New Ways Into the Brain’s ‘Music Room’
Whether to enliven a commute, relax in the evening or drown out the buzz of a neighbor’s recreational drone, Americans listen to music nearly four hours a day. In international surveys, people consistently rank music as one of life’s supreme sources of pleasure and emotional power. We marry to music, graduate to music, mourn to music. Every culture ever studied has been found to make music, and among the oldest artistic objects known are slender flutes carved from mammoth bone some 43,000 years ago — 24,000 years before the cave paintings of Lascaux.
Given the antiquity, universality and deep popularity of music, many researchers had long assumed that the human brain must be equipped with some sort of music room, a distinctive piece of cortical architecture dedicated to detecting and interpreting the dulcet signals of song. Yet for years, scientists failed to find any clear evidence of a music-specific domain through conventional brain-scanning technology, and the quest to understand the neural basis of a quintessential human passion foundered.
Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a radical new approach to brain imaging that reveals what past studies had missed. By mathematically analyzing scans of the auditory cortex and grouping clusters of brain cells with similar activation patterns, the scientists have identified neural pathways that react almost exclusively to the sound of music — any music. It may be Bach, bluegrass, hip-hop, big band, sitar or Julie Andrews. A listener may relish the sampled genre or revile it. No matter. When a musical passage is played, a distinct set of neurons tucked inside a furrow of a listener’s auditory cortex will fire in response.
Other sounds, by contrast — a dog barking, a car skidding, a toilet flushing — leave the musical circuits unmoved.
Nancy Kanwisher and Josh H. McDermott, professors of neuroscience at M.I.T., and their postdoctoral colleague Sam Norman-Haignere reported their results in the journal Neuron. The findings offer researchers a new tool for exploring the contours of human musicality.
“Why do we have music?” Dr. Kanwisher said in an interview. “Why do we enjoy it so much and want to dance when we hear it? How early in development can we see this sensitivity to music, and is it tunable with experience? These are the really cool first-order questions we can begin to address.”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/scien ... d=71987722
Articles of Interest in Science
Gravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s Theory
A team of scientists announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. (Listen to it here.) It completes his vision of a universe in which space and time are interwoven and dynamic, able to stretch, shrink and jiggle. And it is a ringing confirmation of the nature of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits from which not even light can escape, which were the most foreboding (and unwelcome) part of his theory.
More generally, it means that a century of innovation, testing, questioning and plain hard work after Einstein imagined it on paper, scientists have finally tapped into the deepest register of physical reality, where the weirdest and wildest implications of Einstein’s universe become manifest.
Conveyed by these gravitational waves, power 50 times greater than the output of all the stars in the universe combined vibrated a pair of L-shaped antennas in Washington State and Louisiana known as LIGO on Sept. 14.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/scien ... d=71987722
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35524440
Einstein's gravitational waves 'seen' from black holes
Gravitational waves: it's impossible not to be thrilled by this discovery
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... lsignoutmd
******
Finding Beauty in the Darkness
WITH presidential primaries in full steam, with the country wrapped up in concern about the economy, immigration and terrorism, one might wonder why we should care about the news of a minuscule jiggle produced by an event in a far corner of the universe.
The answer is simple. While the political displays we have been treated to over the past weeks may reflect some of the worst about what it means to be human, this jiggle, discovered in an exotic physics experiment, reflects the best. Scientists overcame almost insurmountable odds to open a vast new window on the cosmos. And if history is any guide, every time we have built new eyes to observe the universe, our understanding of ourselves and our place in it has been forever altered.
When Galileo turned his telescope toward Jupiter in 1609, he observed moons orbiting the giant planet, a discovery that destroyed the Aristotelian notion that everything in heaven orbited the Earth. When in 1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Laboratories detected radio waves emitted by celestial objects, they discovered that the universe began in a fiery Big Bang.
Photo
Albert EinsteinCredit Popperfoto/Getty Images
One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein used his newly discovered general theory of relativity (which implies that space itself responds to the presence of matter by curving, expanding or contracting) to demonstrate that each time we wave our hands around or move any matter, disturbances in the fabric of space propagate out at the speed of light, as waves travel outward when a rock is thrown into a lake. As these gravitational waves traverse space they will literally cause distances between objects alternately to decrease and increase in an oscillatory manner.
This, of course, is far from the realm of human experience. In the absence of alcohol, your living room doesn’t appear to shrink and grow repeatedly. But, in fact, it does. The oscillations in space caused by gravitational waves are so small that those ripples in length had never been seen. And there was every reason to suspect they would never be seen.
Yet on Thursday, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, announced that a signal from gravitational waves had been discovered emanating from the collision and merger of two massive black holes over a billion light-years away. How far away is that? Well, one light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles.
To see these waves, the experimenters built two mammoth detectors, one in Washington State, the other in Louisiana, each consisting of two tunnels about 2.5 miles in length at right angles to each other. By shooting a laser beam down the length of each tunnel and timing how long it took for each to be reflected off a mirror at the far end, the experimenters could precisely measure the tunnels’ length. If a gravitational wave from a distant galaxy traverses the detectors at both locations roughly simultaneously, then at each location, the length of one arm would get smaller, while the length of the other arm would get longer, alternating back and forth.
To detect the signal they observed they had to be able to measure a periodic difference in the length between the two tunnels by a distance of less than one ten-thousandth the size of a single proton. It is equivalent to measuring the distance between the earth and the nearest star with an accuracy of the width of a human hair.
If the fact that this is possible doesn’t astonish, then read these statements again. This difference is so small that even the minuscule motion in the position of each mirror at the end of each tunnel because of quantum mechanical vibrations of the atoms in the mirror could have overwhelmed the signal. But scientists were able to resort to the most modern techniques in quantum optics to overcome this.
The two black holes that collided, which the LIGO experiment claimed to have detected, were immense. One was about 36 times the mass of our sun, the other, 29 times that mass. The collision and merger produced a black hole 62 times our sun’s mass. If your elementary arithmetic suggests that something is wrong, you’re right. Where did the extra three solar masses disappear to?
Into pure energy in the form of gravitational waves. Our sun will burn for 10 billion years, with the intensity of over 10 billion thermonuclear weapons going off every second. In the process, only a small fraction of its total mass will be turned into energy, according to Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2. But when those black holes collided, three times the entire mass of our sun disappeared in less than a second, transformed into pure energy. During that time, the collision generated more energy than was being generated by all the rest of the stars in the observable universe combined.
Too often people ask, what’s the use of science like this, if it doesn’t produce faster cars or better toasters. But people rarely ask the same question about a Picasso painting or a Mozart symphony. Such pinnacles of human creativity change our perspective of our place in the universe. Science, like art, music and literature, has the capacity to amaze and excite, dazzle and bewilder. I would argue that it is that aspect of science — its cultural contribution, its humanity — that is perhaps its most important feature.
What more can we learn about the universe from a stupefying experimental feat observing a stupefying wonder of nature? The answer is anyone’s guess. Gravitational-wave observatories of the future will be able to explore the exotic features of black holes. This may shed light on the evolution of galaxies, stars and gravity. Eventually, we may be able to observe gravitational waves from the Big Bang, which will push the limits of our current understanding of physics.
Gravitational waves emerge from near the “event horizon” of black holes, the so-called exit door from the universe through which anything that passes can never return. Near such regions, for example, time slows down by a huge amount, as anyone who went to see the movie “Interstellar” knows. (Coincidentally the original treatment for “Interstellar” was written by Kip Thorne, one of the physicists who helped conceive of the LIGO experiment.)
Ultimately, by exploring processes near the event horizon, or by observing gravitational waves from the early universe, we may learn more about the beginning of the universe itself, or even the possible existence of other universes.
Every child has wondered at some time where we came from and how we got here. That we can try and answer such questions by building devices like LIGO to peer out into the cosmos stands as a testament to the persistent curiosity and ingenuity of humankind — the qualities that we should most celebrate about being human.
Lawrence M. Krauss is a theoretical physicist and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. He is the author of “A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opini ... d=71987722
A team of scientists announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. (Listen to it here.) It completes his vision of a universe in which space and time are interwoven and dynamic, able to stretch, shrink and jiggle. And it is a ringing confirmation of the nature of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits from which not even light can escape, which were the most foreboding (and unwelcome) part of his theory.
More generally, it means that a century of innovation, testing, questioning and plain hard work after Einstein imagined it on paper, scientists have finally tapped into the deepest register of physical reality, where the weirdest and wildest implications of Einstein’s universe become manifest.
Conveyed by these gravitational waves, power 50 times greater than the output of all the stars in the universe combined vibrated a pair of L-shaped antennas in Washington State and Louisiana known as LIGO on Sept. 14.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/scien ... d=71987722
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35524440
Einstein's gravitational waves 'seen' from black holes
Gravitational waves: it's impossible not to be thrilled by this discovery
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... lsignoutmd
******
Finding Beauty in the Darkness
WITH presidential primaries in full steam, with the country wrapped up in concern about the economy, immigration and terrorism, one might wonder why we should care about the news of a minuscule jiggle produced by an event in a far corner of the universe.
The answer is simple. While the political displays we have been treated to over the past weeks may reflect some of the worst about what it means to be human, this jiggle, discovered in an exotic physics experiment, reflects the best. Scientists overcame almost insurmountable odds to open a vast new window on the cosmos. And if history is any guide, every time we have built new eyes to observe the universe, our understanding of ourselves and our place in it has been forever altered.
When Galileo turned his telescope toward Jupiter in 1609, he observed moons orbiting the giant planet, a discovery that destroyed the Aristotelian notion that everything in heaven orbited the Earth. When in 1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Laboratories detected radio waves emitted by celestial objects, they discovered that the universe began in a fiery Big Bang.
Photo
Albert EinsteinCredit Popperfoto/Getty Images
One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein used his newly discovered general theory of relativity (which implies that space itself responds to the presence of matter by curving, expanding or contracting) to demonstrate that each time we wave our hands around or move any matter, disturbances in the fabric of space propagate out at the speed of light, as waves travel outward when a rock is thrown into a lake. As these gravitational waves traverse space they will literally cause distances between objects alternately to decrease and increase in an oscillatory manner.
This, of course, is far from the realm of human experience. In the absence of alcohol, your living room doesn’t appear to shrink and grow repeatedly. But, in fact, it does. The oscillations in space caused by gravitational waves are so small that those ripples in length had never been seen. And there was every reason to suspect they would never be seen.
Yet on Thursday, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, announced that a signal from gravitational waves had been discovered emanating from the collision and merger of two massive black holes over a billion light-years away. How far away is that? Well, one light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles.
To see these waves, the experimenters built two mammoth detectors, one in Washington State, the other in Louisiana, each consisting of two tunnels about 2.5 miles in length at right angles to each other. By shooting a laser beam down the length of each tunnel and timing how long it took for each to be reflected off a mirror at the far end, the experimenters could precisely measure the tunnels’ length. If a gravitational wave from a distant galaxy traverses the detectors at both locations roughly simultaneously, then at each location, the length of one arm would get smaller, while the length of the other arm would get longer, alternating back and forth.
