Science & TechnologyS


Bug

Mutant Mosquitoes: Malaysia Release of Genetically Modified Insects Sparks Fears of Uncontrollable New Species


The Daily Mail, UK
Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:47 UTC
Aedes aegypti
© AlamyMalaysia has released 6,000 genetically modified Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes into a forest in a bid to curb rates of dengue fever
Malaysia has released 6,000 genetically modified mosquitoes into a forest in the first experiment of its kind in Asia aimed at curbing dengue fever.

The field test is meant to pave the way for the official use of genetically engineered Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes to mate with females and produce offspring with shorter lives, thus curtailing the population.

Only female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes spread dengue fever, which killed 134 people in Malaysia last year.

However, the plan has sparked criticism by some Malaysian environmentalists, who fear it might have unforeseen consequences, such as the inadvertent creation of uncontrollable mutated mosquitoes.

Critics also say such plans could leave a vacuum in the ecosystem that is then filled by another insect species, potentially introducing new diseases.
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Magic Wand

Scientists discover why teeth form in a single row


Science Centric
Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:26 UTC
Image
© Unknown
A system of opposing genetic forces determines why mammals develop a single row of teeth, while sharks sport several, according to a study published in the journal Science. When completely understood, the genetic program described in the study may help guide efforts to re-grow missing teeth and prevent cleft palate, one of the most common birth defects.

Gene expression is the process by which information stored in genes is converted into proteins that make up the body's structures and carry its messages. As the baby's face takes shape in the womb, the development of teeth and palate are tightly controlled in space and time by gene expression. Related abnormalities result in the development of teeth outside of the normal row, missing teeth and cleft palate, and the new insights suggest ways to combat these malformations.

The current study adds an important detail to the understanding of the interplay between biochemicals that induce teeth formation, and others that restrict it, to result in the correct pattern. Specifically, researchers discovered that turning off a single gene in mice resulted in development of extra teeth, next to and inside of their first molars. While the study was in mice, past studies have shown that the involved biochemical players are active in humans as well.
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Info

New Hybrid Whale Discovered in Arctic

Brian Handwerk
National Geographic News
Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:44 UTC
Minke Whale
© Oxford Scientific/PhotolibraryA northern minke whale (file picture).

They may be polar opposites, but something is attracting two species of minke whales, producing at least one hybrid offspring, a new study says.

A cross between an Antarctic minke whale and a northern minke whale was recently discovered during a DNA analysis of whales caught by Norwegian hunters.

Normally the two whale species - both of which can reach 35 feet (11 meters) in length - undertake seasonal migrations that separate them by many miles of ocean.

Northern minkes head toward the North Pole in spring and ply waters up to the edge of Arctic ice during the summer. In autumn these whales head south, nearly as far as the Equator, to spend the winter. (See whale pictures.)

Antarctic whales follow a similar pattern, moving between Antarctic ice and warmer mid-latitudes with the seasons.

But because the two hemispheres' seasons are opposite, the minke species don't share near-equatorial waters at the same time. Thus, they were never thought to meet - until now.
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Blackbox

Lovely lab recreations of Saturn's hexagonal storms


BoingBoing
Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:11 UTC
Back in 2007, Pesco blogged about a mysterious hexagon on Saturn that emerged from a storm on their North Pole. While people have known since Isaac Newton's time that spinning a bucket of water could create similar patterns, scientists wanted to emulate the precise conditions on Saturn. Neither Newton nor Saturn have cool green glowy stuff or sparkly white stuff and mechanized centrifuges, so this is quite pretty and trippy. There's some lovely stills of varying rates of spin creating different shapes. I recommend muting their sound and putting on Gustav Holst's Saturn. There's even a HOWTO at The Planetary Society.

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Telescope

Dragonfish nebula conceals giant star cluster

David Shiga
New Scientist
Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:27 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE Team/M Rahman/U of Toronto
Dragonfish are fearsome deep-sea predators with giant mouths, bulging eyes and a propensity for eating bioluminescent prey. Now it seems they have a celestial counterpart in the Dragonfish nebula. Hidden in its gaping maw may be the Milky Way's most massive cluster of young stars.

Mubdi Rahman and Norman Murray, both of the University of Toronto in Canada, found the first hint of the cluster in 2010 in the form of a big cloud of ionised gas 30,000 light years from Earth. They picked up the gas by its microwave emissions - suspecting that radiation from massive stars nearby had ionised the gas.

Now Rahman and his colleagues have identified a knot of 400 massive stars in the cloud's heart in images from the infrared 2 Micron All Sky Survey (Astrophysical Journal Letters, in press). The cluster probably contains many more stars too small and dim to see.
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Sun

Sunspot Sunrise: Sunspot Complex 1147-1149


Space Weather
Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:19 UTC
Sunspot complex 1147-1149 is so big, people are beginning to notice it without the aid of a solar telescope. Stefano De Rosa "spotted" the twin cores at sunrise on Jan. 23rd:

Image
© Stefano De Rosa
"The sun was climbing a hill by the Basilica of Superga," says De Rosa. "[Because the low-hanging sun was so dim], we could see the sunspots above the treeline."

