Science stories of the week: July 16, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... tmd#page=1
Highlight:
Pomegranate compound might be key to prevent aging process
Besides being an excellent source of Vitamin C and antioxidants, pomegranates have now been found to have anti-aging properties as well. A research team at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, led by Johan Auwerx, found that a compound named urolithin A (UA), produced by bacteria in the gut when breaking down pomegranate, strawberries and nuts, increases the average lifespan of worms by 45 percent and improves muscle function in rodents.
On deeper inspection, they observed that UA helps eliminate damaged mitochondria in the cells, which helps the remaining healthy mitochondria to divide and multiply fast. This, in turn, enhances the functioning power of muscles that tend to get worn out with old age.
While the researchers are yet to test UA's magical powers in replenishing human cells, it definitely holds out a promise to battle old-age frailty and loss of mobility.
Articles of Interest in Science
Science stories of the week: July 22, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... Nb9#page=1
Highlight:
Genetic findings raise hope for asthma cure
Scientists have discovered a gene that can be switched off to prevent an asthma attack. The gene ADAM33 has been identified in this regard as contributing to twitchiness and inflammation of airways that triggers an attack. This gene makes an enzyme in the body which causes ‘airway remodelling’ or unnecessary production of muscle and blood vessels around the airways, which makes breathing difficult when coupled with an allergen, like pollen or dust.
Experiments on human tissue samples and mice show that if the gene is switched off the enzyme can’t harm. Prof Hans Michel Haitchi, associate professor in respiratory medicine at University of Southampton said, “This finding radically alters our understanding of the field, to say the least. For years we have thought that airway remodelling is the result of the inflammation caused by an allergic reaction, but our research tells us otherwise."
*******
Updated Brain Map Identifies Nearly 100 New Regions
The brain looks like a featureless expanse of folds and bulges, but it’s actually carved up into invisible territories. Each is specialized: Some groups of neurons become active when we recognize faces, others when we read, others when we raise our hands.
On Wednesday, in what many experts are calling a milestone in neuroscience, researchers published a spectacular new map of the brain, detailing nearly 100 previously unknown regions — an unprecedented glimpse into the machinery of the human mind.
Scientists will rely on this guide as they attempt to understand virtually every aspect of the brain, from how it develops in children and ages over decades, to how it can be corrupted by diseases like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia.
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/scien ... 87722&_r=0
******
In Africa, Birds and Humans Form a Unique Honey Hunting Party
Their word is their bond, and they do what they say — even if the “word” on one side is a loud trill and grunt, and, on the other, the excited twitterings of a bird.
Researchers have long known that among certain traditional cultures of Africa, people forage for wild honey with the help of honeyguides — woodpecker-like birds that show tribesmen where the best beehives are hidden, high up in trees. In return for revealing the location of natural honey pots, the birds are rewarded with the leftover beeswax, which they eagerly devour.
Now scientists have determined that humans and their honeyguides communicate with each other through an extraordinary exchange of sounds and gestures, which are used only for honey hunting and serve to convey enthusiasm, trustworthiness and a commitment to the dangerous business of separating bees from their hives.
The findings cast fresh light on one of only a few known examples of cooperation between humans and free-living wild animals, a partnership that may well predate the love affair between people and their domesticated dogs by hundreds of thousands of years.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/scien ... 87722&_r=0
******
The Cell that Caused Melanoma: Cancer’s Surprise Origins, Caught in Action
It’s long been a mystery why some of our cells can have mutations associated with cancer, yet are not truly cancerous. Now researchers have, for the first time, watched a cancer spread from a single cell in a live animal, and found a critical step that turns a merely cancer-prone cell into a malignant one.
More...
http://blog.dana-farber.org/insight/201 ... htreserach
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... Nb9#page=1
Highlight:
Genetic findings raise hope for asthma cure
Scientists have discovered a gene that can be switched off to prevent an asthma attack. The gene ADAM33 has been identified in this regard as contributing to twitchiness and inflammation of airways that triggers an attack. This gene makes an enzyme in the body which causes ‘airway remodelling’ or unnecessary production of muscle and blood vessels around the airways, which makes breathing difficult when coupled with an allergen, like pollen or dust.
Experiments on human tissue samples and mice show that if the gene is switched off the enzyme can’t harm. Prof Hans Michel Haitchi, associate professor in respiratory medicine at University of Southampton said, “This finding radically alters our understanding of the field, to say the least. For years we have thought that airway remodelling is the result of the inflammation caused by an allergic reaction, but our research tells us otherwise."
*******
Updated Brain Map Identifies Nearly 100 New Regions
The brain looks like a featureless expanse of folds and bulges, but it’s actually carved up into invisible territories. Each is specialized: Some groups of neurons become active when we recognize faces, others when we read, others when we raise our hands.
On Wednesday, in what many experts are calling a milestone in neuroscience, researchers published a spectacular new map of the brain, detailing nearly 100 previously unknown regions — an unprecedented glimpse into the machinery of the human mind.
Scientists will rely on this guide as they attempt to understand virtually every aspect of the brain, from how it develops in children and ages over decades, to how it can be corrupted by diseases like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia.
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/scien ... 87722&_r=0
******
In Africa, Birds and Humans Form a Unique Honey Hunting Party
Their word is their bond, and they do what they say — even if the “word” on one side is a loud trill and grunt, and, on the other, the excited twitterings of a bird.
Researchers have long known that among certain traditional cultures of Africa, people forage for wild honey with the help of honeyguides — woodpecker-like birds that show tribesmen where the best beehives are hidden, high up in trees. In return for revealing the location of natural honey pots, the birds are rewarded with the leftover beeswax, which they eagerly devour.
Now scientists have determined that humans and their honeyguides communicate with each other through an extraordinary exchange of sounds and gestures, which are used only for honey hunting and serve to convey enthusiasm, trustworthiness and a commitment to the dangerous business of separating bees from their hives.
The findings cast fresh light on one of only a few known examples of cooperation between humans and free-living wild animals, a partnership that may well predate the love affair between people and their domesticated dogs by hundreds of thousands of years.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/scien ... 87722&_r=0
******
The Cell that Caused Melanoma: Cancer’s Surprise Origins, Caught in Action
It’s long been a mystery why some of our cells can have mutations associated with cancer, yet are not truly cancerous. Now researchers have, for the first time, watched a cancer spread from a single cell in a live animal, and found a critical step that turns a merely cancer-prone cell into a malignant one.
More...
http://blog.dana-farber.org/insight/201 ... htreserach
Last edited by kmaherali on Sun Sep 18, 2016 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Science stories of the week: July 29, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... Nb9#page=1
Highlights:
Solar Impulse 2 completes round-the-world trip
On July 26, Solar Impulse 2 made history by becoming the first round-the-world solar-powered flight after it touched down at Abu Dhabi's Al Bateen Executive Airport. Bertrand Piccard (L) and his Swiss compatriot André Borschberg (R) piloted this revolutionary flying machine from the Egyptian capital of Cairo in its final leg of the year-long journey. Solar Impulse 2 accomplished what no aircraft has ever achieved before — a flight around the world without burning a drop of conventional fuel. The 26,097-mile-journey (42,000-kilometers) started on March 9, 2015, from Abu Dhabi. The entire trip was broken into 17 stages, covering four continents and two oceans.
During its journey, it set a world record of the longest uninterrupted flight after flying non-stop from Nagoya, Japan, to Hawaii, U.S., in 117 hours 52 minutes on July 3, 2015. Solar Impulse 2's speed varied between 22 miles per hour and 87 miles per hour (36 kilometers per hour and 140 kilometers per hour). Solar cells built into its slender, expansive wings recharged lithium batteries during the day, so that they could be used for nighttime flying.
After landing at Abu Dhabi, Piccard said: "The future is clean. The future is you. The future is now. Let's take it further."
Next, a fail-safe way of reducing carbon emissions…
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... Nb9#page=1
Highlights:
Solar Impulse 2 completes round-the-world trip
On July 26, Solar Impulse 2 made history by becoming the first round-the-world solar-powered flight after it touched down at Abu Dhabi's Al Bateen Executive Airport. Bertrand Piccard (L) and his Swiss compatriot André Borschberg (R) piloted this revolutionary flying machine from the Egyptian capital of Cairo in its final leg of the year-long journey. Solar Impulse 2 accomplished what no aircraft has ever achieved before — a flight around the world without burning a drop of conventional fuel. The 26,097-mile-journey (42,000-kilometers) started on March 9, 2015, from Abu Dhabi. The entire trip was broken into 17 stages, covering four continents and two oceans.
During its journey, it set a world record of the longest uninterrupted flight after flying non-stop from Nagoya, Japan, to Hawaii, U.S., in 117 hours 52 minutes on July 3, 2015. Solar Impulse 2's speed varied between 22 miles per hour and 87 miles per hour (36 kilometers per hour and 140 kilometers per hour). Solar cells built into its slender, expansive wings recharged lithium batteries during the day, so that they could be used for nighttime flying.
After landing at Abu Dhabi, Piccard said: "The future is clean. The future is you. The future is now. Let's take it further."
Next, a fail-safe way of reducing carbon emissions…
Science stories of the week: Aug 6, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Futuristic 'straddling bus' design tested in China
In what has been one of the biggest news in the science world this week, China’s futuristic ‘straddling bus’ ran its inaugural test in the Hebei province.
The 2m-high Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) straddles the cars below, actually allowing them to pass smoothly beneath it. This electric bus that has the capacity to carry 300 passengers and an expected speed of up to 60 km per hour, is seen to be a big step towards saving road space and reducing traffic jams.
The mini-model of this bus was launched at the 19th China-Beijing International High-Tech Expo in May, 2016.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Futuristic 'straddling bus' design tested in China
In what has been one of the biggest news in the science world this week, China’s futuristic ‘straddling bus’ ran its inaugural test in the Hebei province.
The 2m-high Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) straddles the cars below, actually allowing them to pass smoothly beneath it. This electric bus that has the capacity to carry 300 passengers and an expected speed of up to 60 km per hour, is seen to be a big step towards saving road space and reducing traffic jams.
The mini-model of this bus was launched at the 19th China-Beijing International High-Tech Expo in May, 2016.
Science stories of the week: Aug. 12, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Human-scented mosquito trap to help fight malaria, Zika
Scientists from the Netherlands and Kenya have developed a unique mosquito trapping device that uses human odour to attract mosquitoes.
Published in "The Lancet" medical journal, the-three year study in Kenya found that the device helped catch 70 percent of the local mosquito population and brought down mosquito-borne diseases by 30 percent.
"The odour-baited trap may also offer a solution to diseases like dengue fever and the Zika virus," Wageningen University in The Netherlands, which led the research, said in a statement.
*******
This giant shark can live for 400 years
VIDEO:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/wonder/t ... vi-BBvxkEc
Greenland sharks are the new record holders for longest-living vertebrates after a new study put their maximum lifespan at an incredible 400 years.
Meet the Greenland Shark. It Could Be the Longest-Living Vertebrate.
The Greenland shark is a ludicrously late bloomer.
