Science & TechnologyS


Info

Pig Organs Could Be Transplanted Into Humans Within 2 Years

Porky
© redOrbit

Scientists said that organs grown in genetically modified pigs could be transplanted into humans in as soon as two years. Pittsburgh University scientists say that a trial transplanting pig corneas into humans with eye problems could begin as early as 2013.

"With new genetically modified pigs becoming available that are likely to improve the outcome of cellular and corneal xenotransplantation further, we believe that clinical trials will be justified within the next two to three years," the authors wrote in the journal The Lancet.

The researchers said transplants of larger organs like the lungs, hearts and kidneys is likely to take longer due to problems with clots forming.

"These problems mean that the longest survival time for pig organs in non-human primates to date ranges from a few days for lungs to around six to eight months for hearts, and trials of solid organ transplants of this nature in humans are likely to be several years away," they wrote.

However, they said that in dire situations, a heart transplant from a pig might be feasible.

"Life-saving transplants of a pig liver or heart could be justified as a bridge until a human organ becomes available."

Info

'Gypsy Cemetery' Spawns Riddle of the Blue Sedge

Cemetery
© Charles T. BrysonThe grave of the gypsy queen Kelly Mitchell, where her visitors leave gifts. Botanists think her followers may also have introduced a foreign plant, called blue sedge, to Mississippi.

The plant doesn't look as if it had an unusual story to tell. A type of sedge, it tops out at a foot (0.3 meters) tall and has leaves that look just like blades of green grass.

But after this plant turned up in a Mississippi cemetery four years ago, botanists put on their detective hats to figure out how it got there. The weedy species had never been found in North America before then.

Their main theory: Gypsies.

Cemetery sedge

Charles Bryson, a research botanist with the United States Department of Agriculture, recalls how he became involved in the mystery. In 2007, a graduate student named Lucas Majure came across an unknown type of sedge in Rose Hill Cemetery in the city of Meridian. He asked Bryson, who worked for the federal department's Agricultural Research Service, to help identify the plant.

"He showed it to me, and I immediately knew it was something new to science or something I had never seen in the U.S.," Bryson told LiveScience. "I have studied sedges for almost 40 years. I know them well enough to know if there is something different or unusual or new."

The plant turned out to be Carex breviculmis, or blue sedge, a widespread weed found in Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Sun

Nearby planet-forming disk holds water for thousands of oceans

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© Tim Pyle, Spitzer Science Center, CalTechThis is an illustration depicting the sprawling cloud of cold water vapor that astronomers have detected around the burgeoning solar system at the nearby star TW Hydrae. The cold water vapor could could eventually deliver oceans to dry planets that are forming in the system.
For the first time, astronomers have detected around a burgeoning solar system a sprawling cloud of water vapor that's cold enough to form comets, which could eventually deliver oceans to dry planets.

Water is an essential ingredient for life. Scientists have found thousands of Earth-oceans' worth of it within the planet-forming disk surrounding the star TW Hydrae. TW Hydrae is 176 light years away in the constellation Hydra and is the closest solar-system-to-be.

University of Michigan astronomy professor Ted Bergin is a co-author of a paper on the findings published in the Oct. 21 edition of Science.

The researchers used the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI) on the orbiting Hershel Space Observatory to detect the chemical signature of water.

"This tells us that the key materials that life needs are present in a system before planets are born," said Bergin, a HIFI co-investigator. "We expected this to be the case, but now we know it is because have directly detected it. We can see it."

Info

Paleo CSI: Early Hunters Left Mastodon Murder Weapon Behind

Mammoth Bone
© Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&MHigh-tech CT scans show the point embedded in the mammoth's rib bone.

A new look at a very old mastodon skeleton has turned up evidence of the first known hunting weapon in North America, a tool made of bone that predates previously known hunting technology by 800 years.

The sharp bit of bone, found embedded in a mastodon rib unearthed in the 1970s, has long been controversial. Archaeologists have argued about both the date assigned to the bone - around 14,000 years old - and about whether the alleged weapon was really shaped by human hands. But now, researchers say it's likely that 13,800 years ago, hunters slaughtered elephant-like mastodons using bony projectile points not much bigger around than pencils, sharpened to needle-like tips.

"We're fortunate that the hunter 13,800 years ago was probably trying to get that bone projectile point in between the ribs, probably trying to get at a vital organ," said study researcher Michael Waters, an anthropologist at the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University. "Maybe the mastodon flinched or his thrust was off, and he hit a rib instead and broke his bone projectile point. So it's bad for him, and good for us."

Waters and his colleagues report their finding in the journal Science tomorrow (Oct. 21).

Telescope

Astronomer captures image of forming planet

Called LkCa 15 b, it's the youngest planet ever observed
Image
© Karen L. Teramura/Univ. of HawaiiThis illustration shows LkCa 15 b, which is estimated to have started taking shape about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.

Honolulu - Astronomers have captured the first direct image of a planet being born.

Adam Kraus, of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, said the planet is being formed out of dust and gas circling a 2-milion-year-old star about 450 light years from Earth.

The planet itself, based on scientific models of how planets form, is estimated to have started taking shape about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.

Called LkCa 15 b, it's the youngest planet ever observed. The previous record holder was about five times older.

Kraus and his colleague, Michael Ireland from Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory, used Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea to find the planet.

Black Cat

Oldest Tiger-like Skull Yet - Hints Evolution Got It Right From Start

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© Velizar Simeonovski , Field Museum of Natural HistorySkull photo and artist's reconstructions of (em>Panthera zdanskyi.
A tiger-like skull unearthed from 2.5-million-year-old rock is the oldest known complete specimen related to modern big cats, according to a new study.

