Science & TechnologyS


Info

Atlantic Ocean to disappear in 200 million years?

Atlantic Ocean
© Map courtesy Reto Stöckli, NASA Earth ObservatoryThe continents may become a single landmass—or "supercontinent"—and the ocean would close.
A newly discovered crack in the Earth's crust could pull North America and Europe together and cause the Atlantic Ocean to vanish in about 220 million years, scientists say.

A new map of the seafloor off the coast of Iberia - the region of Europe that includes Portugal and Spain - has revealed what could be the birth of a new subduction zone.

Subduction zones happen when tectonic plates - the large rock slabs that make up the Earth's crust - crash into one another. The edge of the heavier plate slides, or subducts, below the lighter plate. It then melts back into the Earth's mantle - the layer just below the crust.

The discovery of this new subduction zone, published on June 6 in the journal Geology, could signal the start of an extended cycle that fuses continents together into a single landmass - or "supercontinent" - and closes our oceans.

This breakup and reformation of supercontinents has happened at least three times during Earth's approximately four-billion-year history.

In the far future, Earth's continents could "look very much like the Pangea," said study first author João Duarte, referring to a supercontinent that existed about 200 million years ago.

Info

New viruses found in Asia and Africa tentatively linked to neurological disease

Virus
© The Independent, UK

A mysterious group of viruses known for their circular genome has been detected in patients with severe disease on two continents. In papers published independently this week, researchers report the discovery of agents called cycloviruses in Vietnam and in Malawi. The studies suggest that the viruses - one of which also widely circulates in animals in Vietnam - could be involved in brain inflammation and paraplegia, but further studies are needed to confirm a causative link.

The discovery in Vietnam grew out of a frustrating lack of information about the causes of some central nervous system (CNS) infections such as encephalitis and meningitis, which can be fatal or leave lasting damage. "There are a lot of severe cases in the hospitals here, and very often we can't come to a diagnosis," says H. Rogier van Doorn, a clinical virologist with the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Ho Chi Minh City. Extensive diagnostic tests turn up pathogens in only about half of patients with such infections, he says. Van Doorn and colleagues in Vietnam and at the University of Amsterdam's Academic Medical Center hoped that they might uncover new pathogens using a powerful new technique called next-generation sequencing.

The group sequenced all the genetic material in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples taken from more than 100 patients with undiagnosed CNS infections. One sample batch returned a promising lead: a viral sequence belonging to the Circoviridae family.

Probing the original patient samples, the scientists ferreted out the sequence in two of the samples - one from an adult and one from a child. Next, they expanded their search, testing samples from an additional 642 patients with CNS infections using a sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test developed to specifically target the detected sequence. Roughly 4% of the samples tested positive, the team reported in mBio on Tuesday. Whole-genome sequencing confirmed that the virus, which the scientists have dubbed CyCV-VN, for cyclovirus-Vietnam, is novel; it belongs to a genus within the Circoviridae family called cycloviruses.

Info

Bacterial DNA may integrate into human genome more readily in tumor tissue

DNA Molecule
© The Cancer Genome AtlasA drawing depicting a DNA molecule unwinding from a chromosome inside the nucleus of a cell.
Bacterial DNA may integrate into the human genome more readily in tumors than in normal human tissue, scientists have found.

The researchers, affiliated with the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute for Genome Sciences, analyzed genomic sequencing data available from the Human Genome Project, the 1,000 Genomes Project and The Cancer Genome Atlas.

They considered the phenomenon of lateral gene transfer (LGT), the transmission of genetic material between organisms in a manner other than than traditional reproduction.

Scientists have already shown that bacteria can transfer DNA to the genome of an animal.

The researchers found evidence that lateral gene transfer is possible from bacteria to the cells of the human body, known as human somatic cells.

They found that bacterial DNA was more likely to integrate in the genome in tumor samples than in normal, healthy somatic cells. The phenomenon might play a role in cancer and other diseases associated with DNA damage.