This lazy-looking, Arctic predator reaches sexual maturity when it’s about 150 years old. Though more than a century of prepubescence might sound bad, there’s a bright side for the sea creature. Once it hits adulthood, it still has another hundred years to live. Maybe even more.
The Greenland shark has a life expectancy of at least 272 years, according to a study published Thursday in Science. If its findings are correct, that makes it the longest-living vertebrate animal in the world, surpassing some sea turtles (about 100 years) tortoises (between 100 and 200 years), and bowhead whales (around 200 years).
But that number, 272, doesn’t tell the whole story of these underwater geezers.
Researchers estimated that two of the 28 Greenland sharks they observed were over three centuries old.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/scien ... ticle&_r=0
*******
The Particle That Wasn’t
A great “might have been” for the universe, or at least for the people who study it, disappeared Friday.
Last December, two teams of physicists working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider reported that they might have seen traces of what could be a new fundamental constituent of nature, an elementary particle that is not part of the Standard Model that has ruled particle physics for the last half-century.
A bump on a graph signaling excess pairs of gamma rays was most likely a statistical fluke, they said. But physicists have been holding their breath ever since.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/scien ... dline&te=1
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Human-scented mosquito trap to help fight malaria, Zika
Scientists from the Netherlands and Kenya have developed a unique mosquito trapping device that uses human odour to attract mosquitoes.
Published in "The Lancet" medical journal, the-three year study in Kenya found that the device helped catch 70 percent of the local mosquito population and brought down mosquito-borne diseases by 30 percent.
"The odour-baited trap may also offer a solution to diseases like dengue fever and the Zika virus," Wageningen University in The Netherlands, which led the research, said in a statement.
*******
This giant shark can live for 400 years
VIDEO:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/wonder/t ... vi-BBvxkEc
Greenland sharks are the new record holders for longest-living vertebrates after a new study put their maximum lifespan at an incredible 400 years.
Meet the Greenland Shark. It Could Be the Longest-Living Vertebrate.
The Greenland shark is a ludicrously late bloomer.
This lazy-looking, Arctic predator reaches sexual maturity when it’s about 150 years old. Though more than a century of prepubescence might sound bad, there’s a bright side for the sea creature. Once it hits adulthood, it still has another hundred years to live. Maybe even more.
The Greenland shark has a life expectancy of at least 272 years, according to a study published Thursday in Science. If its findings are correct, that makes it the longest-living vertebrate animal in the world, surpassing some sea turtles (about 100 years) tortoises (between 100 and 200 years), and bowhead whales (around 200 years).
But that number, 272, doesn’t tell the whole story of these underwater geezers.
Researchers estimated that two of the 28 Greenland sharks they observed were over three centuries old.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/scien ... ticle&_r=0
*******
The Particle That Wasn’t
A great “might have been” for the universe, or at least for the people who study it, disappeared Friday.
Last December, two teams of physicists working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider reported that they might have seen traces of what could be a new fundamental constituent of nature, an elementary particle that is not part of the Standard Model that has ruled particle physics for the last half-century.
A bump on a graph signaling excess pairs of gamma rays was most likely a statistical fluke, they said. But physicists have been holding their breath ever since.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/scien ... dline&te=1
Science stories of the week: Aug. 19, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
China launches Quantum-Communications Satellite
While many nations are working to make quantum communication a reality, China successfully launched the world's first quantum satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern Gobi Desert on Aug. 15.
"The satellite’s two-year mission will be to develop 'hack-proof' quantum communications, allowing users to send messages securely and at speeds faster than light," Xinhua, Beijing’s official news service said.
In an effort to harness the power of particle physics to build an 'unhackable' system of encrypted communications, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said that the quantum satellite will conduct experiments on high-speed quantum key distribution between the satellite and ground stations.
Based on the scientific principle of entanglement, the communications network would be impossible to wiretap, intercept or crack the information transmitted through the satellite, Xinhua reported.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
China launches Quantum-Communications Satellite
While many nations are working to make quantum communication a reality, China successfully launched the world's first quantum satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern Gobi Desert on Aug. 15.
"The satellite’s two-year mission will be to develop 'hack-proof' quantum communications, allowing users to send messages securely and at speeds faster than light," Xinhua, Beijing’s official news service said.
In an effort to harness the power of particle physics to build an 'unhackable' system of encrypted communications, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said that the quantum satellite will conduct experiments on high-speed quantum key distribution between the satellite and ground stations.
Based on the scientific principle of entanglement, the communications network would be impossible to wiretap, intercept or crack the information transmitted through the satellite, Xinhua reported.
Science stories of the week: Aug. 28, 2016
Slide show;
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Octobot: World's first soft-bodied robot
Engineers from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard have built a revolutionary pneumatic, self-contained robot, which is shaped like a small octopus. This palm-sized robot's exterior is made from silicon gels of varying stiffness and is powered by a chemical reaction that circulates gas through the 3D-printed chambers in its rubbery legs. It doesn't contain any batteries or wires.
"Many of the previous embodiments required tethers to external controllers or power sources," said PhD student Ryan Truby from Harvard University. "What we've tried to do is actually to replace these hardware components entirely and have a completely soft robotic system."
Currently, the octobot's fuel lasts for four to eight minutes and it can't steer in any specific direction. The researchers are working to add sensors to help the robot detect the surrounding objects and navigate toward or away from them. They also believe that in future these robots will be developed enough for marine search and rescue, oceanic temperature sensing and military surveillance.
******
Gene Tests Identify Breast Cancer Patients Who Can Skip Chemotherapy, Study Says
When is it safe for a woman with breast cancer to skip chemotherapy?
A new study helps answer that question, based on a test of gene activity in tumors. It found that nearly half of women with early-stage breast cancer who would traditionally receive chemo can avoid it, with little risk of the cancer coming back or spreading in the next five years.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/scien ... 87722&_r=0
Slide show;
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Octobot: World's first soft-bodied robot
Engineers from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard have built a revolutionary pneumatic, self-contained robot, which is shaped like a small octopus. This palm-sized robot's exterior is made from silicon gels of varying stiffness and is powered by a chemical reaction that circulates gas through the 3D-printed chambers in its rubbery legs. It doesn't contain any batteries or wires.
"Many of the previous embodiments required tethers to external controllers or power sources," said PhD student Ryan Truby from Harvard University. "What we've tried to do is actually to replace these hardware components entirely and have a completely soft robotic system."
Currently, the octobot's fuel lasts for four to eight minutes and it can't steer in any specific direction. The researchers are working to add sensors to help the robot detect the surrounding objects and navigate toward or away from them. They also believe that in future these robots will be developed enough for marine search and rescue, oceanic temperature sensing and military surveillance.
******
Gene Tests Identify Breast Cancer Patients Who Can Skip Chemotherapy, Study Says
When is it safe for a woman with breast cancer to skip chemotherapy?
A new study helps answer that question, based on a test of gene activity in tumors. It found that nearly half of women with early-stage breast cancer who would traditionally receive chemo can avoid it, with little risk of the cancer coming back or spreading in the next five years.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/scien ... 87722&_r=0
Science stories of the week: Sept. 2, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... iBC#page=1
Highlight:
SpaceX rocket explodes; Facebook's Amos-6 also destroyed
On Sept. 1, 2016, a rocket operated by aerospace firm, SpaceX, exploded at its launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida, during its test-firing. The payload — the Israeli-built Amos-6, a communication satellite — that was supposed to be launched on Sept. 3, was destroyed in the explosion.
Taking place at Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the blast happened when the rocket was being filled with fuel. While there was no injury, it shook buildings situated several at a distance along with a high plume of smoke. Amos 6, valued at more than $200 million, was to be used by Facebook and Eutelsat Communications to provide broadband internet service in sub-Saharan Africa.
Issuing a statement, SpaceX commented, “The anomaly originated around the upper stage oxygen tanks and occurred during propellant loading of the vehicle. As per standard operating procedure, all personnel were clear of the pad and no-one was injured. We are continuing to review the data to identify the root cause.” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg also remarked, “We remain committed to our mission of connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided.”
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... iBC#page=1
Highlight:
SpaceX rocket explodes; Facebook's Amos-6 also destroyed
On Sept. 1, 2016, a rocket operated by aerospace firm, SpaceX, exploded at its launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida, during its test-firing. The payload — the Israeli-built Amos-6, a communication satellite — that was supposed to be launched on Sept. 3, was destroyed in the explosion.
Taking place at Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the blast happened when the rocket was being filled with fuel. While there was no injury, it shook buildings situated several at a distance along with a high plume of smoke. Amos 6, valued at more than $200 million, was to be used by Facebook and Eutelsat Communications to provide broadband internet service in sub-Saharan Africa.
Issuing a statement, SpaceX commented, “The anomaly originated around the upper stage oxygen tanks and occurred during propellant loading of the vehicle. As per standard operating procedure, all personnel were clear of the pad and no-one was injured. We are continuing to review the data to identify the root cause.” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg also remarked, “We remain committed to our mission of connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided.”
Science Stories of the Week: Sept. 9, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... Nb9#page=1
Highlight:
Distinctive hairprint to the rescue if DNA profiling fails
DNA profiling is the go-to method employed in identifying archaeological remains and criminals but that method has its limitations. Even though DNA is capable of surviving over hundreds of thousands of year, it does have a tendency to break down under exposure to heat, water and light, leading to inaccuracies in profiling results.
Scientists at the University of Bradford, U.K. are looking into a technique to break down hair proteins and analyze their sequences. A study of human hair led them to believe that a few variation in a couple of hundreds of proteins in the hair could be enough to single out a person in a million. There's still some time before this technique can be implemented, however.
“Because protein is more abundant and more robust than DNA, this potentially opens up enormous avenues of research in bioarchaeology and forensic science that couldn’t have been tackled before,” said Andrew Wilson from the research team.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... Nb9#page=1
Highlight:
Distinctive hairprint to the rescue if DNA profiling fails
DNA profiling is the go-to method employed in identifying archaeological remains and criminals but that method has its limitations. Even though DNA is capable of surviving over hundreds of thousands of year, it does have a tendency to break down under exposure to heat, water and light, leading to inaccuracies in profiling results.
Scientists at the University of Bradford, U.K. are looking into a technique to break down hair proteins and analyze their sequences. A study of human hair led them to believe that a few variation in a couple of hundreds of proteins in the hair could be enough to single out a person in a million. There's still some time before this technique can be implemented, however.
“Because protein is more abundant and more robust than DNA, this potentially opens up enormous avenues of research in bioarchaeology and forensic science that couldn’t have been tackled before,” said Andrew Wilson from the research team.
Science Stories of the Week: Sept. 17, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... ailsignout
Highlight:
Gaia telescope to create a 3D map of the galaxy
The European Space Agency (ESA) through its Gaia satellite released the first data that will be used to create the largest and most precise three-dimensional map of our galaxy on Sept. 14.
The catalogue pins down the accurate distances and motions of about two million stars in the sky.
Launched in December 2013, Gaia's latest data shows an all-sky view of stars in our galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, based on the first year of observations from the satellite from July 2014 to September 2015.
"Gaia is at the forefront of astrometry, charting the sky at precisions that have never been achieved before," says Alvaro Giménez, ESA's Director of Science.
