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Man's Best Friend Recruited In Hunt For Disease Genes


Science Daily
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:40 UTC
For centuries man has had a uniquely close relationship with dogs - as a working animal, for security and, perhaps most importantly, for companionship. Now, dogs are taking on a new role - they are helping in the hunt for genetic mutations that lead to diseases in humans.
dachshund
© iStockphoto/Meelis Silem
A genetic mutation that results in a condition called day blindness that can affect dachshunds, and a similar condition can arise in humans.

"Dogs get very similar diseases to humans," said Kerstin Lindblad-Toh of Uppsala University in Sweden and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts. "If you ask a dog owner what sort of conditions their pets get, they will say cancer, allergies, eye diseases."

Lindblad-Toh was speaking at the European Science Foundation's 3rd Functional Genomics Conference, held in Innsbruck, Austria, on 1-4 October. Functional genomics describes the way in which genes and their products, proteins, interact together in complex networks in living cells. If these interactions are abnormal, diseases can result. The Innsbruck meeting brought together more than 450 scientists from across Europe to discuss recent advances in the role of functional genomics in disease.
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Telescope

Vast Stellar Nursery: Claret-colored Cloud With A Massive Heart


Science Daily
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:57 UTC
A new image released by ESO shows the amazing intricacies of a vast stellar nursery, which goes by the name of Gum 29. In the centre, a small cluster of stars - called Westerlund 2 - has been found to be the home of one of the most massive double star systems known to astronomers.
young stars Westerlund 2
© ESO
This image, based on data obtained with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera attached to the 2.2-m Max-Planck/ESO telescope through four different filters (B, V, R, and H-alpha), shows the amazing intricacies of the vast stellar nursery Gum 29. At its centre lies the cluster of young stars Westerlund 2. One object at the bottom of the cluster is in fact a system of two of most massive stars known to astronomers.

Gum 29 is a huge region of hydrogen gas that has been stripped of its electrons (ionised) by the intense radiation of the hot young stars located at its centre. Astronomers call this an HII (pronounced "H-two") region, and this particularly stunning example stretches out across space for over 200 light-years. The name stems from the fact that it is the 29th entry in the catalogue published by Australian astronomer Colin Stanley Gum in 1955.

Embedded deep within the huge, nebulous expanse of Gum 29, the relatively little known cluster of Westerlund 2 is clearly seen in the centre of this image. The latest measurements indicate that it lies at a distance of some 26 000 light-years from Earth, placing it towards the outside edge of the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way. The cluster's distance has been the subject of intense scrutiny in the past, as it is one of the parameters needed to understand this intriguing object. Westerlund 2 is very young too, with an age of only 1 - 2 million years.
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Magnify

Archaeologists Find Unique, Early US Relic Of African Worship


Science Daily
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:52 UTC
University of Maryland archaeologists have dug up what they believe to be one of the earliest U.S. examples of African spirit practices. The researchers say it's the only object of its kind ever found by archaeologists in North America - a clay "bundle" filled with small pieces of common metal, placed in what had been an Annapolis street gutter three centuries ago.
African bundle
© Brian Payne, University of Maryland
How the African bundle might have looked 300 years ago.

The bundle appears to be a direct transplant of African religion, distinct from hoodoo and other later practices blending African and European traditions.

"This is a remarkably early piece, far different from anything I've seen before in North America," says University of Maryland anthropologist Mark Leone, who directs the Archaeology in Annapolis project. "The bundle is African in design, not African-American. The people who made this used local materials. But their knowledge of charms and the spirit world probably came with them directly from Africa."
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Telescope

Cosmic Lens Reveals Distant Galactic Violence


Science Daily
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:15 UTC
By cleverly unraveling the workings of a natural cosmic lens, astronomers have gained a rare glimpse of the violent assembly of a young galaxy in the early Universe. Their new picture suggests that the galaxy has collided with another, feeding a supermassive black hole and triggering a tremendous burst of star formation.
Imaging a distant galaxy
© Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
Imaging a distant galaxy using a gravitational lens.

The astronomers used the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope to look at a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years from Earth, seen as it was when the Universe was only about 15 percent of its current age. Between this galaxy and Earth lies another distant galaxy, so perfectly aligned along the line of sight that its gravity bends the light and radio waves from the farther object into a circle, or "Einstein Ring."