"Advances in genomic and computational sciences are revealing the vast ways in which humans interact with an ever-present and endlessly diverse planet of microbes," says Matt Kane, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology in its Directorate for Biological Sciences, which funded the research.

Display

Forget 3DTVs: MIT group working to bring holographs to your living room

Image
© ABC News
Remember when Tupac made an appearance at last year's Coachella festival? It wasn't really Tupac but a holograph of the late rapper.

The holograph wasn't like watching a regular 3D TV image. You didn't need glasses, it was viewable to the entire audience, no matter what angle they were watching at, and it wasn't just a projected two dimensional image. It looked like Tupac was really on stage.

The engineers of the Object-Based Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, led by V. Michael Bove Jr. and his graduate student Dan Smalley, are working on technology that might enable that experience in your living room. The group is aiming to make true holographic videos not only a reality, but an affordable reality.

Sure, there have been other types of glasses-free 3D screens and devices, including the Nintendo 3DS handheld gaming system or various 3D TVs shown by Vizio and Toshiba, but those have suffered from poor viewing angles, causing the image to be distorted when you move off the right or left. They also aren't considered true holograms.

War Whore

Nuclear energy: The echo chamber effect

old nuclear power plant nuclear explosion
© Unknown"General, they tell me we can make a lot of money out of these nuclear firecrackers; a lot of dam money, and they say it will be controlled and safe, too"
"When do the risks of a technology become untenable?"


About This Podcast

After two weeks of traveling, Arnie is back in town to recount his adventures on this week's podcast. His first trip was to Canada to testify about the Pickering Nuclear Plant on Lake Ontario. His second trip was to southern California to speak at the conference "Fukushima Daiichi Accident: Lessons for California" alongside former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, and former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford. While Arnie was in California, we received the news that the San Onofre Nuclear Plant near San Diego was closing permanently. So, what happens at San Onofre now?

Comment: Listen in, and find out.

Attention

The bad science scandal: How fact-fabrication is damaging UK's global name for research

After a string of high-profile cases, a new agreement between scientists and the people who fund them aims to usher in a new era of 'research purity'

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Britain's leading science institutions will be told on Monday that they will be stripped of many millions of pounds in research grants if they employ rogue researchers who fake the results of experiments, The Independent has learnt.

The clampdown comes as retractions of scientific claims by medical journals are on course to top 500 for the first time in 2013 - having been just 20 a year in the late 1990s, when Andrew Wakefield notoriously claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism in children. In April, the UK's first researcher was jailed for falsifying data over a prolonged period.

The Government is concerned that Britain's prized second place in global research behind the US will be at threatened if more fact-fabricators are exposed. It knows that hundreds of thousands of jobs could easily go to foreign rivals if British laboratories do not keep coming up with new product ideas, to be made by major multinational companies in UK factories.

All of the country's 133 universites and colleges of higher education are being forced to sign a new Concordat for Research Integrity - having been warned by major fund providers that those who do not will be refused access to more than £10 billion in research grants funded each year by British taxpayers - and as much again from the private sector.

A spokesman for Universities UK, which chaired negotations with the grant providers, said: "From next year, universities in the UK will have to prove compliance with the research integrity concordat in order to receive research grant. They are doing this to help demonstrate to government, business, international partners and the wider public that they can continue to have confidence in the research."

Retractions of medical claims alone in 2013 - logged by the Retraction Watch blog - are certain to be more than 400, and could easily top 500. Some result from genuine mistakes, several plagiarise other scientists' work, breakthroughs that haven't been checked. But as many as one in 10 of them contain lies.

Comment: In an ideal world, most of the above would sound all fine and dandy, but in realty research science today been mostly corrupted and is beholden to vast, vested commercial interests.

Turning reality on its head right from the outset ,this article mentions the now infamous Dr Andrew Wakefield affair, where he warned of the dangers of the MMR vaccine and the links to autism in the Lancet (which initially accepted his paper with no qualms). Due to commercial pressure, corrupted science then set out in an attempt to destroy him and his reputation rather than stand up for the truth and integrity.