(Pictured) A man walks in front of a slide show depicting a representation of the ESA Gaia Project, at the ESA centre in Villanueva de la Canada, near Madrid, Spain, on Sept. 14.
******
Remarkable history of NASA's space shuttle program
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/re ... ailsignout
Sept. 17, 2016, marks the 40th anniversary of NASA rolling out the Enterprise orbiter - its first orbiter, which was built as part of the space shuttle program. The space shuttle program had been officially initiated in 1972, with the manned launch vehicle probes being operational from 1981 to 2011. NASA went on to build five fully functional orbiters before finally retiring the space shuttle program in 2011. We take a look at the program's fascinating history.
NASA's new Dream Chaser
A successor to the shuttle program could take astronauts and cargo into orbit
VIDEO
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/video/nas ... ailsignout
Beyond the shuttle era
CBC science correspondent Bob McDonald talks about the future of space travel
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/video/bey ... ailsignout
*******
The Cell that Caused Melanoma: Cancer’s Surprise Origins, Caught in Action
It’s long been a mystery why some of our cells can have mutations associated with cancer, yet are not truly cancerous. Now researchers have, for the first time, watched a cancer spread from a single cell in a live animal, and found a critical step that turns a merely cancer-prone cell into a malignant one.
More...
http://blog.dana-farber.org/insight/201 ... htreserach
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... ailsignout
Highlight:
Gaia telescope to create a 3D map of the galaxy
The European Space Agency (ESA) through its Gaia satellite released the first data that will be used to create the largest and most precise three-dimensional map of our galaxy on Sept. 14.
The catalogue pins down the accurate distances and motions of about two million stars in the sky.
Launched in December 2013, Gaia's latest data shows an all-sky view of stars in our galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, based on the first year of observations from the satellite from July 2014 to September 2015.
"Gaia is at the forefront of astrometry, charting the sky at precisions that have never been achieved before," says Alvaro Giménez, ESA's Director of Science.
(Pictured) A man walks in front of a slide show depicting a representation of the ESA Gaia Project, at the ESA centre in Villanueva de la Canada, near Madrid, Spain, on Sept. 14.
******
Remarkable history of NASA's space shuttle program
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/re ... ailsignout
Sept. 17, 2016, marks the 40th anniversary of NASA rolling out the Enterprise orbiter - its first orbiter, which was built as part of the space shuttle program. The space shuttle program had been officially initiated in 1972, with the manned launch vehicle probes being operational from 1981 to 2011. NASA went on to build five fully functional orbiters before finally retiring the space shuttle program in 2011. We take a look at the program's fascinating history.
NASA's new Dream Chaser
A successor to the shuttle program could take astronauts and cargo into orbit
VIDEO
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/video/nas ... ailsignout
Beyond the shuttle era
CBC science correspondent Bob McDonald talks about the future of space travel
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/video/bey ... ailsignout
*******
The Cell that Caused Melanoma: Cancer’s Surprise Origins, Caught in Action
It’s long been a mystery why some of our cells can have mutations associated with cancer, yet are not truly cancerous. Now researchers have, for the first time, watched a cancer spread from a single cell in a live animal, and found a critical step that turns a merely cancer-prone cell into a malignant one.
More...
http://blog.dana-farber.org/insight/201 ... htreserach
Science Stories of the Week: Sept. 23, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... out#page=1
Highlight:
DARPA launches surveillance system to track drones
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have launched a new project that is aimed to map all small drone activities in cities.
Jeff Krolik, program manager of the project called Aerial Dragnet says, "Commercial websites that currently exist display in real time the tracks of relatively high and fast aircraft — from small general aviation planes to large airliners — all overlaid on geographical maps as they fly around the country and the world. We want a similar capability for identifying and tracking slower, low-flying unmanned aerial systems, particularly in urban environments."
According to the designs released by DARPA, the project will comprise a long-endurance surveillance drone, which will monitor the other small UAVs flying around in the area. Initially, Aerial Dragnet will focus on the safety of military troops overseas. DARPA also said that the system could be used to protect civilians in American cities from terrorist threats.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... out#page=1
Highlight:
DARPA launches surveillance system to track drones
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have launched a new project that is aimed to map all small drone activities in cities.
Jeff Krolik, program manager of the project called Aerial Dragnet says, "Commercial websites that currently exist display in real time the tracks of relatively high and fast aircraft — from small general aviation planes to large airliners — all overlaid on geographical maps as they fly around the country and the world. We want a similar capability for identifying and tracking slower, low-flying unmanned aerial systems, particularly in urban environments."
According to the designs released by DARPA, the project will comprise a long-endurance surveillance drone, which will monitor the other small UAVs flying around in the area. Initially, Aerial Dragnet will focus on the safety of military troops overseas. DARPA also said that the system could be used to protect civilians in American cities from terrorist threats.
Science Stories of the Week: Sept. 30, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Elon Musk to send humans to Mars by 2022
Noted inventor and founder CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, unveiled his plans for manned mission to Mars in six years.
During his keynote speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Sept. 27, Musk said that the human race faces two paths to go forward. “One is that we stay on Earth forever and then there will be an inevitable extinction event. The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization, and a multi-planetary species.”
Although the funding details of the mission are still under wraps, Musk outlined the process that might make this vision a possibility. The mission will feature a multi-stage launch and a reusable booster, much like SpaceX’s tried-and-tested Falcon 9 space launch vehicle. The “interplanetary module,” which will carry the astronauts, will be place atop the booster.
The setup, which can carry up to 100 passengers, would be as long as two Boeing 747 aircraft, nearly 142 m (466 ft). According to Musk, the ship will be named Heart of Gold, taking inspiration from the iconic spacecraft from the popular science fiction novel series, “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,” by Douglas Adams and Eoin Colfer.
Musk estimates that the current cost of the mission might amount to $10 billion per person, although there would be price decreases over time with technological improvements.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Elon Musk to send humans to Mars by 2022
Noted inventor and founder CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, unveiled his plans for manned mission to Mars in six years.
During his keynote speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Sept. 27, Musk said that the human race faces two paths to go forward. “One is that we stay on Earth forever and then there will be an inevitable extinction event. The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization, and a multi-planetary species.”
Although the funding details of the mission are still under wraps, Musk outlined the process that might make this vision a possibility. The mission will feature a multi-stage launch and a reusable booster, much like SpaceX’s tried-and-tested Falcon 9 space launch vehicle. The “interplanetary module,” which will carry the astronauts, will be place atop the booster.
The setup, which can carry up to 100 passengers, would be as long as two Boeing 747 aircraft, nearly 142 m (466 ft). According to Musk, the ship will be named Heart of Gold, taking inspiration from the iconic spacecraft from the popular science fiction novel series, “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,” by Douglas Adams and Eoin Colfer.
Musk estimates that the current cost of the mission might amount to $10 billion per person, although there would be price decreases over time with technological improvements.
Science stories of the week: Oct. 7, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... Nb9#page=1
Highlight:
Nobel winners in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine announced
One of the biggest honors in the world, the Nobel Prize is given out to individuals who have worked for the “Greatest Benefit to Mankind" through their actions and discoveries. Beginning on Oct. 3, the names of the winners will be announced over the coming 10 days. So far, seven names have been declared.
Yoshinori Ohsumi of Japan won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Oct. 3 for discoveries on how cells break down and recycle content, a garbage disposal system that scientists hope to harness in the fight against cancer, Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
British-born scientitists, David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, for their work on theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa for the development of the world's smallest machines. One thousand times thinner than a strand of hair, these machines can be used for delivering drugs directly inside human body cells.
*******
Return to the Teenage Brain
There’s a reason adults don’t pick up Japanese or learn how to kite surf. It’s ridiculously hard. In stark contrast, young people can learn the most difficult things relatively easily. Polynomials, Chinese, skateboarding — no problem!
Neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to form new neural connections and be influenced by the environment — is greatest in childhood and adolescence, when the brain is still a work in progress. But this window of opportunity is finite. Eventually it slams shut. Or so we thought.
Until recently, the conventional wisdom within the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry has been that development is a one-way street, and once a person has passed through his formative years, experiences and abilities are very hard, if not impossible, to change.
What if we could turn back the clock in the brain and recapture its earlier plasticity?
This possibility is the focus of recent research in animals and humans. The basic idea is that during critical periods of brain development, the neural circuits that help give rise to mental states and behaviors are being sculpted and are particularly sensitive to the effects of experience. If we can understand what starts and stops these periods, perhaps we can restart them.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... Nb9#page=1
Highlight:
Nobel winners in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine announced
One of the biggest honors in the world, the Nobel Prize is given out to individuals who have worked for the “Greatest Benefit to Mankind" through their actions and discoveries. Beginning on Oct. 3, the names of the winners will be announced over the coming 10 days. So far, seven names have been declared.
Yoshinori Ohsumi of Japan won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Oct. 3 for discoveries on how cells break down and recycle content, a garbage disposal system that scientists hope to harness in the fight against cancer, Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
British-born scientitists, David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, for their work on theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa for the development of the world's smallest machines. One thousand times thinner than a strand of hair, these machines can be used for delivering drugs directly inside human body cells.
*******
Return to the Teenage Brain
There’s a reason adults don’t pick up Japanese or learn how to kite surf. It’s ridiculously hard. In stark contrast, young people can learn the most difficult things relatively easily. Polynomials, Chinese, skateboarding — no problem!
Neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to form new neural connections and be influenced by the environment — is greatest in childhood and adolescence, when the brain is still a work in progress. But this window of opportunity is finite. Eventually it slams shut. Or so we thought.
Until recently, the conventional wisdom within the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry has been that development is a one-way street, and once a person has passed through his formative years, experiences and abilities are very hard, if not impossible, to change.
What if we could turn back the clock in the brain and recapture its earlier plasticity?
This possibility is the focus of recent research in animals and humans. The basic idea is that during critical periods of brain development, the neural circuits that help give rise to mental states and behaviors are being sculpted and are particularly sensitive to the effects of experience. If we can understand what starts and stops these periods, perhaps we can restart them.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Science Stories of the Week: Oct. 14, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... ailsignout
BMW presents self-balancing motorcycle
Imagine a motorcycle that can balance on its own and is so safe that the rider doesn’t even need a helmet. The recently-unveiled BMW Motorrad Vision Next 100 concept motorcycle is designed to do just that and more.
The zero-emissions vehicle features self-balancing wheels which prevents it from falling, even when the bike is not moving. The body is built with a special ‘flexframe,’ which adjusts itself completely whenever the rider makes a turn. Edgar Heinrich, the design director of BMW's motorcycle division, said, "Its self-balancing system will help protect the rider at any time. Any late reaction from the driver will trigger (the system) and the vehicle will balance out."
The bike also comes with ‘digital companion’ visor glasses, which constantly notifies the rider of upcoming turns, paths and alerts you in case of some upcoming obstruction.
Although the bike was showcased exclusively as a concept, BMW believes that it can commercialize this fully autonomous vehicle by 2021.