This gravitational lens made it possible for the scientists to learn details of the young, distant galaxy that would have been unobtainable otherwise.
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Pharoah

Archaeologists Uncover Ancient Governor's Palace In Turkey


Science Daily
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:11 UTC
Within the scope of an international rescue excavation project, a team of four archaeologists specialized in Middle Eastern affairs headed by Dr. Dirk Wicke (Institute of Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies) have unearthed parts of a Neo-Assyrian governor's palace dating back to the 9th to 7th century BCE in a two-month excavation program amongst the ruins on Ziyaret Tepe. The discoveries were extraordinary.
20 bronze vessels
© Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project
Discovery of a rare treasure trove of more than 20 bronze vessels under the paving stones in the courtyard.

The site in the south-east of Turkey (Diyarbakir province) is at risk from the construction of the Ilisu Dam. For several years now it has been investigated by teams from the universities of Akron (Ohio), Cambridge, Munich and Istanbul (Marmara University) in a joint excavation project. Sponsorship by the research funds of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 2007 and 2008 gave its archaeologists the opportunity to become involved in this international and multi-disciplinary project. There are plans to continue the project for another three years.
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Footprints

Utah geologists discover 'dinosaur dance floor'


Associated Press
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:46 UTC
dance floor
© AP Photo/University of Utah, Nicole Miller
In this undated photo released by the University of Utah, geologist Winston Seiler poses next a trackway, or set of prints made by the same dinosaur, as it walked through a wet, sandy oasis some 190 million years ago in what is now the Coyote Buttes North area straddling the Utah-Arizona border. Seiler and Marjorie Chan, chair of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, published a new study in the October issue of the science journal Palaios showing that numerous impressions at the site are dinosaur tracks, not erosion-caused potholes as was believed previously.

SALT LAKE CITY - Utah geologists say they have discovered prehistoric animal tracks so densely packed on a 3/4-acre rock site, they're calling it a "dinosaur dance floor." The site along the Arizona-Utah border is offering a rich new set of clues about the lives of dinosaurs 190 million years ago.
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Sun

Sun's protective 'bubble' is shrinking

Richard Gray
Telegraph
Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:23 UTC
The protective bubble around the sun that helps to shield the Earth from harmful interstellar radiation is shrinking and getting weaker, Nasa scientists have warned.
sunny
© AP
Data has shown that the sun's heliosphere is shrinking

New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade and is now at it lowest level since the space race began 50 years ago.

Scientists are baffled at what could be causing the barrier to shrink in this way and are to launch mission to study the heliosphere.
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Satellite

Update 1: Spacecraft IBEX Will Study Boundaries Of Solar System


eFlux Media
Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:00 UTC
The U.S. space agency launches today a space probe that will keep an eye on the violence and turbulence at the very edge of the solar system.

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is due to begin its mission at Kwajalein Atoll, the largest coral atoll on the planet, where it will be launched aboard a Pegasus rocket that will be dropped from a jet.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, IBEX will orbit high above the Earth to photograph the interstellar boundaries that separate our heliosphere from the local interstellar medium of our Galaxy. The region is an enormous stretch of turbulent gas and twisting magnetic fields. This mission of taking pictures and recording those baffling boundaries will last two years.
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Robot

Study: 6.5 million robots are in use worldwide


Heise online
Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:51 UTC
Although you still don't have to declare domestic robots on your council tax return, the IFR Statistical Department supported by the robotics and automation division of the VDMA, the German mechanical engineering and plant manufacturing association, carries out an annual check on how many of them are running around on the earth's surface and what they are doing there.
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Info

Real Pilots And 'Virtual Flyers' Go Head-to-Head


Science Daily
Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:57 UTC
Stunt pilots have raced against computer-generated opponents for the first time - in a contest that combines the real and the 'virtual' at 250 miles per hour.
electronically-generated world with the real world
© Air Sports Ltd.
New technology -- made possible by the Geospatial Research Centre (GRC), a joint venture between The University of Nottingham, the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and Canterbury Development Corporation -- can merge an electronically-generated world with the real world using a combination of satellite navigation technology (GPS, or global positioning system) and inertial navigation system technology (INS).

Using technology developed, in part, by a University of Nottingham spin-out company, an air-race in the skies above Spain saw two stunt pilots battle it out with a 'virtual' plane which they watched on screens in their cockpits.

The 'virtual' aircraft was piloted by a computer-gamer who never left the ground, but could likewise see the relative location of the real planes on his own computer screens as the trio swooped around each other during the 'Sky Challenge' race. The event could pave the way for massive online competitions, and also demonstrates the power and scope of the very latest in GPS and related systems.

The 'Sky Challenge' was organised by Air Sports Ltd, a New Zealand company which specialises in advanced sports TV technology.
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