To detect the signal they observed they had to be able to measure a periodic difference in the length between the two tunnels by a distance of less than one ten-thousandth the size of a single proton. It is equivalent to measuring the distance between the earth and the nearest star with an accuracy of the width of a human hair.
If the fact that this is possible doesn’t astonish, then read these statements again. This difference is so small that even the minuscule motion in the position of each mirror at the end of each tunnel because of quantum mechanical vibrations of the atoms in the mirror could have overwhelmed the signal. But scientists were able to resort to the most modern techniques in quantum optics to overcome this.
The two black holes that collided, which the LIGO experiment claimed to have detected, were immense. One was about 36 times the mass of our sun, the other, 29 times that mass. The collision and merger produced a black hole 62 times our sun’s mass. If your elementary arithmetic suggests that something is wrong, you’re right. Where did the extra three solar masses disappear to?
Into pure energy in the form of gravitational waves. Our sun will burn for 10 billion years, with the intensity of over 10 billion thermonuclear weapons going off every second. In the process, only a small fraction of its total mass will be turned into energy, according to Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2. But when those black holes collided, three times the entire mass of our sun disappeared in less than a second, transformed into pure energy. During that time, the collision generated more energy than was being generated by all the rest of the stars in the observable universe combined.
Too often people ask, what’s the use of science like this, if it doesn’t produce faster cars or better toasters. But people rarely ask the same question about a Picasso painting or a Mozart symphony. Such pinnacles of human creativity change our perspective of our place in the universe. Science, like art, music and literature, has the capacity to amaze and excite, dazzle and bewilder. I would argue that it is that aspect of science — its cultural contribution, its humanity — that is perhaps its most important feature.
What more can we learn about the universe from a stupefying experimental feat observing a stupefying wonder of nature? The answer is anyone’s guess. Gravitational-wave observatories of the future will be able to explore the exotic features of black holes. This may shed light on the evolution of galaxies, stars and gravity. Eventually, we may be able to observe gravitational waves from the Big Bang, which will push the limits of our current understanding of physics.
Gravitational waves emerge from near the “event horizon” of black holes, the so-called exit door from the universe through which anything that passes can never return. Near such regions, for example, time slows down by a huge amount, as anyone who went to see the movie “Interstellar” knows. (Coincidentally the original treatment for “Interstellar” was written by Kip Thorne, one of the physicists who helped conceive of the LIGO experiment.)
Ultimately, by exploring processes near the event horizon, or by observing gravitational waves from the early universe, we may learn more about the beginning of the universe itself, or even the possible existence of other universes.
Every child has wondered at some time where we came from and how we got here. That we can try and answer such questions by building devices like LIGO to peer out into the cosmos stands as a testament to the persistent curiosity and ingenuity of humankind — the qualities that we should most celebrate about being human.
Lawrence M. Krauss is a theoretical physicist and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. He is the author of “A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opini ... d=71987722
Virgin Galactic unveils new commercial spacecraft
Virgin Galactic, the commercial spaceflight company owned by Richard Branson, unveiled a new passenger spacecraft on Feb. 19, 2016. The appearance of the spacecraft is similar to SpaceShipTwo, the company’s earlier vehicle, which was destroyed nearly 16 months back over California's Mojave Desert.
The spacecraft was named Virgin Spaceship (VSS) Unity by physicist Stephen Hawking, who has been offered a trip in the spaceship. The scientist said: "If I am able to go, and if Richard will still take me, I will be proud to fly on this spaceship."
More than 700 people have already paid $250,000 for a ticket.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=1
******
Herpesvirus CMV-based vaccine effective against Ebola
Researchers from Plymouth University, the National Institutes of Health and University of California have found a possible cure for Ebola virus. The research, conducted on macaques, revealed that a vaccine based on a common herpes virus was effective against Ebola.
The study is regarded as a crucial step toward the invention of the vaccine for humans and other great apes.
Dr. Michael Jarvis, the leader of the project, said: "This finding was complete serendipity. Although we will definitely need to explore this finding further, it suggests that we may be able to bias immunity towards either antibodies or T cells based on the time of target antigen production. This is exciting not just for Ebola, but for vaccination against other infectious as well as non-infectious diseases."
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=2
******
Half of the world's population may become short-sighted by 2050
According to a study published in the journal Ophthalmology, nearly five billion people (half of the world’s projected population) will become short-sighted by 2050 if the current trend continues. It also said that one fifth of them (one billion) may face a high risk of blindness.
The authors from the Brien Holden Vision Institute, University of New South Wales Australia and Singapore Eye Research Institute, believe that the “environmental factors, principally lifestyle changes resulting from a combination of decreased time outdoors and increased near work activities, among other factors," are at the root of the rising vision problem.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=3
******
Mind-controlled prosthetic arm can move individual fingers
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University reported that a mind-controlled prosthetic arm was able to control the movement of individual fingers. The experiment was conducted on a man who was not missing an arm, but he was outfitted with a device which was used for brain mapping.
Senior author Nathan Crone, M.D., professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said: “We believe this is the first time a person using a mind-controlled prosthesis has immediately performed individual digit movements without extensive training. This technology goes beyond available prostheses, in which the artificial digits, or fingers, moved as a single unit to make a grabbing motion, like one used to grip a tennis ball."
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=5
********
Frozen animals successfully revived and reproduced
Tardigrades, also known as water bears, were successfully revived and reproduced after having been frozen for over 30 years. Roughly 0.2 mm-long, tardigrades were retrieved from a moss sample, which was collected in Antarctica in November 1983. The sample was stored at -20°C and was thawed in May 2014.
Tardigrades are believed to be the most durable lifeform on Earth, withstanding astonishing extremes of temperature and pressure. Even so, this discovery marks their most impressive survival feat to date.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=6
******
Living tissue structures can be printed to replace injured or infected tissues
Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center proved that with the help of a sophisticated, custom-designed 3D printer, it is possible to print living tissue structures to replace injured or infected tissues.
During an experiment, the scientists printed ear, bone and muscle structures, which they implanted in animals. Those tissues matured and became functional and developed a system of blood vessels. Moreover, the structures had the right size, strength and functionality for use in humans.
Anthony Atala, who is senior author of the study and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), said: "This novel tissue and organ printer is an important advance in our quest to make replacement tissue for patients. It can fabricate stable, human-scale tissue of any shape. With further development, this technology could potentially be used to print living tissue and organ structures for surgical implantation."
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=7
******
Raising a child affects immune systems more than gastroenteritis
Did you know raising a child together affects your immune system more than gastroenteritis? Researchers at VIB and KU Leuven in Belgium and the Babraham Institute in the UK conducted a study on 670 people, from 2-86 years of age, in order to understand how immunity differs from person to person.
The study, which focused on a range of factors, including age, gender and obesity, revealed that couples who lived together and raised a child had a 50 percent reduction in the variation between their two immune system as compared to others.
Dr Adrian Liston, who co-led the research, said: " Since parenting is one of the most severe environmental challenges anyone willingly puts themselves through, it makes sense that it radically rewires the immune system — still, it was a surprise that having kids was a much more potent immune challenge than severe gastroenteritis.”
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=8
Virgin Galactic, the commercial spaceflight company owned by Richard Branson, unveiled a new passenger spacecraft on Feb. 19, 2016. The appearance of the spacecraft is similar to SpaceShipTwo, the company’s earlier vehicle, which was destroyed nearly 16 months back over California's Mojave Desert.
The spacecraft was named Virgin Spaceship (VSS) Unity by physicist Stephen Hawking, who has been offered a trip in the spaceship. The scientist said: "If I am able to go, and if Richard will still take me, I will be proud to fly on this spaceship."
More than 700 people have already paid $250,000 for a ticket.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=1
******
Herpesvirus CMV-based vaccine effective against Ebola
Researchers from Plymouth University, the National Institutes of Health and University of California have found a possible cure for Ebola virus. The research, conducted on macaques, revealed that a vaccine based on a common herpes virus was effective against Ebola.
The study is regarded as a crucial step toward the invention of the vaccine for humans and other great apes.
Dr. Michael Jarvis, the leader of the project, said: "This finding was complete serendipity. Although we will definitely need to explore this finding further, it suggests that we may be able to bias immunity towards either antibodies or T cells based on the time of target antigen production. This is exciting not just for Ebola, but for vaccination against other infectious as well as non-infectious diseases."
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=2
******
Half of the world's population may become short-sighted by 2050
According to a study published in the journal Ophthalmology, nearly five billion people (half of the world’s projected population) will become short-sighted by 2050 if the current trend continues. It also said that one fifth of them (one billion) may face a high risk of blindness.
The authors from the Brien Holden Vision Institute, University of New South Wales Australia and Singapore Eye Research Institute, believe that the “environmental factors, principally lifestyle changes resulting from a combination of decreased time outdoors and increased near work activities, among other factors," are at the root of the rising vision problem.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=3
******
Mind-controlled prosthetic arm can move individual fingers
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University reported that a mind-controlled prosthetic arm was able to control the movement of individual fingers. The experiment was conducted on a man who was not missing an arm, but he was outfitted with a device which was used for brain mapping.
Senior author Nathan Crone, M.D., professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said: “We believe this is the first time a person using a mind-controlled prosthesis has immediately performed individual digit movements without extensive training. This technology goes beyond available prostheses, in which the artificial digits, or fingers, moved as a single unit to make a grabbing motion, like one used to grip a tennis ball."
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=5
********
Frozen animals successfully revived and reproduced
Tardigrades, also known as water bears, were successfully revived and reproduced after having been frozen for over 30 years. Roughly 0.2 mm-long, tardigrades were retrieved from a moss sample, which was collected in Antarctica in November 1983. The sample was stored at -20°C and was thawed in May 2014.
Tardigrades are believed to be the most durable lifeform on Earth, withstanding astonishing extremes of temperature and pressure. Even so, this discovery marks their most impressive survival feat to date.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=6
******
Living tissue structures can be printed to replace injured or infected tissues
Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center proved that with the help of a sophisticated, custom-designed 3D printer, it is possible to print living tissue structures to replace injured or infected tissues.
During an experiment, the scientists printed ear, bone and muscle structures, which they implanted in animals. Those tissues matured and became functional and developed a system of blood vessels. Moreover, the structures had the right size, strength and functionality for use in humans.
Anthony Atala, who is senior author of the study and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), said: "This novel tissue and organ printer is an important advance in our quest to make replacement tissue for patients. It can fabricate stable, human-scale tissue of any shape. With further development, this technology could potentially be used to print living tissue and organ structures for surgical implantation."
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=7
******
Raising a child affects immune systems more than gastroenteritis
Did you know raising a child together affects your immune system more than gastroenteritis? Researchers at VIB and KU Leuven in Belgium and the Babraham Institute in the UK conducted a study on 670 people, from 2-86 years of age, in order to understand how immunity differs from person to person.
The study, which focused on a range of factors, including age, gender and obesity, revealed that couples who lived together and raised a child had a 50 percent reduction in the variation between their two immune system as compared to others.
Dr Adrian Liston, who co-led the research, said: " Since parenting is one of the most severe environmental challenges anyone willingly puts themselves through, it makes sense that it radically rewires the immune system — still, it was a surprise that having kids was a much more potent immune challenge than severe gastroenteritis.”