******
There’s Such a Thing as Too Much Neuroscience
Extract:
Psychiatric diagnoses depend on clusters of signs and symptoms. For major depression, for example, some criteria are low mood; wanting to die; and sleep, appetite and energy changes. These diagnoses lack the specificity of the biological markers that neuroscience seeks to identify. If we could find a genetic, neuroimaging or brain-circuit explanation for a mental illness, it might even yield a cure, rather than just the treatment of what can be recurrent, chronic conditions.
But where does that leave patients whom today’s treatments do not help? Can they wait for neuroscience developments that may take decades to appear, or prove illusory? Staking all your money on one bet, as the institute did under Dr. Insel, has consequences.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/opini ... 87722&_r=1
Resonse to the article above:
People suffering from severe mental disorders need and deserve more effective treatments, and this goal requires more neuroscience, not less.
Virtually all of today’s treatments are based on serendipitous discoveries made six decades ago. With focused neuroscience investment, this is beginning to change, and successful efforts to improve treatments will require even greater basic understanding.
Simply put, the challenge is the extraordinary complexity of the brain, which is composed of hundreds of billions of cells that form trillions of contacts. We still seek basic understanding of how those contacts form during development, change over a lifetime and go awry in psychiatric disorders.
The analogy to cancer is useful: In medical school 35 years ago, we learned about molecular strategies to cure cancer, but it has taken three decades of basic research to fully understand and leverage this knowledge, which is now guiding the first definitive treatments.
Conquering mental illness will take longer because of the brain’s greater complexity. Diverting limited research dollars away from basic neuroscience will not lead to more rapid treatments; it will have the opposite effect and slow the search for cures.
ERIC J. NESTLER
STEVEN E. HYMAN
New York
Dr. Nestler is dean for academic and scientific affairs and director of the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Hyman is a past director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/opini ... ef=opinion
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... ailsignout
BMW presents self-balancing motorcycle
Imagine a motorcycle that can balance on its own and is so safe that the rider doesn’t even need a helmet. The recently-unveiled BMW Motorrad Vision Next 100 concept motorcycle is designed to do just that and more.
The zero-emissions vehicle features self-balancing wheels which prevents it from falling, even when the bike is not moving. The body is built with a special ‘flexframe,’ which adjusts itself completely whenever the rider makes a turn. Edgar Heinrich, the design director of BMW's motorcycle division, said, "Its self-balancing system will help protect the rider at any time. Any late reaction from the driver will trigger (the system) and the vehicle will balance out."
The bike also comes with ‘digital companion’ visor glasses, which constantly notifies the rider of upcoming turns, paths and alerts you in case of some upcoming obstruction.
Although the bike was showcased exclusively as a concept, BMW believes that it can commercialize this fully autonomous vehicle by 2021.
******
There’s Such a Thing as Too Much Neuroscience
Extract:
Psychiatric diagnoses depend on clusters of signs and symptoms. For major depression, for example, some criteria are low mood; wanting to die; and sleep, appetite and energy changes. These diagnoses lack the specificity of the biological markers that neuroscience seeks to identify. If we could find a genetic, neuroimaging or brain-circuit explanation for a mental illness, it might even yield a cure, rather than just the treatment of what can be recurrent, chronic conditions.
But where does that leave patients whom today’s treatments do not help? Can they wait for neuroscience developments that may take decades to appear, or prove illusory? Staking all your money on one bet, as the institute did under Dr. Insel, has consequences.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/opini ... 87722&_r=1
Resonse to the article above:
People suffering from severe mental disorders need and deserve more effective treatments, and this goal requires more neuroscience, not less.
Virtually all of today’s treatments are based on serendipitous discoveries made six decades ago. With focused neuroscience investment, this is beginning to change, and successful efforts to improve treatments will require even greater basic understanding.
Simply put, the challenge is the extraordinary complexity of the brain, which is composed of hundreds of billions of cells that form trillions of contacts. We still seek basic understanding of how those contacts form during development, change over a lifetime and go awry in psychiatric disorders.
The analogy to cancer is useful: In medical school 35 years ago, we learned about molecular strategies to cure cancer, but it has taken three decades of basic research to fully understand and leverage this knowledge, which is now guiding the first definitive treatments.
Conquering mental illness will take longer because of the brain’s greater complexity. Diverting limited research dollars away from basic neuroscience will not lead to more rapid treatments; it will have the opposite effect and slow the search for cures.
ERIC J. NESTLER
STEVEN E. HYMAN
New York
Dr. Nestler is dean for academic and scientific affairs and director of the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Hyman is a past director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/opini ... ef=opinion
Science Stories of the Week: Oct. 21, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... out#page=1
Highlight:
British scientist Stephen Hawking hails new AI center
The Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI), opened in Cambridge, eastern England on Oct. 19. A collaboration between the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, and the University of California, Berkeley, the Center will explore the implications of the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
Praising the creation of the $12.26 million (£10m) academic institute dedicated to researching the future of intelligence, Stephen Hawking said that the development of the center is "crucial to the future of our civilisation and our species."
Speaking at the opening ceremony, he said that AI will be "either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity."
He also said: "I believe there is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer. It therefore follows that computers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence - and exceed it."
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... out#page=1
Highlight:
British scientist Stephen Hawking hails new AI center
The Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI), opened in Cambridge, eastern England on Oct. 19. A collaboration between the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, and the University of California, Berkeley, the Center will explore the implications of the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
Praising the creation of the $12.26 million (£10m) academic institute dedicated to researching the future of intelligence, Stephen Hawking said that the development of the center is "crucial to the future of our civilisation and our species."
Speaking at the opening ceremony, he said that AI will be "either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity."
He also said: "I believe there is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer. It therefore follows that computers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence - and exceed it."
Science stories of the week: Oct. 28, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... out#page=1
Highlight:
World wildlife sees a steep decline
According to the Living Planet Report the global population of wildlife has declined by 58 per cent since 1970. The report, an initiative by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and WWF, has also pointed out that the decline of vertebrates could reach two-thirds by 2020 if the trend continues.
The worst-hit are the animals living in lakes, rivers and wetlands. Various human activities such as pollution and wildlife trade have resulted in the steep fall. The study has researched about 3,700 species of birds, fishes, mammals, reptiles and amphibians to collate the data.
Dr. Mike Barrett, head of science and policy at WWF, remarked, “It’s pretty clear under ‘business as usual’ we will see continued declines in these wildlife populations. But I think now we’ve reached a point where there isn’t really any excuse to let this carry on. We know what the causes are and we know the scale of the impact that humans are having on nature and on wildlife populations - it really is now down to us to act.”
*****
The Martians Are Coming—and They’re Human
How settling Mars could create a new human species.
In the upcoming Hollywood movie, The Space Between Us, a child is born to an American astronaut on Mars. The mother dies in childbirth, but the baby survives, and is raised by a small colony of astronauts on Mars. In the trailer, a somber voice-over intones the central conceit of the film: “His heart will simply not have the strength for the Earth’s gravity; his bones will be too brittle.” In other words, there is no turning back. It’s a question worth pondering—if we choose to leave Earth, will our descendants ever be able to return?
We’re moving ever closer to Mars. NASA hopes to put humans on the red planet in 30 years, Elon Musk in 10—first perhaps, just to visit, but eventually, to create self-sustaining Martian cities. In a September 2016 speech, Musk cited the “two fundamental paths” humanity might take: “One path is that we stay on Earth forever and then there will be some eventual extinction event. The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization, and a multi-planet species.”
If and when we do reach Mars, the conditions will be unlike anything on Earth. Adjusting to the weaker gravity, intense radiation, and a total lack of microbial life would cause generations of Martian colonists to undergo some of the most dramatic evolutionary changes in the human lineage since we started walking upright and developed our oversized brains.
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/41/selection/the ... eyre-human
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... out#page=1
Highlight:
World wildlife sees a steep decline
According to the Living Planet Report the global population of wildlife has declined by 58 per cent since 1970. The report, an initiative by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and WWF, has also pointed out that the decline of vertebrates could reach two-thirds by 2020 if the trend continues.
The worst-hit are the animals living in lakes, rivers and wetlands. Various human activities such as pollution and wildlife trade have resulted in the steep fall. The study has researched about 3,700 species of birds, fishes, mammals, reptiles and amphibians to collate the data.
Dr. Mike Barrett, head of science and policy at WWF, remarked, “It’s pretty clear under ‘business as usual’ we will see continued declines in these wildlife populations. But I think now we’ve reached a point where there isn’t really any excuse to let this carry on. We know what the causes are and we know the scale of the impact that humans are having on nature and on wildlife populations - it really is now down to us to act.”
*****
The Martians Are Coming—and They’re Human
How settling Mars could create a new human species.
In the upcoming Hollywood movie, The Space Between Us, a child is born to an American astronaut on Mars. The mother dies in childbirth, but the baby survives, and is raised by a small colony of astronauts on Mars. In the trailer, a somber voice-over intones the central conceit of the film: “His heart will simply not have the strength for the Earth’s gravity; his bones will be too brittle.” In other words, there is no turning back. It’s a question worth pondering—if we choose to leave Earth, will our descendants ever be able to return?
We’re moving ever closer to Mars. NASA hopes to put humans on the red planet in 30 years, Elon Musk in 10—first perhaps, just to visit, but eventually, to create self-sustaining Martian cities. In a September 2016 speech, Musk cited the “two fundamental paths” humanity might take: “One path is that we stay on Earth forever and then there will be some eventual extinction event. The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization, and a multi-planet species.”
If and when we do reach Mars, the conditions will be unlike anything on Earth. Adjusting to the weaker gravity, intense radiation, and a total lack of microbial life would cause generations of Martian colonists to undergo some of the most dramatic evolutionary changes in the human lineage since we started walking upright and developed our oversized brains.
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/41/selection/the ... eyre-human
Science stories of the week: Nov. 4, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... ailsignout
Highlight:
Scientists convert plants into bomb detector
Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have transformed the humble spinach plant into a bomb detector that can wirelessly relay the information to a handheld device.
Sensing explosives in real time, these bionic plants are embedded with carbon nanotubes which help them pick up chemicals called nitro-aromatics — often found in explosives such as landmines.
According to the research, published in Nature Materials, scientists administered the nitro-aromatics into the water sucked by the roots and directly to the leaves in droplets. Upon shining a laser onto the leaf, the nanotubes inside the leaves emitted near-infrared fluorescent light. A smartphone (with the infrared filter removed) can detect this signal up to 3.2 feet (1 meter) away.
Researchers said that these plants could be the future of defense application, environmental monitoring and urban farming.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/sc ... ailsignout
Highlight:
Scientists convert plants into bomb detector
Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have transformed the humble spinach plant into a bomb detector that can wirelessly relay the information to a handheld device.
Sensing explosives in real time, these bionic plants are embedded with carbon nanotubes which help them pick up chemicals called nitro-aromatics — often found in explosives such as landmines.
According to the research, published in Nature Materials, scientists administered the nitro-aromatics into the water sucked by the roots and directly to the leaves in droplets. Upon shining a laser onto the leaf, the nanotubes inside the leaves emitted near-infrared fluorescent light. A smartphone (with the infrared filter removed) can detect this signal up to 3.2 feet (1 meter) away.