Read about the despicable treatment he endured below -

http://www.sott.net/article/202336-Lancet-caves-in-retracts-study-tying-MMR-vaccine-to-Autism

http://www.sott.net/article/222197-Dr-Wakefield-demands-retraction-from-BMJ-after-documents-prove-innocence-from-allegations-of-vaccine-autism-data-fraud

http://www.sott.net/article/242656-British-Court-Throws-Out-Conviction-of-Autism-Vaccine-Doctor


Telescope

ISS threatened by possible 'mold and bacteria contamination' inside cargo spacecraft

 International Space Staion.
© International Space Staion.AFP Photo / NASA / Chris Hadfield
Mission control has instructed the crewmembers of the International Space Station (ISS) to open the hatches of the recently docked ATV-4 unmanned cargo spaceship and carry out disinfection procedures, over fears of mold and bacteria contamination.

The ATV-4 (the fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle) was launched from the Kourou space center in French Guyana on June 5, and docked with Russia's Zvezda ISS module on Saturday.

The hatch opening was initially planned for Monday, but was delayed. According to NASA TV, the delay was over a possible "mold and bacteria contamination" on three bags inside the cargo ship.

"The level of contamination poses no risk to the crew members, however, teams want to make sure the problem is taken care of in order to protect the atmosphere aboard the space station," website Spaceflight101 reported before the opening of the hatch.

Fireball 4

Uranus is being chased by asteroids!

Uranus
© Lawrence Sromovsky, (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison), Keck Observatory
As Uranus speeds in its orbit in the solar system, there are three large space rocks that are in lockstep with the gas giant, according to new simulations. Two of them are wobbling in unstable "horseshoe" orbits near Uranus, while the third is in a more reliable Trojan orbit that is always 60 degrees in front of the planet.

The largest of this small group is the asteroid Crantor, which is 44 miles (70 kilometers) wide. Its horseshoe orbit, and that of companion 2010 EU65, means the space rocks seesaw between being close to Uranus and further away. They should stay in that configuration for a few million years.

The last of the group is 2011 QF99, in a Trojan orbit near one of Uranus' Lagrangian points - sort of like a celestial parking spot where an object can hang out without undue influence from the balanced gravitational forces.

Question

Venus' winds are mysteriously speeding up

Winds on Venus
© ESAOver the past six years wind speeds in Venus’ southern atmosphere have been steadily rising.
High-altitude winds on neighboring Venus have long been known to be quite speedy, whipping sulfuric-acid-laden clouds around the superheated planet at speeds well over 300 km/h (180 mph). And after over six years collecting data from orbit, ESA's Venus Express has found that the winds there are steadily getting faster... and scientists really don't know why.

By tracking the movements of distinct features in Venus' cloud tops at an altitude of 70 km (43 miles) over a period of six years - which is 10 of Venus' years - scientists have been able to monitor patterns in long-term global wind speeds.

What two separate studies have found is a rising trend in high-altitude wind speeds in a broad swath south of Venus' equator, from around 300 km/h when Venus Express first entered orbit in 2006 to 400 km/h (250 mph) in 2012. That's nearly double the wind speeds found in a category 4 hurricane here on Earth!

Fireball 5

Laughable - NASA announces asteroid 'Grand Challenge'

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NASA announced Tuesday a Grand Challenge focused on finding all asteroid threats to human populations and knowing what to do about them. The challenge, which was announced at an asteroid initiative industry and partner day at NASA Headquarters in Washington, is a large-scale effort that will use multi-disciplinary collaborations and a variety of partnerships with other government agencies, international partners, industry, academia, and citizen scientists. It complements NASA's recently announced mission to redirect an asteroid and send humans to study it.

"NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth's orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth," said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver. "This Grand Challenge is focused on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with potential threats. We will also harness public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to help solve this global problem."

Grand Challenges are ambitious goals on a national or global scale that capture the imagination and demand advances in innovation and breakthroughs in science and technology. They are an important element of President Obama's Strategy for American Innovation.