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=8
Scientists Ponder the Prospect of Contagious Cancer
For all its peculiar horror, cancer comes with a saving grace. If nothing else can stop a tumor’s mad evolution, the cancer ultimately dies with its host. Everything the malignant cells have learned about outwitting the patient’s defenses — and those of the oncologists — is erased. The next case of cancer, in another victim, must start anew.
Imagine if instead, cancer cells had the ability to press on to another body. A cancer like that would have the power to metastasize not just from organ to organ, but from person to person, evolving deadly new skills along the way.
While there is no sign of an imminent threat, several recent papers suggest that the eventual emergence of a contagious human cancer is in the realm of medical possibility. This would not be a disease, like cervical cancer, that is set off by the spread of viruses, but rather one in which cancer cells actually travel from one person to another and thrive in their new location.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/scien ... ctionfront
For all its peculiar horror, cancer comes with a saving grace. If nothing else can stop a tumor’s mad evolution, the cancer ultimately dies with its host. Everything the malignant cells have learned about outwitting the patient’s defenses — and those of the oncologists — is erased. The next case of cancer, in another victim, must start anew.
Imagine if instead, cancer cells had the ability to press on to another body. A cancer like that would have the power to metastasize not just from organ to organ, but from person to person, evolving deadly new skills along the way.
While there is no sign of an imminent threat, several recent papers suggest that the eventual emergence of a contagious human cancer is in the realm of medical possibility. This would not be a disease, like cervical cancer, that is set off by the spread of viruses, but rather one in which cancer cells actually travel from one person to another and thrive in their new location.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/scien ... ctionfront
HTC Vive Virtual Reality headset grabs headlines at Mobile World Congress
The launch of HTC Vive, a Virtual Reality (VR) headset, took center stage at the ongoing Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 25. Taiwan-based firm HTC, which was a part of this four-day event, announced that the much-hyped VR headset will be available for customers from April 2016. Vive headset has been developed by HTC in collaboration with Steam, which is the software distribution platform for American game-developer Valve. According to experts, the VR business is heading towards a billion-dollar valuation in the coming years and the launch of HTC Vive is just the beginning. The headset, which is available at a pre-order price of US $799, comes with four separate units, including two hand-tracking controllers and two laser tracking boxes for measuring its position while the user walks around.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=1
******
First ever phone camera with thermal imaging launched at Mobile World Congress
British electronics manufacturing firm Bullitt has launched a Cat S60 smartphone, which contains a camera capable of providing access to thermal imaging. This phone has been created in collaboration with Caterpillar, a firm that manufactures construction equipment, and technology giants FLIR Systems Inc. Manufactured mainly for “tradespeople,” this phone enables access to thermal imaging through the presence of a sensor, which has been developed by FLIR. Pete Cunningham, Product Manager of Bullitt, spoke about how thermal imaging will be beneficial for firefighters and police offers in an interview with Reuters. In addition, he said that this technology, which might not forge a global appeal at present, will join the mainstream within half a decade.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=2
******
Study reveals unique method of decoding brain’s language processing capability
A recent study by experts has revealed that synaesthesia, a neurological phenomenon capturing automatic response to a certain sensory simulation, could help in understanding how the human brain processes languages. According to a study published in Cognition, an international journal, psycholinguists are trying to analyze how theoretical concepts in language might have a psychological connotation attached to them. There are many forms of synaesthesia including association with musical tones, attachment of personalities to letters and relating music to certain colors. For instance, someone who attaches colors to alphabets would regularly relate the letter “A” with red color. Another study worked towards analyzing compound words and how humans store complexities in their mind.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=3
******
Ebola survivors face long term issues
A study in Liberia has claimed that people who have survived Ebola will face several issues in the long run due to the drastic effects of the virus. Neurologists from the United States, working in Liberia, have confirmed suspicions that the Ebola virus has drastic long term effects. Some of the serious long term effects of this virus include depression, headache and memory loss. This news was made public after a nurse named Pauline Cafferkey, who contracted the virus during her time as a volunteer in Sierra Leone, was hospitalized for the third time. A group of neurologists belonging to US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, selected just under 90 people who survived the epidemic in order to study the long-term impacts. Upon close observation, it was concluded that these survivors were suffering from some kind of neurological damage.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=4
******
Stress levels of male mice affect health of their sons
A report submitted by researchers in Cell Metabolism on Feb. 18 suggested that a male mouse’s stress levels directly affect the health of its son. Repeated and consistent exposure to psychological stress leads to the development of high blood sugar, which is passed on to the offspring despite it being totally bereft of any such issue. The report states that stress has a direct impact on the DNA of the male sperm, which is caused due to alteration in chemical tags. Scientists are planning to study this issue in greater depth.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=5
******
NASA plans to attempt exploration of Neptune again
Improvement in the technological sophistication of rockets could propel NASA to orbit Neptune and Uranus again, according to reports. Both these colossal ice giants have not been the target of an attempted exploration since the 1980s, when the Voyager 2 whizzed past Uranus and Neptune afterwards. However, the effort towards sending these unexplored giants is gathering momentum and they are being considered as important frontiers. Jim Green, NASA’s Planetary Science Division Director, said, “We really don’t know much about them. This is a really exciting time for us to be able to study them.”
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=6
******
Earth’s sea levels rising at an alarming rate
According to a report published in Nature Climate Change, the consistent rise in sea level is going to result in large migrations of people away from coastal areas, even if carbon reduction targets are met. The report analyzes the relationship between carbon emissions by humans and the consequential rise in global sea level. Though ice sheets melt slowly, the report states, the elongated presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere combines the former with the latter. To put some figures into perspective, humans have emitted enough carbon pollution to result in a sea level rise of 1.7 meters (5.5 feet). Also, even if we stay within the targeted carbon budget of 1 trillion, sea levels, no matter what, will rise about 9 meters (30 feet).
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=7
******
Scientists say that the dodo was an intelligent bird
Scientists claim that the dodo, an ancient flightless bird whose name is sometimes used to call someone stupid, might have been a reasonably intelligent creature. Speaking on Feb. 24 in Washington, United States, scientists said that they were able to figure out the brain size of the dodo by studying a skull present in a museum. Contrary to what is believed, a dodo’s brain was in complete synchronization with its body size. Interestingly, due to the presence of an enlarged olfactory region, it might have possessed better smelling sense than other birds.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=8
*******
Swedish company develops a musical tablecloth
Two employees of Smart Textiles, a Swedish technology firm, have worked together to develop a tablecloth capable of playing music. The tablecloth features a drum kit as well as piano keys, which are printed on the fabric. Mats Johansson and Li Guo, the men behind this creation, believe that the concept of mixing textiles and music is quite intriguing. They have highlighted the importance of sensors in creating this tablecloth. Speaking to Reuters, Johansson said, “The special thing is, of course, that it is all from textile technologies. We have the woven cloth but on that we added prints for the piano, we added other laminated textile structures for the drums.”
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=9
******
Apollo 10 crew listened to “outer space” music during mission
An audio tape from NASA has revealed that astronauts who were aboard the Apollo 10 used to listen to music, which they described as “outer space type music.” The 1969 mission, which was one of the most historic in human history, around the moon’s dark side is spoken about in the tape. John Young and Eugene Cernan, crew members of the Apollo 10, also discuss the whistling sound in the tape that was clandestine due to the competition with Soviet Union in those times.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... md#page=10
The launch of HTC Vive, a Virtual Reality (VR) headset, took center stage at the ongoing Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 25. Taiwan-based firm HTC, which was a part of this four-day event, announced that the much-hyped VR headset will be available for customers from April 2016. Vive headset has been developed by HTC in collaboration with Steam, which is the software distribution platform for American game-developer Valve. According to experts, the VR business is heading towards a billion-dollar valuation in the coming years and the launch of HTC Vive is just the beginning. The headset, which is available at a pre-order price of US $799, comes with four separate units, including two hand-tracking controllers and two laser tracking boxes for measuring its position while the user walks around.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=1
******
First ever phone camera with thermal imaging launched at Mobile World Congress
British electronics manufacturing firm Bullitt has launched a Cat S60 smartphone, which contains a camera capable of providing access to thermal imaging. This phone has been created in collaboration with Caterpillar, a firm that manufactures construction equipment, and technology giants FLIR Systems Inc. Manufactured mainly for “tradespeople,” this phone enables access to thermal imaging through the presence of a sensor, which has been developed by FLIR. Pete Cunningham, Product Manager of Bullitt, spoke about how thermal imaging will be beneficial for firefighters and police offers in an interview with Reuters. In addition, he said that this technology, which might not forge a global appeal at present, will join the mainstream within half a decade.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=2
******
Study reveals unique method of decoding brain’s language processing capability
A recent study by experts has revealed that synaesthesia, a neurological phenomenon capturing automatic response to a certain sensory simulation, could help in understanding how the human brain processes languages. According to a study published in Cognition, an international journal, psycholinguists are trying to analyze how theoretical concepts in language might have a psychological connotation attached to them. There are many forms of synaesthesia including association with musical tones, attachment of personalities to letters and relating music to certain colors. For instance, someone who attaches colors to alphabets would regularly relate the letter “A” with red color. Another study worked towards analyzing compound words and how humans store complexities in their mind.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=3
******
Ebola survivors face long term issues
A study in Liberia has claimed that people who have survived Ebola will face several issues in the long run due to the drastic effects of the virus. Neurologists from the United States, working in Liberia, have confirmed suspicions that the Ebola virus has drastic long term effects. Some of the serious long term effects of this virus include depression, headache and memory loss. This news was made public after a nurse named Pauline Cafferkey, who contracted the virus during her time as a volunteer in Sierra Leone, was hospitalized for the third time. A group of neurologists belonging to US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, selected just under 90 people who survived the epidemic in order to study the long-term impacts. Upon close observation, it was concluded that these survivors were suffering from some kind of neurological damage.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=4
******
Stress levels of male mice affect health of their sons
A report submitted by researchers in Cell Metabolism on Feb. 18 suggested that a male mouse’s stress levels directly affect the health of its son. Repeated and consistent exposure to psychological stress leads to the development of high blood sugar, which is passed on to the offspring despite it being totally bereft of any such issue. The report states that stress has a direct impact on the DNA of the male sperm, which is caused due to alteration in chemical tags. Scientists are planning to study this issue in greater depth.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=5
******
NASA plans to attempt exploration of Neptune again
Improvement in the technological sophistication of rockets could propel NASA to orbit Neptune and Uranus again, according to reports. Both these colossal ice giants have not been the target of an attempted exploration since the 1980s, when the Voyager 2 whizzed past Uranus and Neptune afterwards. However, the effort towards sending these unexplored giants is gathering momentum and they are being considered as important frontiers. Jim Green, NASA’s Planetary Science Division Director, said, “We really don’t know much about them. This is a really exciting time for us to be able to study them.”
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=6
******
Earth’s sea levels rising at an alarming rate
According to a report published in Nature Climate Change, the consistent rise in sea level is going to result in large migrations of people away from coastal areas, even if carbon reduction targets are met. The report analyzes the relationship between carbon emissions by humans and the consequential rise in global sea level. Though ice sheets melt slowly, the report states, the elongated presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere combines the former with the latter. To put some figures into perspective, humans have emitted enough carbon pollution to result in a sea level rise of 1.7 meters (5.5 feet). Also, even if we stay within the targeted carbon budget of 1 trillion, sea levels, no matter what, will rise about 9 meters (30 feet).