Researchers said that these plants could be the future of defense application, environmental monitoring and urban farming.
Science stories of the week: Nov. 11, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Death of seabirds linked to plastic pollution
Scientists have discovered that plastic pollution in the sea emits a certain smell that draws scavenging birds. The floating pieces of plastic, when it comes in contact with plankton, gives off the smell of seaweed. Seabirds get tricked into associating the smell of plastic with food, which ultimately puts their health at risk. Almost 90 percent of these birds have consumed plastic, which then gets stuck to their bellies.
Researchers at the University of California conducted an experiment by putting microbeads into mesh bags before throwing them into the ocean. After three weeks, they found a distinctive chemical smell in three types of plastic. The chemical, which was found to be dimethyl sulfide, has a signature sulfurous odour that is similar to boiling cabbage or decaying seaweed.
Matthew Savoca, of the University of California, noted, “These seabirds actually use odours to find their way around in the world and to find food. We found a chemical on plastic that these birds typically associate with food, but now it’s being associated with plastic. And so these birds might be very confused - and tricked into consuming plastic as food.”
******
A Lost World of Shipwrecks Is Found
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/scien ... ss&emc=rss
An image of the well-preserved medieval ship found at the bottom of the Black Sea, one of more than 40 wrecks discovered. Photogrammetry, a process using thousands of photographs and readings, produced a rendering that appears three-dimensional.Credit Expedition and Education Foundation/Black Sea MAP
‘We Couldn’t Believe
Our Eyes’: A Lost World
of Shipwrecks Is Found
Extract:
“It’s a great story,” said Shelley Wachsmann of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University. “We can expect some real contributions to our understanding of ancient trade routes.”
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Death of seabirds linked to plastic pollution
Scientists have discovered that plastic pollution in the sea emits a certain smell that draws scavenging birds. The floating pieces of plastic, when it comes in contact with plankton, gives off the smell of seaweed. Seabirds get tricked into associating the smell of plastic with food, which ultimately puts their health at risk. Almost 90 percent of these birds have consumed plastic, which then gets stuck to their bellies.
Researchers at the University of California conducted an experiment by putting microbeads into mesh bags before throwing them into the ocean. After three weeks, they found a distinctive chemical smell in three types of plastic. The chemical, which was found to be dimethyl sulfide, has a signature sulfurous odour that is similar to boiling cabbage or decaying seaweed.
Matthew Savoca, of the University of California, noted, “These seabirds actually use odours to find their way around in the world and to find food. We found a chemical on plastic that these birds typically associate with food, but now it’s being associated with plastic. And so these birds might be very confused - and tricked into consuming plastic as food.”
******
A Lost World of Shipwrecks Is Found
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/scien ... ss&emc=rss
An image of the well-preserved medieval ship found at the bottom of the Black Sea, one of more than 40 wrecks discovered. Photogrammetry, a process using thousands of photographs and readings, produced a rendering that appears three-dimensional.Credit Expedition and Education Foundation/Black Sea MAP
‘We Couldn’t Believe
Our Eyes’: A Lost World
of Shipwrecks Is Found
Extract:
“It’s a great story,” said Shelley Wachsmann of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University. “We can expect some real contributions to our understanding of ancient trade routes.”
Science stories of the week ending Nov. 19, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... out#page=1
Highlight:
New textile can harvest and store solar and electrical power
A new prototype textile has been designed that uses solar and mechanical power to generate and store energy, which can be used to charge small electronic devices.
Conceived and developed by a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Engineering in Atlanta, the textile material is made of two layers. The top layer is lined with thin solar cells, which charge from being exposed to the sun. The bottom layer is made from pliable super-capacitors, which stores the energy for later.
When a person wearing the textile runs or walks, the two layers will build up static electricity as they rub against each other. The super-capacitors will be storing that energy too, essentially making it not depend only on solar energy.
According to study leader Zhong Lin, a 13 sq. cm patch of the textile can power up a digital watch or an LED. He hopes that with further research and development, the textile can help charge more power-consuming devices like MP3 players and fitness trackers.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... out#page=1
Highlight:
New textile can harvest and store solar and electrical power
A new prototype textile has been designed that uses solar and mechanical power to generate and store energy, which can be used to charge small electronic devices.
Conceived and developed by a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Engineering in Atlanta, the textile material is made of two layers. The top layer is lined with thin solar cells, which charge from being exposed to the sun. The bottom layer is made from pliable super-capacitors, which stores the energy for later.
When a person wearing the textile runs or walks, the two layers will build up static electricity as they rub against each other. The super-capacitors will be storing that energy too, essentially making it not depend only on solar energy.
According to study leader Zhong Lin, a 13 sq. cm patch of the textile can power up a digital watch or an LED. He hopes that with further research and development, the textile can help charge more power-consuming devices like MP3 players and fitness trackers.
Science stories of the week ending Nov. 26, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Tesla fully powers an island with solar energy
After acquiring the American solar power group SolarCity, in a $2.6 billion deal, Elon Musk’s (pictured) visionary technology company Tesla has successfully completed a project of powering the island of Ta’u in American Samoa solely by solar energy.
On Nov. 22, the company tweeted it took them over 5,300 solar panels and 60 Tesla Powerpack storage batteries to meet 100 percent of power needs of the island’s 600 residents.
The island, which used more than 109,500 gallons of diesel per year, is now powered by a solar microgrid which can power the entire island for three days without any sunlight. The super-powered batteries also have the ability to recharge completely in only seven hours.
Keith Ahsoon, a local resident, said: “Living on an island, you experience global warming firsthand. Beach erosions and other noticeable changes are a part of life here. It’s a serious problem, and this project will hopefully set a good example for everyone else to follow.”
******
Telescope That ‘Ate Astronomy’ Is on Track to Surpass Hubble
Extract:
Seven times larger than the Hubble in light-gathering ability, the Webb was designed to see farther out in space and deeper into the past of the universe. It may solve mysteries about how and when the first stars and galaxies emerged some 13 billion years ago in the smoky aftermath of the Big Bang.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/scien ... &te=1&_r=0
*****
James Simons’s Foundation Starts New Institute for Computing, Big Data
A new private research institute financed by the billionaire James H. Simons in New York will develop software tools and apply cutting edge computing techniques to science often not possible in academia and industry.
......
Ms. Simons said the impetus for the institute evolved from a brainstorming workshop about “what we might do to help move the needle in science.” A Belgian physicist and mathematician, Ingrid Daubechies, suggested an effort to develop better computational tools.
“She said there is a real need for analyzing big data,” Ms. Simons said. “She felt these kinds of technologies and approaches would be really helpful in addressing some of the scientific problems we had now.”
The first area of focus was computational biology.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/scien ... pe=article
*******
Scientific discovery for life on Mars
Scientists from Arizona State University have discovered biosignatures that has further led the scientific world to believe there was once life on Mars.
VIDEO
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/wonder/s ... vi-AAkFsPG
*****
'World's Fastest' supersonic passenger plane just revealed
Meet "Baby Boom" a newly unveiled airplane created to fly from New York to London in under three and a half hours. TC Newman (@PurpleTCNewman) has details on the XB-1 Supersonic Demonstrator.
VIDEO
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/wonder/w ... vi-AAkn6k0
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Tesla fully powers an island with solar energy
After acquiring the American solar power group SolarCity, in a $2.6 billion deal, Elon Musk’s (pictured) visionary technology company Tesla has successfully completed a project of powering the island of Ta’u in American Samoa solely by solar energy.
On Nov. 22, the company tweeted it took them over 5,300 solar panels and 60 Tesla Powerpack storage batteries to meet 100 percent of power needs of the island’s 600 residents.
The island, which used more than 109,500 gallons of diesel per year, is now powered by a solar microgrid which can power the entire island for three days without any sunlight. The super-powered batteries also have the ability to recharge completely in only seven hours.
Keith Ahsoon, a local resident, said: “Living on an island, you experience global warming firsthand. Beach erosions and other noticeable changes are a part of life here. It’s a serious problem, and this project will hopefully set a good example for everyone else to follow.”
******
Telescope That ‘Ate Astronomy’ Is on Track to Surpass Hubble
Extract:
Seven times larger than the Hubble in light-gathering ability, the Webb was designed to see farther out in space and deeper into the past of the universe. It may solve mysteries about how and when the first stars and galaxies emerged some 13 billion years ago in the smoky aftermath of the Big Bang.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/scien ... &te=1&_r=0
*****
James Simons’s Foundation Starts New Institute for Computing, Big Data
A new private research institute financed by the billionaire James H. Simons in New York will develop software tools and apply cutting edge computing techniques to science often not possible in academia and industry.
......
Ms. Simons said the impetus for the institute evolved from a brainstorming workshop about “what we might do to help move the needle in science.” A Belgian physicist and mathematician, Ingrid Daubechies, suggested an effort to develop better computational tools.
“She said there is a real need for analyzing big data,” Ms. Simons said. “She felt these kinds of technologies and approaches would be really helpful in addressing some of the scientific problems we had now.”
The first area of focus was computational biology.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/scien ... pe=article
*******
Scientific discovery for life on Mars
Scientists from Arizona State University have discovered biosignatures that has further led the scientific world to believe there was once life on Mars.
VIDEO
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/wonder/s ... vi-AAkFsPG
*****
'World's Fastest' supersonic passenger plane just revealed
Meet "Baby Boom" a newly unveiled airplane created to fly from New York to London in under three and a half hours. TC Newman (@PurpleTCNewman) has details on the XB-1 Supersonic Demonstrator.
VIDEO
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/wonder/w ... vi-AAkn6k0
Science stories of the week: Dec. 2, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Alcohol consumption can be suppressed through a gene
Researchers have discovered a gene variant which can suppress the craving to consume alcohol. This advancement may eventually help to develop drugs to control alcohol consumption. Genetics of over 105,000 light and heavy social drinkers have been mapped and compared to reach the findings.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/science/s ... li=AAggNb9
Highlight:
Alcohol consumption can be suppressed through a gene
Researchers have discovered a gene variant which can suppress the craving to consume alcohol. This advancement may eventually help to develop drugs to control alcohol consumption. Genetics of over 105,000 light and heavy social drinkers have been mapped and compared to reach the findings.
Science Stories of the week: Dec. 9, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... out#page=1
Highlights:
Scientists develop a robot with incredible jumping abilities
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, U.S., have unveiled Salto the robot, which packs in the power to perform multiple vertical jumps in a row.
According to scientist Duncan Haldane and his colleagues, they were inspired by African nocturnal primates, the bush babies, or galagos, when they were conceptualizing Salto. The galagos have an incredible ability to store energy in its tendons, enabling them to jump to great heights. Haldane and his team tried to replicate the same principle in their design.
Weighing 0.22 pounds (100 g), the 10 inch-tall robot is driven by a motor, which supplies energy to a spring which loads via a leg mechanism. When it’s in air, Salto is able to store enough energy in his spring to jump again without needing to wind up again.
Funded by the US Army Research Laboratory among other sponsors, Haldane believes Salto can be used for search and rescue in disaster zones.
