Science & TechnologyS


Robot

Is DARPA's atlas robot the real life terminator?


DARPA
's newest military robotic creation is a little too close to our sci-fi imaginations.

Called "Atlas," the robot is designed to travel across rough terrain, use human tools and climb using its hands and feet. DARPA - formally known as the U.S. Defense Department' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - is currently challenging teams to create new software for the 6-foot-tall robot's brain.

Info

Decapitated worms can regenerate their brains, and the memories stored inside

Planarian_1
© ExtremeTechPlanarian, regenerating its head/brain.
Biologists at Tufts University have removed the head and brain of a worm by decapitation, and then watched as it regenerated both its head and brain - and, somewhat miraculously, the memories stored inside. At first glance, this finding would seem to confirm cellular memory - the theory that data can be somehow stored by cells that are outside of the brain. More research will undoubtedly have to occur before such a highly contested hypothesis is confirmed, however.

The Tufts researchers tested the memory of planarians, simple flatworms that are renowned for their regenerative properties. These worms can be cut up into pieces, and then each piece will grow into a whole new worm. In a previous study, a piece as small as 1/279th of the original worm regrew into a complete organism within a few weeks.

This astonishing regeneration is due to a large number of pluripotent stem cells, which make up around 20% of the worm. These adult stem cells, called neoblasts, can become any of the cell types required by the regenerating planarian - including brain cells.

Bulb

Link between quantum physics and game theory found

While research tends to become very specialized and entire communities of scientists can work on specific topics with only a little overlap between them, physicist Dr Nicolas Brunner and mathematician Professor Noah Linden worked together to uncover a deep and unexpected connection between their two fields of expertise: game theory and quantum physics.

Dr Brunner said: "Once in a while, connections are established between topics which seem, on the face of it, to have nothing in common. Such new links have potential to trigger significant progress and open entirely new avenues for research."

Game theory -- which is used today in a wide range of areas such as economics, social sciences, biology and philosophy -- gives a mathematical framework for describing a situation of conflict or cooperation between intelligent rational players. The central goal is to predict the outcome of the process. In the early 1950s, John Nash showed that the strategies adopted by the players form an equilibrium point (so-called Nash equilibrium) for which none of the players has any incentive to change strategy.

Bell

Early warning signs of U.S. injection-well earthquakes found

Two new studies of earthquakes near injection wells have seismologists using words rarely heard these days in earthquake science: prediction and warning. The research has also renewed calls for better seismic monitoring and reporting in regions experiencing man-made earthquakes.

"Shale gas operations have completely changed our energy policy and people are injecting in places they've never injected before. If we're going to do this safely, we need to address the environmental issues, including protecting water supplies and earthquake risk," said Cliff Frohlich, a seismologist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics who was not involved in the new studies.The two reports appear in today's (July 11) issue of the journal Science.
Image
Links between injection and earthquakes

In the Midwest, researchers discovered a warning signal that moderate-sized earthquakes may strike near injection wells, where mining companies dispose of waste fluids. At three sites in Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas, passing seismic waves from faraway earthquakes - the recent massive temblors in Japan, Sumatra and Chile - triggered swarms of small earthquakes. The seismic activity continued until magnitude-4 and magnitude-5 earthquakes struck, such as the large earthquakes near Prague, Okla., in November 2011.

Magnify

New pig virus migrates to U.S., threatens pork prices

piggies
© AP Photo/M. Spencer Green
Pork prices may be on the rise in the next few months because of a new virus that has migrated to the U.S, killing piglets in 15 states at an alarming rate in facilities where it has been reported.

Dr. Nick Striegel (STREE'-gel), assistant state veterinarian for the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said Wednesday the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus, also known as PED, was thought to exist only in Europe and China, but Colorado and 14 other states began reporting the virus in April, and officials confirmed its presence in May. The virus causes severe diarrhea, vomiting and severe dehydration in pigs, and can be fatal.

"It has been devastating for those producers where it has been diagnosed. It affects nursing pigs, and in some places, there has been 100 percent mortality," he said.

Striegel said the disease is not harmful to humans, and there is no evidence it affects pork products.


Comment: ...and when it mutates?


Eye 1

The eyes have it: US college adopts iris scans

Iris Scan
© Varie/Alt/CORBIS
Scenes from The Minority Report have become a reality at a small college in South Carolina. Administrators there are testing out the use of iris scanners to control access to certain buildings.

Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., has been evaluating the scanners for four months. Students and faculty have the iris in their eyes scanned by looking into a mirror that has a camera behind it. (Iris scanning differs from retinal scanning, primarily because it looks at the outside of the eye in infrared light, rather than the back of the eyeball.)

The camera is connected to a computer and special software records 250 data points on the eye, measuring the shape of the eye in three dimensions. Once the information is saved in a database, the person needs no other form of identification to gain access to a building, just an eye.