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=7
******
Scientists say that the dodo was an intelligent bird
Scientists claim that the dodo, an ancient flightless bird whose name is sometimes used to call someone stupid, might have been a reasonably intelligent creature. Speaking on Feb. 24 in Washington, United States, scientists said that they were able to figure out the brain size of the dodo by studying a skull present in a museum. Contrary to what is believed, a dodo’s brain was in complete synchronization with its body size. Interestingly, due to the presence of an enlarged olfactory region, it might have possessed better smelling sense than other birds.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=8
*******
Swedish company develops a musical tablecloth
Two employees of Smart Textiles, a Swedish technology firm, have worked together to develop a tablecloth capable of playing music. The tablecloth features a drum kit as well as piano keys, which are printed on the fabric. Mats Johansson and Li Guo, the men behind this creation, believe that the concept of mixing textiles and music is quite intriguing. They have highlighted the importance of sensors in creating this tablecloth. Speaking to Reuters, Johansson said, “The special thing is, of course, that it is all from textile technologies. We have the woven cloth but on that we added prints for the piano, we added other laminated textile structures for the drums.”
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=9
******
Apollo 10 crew listened to “outer space” music during mission
An audio tape from NASA has revealed that astronauts who were aboard the Apollo 10 used to listen to music, which they described as “outer space type music.” The 1969 mission, which was one of the most historic in human history, around the moon’s dark side is spoken about in the tape. John Young and Eugene Cernan, crew members of the Apollo 10, also discuss the whistling sound in the tape that was clandestine due to the competition with Soviet Union in those times.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... md#page=10
LATEST DIALOGUES
Let’s Rethink Space
Does space exist without objects, or is it made by them? By George Musser
Space is brutally egalitarian. When you become separated from your lover, the two of you retain no tighter a physical connection than do two lumps of coal. In this way, space serves as the organizing principle of the natural world—the glue that binds the universe together, as the English physicist Julian Barbour has put it. Physical objects do not interact willy-nilly; their behavior is dictated by how they are related to one another, which depends on where they lie in space at a given time. This structuring role is easiest to see in the classical laws of mechanical motion, but also occurs in field theories. The value and rate of change of a field at different points in space fully determine what the field does, and points in the field interact only with their immediate neighbors.
This kind of behavior reflects what scientists call “locality,” which means that everything has a place. You can always point to an object and say, “Here it is.” The world we experience possesses all the qualities of locality. We have a strong sense of place and of the relations among places. Locality grounds our sense of self, our confidence that our thoughts and feelings are our own. With all due respect to John Donne, every man is an island, entire of himself. We are insulated from one another by seas of space, and we should be grateful for it.
But locality isn’t what it used to be. Quantum mechanics predicts that two particles can become blood brothers. For want of a mechanism to couple them, the particle should be completely autonomous—yet to touch one is to touch the other, as if distance meant nothing to them. The scientific method of divide and conquer fails for them. The particles have joint properties that escape you if you view them one at a time; you must measure the particles together.
Our world is crisscrossed by a web of these seemingly mystical relationships. And in the past 20 years, I’ve witnessed a remarkable evolution in attitudes among physicists toward locality. In my career as a science writer and editor, I have had the privilege of talking to scientists from a wide range of communities—people who study everything from subatomic particles to black holes to the grand structure of the cosmos. Over and over, I heard some variant of: “Well, it’s weird, and I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen if for myself, but it looks like the world has just got to be nonlocal.” -
See more at: http://scienceandnonduality.com/lets-rethink-space/
Let’s Rethink Space
Does space exist without objects, or is it made by them? By George Musser
Space is brutally egalitarian. When you become separated from your lover, the two of you retain no tighter a physical connection than do two lumps of coal. In this way, space serves as the organizing principle of the natural world—the glue that binds the universe together, as the English physicist Julian Barbour has put it. Physical objects do not interact willy-nilly; their behavior is dictated by how they are related to one another, which depends on where they lie in space at a given time. This structuring role is easiest to see in the classical laws of mechanical motion, but also occurs in field theories. The value and rate of change of a field at different points in space fully determine what the field does, and points in the field interact only with their immediate neighbors.
This kind of behavior reflects what scientists call “locality,” which means that everything has a place. You can always point to an object and say, “Here it is.” The world we experience possesses all the qualities of locality. We have a strong sense of place and of the relations among places. Locality grounds our sense of self, our confidence that our thoughts and feelings are our own. With all due respect to John Donne, every man is an island, entire of himself. We are insulated from one another by seas of space, and we should be grateful for it.
But locality isn’t what it used to be. Quantum mechanics predicts that two particles can become blood brothers. For want of a mechanism to couple them, the particle should be completely autonomous—yet to touch one is to touch the other, as if distance meant nothing to them. The scientific method of divide and conquer fails for them. The particles have joint properties that escape you if you view them one at a time; you must measure the particles together.
Our world is crisscrossed by a web of these seemingly mystical relationships. And in the past 20 years, I’ve witnessed a remarkable evolution in attitudes among physicists toward locality. In my career as a science writer and editor, I have had the privilege of talking to scientists from a wide range of communities—people who study everything from subatomic particles to black holes to the grand structure of the cosmos. Over and over, I heard some variant of: “Well, it’s weird, and I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen if for myself, but it looks like the world has just got to be nonlocal.” -
See more at: http://scienceandnonduality.com/lets-rethink-space/
Astronomers just saw farther back in time than they ever have before
To look through the lens of a telescope is to peer back in time.
The light we view through it has spent hundreds, millions, even billions of years crossing the vastness of space to reach us, carrying with it images of things that happened long ago.
On Thursday, astronomers at the Hubble Space Telescope announced that they’d seen back farther than they ever have before, to a galaxy 13.4 billion light years away in a time when the universe was just past its infancy.
The finding shattered what’s known as the “cosmic distance record,” illuminating a point in time that scientists once thought could never be seen with current technology.
More...
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ast ... lsignoutmd
To look through the lens of a telescope is to peer back in time.
The light we view through it has spent hundreds, millions, even billions of years crossing the vastness of space to reach us, carrying with it images of things that happened long ago.
On Thursday, astronomers at the Hubble Space Telescope announced that they’d seen back farther than they ever have before, to a galaxy 13.4 billion light years away in a time when the universe was just past its infancy.
The finding shattered what’s known as the “cosmic distance record,” illuminating a point in time that scientists once thought could never be seen with current technology.
More...
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ast ... lsignoutmd
Science stories of the week: March 4, 2016
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returns from space after almost a year
New cosmic distance record set by Hubble Space Telescope
Scientists find a way to help immune system destroy cancer cells
China to launch new space lab later this year
Europe's largest floating solar farm to open near Heathrow airport, London
Scientists have finally identified the gene involved in turning hair gray
Blind woman regains sight after a stem cell treatment
Details of each item by slide show at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... Nb9#page=1
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returns from space after almost a year
New cosmic distance record set by Hubble Space Telescope
Scientists find a way to help immune system destroy cancer cells
China to launch new space lab later this year
Europe's largest floating solar farm to open near Heathrow airport, London
Scientists have finally identified the gene involved in turning hair gray
Blind woman regains sight after a stem cell treatment
Details of each item by slide show at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... Nb9#page=1
Hopeful Start for First Uterus Transplant Surgery in U.S
CLEVELAND — Just minutes after the patient’s name was placed on the waiting list for a transplant, details about a matching donor popped up.
“I was shocked,” said Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis, the director of solid organ transplantation at the Cleveland Clinic’s hospital in Weston, Fla. “I really considered it an act of God.”
Less than 24 hours later, on Feb. 24, the patient, a 26-year-old woman from Texas, became the first in the United States to receive a uterus transplant, in a nine-hour operation here at the Cleveland Clinic. Born without a uterus, she hopes the transplant will enable her to become pregnant and give birth.
........
Medically, uterus transplants are a new frontier. Ethically, they reflect an increasing acceptance that transplants are justified not only to save lives, but also to improve the quality of life. That belief has already led to hand and face transplants for people with horrific injuries. Penis transplants may be next: Doctors at Johns Hopkins University plan to perform them for men wounded in combat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/healt ... d=71987722
CLEVELAND — Just minutes after the patient’s name was placed on the waiting list for a transplant, details about a matching donor popped up.
“I was shocked,” said Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis, the director of solid organ transplantation at the Cleveland Clinic’s hospital in Weston, Fla. “I really considered it an act of God.”
Less than 24 hours later, on Feb. 24, the patient, a 26-year-old woman from Texas, became the first in the United States to receive a uterus transplant, in a nine-hour operation here at the Cleveland Clinic. Born without a uterus, she hopes the transplant will enable her to become pregnant and give birth.
........
Medically, uterus transplants are a new frontier. Ethically, they reflect an increasing acceptance that transplants are justified not only to save lives, but also to improve the quality of life. That belief has already led to hand and face transplants for people with horrific injuries. Penis transplants may be next: Doctors at Johns Hopkins University plan to perform them for men wounded in combat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/healt ... d=71987722
Science stories of the week: March 11, 2016
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... lsignoutmd
Items:
Meldonium - The banned drug Sharapova was found using
Carbon dioxide levels record largest hike
A new approach to remove congenital cataracts
Zika virus may infect adult brains
Google's artificial intelligence program beats Go champion
The Pacific witnesses the year's first complete solar eclipse
Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin announces private space travel by 2018
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... lsignoutmd
Items:
Meldonium - The banned drug Sharapova was found using
Carbon dioxide levels record largest hike
A new approach to remove congenital cataracts
Zika virus may infect adult brains
Google's artificial intelligence program beats Go champion
The Pacific witnesses the year's first complete solar eclipse
Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin announces private space travel by 2018
Science stories of the week: March 18, 2016
SLIDE SHOW
http://www.msn.com/en-za/news/science/s ... 9em#page=1
Highlight:
Russia’s Dmitry Itskov’s plan to make the idea of immortality a possibility
If Russian multi-millionaire Dmitry Itskov's project is successful, the concept of immortality could become a reality. The ambitious project aims to create robots capable of storing human personalities. The project is based on the idea that a robot works on the same principle as a human brain and hence it can store a person's thoughts and feelings. A group of neuroscientists, robot builders, and consciousness researchers are working together to come up with an android capable of storing human personality as early as 2045.
SLIDE SHOW
http://www.msn.com/en-za/news/science/s ... 9em#page=1
Highlight:
Russia’s Dmitry Itskov’s plan to make the idea of immortality a possibility
If Russian multi-millionaire Dmitry Itskov's project is successful, the concept of immortality could become a reality. The ambitious project aims to create robots capable of storing human personalities. The project is based on the idea that a robot works on the same principle as a human brain and hence it can store a person's thoughts and feelings. A group of neuroscientists, robot builders, and consciousness researchers are working together to come up with an android capable of storing human personality as early as 2045.
What We’ve Learned About Pluto
The story of Pluto is largely a story of ice.
On Earth, the only ice is frozen water. On Pluto, nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide also freeze solid.