*******
Twinkle, Twinkle Little [Insert Name Here]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/scien ... &te=1&_r=0
Extract:
All stars do have numbers. In fact, many have more than one number, corresponding to their listings in the voluminous catalogs that have been compiled over the century by astronomers. The PPMXL catalog, combining data from the United States Naval Observatory and the University of Massachusetts, lists the positions and motions of some 900 million stars.
This makes for awkward moments when modern astrophysics vaults one of these previously anonymous stars into the limelight, because it is exploding weirdly or turns out to harbor possibly habitable planets. Such dramatic destinations as HR 8799 , HD 85512 and Gliese 581 don’t exactly trip off the tongue.
Now, however, the International Astronomical Union, an organization of stargazers, is coming to the rescue. In November, it published what it calls “the first set” of approved names for 227 stars.
******
Four New Names Officially Added to the Periodic Table of Elements
It’s official. Chemistry’s highest gatekeepers have accepted the newly proposed names for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118.
Please welcome to the periodic table: Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine and Oganesson.
Scientists first synthesized the new elements between 2002 and 2010, but it wasn’t until December of 2015 that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry officially recognized the discoveries. Then in June of this year the scientists who discovered the super-heavy, highly-reactive elements sent Iupac their suggested names.
After a five-month waiting period when members of the public could ask questions about the new elements, the foursome were approved on Wednesday, formally filling their boxes in chemistry’s most fundamental table.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/scien ... dline&te=1
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... out#page=1
Highlights:
Scientists develop a robot with incredible jumping abilities
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, U.S., have unveiled Salto the robot, which packs in the power to perform multiple vertical jumps in a row.
According to scientist Duncan Haldane and his colleagues, they were inspired by African nocturnal primates, the bush babies, or galagos, when they were conceptualizing Salto. The galagos have an incredible ability to store energy in its tendons, enabling them to jump to great heights. Haldane and his team tried to replicate the same principle in their design.
Weighing 0.22 pounds (100 g), the 10 inch-tall robot is driven by a motor, which supplies energy to a spring which loads via a leg mechanism. When it’s in air, Salto is able to store enough energy in his spring to jump again without needing to wind up again.
Funded by the US Army Research Laboratory among other sponsors, Haldane believes Salto can be used for search and rescue in disaster zones.
*******
Twinkle, Twinkle Little [Insert Name Here]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/scien ... &te=1&_r=0
Extract:
All stars do have numbers. In fact, many have more than one number, corresponding to their listings in the voluminous catalogs that have been compiled over the century by astronomers. The PPMXL catalog, combining data from the United States Naval Observatory and the University of Massachusetts, lists the positions and motions of some 900 million stars.
This makes for awkward moments when modern astrophysics vaults one of these previously anonymous stars into the limelight, because it is exploding weirdly or turns out to harbor possibly habitable planets. Such dramatic destinations as HR 8799 , HD 85512 and Gliese 581 don’t exactly trip off the tongue.
Now, however, the International Astronomical Union, an organization of stargazers, is coming to the rescue. In November, it published what it calls “the first set” of approved names for 227 stars.
******
Four New Names Officially Added to the Periodic Table of Elements
It’s official. Chemistry’s highest gatekeepers have accepted the newly proposed names for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118.
Please welcome to the periodic table: Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine and Oganesson.
Scientists first synthesized the new elements between 2002 and 2010, but it wasn’t until December of 2015 that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry officially recognized the discoveries. Then in June of this year the scientists who discovered the super-heavy, highly-reactive elements sent Iupac their suggested names.
After a five-month waiting period when members of the public could ask questions about the new elements, the foursome were approved on Wednesday, formally filling their boxes in chemistry’s most fundamental table.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/scien ... dline&te=1
Science stories of the week: Dec. 16, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... out#page=1
Highlight:
There are an estimated 18,000 bird species in the world
Research led by the American Museum of Natural History estimated that there are closer to 18,000 species of birds in the world – that’s twice the previous estimate of 9,000 to 10,000 species.
It had been thought that 95 percent of bird species had been documented, however, that estimate was based on the “biological species concept,” an older model that defined a species as animals that can breed together. “It’s really an outdated point of view, and it’s a concept that is hardly used in taxonomy outside of birds,” said George Barrowclough, the lead author and an associate curator in the Museum’s Department of Ornithology.
The “hidden” bird species are birds that look like one another but have different evolutionary lines.
********
Scientists Say the Clock of Aging May Be Reversible
At the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., scientists are trying to get time to run backward.
Biological time, that is. In the first attempt to reverse aging by reprogramming the genome, they have rejuvenated the organs of mice and lengthened their life spans by 30 percent. The technique, which requires genetic engineering, cannot be applied directly to people, but the achievement points toward better understanding of human aging and the possibility of rejuvenating human tissues by other means.
The Salk team’s discovery, reported in the Thursday issue of the journal Cell, is “novel and exciting,” said Jan Vijg, an expert on aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Leonard Guarente, who studies the biology of aging at M.I.T., said, “This is huge,” citing the novelty of the finding and the opportunity it creates to slow down, if not reverse, aging. “It’s a pretty remarkable finding, and if it holds up it could be quite important in the history of aging research,” Dr. Guarente said.
The finding is based on the heterodox idea that aging is not irreversible and that an animal’s biological clock can in principle be wound back to a more youthful state.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/scien ... 87722&_r=1
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... out#page=1
Highlight:
There are an estimated 18,000 bird species in the world
Research led by the American Museum of Natural History estimated that there are closer to 18,000 species of birds in the world – that’s twice the previous estimate of 9,000 to 10,000 species.
It had been thought that 95 percent of bird species had been documented, however, that estimate was based on the “biological species concept,” an older model that defined a species as animals that can breed together. “It’s really an outdated point of view, and it’s a concept that is hardly used in taxonomy outside of birds,” said George Barrowclough, the lead author and an associate curator in the Museum’s Department of Ornithology.
The “hidden” bird species are birds that look like one another but have different evolutionary lines.
********
Scientists Say the Clock of Aging May Be Reversible
At the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., scientists are trying to get time to run backward.
Biological time, that is. In the first attempt to reverse aging by reprogramming the genome, they have rejuvenated the organs of mice and lengthened their life spans by 30 percent. The technique, which requires genetic engineering, cannot be applied directly to people, but the achievement points toward better understanding of human aging and the possibility of rejuvenating human tissues by other means.
The Salk team’s discovery, reported in the Thursday issue of the journal Cell, is “novel and exciting,” said Jan Vijg, an expert on aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Leonard Guarente, who studies the biology of aging at M.I.T., said, “This is huge,” citing the novelty of the finding and the opportunity it creates to slow down, if not reverse, aging. “It’s a pretty remarkable finding, and if it holds up it could be quite important in the history of aging research,” Dr. Guarente said.
The finding is based on the heterodox idea that aging is not irreversible and that an animal’s biological clock can in principle be wound back to a more youthful state.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/scien ... 87722&_r=1
Science stories of the week: Dec. 25, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Researchers find out how the brain filters out noise
In an attempt to improve speech recognition technology, researchers at University of California, in Berkeley, U.S. conducted a study to understand how our brain makes sense of speech in a noisy room.
The study was carried out on seven epilepsy patients, who had specific portions of the skull removed to attach electrodes on the brain’s surface to record their seizures. At first, the subjects were played a distorted, unintelligible sentence. When none of them could figure out the words, the sentence was replayed in clear diction and sound. After hearing the clean sound, the garbled sound was played again. This time, the subjects could easily make out the sentence even when they heard the distorted sound.
According to the researchers, the area of the brain which is in charge of processing sound and understanding spoken words remained nearly inactive when it heard the garbled sound. When it heard the clean sentence, the areas “lit up,” changing their activity pattern to tune in to the familiar words among the distortion. When the subjects heard the clean sound again, the brain had already enhanced the speech signal, enabling them to fully understand the words.
Lead researcher Christopher Holdgraf said, “By understanding the ways in which our brains filter out noise in the world, we hope to be able to create devices that help people with speech and hearing impediments accomplish the same thing.”
******
Spark of Science: Melissa Franklin
Harvard’s first tenured woman physicist tells us about her heroes and her work.
VIDEO and more at:
http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/spark- ... 6-60760513
*******
To Understand Your Past, Look to Your Future
An alternative to the Newtonian worldview promises to help explain quantum weirdness
You’re thinking about time all wrong, according to our best physical theories. In Einstein’s general theory of relativity, there’s no conceptual distinction between the past and the future, let alone an objective line of “now.” There’s also no sense in which time “flows”; instead, all of space and time is just there in some four-dimensional structure. What’s more, all the fundamental laws of physics work essentially the same both forward and backward.
None of these facts are easy to accept, because they’re in direct conflict with our subjective experience of time. But don’t feel too bad: They’re hard even for physicists to accept, an ongoing tension that places physics in conflict not just with common sense but also with itself. As much as physicists talk about time symmetry, they do not allow themselves to invoke the future, only the past, when seeking to explain occurrences in the world.
When formulating explanations, most of us tend to think in terms laid down by Isaac Newton over 300 years ago. This “Newtonian Schema” takes the past as primary and uses it to solve for the future, explaining our universe one time-step at a time. Some researchers even go so far as to think of the universe as the output of a forward-running computer program, a picture that is a natural extension of this schema. Even though our view of time has changed dramatically in the last century, the Newtonian Schema has somehow endured as our most popular physics framework.
But imposing old Newtonian Schema thinking on new quantum-scale phenomena has landed us in situations with no good explanations whatsoever. If these phenomena seem inexplicable, we may just be thinking about them in the wrong way. Much better explanations become available if we are willing to take the future into account as well as the past. But Newtonian-style thinking is inherently incapable of such time-neutral explanations. Computer programs run in only one direction, and trying to combine two programs running in opposite directions leads to the paradoxical morass of poorly plotted time-travel movies. In order to treat the future as seriously as we treat the past, we clearly need an alternative to the Newtonian Schema.
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/36/Aging/to-unde ... our-future
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Researchers find out how the brain filters out noise
In an attempt to improve speech recognition technology, researchers at University of California, in Berkeley, U.S. conducted a study to understand how our brain makes sense of speech in a noisy room.
The study was carried out on seven epilepsy patients, who had specific portions of the skull removed to attach electrodes on the brain’s surface to record their seizures. At first, the subjects were played a distorted, unintelligible sentence. When none of them could figure out the words, the sentence was replayed in clear diction and sound. After hearing the clean sound, the garbled sound was played again. This time, the subjects could easily make out the sentence even when they heard the distorted sound.
According to the researchers, the area of the brain which is in charge of processing sound and understanding spoken words remained nearly inactive when it heard the garbled sound. When it heard the clean sentence, the areas “lit up,” changing their activity pattern to tune in to the familiar words among the distortion. When the subjects heard the clean sound again, the brain had already enhanced the speech signal, enabling them to fully understand the words.
Lead researcher Christopher Holdgraf said, “By understanding the ways in which our brains filter out noise in the world, we hope to be able to create devices that help people with speech and hearing impediments accomplish the same thing.”
******
Spark of Science: Melissa Franklin
Harvard’s first tenured woman physicist tells us about her heroes and her work.
