Posted: 4/24/2017
- Mars rover spots clouds shaped by gravity waves (“NASA’s Curiosity rover … Well into its fifth year, the rover has now shot more than 500 movies of the clouds above it, including the first ground-based view of martian clouds shaped by gravity waves … Gravity waves, common atmospheric ripples on Earth that result from air trying to regain its vertical balance … ”)
- Rewriting Life Protein Hints at a Fountain of Youth in Blood It’s another tantalizing finding in an area of anti-aging research that has had mixed results. (“... researchers discovered that older mice had low levels of a protein called osteopontin, and that stem cells injected into the mice quickly aged. The reverse—putting old stem cells into a dish filled with osteopontin—appeared to rejuvenate them. … What it comes down to is that no one knows what it is about young blood that causes the rejuvenation effect—or whether blood is even the most important part of the equation.”)
- Molecule kills elderly cells, reduces signs of aging in mice (Closing in on the fountain of youth. “... Now, researchers have developed a molecule [there is no description of the molecule] that selectively destroys these so-called senescent cells. The compound makes old mice act and appear more youthful, ...”)
- Most Cancer Cases Arise from "Bad Luck" Environment and heredity are smaller players than researchers previously believed (This article generated some controversy! In my understanding, this boils down to the law of great numbers or statistics. Cells that divide frequently, suffer more from inevitable, random mutations than other cells)
- It wasn't just Greece: Archaeologists find early democratic societies in the Americas (Sounds more Spartan than Athens to me! “The candidate for political office stood in a plaza, naked, bracing himself against the punches and kicks. … People for whom he had risked his life in war after war hurled blows and insults from all directions. ... Trained as a warrior, he knew he had to stay calm to reach the next phase of his candidacy. This ordeal ... was merely the beginning of the long process of joining the government of the Mesoamerican city of Tlaxcallan, built around 1250 C.E. …, Mexico. After this trial ended, the candidate would enter the temple … and stay for up to 2 years, while priests drilled him in ... moral and legal code. He would be starved, beaten with spiked whips when he fell asleep, and required to cut himself in bloodletting rituals. But when he walked out of the temple, he would be more than a warrior: He would be a member of … senate, one of the 100 or so men who made the city's most important military and economic decisions.”)
- Earth’s Lost History of Planet-Altering Eruptions Revealed Geologists unearth signs of major volcanic events stretching back 3 billion years (“Enormous volcanoes vomited [sic!] lava over the ancient Earth much more often than geologists had suspected. Eruptions as big as the biggest previously known ones happened at least 10 times in the past 3 billion years, an analysis of the geological record shows. … Technically, the eruptions are known as ‘large igneous provinces’ (LIPs). They can spew more than one million cubic kilometres of rock in a few million years. By comparison, the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington state put out just 10 cubic kilometres. … These large events also emit gases that can change atmospheric temperature and ocean chemistry in a geological blink of an eye. A modelling study published last month suggests that global temperatures could have soared by as much as 7 °C per year at the height of the Siberian eruptions … Sulfur particles from the eruptions would have soon led to global cooling and acid rain; more than 96% of marine species went extinct. … On average, LIPs occur every 20 million years or so. The most recent one was the Columbia River eruption 17 million years ago, in what is now the northwestern United States. … Venus, Mars, Mercury and the Moon all show signs of enormous eruptions, Gregg notes. On the Moon, LIP-style volcanism started as early as 3.8 billion years ago; on Mars, possibly 3.5 billion years ago. But without plate tectonics to keep the surface active, those eruptions eventually ceased.”)
- Nanoscale logic machines go beyond binary computing (“... the possibility of a new class of tiny analog computers that can solve computationally difficult problems by simple statistical algorithms running in nanoscale solid-state physical devices … The new nanologic machines consist of individual phosphorous atoms that are precisely positioned and embedded in a silicon crystal at a density of about 200 billion atoms per square centimeter. Single electrons randomly move in and out of the atoms due to quantum tunneling. Since each atom can hold one or two of these electrons, and each electron can occupy a few different energy levels, each atom can occupy one of four possible states. Each atom is constantly transitioning between its four states according to a certain set of probabilities, corresponding to the random movement of electrons tunneling in and out of the atom and changing their energy levels.”)
- Glass shield may protect water bears from dehydration (“... their ability to survive droughts by drying up and then rehydrating years or maybe even decades later … During the process, they essentially lose all the water in their body and cells. The creatures also start pumping out unique, amorphous proteins that form a glasslike material inside of their cells, ... The material may encase and shelter vital molecules, such as other proteins, until the dry spell is over.”)
- World’s first full-body PET scanner could aid drug development, monitor environmental toxins (“... Obviously when developing new treatments, pharmaceutical companies have a target of interest. But the problem when you get into human clinical trials is toxic side effects in other parts of the body. And so one thing that EXPLORER [full body PET scanner] does that I think will be very exciting for drug development is that we can radioactively label that drug and watch where it goes in the body over time. We can see its concentration in every single tissue and organ in the body. Drug companies are very excited about that prospect ...”)
- Running away from Einstein (“Einstein's theory of gravity may have to be rewritten, after researchers at the University of St Andrews found a gigantic ring of galaxies darting away from us much faster than predicted. This 10 million light year-wide ring made up of small galaxies is expanding rapidly like a mini Big Bang. The team believe our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, once flew past our own galaxy at close range, creating a sling-shot of several small galaxies. … ”)
- https://phys.org/news/2017-03-wi-fi-rays-light100-faster-overloaded.html (This could be huge! Powerful indoor optical wireless networks)
- Brain Imaging Identifies Different Types of Depression Biological markers could enable tailored therapies that target individual differences in symptoms (Hopefully, this finally is a breakthrough in being able to properly diagnose depression! “The researchers used a noninvasive technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the strength of connections between neural circuits in the brain. Analyzing fMRI scans from more than 1,000 people, of whom about 40 percent had been diagnosed as depressive, the team identified four subtypes of depression. If confirmed in additional studies, the findings could enable clearer diagnoses and pave the way for personalized therapies targeting brain networks found to be awry in individual patients. … the fMRI-based subdivisions could be linked to particular symptoms. Patients falling into the first two subtypes reported more fatigue whereas those in the other two reported more trouble feeling pleasure. This subtyping has implications not just for diagnosis but potentially for non pharmaceutical treatment. Relative to groups two and four, people with depression subtype 1 were three times as likely benefit from a newer therapy known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. ”)
- Seven Earth-sized planets around a tiny star (We are not alone! Only 39 light years away “An international team has discovered that the ultracold dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 is orbited by seven planets comparable to Earth in size. For all but the outermost planet, the researchers were also able to obtain density estimates and concluded that the data “broadly suggest rocky compositions.” Most intriguingly, all the planets could potentially house liquid water on at least limited regions of their surfaces. ”)
- An alternative to opioids? Compound from marine snail is potent pain reliever (Good news! Perhaps finally a powerful non-addictive pain killer? “Conus regius, a small marine cone snail common to the Caribbean Sea, packs a venomous punch, capable of paralyzing and killing its prey. In this study, the researchers found that a compound isolated from snail's venom, Rg1A, acts on a pain pathway distinct from that targeted by opioid drugs. Using rodent models, the scientists showed that α9α10 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR) functions as a pain pathway receptor and that RgIA4 is an effective compound to block this receptor. The pathway adds to a small number of nonopioid-based pathways that could be further developed to treat chronic pain. Interestingly, the duration of the pain relief is long, greatly outlasting the presence of the compound in the animal's system.”)
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