The most striking feature that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft saw when it flew past Pluto last July was a heart-shape region now named Tombaugh Regio after Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto.
The left half is covered by mostly nitrogen snow; the right side is more methane ice.
Eight months since NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft had its quick, close-up look at Pluto, scientists are reaping the scientific rewards from a bounty of data the spacecraft collected. Mission scientists reported their findings in five articles published Thursday in the journal Science.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016 ... d=45305309
******
Risky Rats Give Clues on Brain Circuitry Behind Taking a Chance
When people make risky decisions, like doubling down in blackjack or investing in volatile stocks, what happens in the brain?
Scientists have long tried to understand what makes some people risk-averse and others risk-taking. Answers could have implications for how to treat, curb or prevent destructively risky behavior, like pathological gambling or drug addiction.
Now, a study by Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a prominent Stanford neuroscientist and psychiatrist, and his colleagues gives some clues. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, reports that a specific type of neuron or nerve cell, in a certain brain region helps galvanize whether or not a risky choice is made.
The study was conducted in rats, but experts said it built on research suggesting the findings could be similar in humans. If so, they said, it could inform approaches to addiction, which involves some of the same neurons and brain areas, as well as treatments for Parkinson’s disease because one class of Parkinson’s medications turns some patients into problem gamblers.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/scien ... ctionfront
****
Parrots Are a Lot More Than ‘Pretty Bird’
Out of the cage, they speak their own language, make tools,
and wreak havoc on plants and researchers’ efforts alike.
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/scien ... ctionfront
The story of Pluto is largely a story of ice.
On Earth, the only ice is frozen water. On Pluto, nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide also freeze solid.
The most striking feature that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft saw when it flew past Pluto last July was a heart-shape region now named Tombaugh Regio after Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto.
The left half is covered by mostly nitrogen snow; the right side is more methane ice.
Eight months since NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft had its quick, close-up look at Pluto, scientists are reaping the scientific rewards from a bounty of data the spacecraft collected. Mission scientists reported their findings in five articles published Thursday in the journal Science.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016 ... d=45305309
******
Risky Rats Give Clues on Brain Circuitry Behind Taking a Chance
When people make risky decisions, like doubling down in blackjack or investing in volatile stocks, what happens in the brain?
Scientists have long tried to understand what makes some people risk-averse and others risk-taking. Answers could have implications for how to treat, curb or prevent destructively risky behavior, like pathological gambling or drug addiction.
Now, a study by Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a prominent Stanford neuroscientist and psychiatrist, and his colleagues gives some clues. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, reports that a specific type of neuron or nerve cell, in a certain brain region helps galvanize whether or not a risky choice is made.
The study was conducted in rats, but experts said it built on research suggesting the findings could be similar in humans. If so, they said, it could inform approaches to addiction, which involves some of the same neurons and brain areas, as well as treatments for Parkinson’s disease because one class of Parkinson’s medications turns some patients into problem gamblers.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/scien ... ctionfront
****
Parrots Are a Lot More Than ‘Pretty Bird’
Out of the cage, they speak their own language, make tools,
and wreak havoc on plants and researchers’ efforts alike.
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/scien ... ctionfront
Science stories of the week: March 25, 2016
SLIDESHOW
http://www.msn.com/en-za/news/science/s ... ar-BBqUdLi
Science stories of the week: April 1, 2016
Slideshow
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Scientists develop transparent wood
Swedish scientists have developed transparent wood that could be used in building materials and help save energy costs. This material could also find application in solar cell windows. A structural polymer called lignin makes wood opaque. In their experiments on balsa wood, scientists removed this component and incorporated acrylic or plexiglass to make the wood transparent. The resulting product was twice as strong and transmitted 85 percent of light falling through it.
Right now, the transparent wood developed is only a few millimeters thick. "This is only a prototype. We expect to make thicker structures very soon," said Lars Berglund, the main author of the report.
SLIDESHOW
http://www.msn.com/en-za/news/science/s ... ar-BBqUdLi
Science stories of the week: April 1, 2016
Slideshow
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Scientists develop transparent wood
Swedish scientists have developed transparent wood that could be used in building materials and help save energy costs. This material could also find application in solar cell windows. A structural polymer called lignin makes wood opaque. In their experiments on balsa wood, scientists removed this component and incorporated acrylic or plexiglass to make the wood transparent. The resulting product was twice as strong and transmitted 85 percent of light falling through it.
Right now, the transparent wood developed is only a few millimeters thick. "This is only a prototype. We expect to make thicker structures very soon," said Lars Berglund, the main author of the report.
To Beat Go Champion, Google’s Program Needed a Human Army
Nearly 20 years ago, after a chess-playing computer called Deep Blue beat the world grandmaster Garry Kasparov, I wrote an article about why humans would long remain the champions in the game of Go.
“It may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go — maybe even longer,” Dr. Piet Hut, an astrophysicist and Go enthusiast at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., told me in 1997. “If a reasonably intelligent person learned to play Go, in a few months he could beat all existing computer programs. You don’t have to be a Kasparov.”
That was the prevailing wisdom. Last month, after a Google computer program called AlphaGo defeated the Go master Lee Se-dol, I asked Dr. Hut for his reaction. “I was way off, clearly, with my prediction,” he replied in an email. “It’s really stunning.”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/scien ... d=71987722
*******
Why Some Societies Practiced Ritual Human Sacrifice
One thing that’s definitely gotten better over time: not as much ritualistic human sacrifice.
But a new study published Monday in Nature revisits the ancient practice to look for fresh insights. The scientists found that, for better or worse (and only worse for the victims, of course), human sacrifice helped create the hierarchies present in many modern societies.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/scien ... pe=article
Nearly 20 years ago, after a chess-playing computer called Deep Blue beat the world grandmaster Garry Kasparov, I wrote an article about why humans would long remain the champions in the game of Go.
“It may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go — maybe even longer,” Dr. Piet Hut, an astrophysicist and Go enthusiast at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., told me in 1997. “If a reasonably intelligent person learned to play Go, in a few months he could beat all existing computer programs. You don’t have to be a Kasparov.”
That was the prevailing wisdom. Last month, after a Google computer program called AlphaGo defeated the Go master Lee Se-dol, I asked Dr. Hut for his reaction. “I was way off, clearly, with my prediction,” he replied in an email. “It’s really stunning.”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/scien ... d=71987722
*******
Why Some Societies Practiced Ritual Human Sacrifice
One thing that’s definitely gotten better over time: not as much ritualistic human sacrifice.
But a new study published Monday in Nature revisits the ancient practice to look for fresh insights. The scientists found that, for better or worse (and only worse for the victims, of course), human sacrifice helped create the hierarchies present in many modern societies.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/scien ... pe=article
Science stories of the week: April 9, 2016
Sideshow at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... lsignoutmd
Highlights:
World's first 3D-printed drug goes on sale
The 3D printing technology touched yet another high as Aprecia Pharmaceuticals, a Pennsylvania.-based company, has become the world’s first brand to manufacture drugs by using powder-liquid three-dimensional printing technology, according to Science News journal. The drug, named Spritam, is meant to treat epilepsy.
The 3D drug has received necessary approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is now commercially available in the United States. Made using power bed inkjet printing, where the elements of the drug are created layer upon layer, its instant melt-in-the-mouth property gives it a distinct advantage over traditional anticonvulsants that have to be swallowed.
A baboon survives with a 'pig's heart' in stomach
As part of a National Institutes of Health research on xenotransplantation — the process of grafting or transplanting organs between different species, a baboon has survived with a pig's heart beating inside its abdomen for nearly three years. The baboon had its own heart in place and did not rely on the pig’s heart for functioning. All the baboons used in this experiment were administered a combination of immune-suppressing drugs to stop their immune systems from attacking the new hearts; once the drugs were withdrawn, the pig hearts stopped working.
While it's too early before xenotransplantation can be successfully carried out in humans, this experiment sure gives hope. Around 22 people die in the U.S. everyday while waiting for human organs that are in short supply, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
Sideshow at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... lsignoutmd
Highlights:
World's first 3D-printed drug goes on sale
The 3D printing technology touched yet another high as Aprecia Pharmaceuticals, a Pennsylvania.-based company, has become the world’s first brand to manufacture drugs by using powder-liquid three-dimensional printing technology, according to Science News journal. The drug, named Spritam, is meant to treat epilepsy.
The 3D drug has received necessary approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is now commercially available in the United States. Made using power bed inkjet printing, where the elements of the drug are created layer upon layer, its instant melt-in-the-mouth property gives it a distinct advantage over traditional anticonvulsants that have to be swallowed.
A baboon survives with a 'pig's heart' in stomach
As part of a National Institutes of Health research on xenotransplantation — the process of grafting or transplanting organs between different species, a baboon has survived with a pig's heart beating inside its abdomen for nearly three years. The baboon had its own heart in place and did not rely on the pig’s heart for functioning. All the baboons used in this experiment were administered a combination of immune-suppressing drugs to stop their immune systems from attacking the new hearts; once the drugs were withdrawn, the pig hearts stopped working.
While it's too early before xenotransplantation can be successfully carried out in humans, this experiment sure gives hope. Around 22 people die in the U.S. everyday while waiting for human organs that are in short supply, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
In Science, It’s Never ‘Just a Theory’
Misconception: It’s just a theory.
Actually: Theories are neither hunches nor guesses. They are the crown jewels of science.
One day, it’s Megyn Kelly who has a theory about why Donald J. Trump hates her.
Another day, the newly released trailer for the next Star Wars movie inspires a million theories from fans about who Rey’s parents are.
And on Twitter, someone going by the name of Mothra P.I. has a theory about how cats can assume a new state of matter:
In everyday conversation, we tend to use the word “theory” to mean a hunch, an idle speculation, or a crackpot notion.
That’s not what “theory” means to scientists.
“In science, the word theory isn’t applied lightly,” Kenneth R. Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, said. “It doesn’t mean a hunch or a guess. A theory is a system of explanations that ties together a whole bunch of facts. It not only explains those facts, but predicts what you ought to find from other observations and experiments.”
Dr. Miller is one of the few scientists to have explained the nature of theories on a witness stand under oath.
He is a co-author of a high school biology textbook that puts a strong emphasis on the theory of evolution. In 2002, the board of education in Cobb County, Ga., adopted the textbook but also required science teachers to put a warning sticker inside the cover of every copy.
“Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things,” the sticker read, in part.
In 2004, several Cobb County parents filed a lawsuit against the county board of education to have the stickers removed. They called Dr. Miller, who testified for about two hours, explaining, among other things, the strength of evidence for the theory of evolution.
Once the lawyers had finished questioning Dr. Miller, he stepped down from the stand and made his way out of the courtroom. On the way, he noticed a woman looking him straight in the eye.
“She said, ‘It’s only a theory, and we’re going to win this one,’  ” Dr. Miller recalled.
They didn’t. In 2005 the judge ruled against the board of education. The board appealed the decision but later agreed to remove the stickers.
Peter Godfrey-Smith, the author of “Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science,” has been thinking about how people can avoid the misunderstanding embedded in the phrase, “It’s only a theory.”
It’s helpful, he argues, to think about theories as being like maps.