VIDEO and more at:
http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/spark- ... 6-60760513
*******
To Understand Your Past, Look to Your Future
An alternative to the Newtonian worldview promises to help explain quantum weirdness
You’re thinking about time all wrong, according to our best physical theories. In Einstein’s general theory of relativity, there’s no conceptual distinction between the past and the future, let alone an objective line of “now.” There’s also no sense in which time “flows”; instead, all of space and time is just there in some four-dimensional structure. What’s more, all the fundamental laws of physics work essentially the same both forward and backward.
None of these facts are easy to accept, because they’re in direct conflict with our subjective experience of time. But don’t feel too bad: They’re hard even for physicists to accept, an ongoing tension that places physics in conflict not just with common sense but also with itself. As much as physicists talk about time symmetry, they do not allow themselves to invoke the future, only the past, when seeking to explain occurrences in the world.
When formulating explanations, most of us tend to think in terms laid down by Isaac Newton over 300 years ago. This “Newtonian Schema” takes the past as primary and uses it to solve for the future, explaining our universe one time-step at a time. Some researchers even go so far as to think of the universe as the output of a forward-running computer program, a picture that is a natural extension of this schema. Even though our view of time has changed dramatically in the last century, the Newtonian Schema has somehow endured as our most popular physics framework.
But imposing old Newtonian Schema thinking on new quantum-scale phenomena has landed us in situations with no good explanations whatsoever. If these phenomena seem inexplicable, we may just be thinking about them in the wrong way. Much better explanations become available if we are willing to take the future into account as well as the past. But Newtonian-style thinking is inherently incapable of such time-neutral explanations. Computer programs run in only one direction, and trying to combine two programs running in opposite directions leads to the paradoxical morass of poorly plotted time-travel movies. In order to treat the future as seriously as we treat the past, we clearly need an alternative to the Newtonian Schema.
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/36/Aging/to-unde ... our-future
Science stories of the week: Dec. 30, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... ehp#page=1
Highlight:
Cheetah population crashes, may face extinction
According to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the population of cheetah have dwindled down to just 7,100 in the world. Citing that they are rapidly heading towards extinction, the authors are pushing for an immediate re-categorization of the world’s fastest mammals from vulnerable to endangered on the Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Owing to the animal’s vast range, that goes well beyond protected areas, cheetahs are increasingly coming in conflict with humans, which in turn leads to the decreasing numbers. The report’s lead author, Dr Sarah Durant from the Zoological Society of London, U.K. said, “Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked.”
As revealed by the study, around 77 percent of cheetah habitats fall outside national parks and reserves. The Asiatic cheetah population has lowered to 50 in Iran. In Zimbabwe, the numbers have decreased from 1,200 to just 170 in the past 16 years.
Study co-author Dr Kim Young-Overton said, “We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-reaching cats inhabit, if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever.”
*******
Why Sex Is Mostly Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
A short genetic history of one of the most profound dimensions of human identity.
By Siddhartha Mukherjee December 29, 2016
Anyone who doubts that genes can specify identity might well have arrived from another planet and failed to notice that the humans come in two fundamental variants: male and female. Cultural critics, queer theorists, fashion photographers, and Lady Gaga have reminded us— accurately—that these categories are not as fundamental as they might seem, and that unsettling ambiguities frequently lurk in their borderlands. But it is hard to dispute three essential facts: that males and females are anatomically and physiologically different; that these anatomical and physiological differences are specified by genes; and that these differences, interposed against cultural and social constructions of the self, have a potent influence on specifying our identities as individuals.
That genes have anything to do with the determination of sex, gender, and gender identity is a relatively new idea in our history. The distinction between the three words is relevant to this discussion. By sex, I mean the anatomic and physiological aspects of male versus female bodies. By gender, I am referring to a more complex idea: the psychic, social, and cultural roles that an individual assumes. By gender identity, I mean an individual’s sense of self (as female versus male, as neither, or as something in between).
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/why-se ... 9-60760513
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... ehp#page=1
Highlight:
Cheetah population crashes, may face extinction
According to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the population of cheetah have dwindled down to just 7,100 in the world. Citing that they are rapidly heading towards extinction, the authors are pushing for an immediate re-categorization of the world’s fastest mammals from vulnerable to endangered on the Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Owing to the animal’s vast range, that goes well beyond protected areas, cheetahs are increasingly coming in conflict with humans, which in turn leads to the decreasing numbers. The report’s lead author, Dr Sarah Durant from the Zoological Society of London, U.K. said, “Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked.”
As revealed by the study, around 77 percent of cheetah habitats fall outside national parks and reserves. The Asiatic cheetah population has lowered to 50 in Iran. In Zimbabwe, the numbers have decreased from 1,200 to just 170 in the past 16 years.
Study co-author Dr Kim Young-Overton said, “We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-reaching cats inhabit, if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever.”
*******
Why Sex Is Mostly Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
A short genetic history of one of the most profound dimensions of human identity.
By Siddhartha Mukherjee December 29, 2016
Anyone who doubts that genes can specify identity might well have arrived from another planet and failed to notice that the humans come in two fundamental variants: male and female. Cultural critics, queer theorists, fashion photographers, and Lady Gaga have reminded us— accurately—that these categories are not as fundamental as they might seem, and that unsettling ambiguities frequently lurk in their borderlands. But it is hard to dispute three essential facts: that males and females are anatomically and physiologically different; that these anatomical and physiological differences are specified by genes; and that these differences, interposed against cultural and social constructions of the self, have a potent influence on specifying our identities as individuals.
That genes have anything to do with the determination of sex, gender, and gender identity is a relatively new idea in our history. The distinction between the three words is relevant to this discussion. By sex, I mean the anatomic and physiological aspects of male versus female bodies. By gender, I am referring to a more complex idea: the psychic, social, and cultural roles that an individual assumes. By gender identity, I mean an individual’s sense of self (as female versus male, as neither, or as something in between).
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/why-se ... 9-60760513
Mesentery: New organ discovered inside human body by scientists
A new organ has been discovered hiding in plain sight inside the human body.
Known as the mesentery, it was previously thought to be just a few fragmented structures in the digestive system.
But scientists have realised it is in fact one, continuous organ.
Although its function is still unclear, the discovery opens up “a whole new area of science,” according to J Calvin Coffey, a researcher at the University Hospital Limerick, who first discovered it.
"When we approach it like every other organ… we can categorise abdominal disease in terms of this organ," he told the Science Alert website.
Video and more:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/medical ... ailsignout
********
Why Vera Rubin Deserved a Nobel
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As we look back on 2016, and perhaps fret about 2017, we can take some solace in the remarkable things we know and continue to learn about the universe. In addition to a better understanding of the 5 percent of matter that has been well studied and understood, scientists are unlocking mysteries about the rest — 25 percent of it dark matter, and the remaining 70 percent dark energy.
Dark matter interacts gravitationally the way that ordinary matter does — clumping into galaxies and galaxy clusters, for example — but we call it “dark” because it doesn’t interact, in any perceptible way, with light. So 85 percent of the matter in the universe is not familiar matter. It is not made up of atoms and doesn’t carry an electric charge.
Observations in the 1980s presented convincing evidence of dark matter, opening a vast field of scientific work. Of all the great advances in physics during the 20th century, surely this one should rank near the top, making it well deserving of the world’s pre-eminent award in the field, the Nobel Prize. Yet to this date none has been awarded, and may never be, because the scientist most often attributed with establishing its existence, Vera Rubin, died on Christmas Day.
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/opini ... ytmobile=0
A new organ has been discovered hiding in plain sight inside the human body.
Known as the mesentery, it was previously thought to be just a few fragmented structures in the digestive system.
But scientists have realised it is in fact one, continuous organ.
Although its function is still unclear, the discovery opens up “a whole new area of science,” according to J Calvin Coffey, a researcher at the University Hospital Limerick, who first discovered it.
"When we approach it like every other organ… we can categorise abdominal disease in terms of this organ," he told the Science Alert website.
Video and more:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/medical ... ailsignout
********
Why Vera Rubin Deserved a Nobel
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As we look back on 2016, and perhaps fret about 2017, we can take some solace in the remarkable things we know and continue to learn about the universe. In addition to a better understanding of the 5 percent of matter that has been well studied and understood, scientists are unlocking mysteries about the rest — 25 percent of it dark matter, and the remaining 70 percent dark energy.
Dark matter interacts gravitationally the way that ordinary matter does — clumping into galaxies and galaxy clusters, for example — but we call it “dark” because it doesn’t interact, in any perceptible way, with light. So 85 percent of the matter in the universe is not familiar matter. It is not made up of atoms and doesn’t carry an electric charge.
Observations in the 1980s presented convincing evidence of dark matter, opening a vast field of scientific work. Of all the great advances in physics during the 20th century, surely this one should rank near the top, making it well deserving of the world’s pre-eminent award in the field, the Nobel Prize. Yet to this date none has been awarded, and may never be, because the scientist most often attributed with establishing its existence, Vera Rubin, died on Christmas Day.
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/opini ... ytmobile=0
Science stories of the week ending Jan. 7, 2016
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Carbon atoms can bond with more than four other carbons
The carbon atom, believed to be able to bond with only four other carbon atoms at a time, has been proven to bond with six others in a report published in the German journal, Angewandte Chemie.
In covalent bonding, atoms bond by sharing two electrons, one from each other. Since Carbon has four shareable electrons, it can form four bonds with other atoms. In the 1970s, German scientists discovered a molecule called hexamethylbenzene, which is made of six carbon atoms. Theories suggested that if two electrons are removed from the molecule, leaving it with positive charge, it might undergo a notable shape change.
Moritz Malischewski and her colleagues at the Free University of Berlin in Germany created the charged molecule in their labs. Using X-rays, the team developed a 3D map of the structure. As theorized, when the hexamethylbenzene lost two electrons, it reordered itself by enabling one carbon atom to bond with six other carbons – five below and one above. This is the first time that carbon has been proven to associate with six other carbon atoms.
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http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sci ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Carbon atoms can bond with more than four other carbons
The carbon atom, believed to be able to bond with only four other carbon atoms at a time, has been proven to bond with six others in a report published in the German journal, Angewandte Chemie.
In covalent bonding, atoms bond by sharing two electrons, one from each other. Since Carbon has four shareable electrons, it can form four bonds with other atoms. In the 1970s, German scientists discovered a molecule called hexamethylbenzene, which is made of six carbon atoms. Theories suggested that if two electrons are removed from the molecule, leaving it with positive charge, it might undergo a notable shape change.
Moritz Malischewski and her colleagues at the Free University of Berlin in Germany created the charged molecule in their labs. Using X-rays, the team developed a 3D map of the structure. As theorized, when the hexamethylbenzene lost two electrons, it reordered itself by enabling one carbon atom to bond with six other carbons – five below and one above. This is the first time that carbon has been proven to associate with six other carbon atoms.
Science Stories of the week: Jan. 13, 2017
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http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... out#page=1
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Black holes send out spitballs after devouring a star
At the center of every galaxy, including our Milky Way, lies super-massive black holes. When they consume a star, it throws out “spitballs” made of regurgitated gas. These planet-sized balls of gas move around all over the galaxy and a new study shows that they can come within a few light years from Earth.
