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Do aliens share our genetic code?

Lewis Dartnell
New Scientist
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:04 UTC
Image
© Jonathan Hordle / Rex
Was Jabba the Hutt made from the same genetic building blocks as life on Earth?
What similarities will alien life forms have to living things here on Earth? We won't know until we find some, but now there is evidence that at least the basic building blocks will be the same.

All terrestrial life forms share the same 20 amino acids. Biochemists have managed to synthesise 10 of them in experiments that simulate lifeless prebiotic environments, using proxies for lightning, ionising radiation from space, or hydrothermal vents to provide the necessary energy. Amino acids are also found inside meteorites formed before Earth was born.

Paul Higgs and Ralph Pudritz at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, point out that all these experiments produced a subset of the same 10 amino acids and calculate that these 10 require the least amount of energy to form.

This, they argue, suggests that if alien life exists it probably has the same 10 amino acids at its core.
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Saturn

First DNA analysis from Mars?

Ewen Callaway
New Scientist
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:39 UTC
Image
© NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA/J Bell/Cornell/M Wolff/Space Science Institute
Some 3-4 billion years ago, impacts threw pieces of Earth and Mars into space. Life may have hitched a ride on this rocky debris, some of which landed on neighbouring planets as meteorites
In August 1996, molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun was about to reveal one of the biggest discoveries of his scientific career. His lab at Harvard Medical School had recently found a gene called age-1 that determines lifespan in roundworms. Their work offered the tantalising possibility that tinkering with molecular pathways might extend the lifespan of other organisms - and perhaps even humans.

Harvard sent out a press release and Ruvkun prepared for an onslaught of media attention. But it never came. Two days before his team's paper came out, scientists analysing a meteorite from Mars called ALH84001 made headlines worldwide. Then-US president Bill Clinton even got in on the announcement.

"My grad student leans in the door and says, 'They've just announced life on Mars,'" recalls Ruvkun. "That would really f--- us," Ruvkun replied, thinking his student was joking.

Scientists have since raised serious doubts about the existence of the purported fossilised microbes in the meteorite.
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Telescope

Pulsar Creates Cosmic "Hand"

Victoria Jaggard
National Geographic
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:35 UTC
Image
© NASA
A new x-ray image has revealed an unusual hand-shaped nebula that brings a whole new meaning to the expression "reach for the stars."

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory recently snapped this shot of energetic particles streaming from a pulsar - the rapidly rotating core left behind after a very massive star exploded as a supernova. Known as B1509, the pulsar is thought to be about 1,700 years old and lies roughly 17,000 light-years from Earth.

The tiny pulsar is just 12 miles (19.3 kilometers) wide. But it is spinning so fast - it makes seven complete rotations every second - that the particles it spews have created a nebula spanning 150 light-years.
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Control Panel

Science's most powerful computer tackles first questions

Tom Simonite
New Scientist
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:31 UTC
Image
© National Center for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Jaguar is the second most powerful computer ever built and the fastest dedicated to science.
In cult sci-fi tale Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the most powerful computer in the universe was charged with finding the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

In the real world, a newly built supercomputer that is the most powerful ever dedicated to science will be tackling questions about climate change, supernovas, and the structure of water.

The projects were chosen in a peer-reviewed process designed to get the computer producing useful science even during the period when its performance is still being fine-tuned by engineers.

Jaguar is located at the National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS), part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, and has a peak operating performance of 1.64 petaflops, meaning it can perform more than a million billion mathematical operations every second.

Jaguar has 181,000 processing cores, compared to the one or two found in most desktop machines. The world's only more powerful computer is the US Nuclear Security Administration's 1.7-petaflop Roadrunner at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
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Radar

Conficker botnet stirs to distribute update payload: it's alive!

John Leyden
The Register
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:21 UTC
The Conficker superworm is stirring, with the spread of a new variant that spreads across P2P and drops a payload. It is thought to update machines infected by earlier strains of the worm.

Conficker-E (the latest variant) offers potential clues on the origins of the worm, because of possible links to other malware. Trend Micro reports that the new Downadup/Conficker variant is talking to servers associated with the Waledac family of malware, in order to download further unwanted items.

Waledec, in turn, is suspected as the latest item of malware from the gang behind the Storm botnet, sparking speculation that all three strains of botnet client are the work of the same cybercriminal gang.
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Umbrella

Obama looks to 'introduce' what has long been happening: climate geoengineering

Seth Borenstein
AP - Breitbart
Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:12 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.

John Holdren told the Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
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Sun

Wristband to alert sun over-exposure


Press TV
Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:39 UTC
sun wristband
© unknown
The increased rate of skin cancer among sunbathers prompts scientists to create a wristband to warn user against maximum sun exposure.

Excessive sun exposure is reported as the main trigger for DNA changes leading to melanoma, the most malignant type of skin cancer in 70 percent of sufferers.

The new bracelet-style product, which will enter the market in the upcoming months, turns pink when the sunbather is in danger of getting a sunburn.
      Read More...
Family

Modern life's pressures may be hastening human evolution

Robert S. Boyd
McClatchy Newspapers
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 03:33 UTC
We're not finished yet. Even today, scientists say that human beings are continuing to evolve as our genes respond to rapid changes in the world around us.

In fact, the pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think.

Their view contradicts the widespread 20th-century assumption that modern medical practice, antibiotics, better diet and other advances would protect people from the perils and stresses that drive evolutionary change.

Nowadays, the idea that "human evolution is a continuing process is widely accepted among anthropologists,'' said Robert Wald Sussman , the editor of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis .

It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens.
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Magnify

Toltec Mounds profiled

Bill Shrum
Daily Leader
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:21 UTC
Image
© Daily Leader
Since 1975, Toltec Mounds Archeological Park was thought in the beginning to be made by the Toltec Indian tribe of Mexico but was later determined that another tribe of Indians, who are not named built the mounds. The tribe has been called The Plum Bayou Tribe, named after a nearby stream.
Stuttgart, Ark. - Within 35 miles and less than a one-hour drive from Stuttgart is Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park, just off Highway 165 North.

The Toltec Mounds, located in the park, are some of the largest and most impressive archeological sites in the Mississippi River Valley Region of the United States.

"People started living at this place we call Toltec Mounds some time before 700 A.D.," Robin Gabe, park interpreter at Toltec Mounds Archeological Park, said. "Distinctive aspects of the culture of the people who lived here are the arrangement and construction of the mounds, the style of decoration on the pottery and the kinds of stone tolls."
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Telescope

Universe lit by dust-swaddled galaxies

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:48 UTC
Image
© NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA
Dust-obscured galaxies that thrived when the universe was less than 5 billion years old have been seen for the first time by a balloon-borne experiment called BLAST
Dramatic dust-swaddled stellar nurseries seem to be the main sources of a diffuse background light found in all directions, an Antarctic balloon experiment has revealed. The results could help illuminate how star formation has changed over the history of the universe.

Astronomers have long suspected that individual galaxies are responsible for a diffuse glow of long-wavelength infrared light, called the far infrared background, that was detected by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite in the 1990s.

But accounting for all that light has been difficult, because astronomers must look for such distant galaxies in submillimetre light, which sits between radio and infrared light in the electromagnetic spectrum. Water vapour in Earth's atmosphere easily absorbs this radiation, making it difficult to detect from the ground.
      Read More...
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