“To say something is a map is not to say it’s a hunch,” said Dr. Godfrey-Smith, a professor at the City University of New York and the University of Sydney. “It’s an attempt to represent some territory.”
A theory, likewise, represents a territory of science. Instead of rivers, hills, and towns, the pieces of the territory are facts.
“To call something a map is not to say anything about how good it is,” Dr. Godfrey-Smith added. “There are fantastically good maps where there’s not a shred of doubt about their accuracy. And there are maps that are speculative.”
To judge a map’s quality, we can see how well it guides us through its territory. In a similar way, scientists test out new theories against evidence. Just as many maps have proven to be unreliable, many theories have been cast aside.
But other theories have become the foundation of modern science, such as the theory of evolution, the general theory of relativity, the theory of plate tectonics, the theory that the sun is at the center of the solar system, and the germ theory of disease.
“To the best of our ability, we’ve tested them, and they’ve held up,” said Dr. Miller. “And that’s why we’ve held on to these things.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/scien ... pe=article
Misconception: It’s just a theory.
Actually: Theories are neither hunches nor guesses. They are the crown jewels of science.
One day, it’s Megyn Kelly who has a theory about why Donald J. Trump hates her.
Another day, the newly released trailer for the next Star Wars movie inspires a million theories from fans about who Rey’s parents are.
And on Twitter, someone going by the name of Mothra P.I. has a theory about how cats can assume a new state of matter:
In everyday conversation, we tend to use the word “theory” to mean a hunch, an idle speculation, or a crackpot notion.
That’s not what “theory” means to scientists.
“In science, the word theory isn’t applied lightly,” Kenneth R. Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, said. “It doesn’t mean a hunch or a guess. A theory is a system of explanations that ties together a whole bunch of facts. It not only explains those facts, but predicts what you ought to find from other observations and experiments.”
Dr. Miller is one of the few scientists to have explained the nature of theories on a witness stand under oath.
He is a co-author of a high school biology textbook that puts a strong emphasis on the theory of evolution. In 2002, the board of education in Cobb County, Ga., adopted the textbook but also required science teachers to put a warning sticker inside the cover of every copy.
“Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things,” the sticker read, in part.
In 2004, several Cobb County parents filed a lawsuit against the county board of education to have the stickers removed. They called Dr. Miller, who testified for about two hours, explaining, among other things, the strength of evidence for the theory of evolution.
Once the lawyers had finished questioning Dr. Miller, he stepped down from the stand and made his way out of the courtroom. On the way, he noticed a woman looking him straight in the eye.
“She said, ‘It’s only a theory, and we’re going to win this one,’  ” Dr. Miller recalled.
They didn’t. In 2005 the judge ruled against the board of education. The board appealed the decision but later agreed to remove the stickers.
Peter Godfrey-Smith, the author of “Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science,” has been thinking about how people can avoid the misunderstanding embedded in the phrase, “It’s only a theory.”
It’s helpful, he argues, to think about theories as being like maps.
“To say something is a map is not to say it’s a hunch,” said Dr. Godfrey-Smith, a professor at the City University of New York and the University of Sydney. “It’s an attempt to represent some territory.”
A theory, likewise, represents a territory of science. Instead of rivers, hills, and towns, the pieces of the territory are facts.
“To call something a map is not to say anything about how good it is,” Dr. Godfrey-Smith added. “There are fantastically good maps where there’s not a shred of doubt about their accuracy. And there are maps that are speculative.”
To judge a map’s quality, we can see how well it guides us through its territory. In a similar way, scientists test out new theories against evidence. Just as many maps have proven to be unreliable, many theories have been cast aside.
But other theories have become the foundation of modern science, such as the theory of evolution, the general theory of relativity, the theory of plate tectonics, the theory that the sun is at the center of the solar system, and the germ theory of disease.
“To the best of our ability, we’ve tested them, and they’ve held up,” said Dr. Miller. “And that’s why we’ve held on to these things.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/scien ... pe=article
Science stories of the week: April 15
Slide Show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Bacteria-powered solar panels
© yangphoto/Getty Images
Scientists have now found a way to generate electricity powered by bacteria.
Researchers at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York, U.S. have created a solar panel powered by bacteria that can generate 5.59 microwatts of energy. The panels were able to produce electricity from photosynthesis and respiratory activities from the micro-organisms.
Study co-author Seokheun Choi said, “Once a functional bio-solar panel becomes available, it could become a permanent power source for supplying long-term power for small, wireless telemetry systems as well as wireless sensors used at remote sites where frequent battery replacement is impractical.”
Slide Show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Bacteria-powered solar panels
© yangphoto/Getty Images
Scientists have now found a way to generate electricity powered by bacteria.
Researchers at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York, U.S. have created a solar panel powered by bacteria that can generate 5.59 microwatts of energy. The panels were able to produce electricity from photosynthesis and respiratory activities from the micro-organisms.
Study co-author Seokheun Choi said, “Once a functional bio-solar panel becomes available, it could become a permanent power source for supplying long-term power for small, wireless telemetry systems as well as wireless sensors used at remote sites where frequent battery replacement is impractical.”
Science stories of the week: April 22
Slideshow:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/sci ... ar-BBs7h4R
Science stories of the week: April 30th
Slideshow:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
SpaceX to land spacecraft on Mars by 2018
American space transportation and exploration company SpaceX has set its sight on Mars and is planning to send an unmanned spacecraft to the red planet as early as 2018. The spacecraft, known as Red Dragon (pictured, artist's rendition), will be SpaceX’s first foray into mars exploration.
NASA announced it will provide full technical support to the Red Dragon, saying that the mission will provide “valuable entry, descent and landing data” for its first manned Mars landing in the 2030s. SpaceX will provide more details on the mission at the International Astronautical Congress in September.
Slideshow:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/sci ... ar-BBs7h4R
Science stories of the week: April 30th
Slideshow:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
SpaceX to land spacecraft on Mars by 2018
American space transportation and exploration company SpaceX has set its sight on Mars and is planning to send an unmanned spacecraft to the red planet as early as 2018. The spacecraft, known as Red Dragon (pictured, artist's rendition), will be SpaceX’s first foray into mars exploration.
NASA announced it will provide full technical support to the Red Dragon, saying that the mission will provide “valuable entry, descent and landing data” for its first manned Mars landing in the 2030s. SpaceX will provide more details on the mission at the International Astronautical Congress in September.
Science stories of the week ending May 7, 2016
Slideshow
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Mobile game to help doctors detect dementia
A new mobile video game, “Sea Hero Quest,” will help researchers gather data that could lead to early diagnosis of dementia.
As players navigate the game’s 3D levels, which involve steering a boat through an ocean of icebergs, the game collects data on the users’ navigational capability and anonymously sends it to the researchers.
One of the first skills that people suffering from dementia loses is the power to navigate through obstacles. Therefore, data on navigational skills is essential to tackle dementia in its early stages.
The game was developed by researchers from University College London (UCL) and the University of East Anglia, with the backing of communications giant Deutsche Telekom. Commenting on the effectiveness of the data gathering process, researchers said that the game generated data about 150 times faster than lab-based experiments.
"In my research team, I could only test about 200 people a year, and that's working hard," said UCL researcher Dr Hugo Spiers. "But last night I tested 200 people in one minute with this game."
The first results of the data collection are slated to be revealed in Nov. 2016.
(Pictured above) Volunteers gathered at UCL to mark the launch of "Sea Hero Quest" on May 3 in London, England. Through this event, 350 people collectively played the game for 10 minutes and generated data of one year's worth of similar lab-based research.
Slideshow
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Mobile game to help doctors detect dementia
A new mobile video game, “Sea Hero Quest,” will help researchers gather data that could lead to early diagnosis of dementia.
As players navigate the game’s 3D levels, which involve steering a boat through an ocean of icebergs, the game collects data on the users’ navigational capability and anonymously sends it to the researchers.
One of the first skills that people suffering from dementia loses is the power to navigate through obstacles. Therefore, data on navigational skills is essential to tackle dementia in its early stages.
The game was developed by researchers from University College London (UCL) and the University of East Anglia, with the backing of communications giant Deutsche Telekom. Commenting on the effectiveness of the data gathering process, researchers said that the game generated data about 150 times faster than lab-based experiments.
"In my research team, I could only test about 200 people a year, and that's working hard," said UCL researcher Dr Hugo Spiers. "But last night I tested 200 people in one minute with this game."
The first results of the data collection are slated to be revealed in Nov. 2016.
(Pictured above) Volunteers gathered at UCL to mark the launch of "Sea Hero Quest" on May 3 in London, England. Through this event, 350 people collectively played the game for 10 minutes and generated data of one year's worth of similar lab-based research.
Scientists Hold Secret Meeting to Consider Creating a Synthetic Human Genome
Scientists are now contemplating the creation of a synthetic human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.
The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community, because it might be possible — if someone were able to create a totally artificial genome — to implant that genome into embryos and create human beings without parents.
While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting at Harvard Medical School in Boston on Tuesday. The roughly 150 attendees were told not to contact the media or to tweet about the meeting.
Organizers said the project in some ways would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.
But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people?
“Would it be O.K. to sequence and then synthesize Einstein’s genome?” Drew Endy, a bioengineer at Stanford and Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, wrote in an essay criticizing the proposed project. “If so, how many Einstein genomes would it be O.K. to make and install in cells, and who would get to make and control these cells?”
Scientists and ethicists are already raising concerns about using new gene-editing techniques that could change individual traits in embryos. But it would be possible to make much more extensive changes by synthesizing an entire genome.
Professor Zoloth said in an interview that the project could be risky without any well-defined benefit. She also criticized the surreptitious meeting. “It is O.K. to have meetings that are private, but it has not been characteristic of the field to have meetings that are secret in addition to being private.”
George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and one of the organizers of the proposed project, said the characterization was a misunderstanding, and that in reality the project was aimed more generally at improving the ability to synthesize long strands of DNA, which could be applied to various types of animals, plants and microbes.
“They’re painting a picture which I don’t think represents the project,” Dr. Church said in an interview. “If that were the project, I’d be running away from it.”
The project was initially called HGP2: The Human Genome Synthesis Project, with HGP referring to the Human Genome Project. An invitation to the meeting at Harvard said that the primary goal “would be to synthesize a complete human genome in a cell line within a period of ten years.”
Photo
George Church, one of the organizers of the proposed project, at his lab at Harvard Medical School in 2013. Credit Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
But by the time the meeting was held, the name had been changed to “HGP-Write: Testing Large Synthetic Genomes in Cells.”
The original name had been proposed as a headline-grabbing aspirational goal, like landing on the moon, because that would be the best way to galvanize the scientific community.
Dr. Church said the meeting was closed to the press, and people were asked not to tweet because the project organizers, in an attempt to be transparent, had submitted a paper to a scientific journal. They were therefore not supposed to discuss the idea publicly before publication.
The project does not yet have funding, Dr. Church said, though various companies and foundations would be invited to contribute and some have indicated interest. The federal government will also be asked.
Besides Dr. Church, the organizers of the project include Jef Boeke, director of the institute for systems genetics at NYU Langone Medical Center; Andrew Hessel, a self-described futurist who works in the bio/nano research group at the Bay Area software company Autodesk, and Nancy J. Kelley, who makes a business of planning and launching projects.
