Science & TechnologyS


Cow

Scientists Create Cow that Produces 'Human' Milk

'Rosita Isa' the first Argentinian cloned calf
© EPAArgentinian Agriculture Minister Julian Dominguez (R) posing with an unidentified scientist and 'Rosita Isa' the first Argentinian cloned calf in Balcarce
Scientists in Argentina have created the world's first cow to boast two human genes that will enable it to produce human-like milk.

Genetic engineering was used to introduce the "mothers' milk" genes into the animal before birth, according to the National Institute of Agribusiness Technology in Buenos Aires.

As an adult the cloned cow "will produce milk that is similar to humans" in what will prove "a development of great importance for the nutrition of infants", it said in a statement.

"The cloned cow, named Rosita ISA, is the first bovine born in the world that incorporates two human genes that contain the proteins present in human milk," the statement said.

In April scientists in China published details of research showing that they had created GM Holstein dairy cows which produced milk containing proteins found in human breast milk.

Light Sabers

SOTT Focus: Real Science Under Attack - The Dirty Tricks of Rex Dalton

Cycles of Cosmic Catastrophe
© Firestone et al.
The Scientific Establishment recently turned up the heat on scientist Allen West and the rest of the Younger Dryas Impact Event researchers by unleashing their attack dog, Rex Dalton, whose hitpiece is being used to smear West's good name and the Younger Dryas Impact Theory by proxy. While this is an unfortunate turn of events, we are not entirely surprised here given what we've seen of psychopaths in other quarters of society. If there is one overarching point that we wish SOTT readers to understand, it's that psychopaths do control our world - all of it. While this should be plainly obvious when it comes to corrupt governments, corporations and religious institutions, the world of science and academia is no exception to this fact.

The assumption of Uniformitarianism underpins many if not all scientific disciplines. Its proponents argue that the "present is the key to understanding the past," that the slow gradual processes we see in nature today have been constant throughout history. An enormous number of scientists across many fields have staked their careers (whether they're aware of it or not) on this fundamental assumption. This Uniformitarianist, or gradualist, approach is used to explain things like geological features, celestial events, species evolution, civilization advancement, technological progress and so on. When it comes to catastrophic events, the Uniformitarian-dominated sciences permit only consideration of those which may have happened on a timescale of millions of years, like the Cretaceous - Tertiary extinction event 65 million years ago that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs. To admit that catastrophic impact events occur on the timescale of human history would mean surrendering the comfortable notion we live in a safe and stable world that has evolved in splendid isolation, shielded from cosmic intervention. Few people, even scientists, are prepared to examine the overwhelming data indicating the reality of cyclic catastrophism. The elite of our world have gone to enormous lengths to prevent the masses from knowing this, so it's not difficult to see how today's Uniformitarianist approach serves a lot of interests.

Meteor

Best of the Web: Younger Dryas Impact theorist Allen West smeared by Dalton, former Nature writer

Cycles of Cosmic Catastrophe
© Firestone et al.
The writer formerly employed by Nature, Rex Dalton, recently implied in a Miller-McCune blog that Allen West is a criminal charlatan. That is untrue. I have spoke over the last month to Allen, as well as a number of his collaborators, and determined the true story to the satisfaction of the Tusk. I have also assembled and shared a number of primary documents linked below, not identified or referenced by Dalton, et. al.

The true story is consistent with my experience that Allen West is an honest-to-goodness, if imperfectly credentialed, key contributor to the hypothesis and the papers.

I am very biased in this matter. For instance, Allen is my most frequent (if only) house guest. My wife Pam and I have allowed Allen to stay with our young family on several occasions. The little guy has been a close friend for over five years. I know Allen West as well as anyone on the Younger Dryas team or its collaborators.

I suppose Allen West could appear to readers of Dalton's article to be a liar salting his samples at his own expense to get on TV. But I have reason to believe this is untrue.

For one, I have spoken regularly over the last decade with the laboratory techs, supervising scientists and co-authors dealing with the hundreds of samples from dozens of locations around the world and it would simply be impossible for Allen to direct from his "laboratory" in Arizona a fraud of this complexity, scale and nature.

Info

3-D Images Reveal What Happens as Brain Loses Consciousness

Anaesthetised Brain
© University of ManchesterReconstruction of the brain during the onset of anaesthesia. This particular frame shows the brain in an anaesthetised state following global conductivity changes.
New 3-D images reveal for the first time what happens inside the brain when a person loses consciousness, suggesting the mysterious sleeplike state occurs as electrical activity deep in the brain dims and connections between certain neurons suddenly break down.

"We have produced what I think is the first video in existence in the entire world of [the brain of] a patient being anesthetized," said study researcher Brian Pollard, of the University of Manchester. "We are seeing different parts of the brain, different areas, being activated and deactivated."

Loss of consciousness occurs when the brain is no longer aware of one's surroundings and so the body stops reacting to the world around it. Scientists and doctors aren't sure how this happens, but distinguish it from consciousness, or the ability to understand, be self-aware and think in the unique way that humans do.