Representing a new species, the skull isn't that different from those of modern tigers, suggesting evolution hit on a winning formula early on and stuck with it.

Paleontologists in 2004 discovered the remarkably complete skull in eastern China. Now an international group of researchers has teased out the specimen's age and its place on the feline evolutionary tree.

The head is as big as that of a very large modern jaguar's. But the teeth and other skeletal features make it most similar to the skulls of tigers, the largest living big cats. Siberian, or amur, tigers, for example - the world's largest cats - stretch about 11 feet (3.3 meters) long and weigh in at about 660 pounds (300 kilograms). (Pictures: "Toygers" vs. Tigers.)

Camera

Adobe Demonstrates Stunning Photo Deblurring Technology

Let's be honest: There have not been many features that have blown your socks off in Photoshop recently and for those who actually have to pay for the software themselves, the reasons that justify an upgrade have not been very compelling.

However, I predict that this is a feature that you will want -- one that you'll pay for -- if it works as Adobe promises.

Adobe recently demonstrated a deblurring feature for a future version of Photoshop. They did not say which version they are targeting, but it seemed a bit rough around the edges, so I would be cautious about speculating that it will be in CS6. The feature was integrated into Photoshop via a plug-in and can magically correct blurred images and come up with a sharp picture. Magic?
Image
© Adobe

Common sense tells us that if you screw up a picture, you screwed it up and especially if its blurred, your options to make it look better are very limited. How would Adobe be able to deblur a picture?

Adobe's approach is interesting - and quite compute-intensive. The analysis of the picture tries to trace the path a picture was blurred - it basically attempts to recreate your hand movement during the time a picture was taken, based on the blurring in the picture. Depending on the size of the picture, this process can consume some time, but the effect that Adobe presented on stage was breathtaking. In one example, the software even revealed a blurred phone number in a picture.

Adobe declined to confirm a release date of the feature. But even if it is just half as good as it worked in the demo, this feature will be reason enough for many Photoshop users to upgrade.

Video Demonstration

Meteor

Comet Armageddon Detected in Nearby Star System

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© NASA/JPL/Cal-TechA nearby star system is currently going through hell, as hinted at by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Through its infrared eye, Spitzer has detected the dusty remains of comet impacts around the star Eta Corvi -- reminding us what it must have been like during the early evolution of our own solar system.
During our solar system's "Late Heavy Bombardment" (LHB) some four billion years ago, the inner planets were constantly peppered with massive comets impacting their surfaces. Earth would have been unrecognizable -- the planet's surface was a burning, molten mess; young atmosphere constantly punctuated by incoming cometary fragments.

Devoid of any eroding atmosphere, the moon's surface bears the scars of this epic cometary onslaught -- huge impact craters providing a reminder of how violent the "early years" of our solar system really was.

Despite the continuous cycle of cataclysmic impact events generating a hellish cauldron on Earth, the LHB has been linked with the genesis of life -- evidence points to a cometary source for the organic ingredients. Needless to say, the growing pains inflicted by the LHB on our planet is of huge importance to scientists.

Therefore, to spot the signs of similar cometary bombardments in other star systems would be pretty awesome. Not only would that help us understand the evolution of planetary systems orbiting other stars, it would provide a "time capsule" for us to have a glimpse of the early life of our own solar system. Of course, it would also give us an idea of how many other stars could be "ripe" for life (as we know it).

Now, scientists using observations by Spitzer have detected cometary Armageddon around Eta Corvi, a star some 50 light-years away in the constellation Corvus.

Satellite

Russia Eyes Caves on Moon for Setting Up a Lunar Base

For the time being, it appears NASA has set aside any ambitions to return to the Moon with human missions. But Russia may consider sending cosmonauts to the lunar surface to set up a colony using natural caves and possible volcanic tunnels as protection from the harsh lunar environment.

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© NASA/GSFC/Arizona State UniversitySpectacular high Sun view of the Mare Tranquillitatis pit crater revealing boulders on an otherwise smooth floor. Image is 400 meters wide, north is up, NAC M126710873R
Krikalev served on board two different space stations and flew on the space shuttle. He now leads Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center outside Moscow. He and Russian scientists discussed the possible Moon base a forum on the future of manned spaceflight.

The image above is from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing a cave or pit found in the Sea of Tranquility. Scientists have estimated the depth of the pit at over 100 meters, and several other caves have been found with orbiting spacecraft. Lunar scientists are studying the images to determine if an extended lava tube system still exists beneath the surface.

Chess

Darpa Wants to Master the Science of Propaganda

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© Wikimedia CommonsStorytelling
Mark Twain once tried to distinguish between the storyteller's art and tales that a machine could generate. He observed that stringing "incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities," was the province of the American storyteller. A machine might imitate simple formulas behind yarns, but never quite master them.

The Pentagon's freewheeling research arm is hoping to prove Twain wrong. Darpa is asking scientists to "take narratives and make them quantitatively analyzable in a rigorous, transparent and repeatable fashion." The idea is to detect terrorists who have been indoctrinated by propaganda. Then, the Pentagon can respond with some messages of its own.

The program is called "Narrative Networks." By understanding how stories have shaped your mind, the Pentagon hopes to sniff out who has fallen prey to dangerous ideas, a neuroscience researcher involved in the project tells Danger Room. With this knowledge, the military can also target groups vulnerable to terrorists' recruiting tactics with its own counter-messaging.