To do so, the person stands in front of device outside the door and looks into a mirror-like screen. A voice prompt her where to position her eye and a scanner analyzes the same data points collected. If those data points match the ones on file, the person gains access.

Using data points, rather than an image of the eye, adds layers of security that cannot be reconstructed.

Question

Mysterious new virus found in sick dolphin

Dolphins
© mikeledray/ShutterstockThe short-beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) is, well, pretty common. There are more short-beaked common dolphins than any other dolphin species in the warm-temperate portions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They are fast swimmers, enjoy aerial acrobatics and can sometimes be seen swimming closely alongside boats, a behavior known as "bow riding."
In October 2010, the body of a young short-beaked common dolphin was found stranded on a beach in San Diego, Calif. The sickly female had lesions in its airway, and a necropsy showed that it died of so-called tracheal bronchitis, likely due to an infection.

Now, further investigation has revealed the dolphin's malaise was caused by a virus that scientists had never seen before, according to a new study.

The pathogen, which researchers propose should be named Dolphin polyomavirus 1, or DPyV-1, is still quite mysterious.

Scientists say they don't know where it came from, how common it might be, or what threat it poses to wildlife.


Comment: Here are couple of articles for the reader to ponder about the possible source of the virus and kind of dangers or outcomes this possibility represents:

New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection
On viral 'junk' DNA, a DNA-enhancing Ketogenic diet, and cometary kicks


"We don't even know if this is even a dolphin virus. It could also represent a spillover event from another species," Simon Anthony, a researcher who studies wildlife pathogens at Columbia University, said in a statement.

"It's no immediate cause for alarm, but it's an important data point in understanding this family of viruses and the diseases they cause."

Genetic analysis showed that the polyomavirus found in the San Diego dolphin was distinct from other known polyomaviruses (a widespread family of small DNA viruses that can sometimes cause infections and tumors in various animals).

The pathogen appeared to be most closely related to the California sea lion polyomavirus, the researchers reported online on July 10 in the journal PLOS ONE.

"It's possible that many dolphins carry this virus or other polyomaviruses without significant problems," said Judy St. Leger, the director of pathology at SeaWorld in San Diego, who performed the initial animal autopsy (or necropsy) on the stranded dolphin.

"Or perhaps it's like the common cold, where they get sick for a short while and recover," St. Leger added in a statement.

Sun

Is the sun a giant comet?


NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a $169 million spacecraft has discovered what many scientists surmised; the sun has a comet-like tail. The less than 20 foot square craft, displayed the tail which couldn't be seen before because it doesn't shine, nor does it reflect light. Is the sun a comet?

No, it is a star. Both stars and comets have tails, which can usually be seen through a telescope. Our sun was not that easy.

"By examining the neutral atoms, IBEX made the first observations of the heliotail. Many models have suggested the heliotail might be like this or like that, but we've had no observations. We always drew pictures where the tail of the heliosphere just disappears off the page, since we couldn't even speculate about what it really looked like," said David McComas, lead author on the research and principal investigator for IBEX at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

Magic Wand

What makes a Stradivarius a, well, Stradivarius? New clues to making the World's best violin

Image
© Reuters A Stradivarius "Ex-Nachez" made in the year 1716 by famed Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari is pictured at Sotheby's in Hamburg Oct. 21, 2003.
A Stradivarius is among the most coveted items in the world, considered to be the best-stringed instrument ever created. The violins, violas and cellos produced by the Stradivari family during the 17th and 18th centuries are prized for their remarkable sound and incredible craftsmanship, and a new study explores the possible techniques used by Antonio Stradivari.

A Stradivarius in pristine condition can fetch millions of dollars. In 2011, a Stradivarius violin made in 1721, named Lady Blunt after Lord Byron's granddaughter, Lady Ann Blunt, was sold at a charity auction for $15.9 million. The money collected during the auction went to Japanese earthquake relief funds.

Approximately 600 string instruments made by Stradivari are still known to exist, according to the Wall Street Journal, and a new study using several diagnostic techniques examined a Stradivarius to unlock the mystery of what techniques and materials were used to create the world's best violins.

Info

Dolphins may 'see' pregnant women's fetuses

Dolphin
© Brian BranstetterDolphins may use ultrasound to detect a baby inside a pregnant woman.
Using echolocation, dolphins might be able to detect a pregnant woman's developing fetus, some experts say.

Dolphins emit sounds in their environment and listen to the echoes that return - a process that helps them identify the shapes and locations of objects. Doctors use a similar technique to image a developing human baby. Both involve ultrasound - high-pitched pulses of sound above the range of human hearing.

"I think it's extremely plausible [dolphins] would be able to detect a fetus," said Lori Marino, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta who studies cetacean intelligence. However, "you'd have to really do a well-controlled study to make a definitive statement," she cautioned.