Chalkboard

What flips on the Northern Lights?


Golden Valley, Minnesota. -- They look cool, but do you know what flips the switch on the Northern Lights?


Major solar flares from the sun have sent massive amounts of particles into the Earth's atmosphere, meaning that we may see the Northern Lights over the next few days.

These particles from the solar flare also called a solar wind are pulled into the Earth's atmosphere and then the particles glow when they interact with the gasses in the Earth's atmosphere.

The glowing particles are called the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis. The most common color seen with the Northern Lights is green, but sometimes other colors like red and blue are visible.

Umbrella

Evaporation from Land Only Modifies Rainfall Frequency

Image
© Google
A team of researchers has found that evaporation from the land only modifies the frequency of summertime rainfall, and not its quantity.

"This is a major shift in our understanding of the coupling between the land surface and the atmosphere, and fundamental for our understanding of the prolongation of hydrological extremes like floods and droughts," said Pierre Gentine, assistant professor of Applied Mathematics at The Fu Foundation School for Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University.

They discovered that higher evaporation increases the probability of afternoon rainfall east of the Mississippi and in Mexico, while it has no influence on rainfall over the Western U.S. The cited the difference is due to the humidity present in the atmosphere. The researchers explained that the atmosphere over the western regions is so dry that no matter what the input of moisture via evaporation is from the surface, an added source of moisture will not trigger any rain.

Chalkboard

Scientists Exploring Quake Warning Signals

Image
© Reuters
Seismologists and other scientists at eight universities in Japan are collaborating with a team of American and Russian researchers to try to devise a reliable system for predicting destructive earthquakes. This comes after the release of preliminary research following the March 11th earthquake in Japan indicating changes were detected in the atmosphere in the days before and after the destructive tremor.

When a potentially destructive earthquake strikes, the Japanese sometimes are able to receive a warning - although usually just a few seconds before the ground starts shaking.

These warnings are broadcast on radio and television and sent to mobile phones and computers. This automated alarm is triggered by the initial elastic P-wave of a tremor, which immediately precedes the slower but more destructive secondary wave, which then shakes the ground back and forth perpendicular to the direction it is moving.

Researchers around the world have been seeking a way to reliably give indications of quakes hours or days before they occur.

Info

Ducklings Following Dog Explained

Dogs & Ducklings_1
© Frances Marsh
Ducklings following in a line behind a mother duck is enough to turn heads and elicit a few "awwws." But ducklings following a dog? Now that's worthy of Animal Planet's Wall of Fame where this photo first appeared.

While it might look like a strange friendship between two species, this adorable, multi-animal, fluffy overload is actually the byproduct of thousands of years of avian evolution.

"There's nothing unique here at work," according to Sara Hallager, a bird biologist at the National Zoo. "All baby birds, when they're born, the first thing they see, which is usually the same species, is what they imprint on."

Info

A Big Surprise from the Edge of the Solar System

NASA's Voyager probes are truly going where no one has gone before. Gliding silently toward the stars, 9 billion miles from Earth, they are beaming back news from the most distant, unexplored reaches of the solar system.

Mission scientists say the probes have just sent back some very big news indeed.

It's bubbly out there.

"The Voyager probes appear to have entered a strange realm of frothy magnetic bubbles," says astronomer Merav Opher of Boston University. "This is very surprising."


According to computer models, the bubbles are large, about 100 million miles wide, so it would take the speedy probes weeks to cross just one of them. Voyager 1 entered the "foam-zone" around 2007, and Voyager 2 followed about a year later. At first researchers didn't understand what the Voyagers were sensing--but now they have a good idea.

Bizarro Earth

Keeping an eye on Yellowstone's supervolcano

Image
© National Park ServiceYellowstone is an active volcano. Surface features such as geysers and hot springs are direct results of the region's underlying volcanism.
When next 'big one' will be is anyone's guess - but you don't want to be here

It's no mere doomsday pseudoscience: The Yellowstone supervolcano really could be the end of us all. When the Yellowstone Caldera - the name of the national park's geographic structure, which roughly translates as "caldron" - blows its lid, much of the continental United States will get covered in a blanket of ash. That ash will clog the atmosphere enough to block out the sun, disrupting the global climate enough to cause mass extinctions.

The last full-scale eruption of that kind occurred 640,000 years ago, and the ones prior to that occurred 1.3 million years and 2.1 million years ago. Interspersed with the big ones have been smaller-scale but still major eruptions, most recently 70,000 years ago.

At the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), an outpost run by the U.S. Geological Survey in conjunction with Yellowstone National Park and the University of Utah, a team of volcanologists continuously monitors the sleeping giant's tectonic activity. They listen to its rumblings (which are streamed online in real time) for clues as to what's brewing below the surface. Jacob Lowenstern, scientist-in-charge at YVO, told us what they're listening for and what they know so far about the next "big one."