Scientists and companies can now change the DNA in cells, for example by adding foreign genes or changing the letters in the existing genes. This technique is routinely used to make drugs, such as insulin for diabetes, inside genetically modified cells, as well as to make genetically modified crops.
But synthesizing a gene, or an entire genome, would provide the opportunity to make even more extensive changes in DNA. The idea is similar to changing a document. If only minor fixes are needed, it is easier to change a word here or there. But if extensive changes are needed, it becomes easier to create a new document from scratch.
Right now, synthesizing DNA from chemicals is difficult and error-prone. Existing techniques can reliably make strands that are only about 200 or 250 bases long, with the bases being the chemical units in DNA. Even a single gene can be thousands of bases long. To synthesize one of those, multiple 200-unit segments have to be manufactured and spliced together.
But the cost and capabilities are improving. “These are on exponential curves that are so much faster than Moore’s law,” Dr. Church said, referring to an observation about how rapidly computing power improves.
J. Craig Venter, the maverick genetic scientist, synthesized a bacterial genome consisting of about a million base pairs and was mainly a copy of an existing genome. More recently Dr. Venter and his team synthesized a more original bacterial genome, about 500,000 base pairs long.
Dr. Church said a group with which he is involved is close to synthesizing the entire four-million-base genome of the E. coli bacterium. He said it might be possible to synthesize an entire human genome within a decade, though that job at first would cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Dr. Endy of Stanford, who is an expert in synthetic biology, which involves engineering life, said the cost of synthesizing genes has plummeted from $4 per base pair, or letter, in 2003 to 3 cents now, but even at that rate, the cost for 3 billion letters would be $90 million. He said if costs continued to decline at the same pace, that figure could reach $100,000 in 20 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/scien ... pe=article
*******
Scientists Announce HGP-Write, Project to Synthesize the Human Genome
Scientists on Thursday formally announced the start of a 10-year project aimed at vastly improving the ability to chemically manufacture DNA, with one of the goals being to synthetically create an entire human genome.
Plans for the project, which leaked last month, have already set off an ethical debate, because the ability to chemically fabricate the complete set of human chromosomes could theoretically allow the creation of babies without biological parents.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/03/scien ... d=71987722
Scientists are now contemplating the creation of a synthetic human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.
The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community, because it might be possible — if someone were able to create a totally artificial genome — to implant that genome into embryos and create human beings without parents.
While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting at Harvard Medical School in Boston on Tuesday. The roughly 150 attendees were told not to contact the media or to tweet about the meeting.
Organizers said the project in some ways would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.
But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people?
“Would it be O.K. to sequence and then synthesize Einstein’s genome?” Drew Endy, a bioengineer at Stanford and Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, wrote in an essay criticizing the proposed project. “If so, how many Einstein genomes would it be O.K. to make and install in cells, and who would get to make and control these cells?”
Scientists and ethicists are already raising concerns about using new gene-editing techniques that could change individual traits in embryos. But it would be possible to make much more extensive changes by synthesizing an entire genome.
Professor Zoloth said in an interview that the project could be risky without any well-defined benefit. She also criticized the surreptitious meeting. “It is O.K. to have meetings that are private, but it has not been characteristic of the field to have meetings that are secret in addition to being private.”
George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and one of the organizers of the proposed project, said the characterization was a misunderstanding, and that in reality the project was aimed more generally at improving the ability to synthesize long strands of DNA, which could be applied to various types of animals, plants and microbes.
“They’re painting a picture which I don’t think represents the project,” Dr. Church said in an interview. “If that were the project, I’d be running away from it.”
The project was initially called HGP2: The Human Genome Synthesis Project, with HGP referring to the Human Genome Project. An invitation to the meeting at Harvard said that the primary goal “would be to synthesize a complete human genome in a cell line within a period of ten years.”
Photo
George Church, one of the organizers of the proposed project, at his lab at Harvard Medical School in 2013. Credit Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
But by the time the meeting was held, the name had been changed to “HGP-Write: Testing Large Synthetic Genomes in Cells.”
The original name had been proposed as a headline-grabbing aspirational goal, like landing on the moon, because that would be the best way to galvanize the scientific community.
Dr. Church said the meeting was closed to the press, and people were asked not to tweet because the project organizers, in an attempt to be transparent, had submitted a paper to a scientific journal. They were therefore not supposed to discuss the idea publicly before publication.
The project does not yet have funding, Dr. Church said, though various companies and foundations would be invited to contribute and some have indicated interest. The federal government will also be asked.
Besides Dr. Church, the organizers of the project include Jef Boeke, director of the institute for systems genetics at NYU Langone Medical Center; Andrew Hessel, a self-described futurist who works in the bio/nano research group at the Bay Area software company Autodesk, and Nancy J. Kelley, who makes a business of planning and launching projects.
Scientists and companies can now change the DNA in cells, for example by adding foreign genes or changing the letters in the existing genes. This technique is routinely used to make drugs, such as insulin for diabetes, inside genetically modified cells, as well as to make genetically modified crops.
But synthesizing a gene, or an entire genome, would provide the opportunity to make even more extensive changes in DNA. The idea is similar to changing a document. If only minor fixes are needed, it is easier to change a word here or there. But if extensive changes are needed, it becomes easier to create a new document from scratch.
Right now, synthesizing DNA from chemicals is difficult and error-prone. Existing techniques can reliably make strands that are only about 200 or 250 bases long, with the bases being the chemical units in DNA. Even a single gene can be thousands of bases long. To synthesize one of those, multiple 200-unit segments have to be manufactured and spliced together.
But the cost and capabilities are improving. “These are on exponential curves that are so much faster than Moore’s law,” Dr. Church said, referring to an observation about how rapidly computing power improves.
J. Craig Venter, the maverick genetic scientist, synthesized a bacterial genome consisting of about a million base pairs and was mainly a copy of an existing genome. More recently Dr. Venter and his team synthesized a more original bacterial genome, about 500,000 base pairs long.
Dr. Church said a group with which he is involved is close to synthesizing the entire four-million-base genome of the E. coli bacterium. He said it might be possible to synthesize an entire human genome within a decade, though that job at first would cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Dr. Endy of Stanford, who is an expert in synthetic biology, which involves engineering life, said the cost of synthesizing genes has plummeted from $4 per base pair, or letter, in 2003 to 3 cents now, but even at that rate, the cost for 3 billion letters would be $90 million. He said if costs continued to decline at the same pace, that figure could reach $100,000 in 20 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/scien ... pe=article
*******
Scientists Announce HGP-Write, Project to Synthesize the Human Genome
Scientists on Thursday formally announced the start of a 10-year project aimed at vastly improving the ability to chemically manufacture DNA, with one of the goals being to synthetically create an entire human genome.
Plans for the project, which leaked last month, have already set off an ethical debate, because the ability to chemically fabricate the complete set of human chromosomes could theoretically allow the creation of babies without biological parents.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/03/scien ... d=71987722
Last edited by kmaherali on Sun Jun 05, 2016 1:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Science stories of the week: May 13
Slideshow:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
NASA’s Kepler mission finds 1,284 new planets
In its largest discovery to date, the Kepler mission has verified the existence of 1,284 new planets.
The Kepler telescope helps prepare a catalog of discovered celestial bodies, which could be considered as potential planets. After the catalog of July 2015 was analyzed, it was found out that 1,284 of the discovered 4,032 bodies qualified to be classified as planets.
"This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S. “This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth."
In the latest batch, nearly 550 planets could be rocky like Earth. Out of them, nine planets orbit in their sun’s habitable zone, which may allow them to have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool.
"This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever-closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe," said Paul Hertz, director, NASA Astrophysics Division.
Launched in March 2009, Kepler has discovered and verified 2,325 new planets till date.
Slideshow:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
NASA’s Kepler mission finds 1,284 new planets
In its largest discovery to date, the Kepler mission has verified the existence of 1,284 new planets.
The Kepler telescope helps prepare a catalog of discovered celestial bodies, which could be considered as potential planets. After the catalog of July 2015 was analyzed, it was found out that 1,284 of the discovered 4,032 bodies qualified to be classified as planets.
"This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S. “This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth."
In the latest batch, nearly 550 planets could be rocky like Earth. Out of them, nine planets orbit in their sun’s habitable zone, which may allow them to have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool.
"This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever-closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe," said Paul Hertz, director, NASA Astrophysics Division.
Launched in March 2009, Kepler has discovered and verified 2,325 new planets till date.
Science stories of the week: May 21, 2016
Slideshow..
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Robot capsule can heal stomach wound
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a tiny ingestible "origami robot" capsule that could revolutionize medical treatment for stomach ailments in the future.
The "origami robot" is made of a specially folded sheet of dried pig intestine and a tiny magnet, which are encased in a capsule that dissolves when swallowed. The robot then unfolds itself and crawls across the stomach wall using external magnetic fields to either patch up a wound in the stomach's lining or wrap itself around a foreign object for safe extraction.
Slideshow..
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Robot capsule can heal stomach wound
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a tiny ingestible "origami robot" capsule that could revolutionize medical treatment for stomach ailments in the future.
The "origami robot" is made of a specially folded sheet of dried pig intestine and a tiny magnet, which are encased in a capsule that dissolves when swallowed. The robot then unfolds itself and crawls across the stomach wall using external magnetic fields to either patch up a wound in the stomach's lining or wrap itself around a foreign object for safe extraction.
Science stories of the week: May 27, 2016
Slideshow:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Sea urchins not affected by aging
Scientists at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in the USA have noticed that the regenerative capacity of sea urchins does not decline over time.
Contrary to popular belief, the regeneration process in sea urchins is not correlated to their age. Scientists studied three different types of sea urchins, with varying life expectancy. Even when they were short-lived, the organisms did not age and could reproduce and regenerate body parts like when they were young.
Through this study, the team hopes to understand the aging process in humans more deeply, who interestingly share a close genetic relationship with these sea creatures. MDI Biological Laboratory Associate Professor James A. Coffman, Ph.D., said, “What we found is that aging is not inevitable: sea urchins don't appear to age, even when they are short-lived. Because these findings were unexpected in light of the prevailing theories about the evolution of aging, we may have to rethink theories on why aging occurs.”
Slideshow:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Sea urchins not affected by aging
Scientists at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in the USA have noticed that the regenerative capacity of sea urchins does not decline over time.
Contrary to popular belief, the regeneration process in sea urchins is not correlated to their age. Scientists studied three different types of sea urchins, with varying life expectancy. Even when they were short-lived, the organisms did not age and could reproduce and regenerate body parts like when they were young.
Through this study, the team hopes to understand the aging process in humans more deeply, who interestingly share a close genetic relationship with these sea creatures. MDI Biological Laboratory Associate Professor James A. Coffman, Ph.D., said, “What we found is that aging is not inevitable: sea urchins don't appear to age, even when they are short-lived. Because these findings were unexpected in light of the prevailing theories about the evolution of aging, we may have to rethink theories on why aging occurs.”
