Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Trifid Nebula Triple Threat


Space Daily / SPX
Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:26 UTC
Image
© ESOThe massive star factory known as the Trifid Nebula was captured in all its glory with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile. So named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, the Trifid Nebula is a rare combination of three nebulae types that reveal the fury of freshly formed stars and point to more star birth in the future. The field of view of the image is approximately 12 x 16 arcminutes.
Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), of which the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council is a partner, have captured a stunning new image of the Trifid Nebula, showing just why it is a firm favorite of astronomers, amateur and professional alike.

This massive star factory is so named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, and is a rare combination of three nebula types, revealing the fury of freshly formed stars and indicating more star birth.

Smoldering some 5,500 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), the Trifid Nebula presents a compelling portrait of the early stages of a star's life, from gestation to first light. The heat and "winds" of newly ignited, volatile stars stir the Trifid's gas and dust-filled cauldron; in time, the dark tendrils of matter strewn throughout the area will themselves collapse and form new stars.

The French astronomer Charles Messier first observed the Trifid Nebula in June 1764, recording the hazy, glowing object as entry number 20 in his renowned catalogue. Observations made about 60 years later by John Herschel revealed the dust lanes that appear to divide the cosmic cloud into three lobes, inspiring the English astronomer to coin the name "Trifid".
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Question

Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn't Age

Bob Brown
ABC News
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:00 UTC

Years Pass, but Brooke Greenberg Remains a Toddler. No One Can Explain How or Why.

"Why doesn't she age?" Howard Greenberg, 52, asked of his daughter. "Is she the fountain of youth?"

Such questions are why scientists are fascinated by Brooke. Among the many documented instances of children who fail to grow or develop in some way, Brooke's case may be unique, according to her doctor, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine pediatrician Lawrence Pakula, in Baltimore.

"Many of the best-known names in medicine, in their experience ... had not seen anyone who matched up to Brooke," Pakula said. "She is always a surprise."

Brooke hasn't aged in the conventional sense. Dr. Richard Walker of the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa, says Brooke's body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why.
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Battery

Airport travellers get a robot chauffeur

MacGregor Campbell
New Scientist
Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:31 UTC
Driverless, battery-powered pod-cars will soon zip passengers around part of London's Heathrow Airport. The manufacturers of the Ultra personal rapid transit (PRT) system say it is the world's first public transport to balance the convenience of a taxi with the efficiency of a bus or light rail - albeit only for business passengers arriving at the world's third busiest airport.

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Battery

An Intelligent System Helps Elderly Or Memory-impaired To Remember Everyday Tasks


Science Daily
Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:17 UTC
A team of researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) has created a system with Artificial Intelligence techniques which notifies elderly people or people with special needs of the forgetting of certain everyday tasks. This system uses sensors distributed in the environment in order to detect their actions and mobile devices which remind them, for example, to take their keys before they leave home.

An elderly lady is about to go to bed. She goes into her room, sits down on the bed, takes off her slippers and turns off the light. Suddenly, before getting into bed, a small alarm goes off and a mobile device reminds her that she has not taken her tablets.
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Magnify

Mutation Rate in Humans Measured by Direct Sequencing


Xinhua
Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:29 UTC
DNA
© Unknown
An international research team has reported the first direct measurement of the general rate of genetic mutation at individual DNA letters in humans.

The team, including 16 Chinese and British scientists, published its findings in the latest edition of the journal Current Biology.

"If we say the mutation drives human evolution as an ongoing train, now we finally get its speed measured," said Dr. Xue Yali, a Chinese scientist working in the British Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the first author of the team's research paper.

The team sequenced the same piece of DNA -- 10,000,000 or so letters or 'nucleotides' from the Y chromosome -- from two men separated by 13 generations, and counted the number of differences. Among all the nucleotides, they found only four mutations.
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Sherlock

Archaeologists Unearth 5,000-Year-Old "Cathedral" in Britian


Newspost Online
Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:00 UTC
A team of archaeologists has unearthed a Neolithic "cathedral" - a massive building of a kind never before seen in Britain, which go back nearly 5,000 years, easily predating the Egyptian pyramids.

According to a report in The Press and Journal, the "cathedral", at 82 ft long and 65 ft wide, is placed between two of Orkney's most famous Neolithic landmarks, the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness.