Eden Girma, lead author of the study and an undergraduate student at Harvard University in Massachusetts, U.S., said, “A single shredded star can form hundreds of these planet-mass objects. We wondered: Where do they end up? How close do they come to us? We developed a computer code to answer those questions.”
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How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games
The responsibilities and challenges of programmed luck.
Extract:
Computing Aesthetic’s video is just one of nearly 20,000 such YouTube clips labelled with the words “Peggle” and “Lucky,” uploaded by players so amazed at their good fortune in the game that they were moved to share the achievement with the world. But these players may not be as lucky as they’ve been led to believe. “In Peggle, the seemingly random bouncing of the balls off of pegs is sometimes manipulated to give the player better results,” Jason Kapalka, one of the game’s developers, admitted to me. “The Lucky Bounce that ensures that a ball hits a target peg instead of plunking into the dead ball zone is used sparingly. But we do apply a lot of extra ‘luck’ to players in their first half-dozen levels or so to keep them from getting frustrated while learning the ropes.” Tweaking the direction of any given bounce by just a few compass degrees—but not so much that the ball swerves unrealistically in mid-air—is enough to encourage beginners and not make the game too unbelievable, Kapalka said.
More..
http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/how-desi ... c-60760513
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... out#page=1
Highlight:
Black holes send out spitballs after devouring a star
At the center of every galaxy, including our Milky Way, lies super-massive black holes. When they consume a star, it throws out “spitballs” made of regurgitated gas. These planet-sized balls of gas move around all over the galaxy and a new study shows that they can come within a few light years from Earth.
Eden Girma, lead author of the study and an undergraduate student at Harvard University in Massachusetts, U.S., said, “A single shredded star can form hundreds of these planet-mass objects. We wondered: Where do they end up? How close do they come to us? We developed a computer code to answer those questions.”
******
How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games
The responsibilities and challenges of programmed luck.
Extract:
Computing Aesthetic’s video is just one of nearly 20,000 such YouTube clips labelled with the words “Peggle” and “Lucky,” uploaded by players so amazed at their good fortune in the game that they were moved to share the achievement with the world. But these players may not be as lucky as they’ve been led to believe. “In Peggle, the seemingly random bouncing of the balls off of pegs is sometimes manipulated to give the player better results,” Jason Kapalka, one of the game’s developers, admitted to me. “The Lucky Bounce that ensures that a ball hits a target peg instead of plunking into the dead ball zone is used sparingly. But we do apply a lot of extra ‘luck’ to players in their first half-dozen levels or so to keep them from getting frustrated while learning the ropes.” Tweaking the direction of any given bounce by just a few compass degrees—but not so much that the ball swerves unrealistically in mid-air—is enough to encourage beginners and not make the game too unbelievable, Kapalka said.
More..
http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/how-desi ... c-60760513
Science stories of the week: Jan. 20, 2017
Slide Show at:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/science/ ... Krk#page=1
Highlight:
New device can convert a smartphone into DNA scanner
A joint effort by the University of California, Stockholm University and Uppsala University has given way to a 3D-printed device that can be combined with a smartphone and used to analyze DNA.
The device, which could help doctors treat severe diseases like tuberculosis, cancer, test tissue samples and diagnose patients in locations where advanced laboratories are not within reach, can be mass produced for less than $500 (£406) per unit.
According to one of researcher, Prof. Mats Nilsson, the device can be used to read information carried in our DNA and make diagnoses in two areas, “In cancer, where certain mutations in tumors confer resistance to drugs, it can be used to prescribe the right treatments. And in infectious diagnostics, it's the fastest way to work out if an infection is viral or bacterial, and, if it's bacteria, to figure out if it carries antibiotic resistant genes or not,” he said.
The device can be fitted with most smartphone models. When a tissue sample is put within a container and placed under a lens which is attached to the phone’s camera, two laser diodes and a white LED scan the sample and the resulting image is put into an algorithm for analysis.
Dr Justine Alford, a senior science information officer at the charity Cancer Research UK said, “Revealing the precise make-up of a cancer can help patients get treatments that are most likely to benefit them, but tests can be expensive and time-consuming. This early study suggests mobile phone technology could potentially speed up this process and reduce costs, but much more research is needed to find out if it's reliable and accurate enough to make its way into the clinic.”
********
Science stories of the week: Jan. 27, 2017
Slide Show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... ailsignout
Highlight:
Scientists at the Stanford University in California, U.S., have suggested that Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be “as good as doctors” in spotting skin cancer.
In an experiment, the researchers repurposed the AI from a software by Google to identify skin cancer. The AI which can spot the difference between cats and dogs in images was provided pictures and information of different skin conditions. This led the AI to spot the most common type of skin cancer known as carcinoma and the most fatal one called melanoma.
The AI was then tested against 21 trained skin cancer doctors. Dr. Andre Esteva, one of the researchers, said in an interview with BBC News: "We find, in general, that we are on par with board-certified dermatologists."
The findings may transform the future of health care as the scientists believe that smart phones will be able to scan cancer. Esteva added that “…to achieve this we would have to build an app and test its accuracy directly from a mobile device.”
Dr. Jana Witt, from the charity Cancer Research UK, said, "It's unlikely that AI will replace all of the other information your clinician would consider when making a diagnosis, but AI could help guide GP referrals to specialists in the future."
******
Hydrogen turned into metal in stunning act of alchemy that could revolutionise technology and spaceflight
For nearly 100 years, scientists have dreamed of turning the lightest of all the elements, hydrogen, into a metal.
Now, in a stunning act of modern-day alchemy, scientists at Harvard University have finally succeeded in creating a tiny amount of what is the rarest, and possibly most valuable, material on the planet, they reported in the journal Science.
For metallic hydrogen could theoretically revolutionise technology, enabling the creation of super-fast computers, high-speed levitating trains and ultra-efficient vehicles and dramatically improving almost anything involving electricity.
And it could also allow humanity to explore outer space as never before.
More...
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/hyd ... ailsignout
Slide Show at:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/science/ ... Krk#page=1
Highlight:
New device can convert a smartphone into DNA scanner
A joint effort by the University of California, Stockholm University and Uppsala University has given way to a 3D-printed device that can be combined with a smartphone and used to analyze DNA.
The device, which could help doctors treat severe diseases like tuberculosis, cancer, test tissue samples and diagnose patients in locations where advanced laboratories are not within reach, can be mass produced for less than $500 (£406) per unit.
According to one of researcher, Prof. Mats Nilsson, the device can be used to read information carried in our DNA and make diagnoses in two areas, “In cancer, where certain mutations in tumors confer resistance to drugs, it can be used to prescribe the right treatments. And in infectious diagnostics, it's the fastest way to work out if an infection is viral or bacterial, and, if it's bacteria, to figure out if it carries antibiotic resistant genes or not,” he said.
The device can be fitted with most smartphone models. When a tissue sample is put within a container and placed under a lens which is attached to the phone’s camera, two laser diodes and a white LED scan the sample and the resulting image is put into an algorithm for analysis.
Dr Justine Alford, a senior science information officer at the charity Cancer Research UK said, “Revealing the precise make-up of a cancer can help patients get treatments that are most likely to benefit them, but tests can be expensive and time-consuming. This early study suggests mobile phone technology could potentially speed up this process and reduce costs, but much more research is needed to find out if it's reliable and accurate enough to make its way into the clinic.”
********
Science stories of the week: Jan. 27, 2017
Slide Show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... ailsignout
Highlight:
Scientists at the Stanford University in California, U.S., have suggested that Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be “as good as doctors” in spotting skin cancer.
In an experiment, the researchers repurposed the AI from a software by Google to identify skin cancer. The AI which can spot the difference between cats and dogs in images was provided pictures and information of different skin conditions. This led the AI to spot the most common type of skin cancer known as carcinoma and the most fatal one called melanoma.
The AI was then tested against 21 trained skin cancer doctors. Dr. Andre Esteva, one of the researchers, said in an interview with BBC News: "We find, in general, that we are on par with board-certified dermatologists."
The findings may transform the future of health care as the scientists believe that smart phones will be able to scan cancer. Esteva added that “…to achieve this we would have to build an app and test its accuracy directly from a mobile device.”
Dr. Jana Witt, from the charity Cancer Research UK, said, "It's unlikely that AI will replace all of the other information your clinician would consider when making a diagnosis, but AI could help guide GP referrals to specialists in the future."
******
Hydrogen turned into metal in stunning act of alchemy that could revolutionise technology and spaceflight
For nearly 100 years, scientists have dreamed of turning the lightest of all the elements, hydrogen, into a metal.
Now, in a stunning act of modern-day alchemy, scientists at Harvard University have finally succeeded in creating a tiny amount of what is the rarest, and possibly most valuable, material on the planet, they reported in the journal Science.
For metallic hydrogen could theoretically revolutionise technology, enabling the creation of super-fast computers, high-speed levitating trains and ultra-efficient vehicles and dramatically improving almost anything involving electricity.
And it could also allow humanity to explore outer space as never before.
More...
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/hyd ... ailsignout
Science stories of the week: Feb. 3, 2017
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... out#page=2
Highlights:
NASA’s Cassini sends highly-detailed photos of Saturn’s rings
Cassini, the unmanned spacecraft sent to Saturn, has sent back photos of the planet’s rings in incredible detail.
The photographs provided are some of the closest-ever images of the outer parts of the main rings, resolving details as close as 0.3 mile (550 m) and gives scientists an unprecedented view to study the various features of the rings.
Launched on Oct. 15, 1997, Cassini became the first space probe to enter Saturn’s orbit in 2004. Currently halfway through its second to last mission, Cassini is now undergoing ring-grazing orbits to dive past the outer edge of the rings. The finale plunge, scheduled for April 26, 2017, will see the probe plunging through the gap between the rings and into the planet itself.
"These close views represent the opening of an entirely new window onto Saturn's rings, and over the next few months we look forward to even more exciting data as we train our cameras on other parts of the rings closer to the planet," said Matthew Tiscareno, a Cassini scientist who studies Saturn's rings at the SETI Institute, Mountain View, California, U.S.
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... out#page=2
Highlights:
NASA’s Cassini sends highly-detailed photos of Saturn’s rings
Cassini, the unmanned spacecraft sent to Saturn, has sent back photos of the planet’s rings in incredible detail.
The photographs provided are some of the closest-ever images of the outer parts of the main rings, resolving details as close as 0.3 mile (550 m) and gives scientists an unprecedented view to study the various features of the rings.
Launched on Oct. 15, 1997, Cassini became the first space probe to enter Saturn’s orbit in 2004. Currently halfway through its second to last mission, Cassini is now undergoing ring-grazing orbits to dive past the outer edge of the rings. The finale plunge, scheduled for April 26, 2017, will see the probe plunging through the gap between the rings and into the planet itself.
"These close views represent the opening of an entirely new window onto Saturn's rings, and over the next few months we look forward to even more exciting data as we train our cameras on other parts of the rings closer to the planet," said Matthew Tiscareno, a Cassini scientist who studies Saturn's rings at the SETI Institute, Mountain View, California, U.S.