Science stories of the week: June 3, 2016
Slideshow at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... tmd#page=1
Highlights:
Dietary supplement that can prevent brain cell degeneration
Researchers at Ontario's McMaster University claim to have created a dietary supplement, whose anti-aging properties can prevent or even reverse brain cell degeneration. It is a blend of 30 vitamins and minerals, all of which are widely available in local health food stores.
The researchers hope that the mixture could be used in future to slow down the progress of neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Parkinson's.
The formula contains Vitamins B, C and D, folic acid, green tea extract and cod liver oil, and laboratory tests on mice have shown to improve vision, sense of smell, balance, and motor functions.
Slideshow at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... tmd#page=1
Highlights:
Dietary supplement that can prevent brain cell degeneration
Researchers at Ontario's McMaster University claim to have created a dietary supplement, whose anti-aging properties can prevent or even reverse brain cell degeneration. It is a blend of 30 vitamins and minerals, all of which are widely available in local health food stores.
The researchers hope that the mixture could be used in future to slow down the progress of neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Parkinson's.
The formula contains Vitamins B, C and D, folic acid, green tea extract and cod liver oil, and laboratory tests on mice have shown to improve vision, sense of smell, balance, and motor functions.
Science stories of the week: June 11, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Names proposed for four new elements
In January of this year, four new elements were added in the periodic table. Now, the suggested names of these four elements have been revealed by scientists.
The suggestions are nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc) tennessine (Ts) and oganesson (Og). To date they have been referred to by the number of protons in each atom – 113, 115, 117 and 118, respectively..
The names must be approved by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry after a consultation period of five months.
The four elements were created synthetically and are named by the scientists who discovered them. They are also the first ones to be added to the table since 2011.
Here are the meanings of the names:
Nihonium refers to the Japanese name for Japan, since it was discovered at the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator Science. (Pictured above) Kosuke Morita, researcher of the institute, who led the discovery of the element, points to a periodic table during a press conference at the institution in Wako, northwest of Tokyo, Japan on June 9.
Moscovium refers to the Moscow region, where the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research is located in Dubna, Russia.
Tennessine refers to Tennessee, U.S., as it was discovered by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University.
Oganesson is named after nuclear physicist Yuri Oganessian, who played an important role in search of new elements including this one.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Names proposed for four new elements
In January of this year, four new elements were added in the periodic table. Now, the suggested names of these four elements have been revealed by scientists.
The suggestions are nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc) tennessine (Ts) and oganesson (Og). To date they have been referred to by the number of protons in each atom – 113, 115, 117 and 118, respectively..
The names must be approved by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry after a consultation period of five months.
The four elements were created synthetically and are named by the scientists who discovered them. They are also the first ones to be added to the table since 2011.
Here are the meanings of the names:
Nihonium refers to the Japanese name for Japan, since it was discovered at the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator Science. (Pictured above) Kosuke Morita, researcher of the institute, who led the discovery of the element, points to a periodic table during a press conference at the institution in Wako, northwest of Tokyo, Japan on June 9.
Moscovium refers to the Moscow region, where the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research is located in Dubna, Russia.
Tennessine refers to Tennessee, U.S., as it was discovered by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University.
Oganesson is named after nuclear physicist Yuri Oganessian, who played an important role in search of new elements including this one.
Science stories of the week: June 19, 2016
Slide Show at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2 reached New York
The solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2, piloted by Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, completed the 14th leg of an east-west journey to promote clean energy and prove the viability of a solar-powered flying machine.
The plane landed at New York's Kennedy Airport after concluding a five-hour flight from Lehigh Valley Airport in Pennsylvania. The team that began the journey on March 9, 2015, in Abu Dhabi, making its way across Asia, the Pacific, and the United States, will now attempt to cross the Atlantic to Europe and on to the Middle East.
Slide Show at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2 reached New York
The solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2, piloted by Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, completed the 14th leg of an east-west journey to promote clean energy and prove the viability of a solar-powered flying machine.
The plane landed at New York's Kennedy Airport after concluding a five-hour flight from Lehigh Valley Airport in Pennsylvania. The team that began the journey on March 9, 2015, in Abu Dhabi, making its way across Asia, the Pacific, and the United States, will now attempt to cross the Atlantic to Europe and on to the Middle East.
Science stories of the week: June 24, 2016
Slide show at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... Fpf#page=1
Highlight:
Chinese supercomputer named the world’s fastest
An entirely homegrown Chinese supercomputer was named the world's fastest supercomputer on June 20. Not only that, China currently leads the TOP500 list of the world’s top supercomputers with 167 such super machines, in comparison to 165 owned by the United States.
Sunway-TaihuLight, developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology, has been built using processors designed and made in China. Installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, it displaced the Intel-based Tianhe-2, which held the top spot in the past six Top500 lists. The new supercomputer is twice as fast and three times more efficient than Tianhe-2, with a 93 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second) on the LINPACK benchmark (measure of a system's computing power).
Slide show at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... Fpf#page=1
Highlight:
Chinese supercomputer named the world’s fastest
An entirely homegrown Chinese supercomputer was named the world's fastest supercomputer on June 20. Not only that, China currently leads the TOP500 list of the world’s top supercomputers with 167 such super machines, in comparison to 165 owned by the United States.
Sunway-TaihuLight, developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology, has been built using processors designed and made in China. Installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, it displaced the Intel-based Tianhe-2, which held the top spot in the past six Top500 lists. The new supercomputer is twice as fast and three times more efficient than Tianhe-2, with a 93 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second) on the LINPACK benchmark (measure of a system's computing power).
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Will Soon Be in Jupiter’s Grip
After traveling for five years and nearly 1.8 billion miles, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will announce its arrival at Jupiter with the simplest of radio signals: a three-second beep.
NASA expects the beep, marking the end of a 35-minute engine burn to slow the spacecraft down and allow it to be captured by Jupiter’s gravity, to arrive at Earth at 11:53 p.m. Eastern time next Monday.
“I can tell you when that completes, you’re going to see a lot of celebration,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno’s project manager, “because that means we’ll be in orbit around Jupiter, and that’ll be really cool.”
Juno’s mission is to explore the enigmas beneath the cloud tops of Jupiter. How far down does the Big Red Spot storm that has swirled for centuries extend? What is inside the solar system’s largest planet?
“We still have questions, and Juno is poised to begin answering them,” Diane Brown, Juno’s program executive, said during a news conference this month.
Juno will be the first craft to orbit Jupiter in more than a decade. NASA’s earlier robotic explorer, Galileo, spent eight years there and sent back astounding images of the planet and its many moons. It revealed features like a large ocean under the icy crust of the moon Europa, now considered one of the most promising places to look for life elsewhere in the solar system.
This time, the focus will be on Jupiter itself, and in particular what cannot be seen beneath its colorful cloud stripes.
“One of the primary goals of Juno is to learn the recipe for solar systems,” said Scott Bolton, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio who is the principal investigator for the $1.1 billion mission. “How do you make the solar system? How do you make the planets in our solar system?”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/scien ... d=71987722
After traveling for five years and nearly 1.8 billion miles, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will announce its arrival at Jupiter with the simplest of radio signals: a three-second beep.
NASA expects the beep, marking the end of a 35-minute engine burn to slow the spacecraft down and allow it to be captured by Jupiter’s gravity, to arrive at Earth at 11:53 p.m. Eastern time next Monday.
“I can tell you when that completes, you’re going to see a lot of celebration,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno’s project manager, “because that means we’ll be in orbit around Jupiter, and that’ll be really cool.”
Juno’s mission is to explore the enigmas beneath the cloud tops of Jupiter. How far down does the Big Red Spot storm that has swirled for centuries extend? What is inside the solar system’s largest planet?
“We still have questions, and Juno is poised to begin answering them,” Diane Brown, Juno’s program executive, said during a news conference this month.
Juno will be the first craft to orbit Jupiter in more than a decade. NASA’s earlier robotic explorer, Galileo, spent eight years there and sent back astounding images of the planet and its many moons. It revealed features like a large ocean under the icy crust of the moon Europa, now considered one of the most promising places to look for life elsewhere in the solar system.
This time, the focus will be on Jupiter itself, and in particular what cannot be seen beneath its colorful cloud stripes.
“One of the primary goals of Juno is to learn the recipe for solar systems,” said Scott Bolton, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio who is the principal investigator for the $1.1 billion mission. “How do you make the solar system? How do you make the planets in our solar system?”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/scien ... d=71987722
Science stories of the week: July 1
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... Nb9#page=1
Highlight:
Stephen Hawking plans to map the universe
The astrophysics luminary intends to map the entire known universe in 3D with the help of a supercomputer named Cosmos, which is located at Cambridge University.
Cosmology Professor Paul Shellard, the director of the Cosmos supercomputer center, said the project will use images of the radiation from the Big Bang — all of which were captured by the Planck satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA).
The Cosmos computer will plot the position and movement of billions of galaxies, black holes, supernovas and other cosmic structures.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... Nb9#page=1
Highlight:
Stephen Hawking plans to map the universe
The astrophysics luminary intends to map the entire known universe in 3D with the help of a supercomputer named Cosmos, which is located at Cambridge University.
Cosmology Professor Paul Shellard, the director of the Cosmos supercomputer center, said the project will use images of the radiation from the Big Bang — all of which were captured by the Planck satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA).
The Cosmos computer will plot the position and movement of billions of galaxies, black holes, supernovas and other cosmic structures.
Science stories of the week: July 8, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Careful who you kiss to avoid infertility
Until recently, factors like alcohol, an unhealthy diet and caffeine were linked to fertility problems in couples, but now scientists have found that it could even be because of an obscure virus that is transmitted by kissing. The culprit is HHV-6A, one of the human herpes viruses that replicates in the salivary glands and can be transferred through kissing.
The research was carried out at the University of Ferrara in Italy where a team examined the cases of unexplained primary infertility in women and found 43 percent of them to be infected by HHV-6A.
“This is a surprising discovery. If confirmed, the finding has the potential to improve the outcome for a large subset of infertile women,” said Anthony Komaroff, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has studied the virus.
******
NASA Video Shows Jupiter and Its Moons
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/video/nas ... lsignoutmd
Reaching Jupiter was NASA's most difficult mission yet — here's what made it so intense
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/wonder/r ... lsignoutmd
NASA Juno spacecraft reaches Jupiter
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/nas ... lsignoutmd
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Careful who you kiss to avoid infertility
Until recently, factors like alcohol, an unhealthy diet and caffeine were linked to fertility problems in couples, but now scientists have found that it could even be because of an obscure virus that is transmitted by kissing. The culprit is HHV-6A, one of the human herpes viruses that replicates in the salivary glands and can be transferred through kissing.
The research was carried out at the University of Ferrara in Italy where a team examined the cases of unexplained primary infertility in women and found 43 percent of them to be infected by HHV-6A.
“This is a surprising discovery. If confirmed, the finding has the potential to improve the outcome for a large subset of infertile women,” said Anthony Komaroff, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has studied the virus.
******
NASA Video Shows Jupiter and Its Moons
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/video/nas ... lsignoutmd
Reaching Jupiter was NASA's most difficult mission yet — here's what made it so intense
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/wonder/r ... lsignoutmd
NASA Juno spacecraft reaches Jupiter
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/nas ... lsignoutmd