Even the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness would have seemed quite small in the presence of the cathedral-type building, which would have stood on the spot that has now been excavated.

Nick Card, from the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology, who is leading the dig, said the building was effectively a cathedral for the north of Scotland.
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Sherlock

Bulgaria Archaeologists find 14th Century Medallion with Christ


Sofia News Agency
Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:00 UTC
Medallion
© Narodno DeloA unique medallion with Christ Pancrator was discovered by archaeologists near Varna.
Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered a unique glass medallion with Christ Pantocrator at the excavated fortress of Kastritsi near Varna.

The archaeological team is led by Valentin Pletnyov, head of the Varna Regional History Museum.

The medallion, which is dated back to the 14th century, the later period of the Second Bulgarian State (1186-1396), is an extremely rare find. It was discovered in the wooden floor of one of the large buildings in the fortress Kastritsi, which is close to the Euxinograd palace on the Black Sea coast.

Pletnyov said the medallion was made of copper enamel, i.e. a type of glass produced in Byzantium after the 13th century. The medallion has a diameter of 4 cm, and shows Christ Pantocrator holding the Gospel, and giving a blessing with his other hand. Nothing of this kind has ever been discovered in Bulgaria so far.
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Camera

Single molecule, one million times smaller than a grain of sand, pictured for first time

Claire Bates
DailyMail.co.uk
Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:46 UTC
Image
© IBMThe delicate inner structure of a pentacene molecule has been imaged with an atomic force microscope
It may look like a piece of honeycomb, but this lattice-shaped image is the first ever close-up view of a single molecule.

Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within a molecule.

'This is the first time that all the atoms in a molecule have been imaged,' lead researcher Leo Gross said.

The researchers focused on a single molecule of pentacene, which is commonly used in solar cells. The rectangular-shaped organic molecule is made up of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.

In the image above the hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen.

To give some perspective, the space between the carbon rings is only 0.14 nanometers across, which is roughly one million times smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand.
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Rocket

Chandrayaan-1: ISRO loses contact, claims mission 'over'


Times of India
Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:26 UTC
Image
© Graphic courtesy Satish Dhawan Space Centre
Bangalore: Ten months after it was launched, India's maiden moon mission the ambitious Chandrayaan-1 came to an abrupt end on Saturday after ISRO lost communication with the spacecraft, cutting short the dream odyssey that was expected to last two years.

"The mission is definitely over. We have lost contact with the spacecraft," Project Director of the Chandrayaan-1 mission M Annadurai said.

However, he said: "It (Chandrayaan-1) has done its job technically...100 per cent. Scientifically also, it has done almost 90-95 percent of its job".

ISRO chief Madhavan Nair on Saturday virtually admitted that the Chandrayaan-I moon mission could be over, saying it is a "pretty difficult" situation.
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Better Earth

Balmy water once bathed Mars rock claimed to host life

David Shiga
New Scientist
Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:44 UTC
Image
© NASAIn 1996, researchers suggested that microscopic rod-like structures in a Martian meteorite called ALH84001 were the fossilised remains of tiny bacteria. Although most researchers now doubt the claim, since the structures can be made inorganically, a new study suggests the rock was once bathed in water at the right temperature to support life as we know it.
A 1996 claim of fossilised microbes in a meteorite from Mars has yet to be confirmed, but a new analysis does suggest the rock's Martian environment had the conditions conducive to life.

Researchers led by David McKay of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, caused a sensation 13 years ago when they proposed that a chunk of Mars rock found in Antarctica, called ALH 84001, contained possible signs of past life on the Red Planet, including complex carbon-based molecules and some microscopic objects shaped like bacteria.

But the claim was never widely accepted. Other scientists countered that the shapes were ambiguous and that the complex carbon-based molecules could have been produced without life, since they are also found in chunks of asteroids that fall to Earth as meteorites, for example.

And some argued that the carbon in the meteorite could have been deposited in very harsh conditions, involving water at more than 150 °C. Even the hardiest known terrestrial microbes die above about 120 °C.

But a new analysis suggests the water involved was cool enough to allow for life, which at least keeps open the possibility of fossilised life in the meteorite. The study was led by Paul Niles of NASA Johnson. Neither he nor any of the other team members were part of the 1996 life claim.
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