Caution: Even when the sun is dimmed by clouds or low altitude, it is still dangerously bright. Direct sunlight beaming through the optics of cameras can instantly damage your eyes. If you attempt to photograph the sun using a digital camera, do not peer through the viewfinder. The LCD screen is a safer place to look. The links below are safest of all; browse and enjoy.
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Sherlock

Dating sheds new light on dawn of the dinosaurs


UC Davis
Mon, 24 Jan 2011 04:32 UTC
Careful dating of new dinosaur fossils and volcanic ash around them by researchers from UC Davis and UC Berkeley casts doubt on the idea that dinosaurs appeared and opportunistically replaced other animals. Instead -- at least in one South American valley -- they seem to have existed side by side and gone through similar periods of extinction.

Geologists from Argentina and the United States announced earlier this month the discovery of a new dinosaur that roamed what is now South America 230 million years ago, at the beginning of the age of the dinosaurs. The newly discovered Eodramaeus, or "dawn runner," was a predatory dinosaur that walked (or ran) on two legs and weighed 10 to 15 pounds. The new fossil was described in a paper by Ricardo Martinez of the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Argentina, and colleagues in the journal Science Jan. 14.

The fossils come from a valley in the foothills of the Andes in northwestern Argentina. More than 200 million years ago, it was a rift valley on the western edge of the supercontinent Pangaea, surrounded by volcanoes. It's one of the few places in the world where a piece of tectonically active continental margin has been preserved, said Isabel Montañez, a UC Davis geology professor and a co-author of the Science paper.

Montañez, with Brian Currie from Miami University, Ohio, and Paul Renne at UC Berkeley's Geochronology Center, have conducted earlier studies of the ancient soils from the valley, dating layers of ash and researching how the climate changed. Those climate studies have been published previously.
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Laptop

Broadband Cable on its Way to Unplugged Cuba

Rory Carroll
The Guardian, UK
Sun, 23 Jan 2011 02:18 UTC
Image
© Ramon Espinosa / Associated PressCubans look at computers in Havana. Soon they should be able to get speedy internet connections to go with them.
Fibre-optic cable laid from Venezuela brings the promise of speedy internet to one of the world's least connected countries

Cuba is set to join the high-speed broadband era with an undersea fibre-optic cable laid from Venezuela, bringing the promise of speedy internet to one of the world's least connected countries.

A specialised ship sailed from Camuri beach, near the Venezuelan port of La Guaria, this weekend, trailing the cable from buoys on the start of a 1,000-mile journey across the Caribbean sea.

Venezuelan and Cuban officials hailed the project as a blow to the United States' embargo on the island. It will make Cuba's connection speed 3,000 times faster and modernise its economy.

"This means a giant step for the independence and sovereignty of our people," Rogelio Polanco, Cuba's ambassador to Caracas, said at a pomp-filled ceremony in tropical sunshine.

The ship, Ile de Batz, owned by the French company Alcatel-Lucent, will lay the cable at depths of up to 5,800 metres and is expected to reach eastern Cuba by 8 February. Cuba's government said the cable should be in use by June or July.

Cuba has some censorship restrictions but the impact could be profound. The country has just 14.2 internet users per 100 people, the western hemisphere's lowest ratio, with access largely restricted to government offices, universities, foreign companies and tourist hotels.

The 50-year-old US embargo prevented Cuba tapping into Caribbean fibre-optic cables, forcing it to rely on a slow, expensive satellite link of just 379 megabits per second.
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X

Toxic Ash Clouds Might Be Culprit in Biggest Mass Extinction

Sid Perkins
Science NOW
Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:06 UTC
Image
© Grasby et al., Nature Geoscience Spark. The tiny, frothy particles found in ancient Canadian rocks (left), which are similar to the particles of fly ash from today's coal-fired power plants (right), might have helped trigger the mass extinction that struck Earth 250 million years ago.
Tiny particles embedded in ancient Canadian rocks have provided new clues about what might have triggered Earth's deadliest mass extinction. The ultimate cause, researchers say, might be globe-smothering clouds of toxic ash similar to that spewed by modern-day coal-fired power plants.

The die-off, which occurred worldwide about 250 million years ago at the end of the Permian period, was even more extensive than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. More than 90% of marine species went extinct, and land-based ecosystems suffered almost as much. Scientists have long debated the reasons. Favorite hypotheses include an asteroid impact, massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia, and toxic oceans. Geochemist Stephen Grasby of the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary and colleagues report online today in Nature Geoscience a new twist on the volcano notion.
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Dollar

Best of the Web: The downfall of science and the rise of intellectual tyranny

Mike Adams
Natural News
Fri, 21 Jan 2011 06:42 UTC
Image
The very reputation of so-called "science" has been irreparably damaged by the invocation of the term "science" by GMO lackeys, pesticide pushers, mercury advocates and fluoride poisoners who all claim to have science on their side. It seems that every toxin, contamination and chemical disaster that now infects our planet has been evangelized in the name of "science."

Where "science" used to be highly regarded in the 1950's, today the term is largely exploited by pharmaceutical companies, biotech giants and chemical companies to push their own for-profit agendas. Actual science has little to do with the schemes now being pushed under the veil of science.

To make matters even worse for the sciences, many so-called "science bloggers" have been revealed to have financial ties to the very same companies whose profits are shored up by their activities.

Rather than defending any sort of scientific truth, science bloggers have become the internet whores of Big Pharma, Monsanto, pesticide manufacturers, chemical companies and toxic mercury factories. There's hardly a dangerous chemical in widespread use today that the science bloggers haven't venomously defended as safe and effective. Many are just blatantly paid off by corporate entities to run around the internet pushing GMOs, chemicals and vaccines.
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