Science & TechnologyS


Better Earth

The Real Avatar: Ocean Bacteria Act As 'Super-Organism'

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© 20th Century FoxNetworked life is not just sci-fi
In the movie Avatar, the Na'vi people of Pandora plug themselves into a network that links all elements of the biosphere, from phosphorescent plants to pterodactyl-like birds. It turns out that Pandora's interconnected ecosystem may have a parallel back on Earth: sulphur-eating bacteria that live in muddy sediments beneath the sea floor.

Some researchers believe that bacteria in ocean sediments are connected by a network of microbial nanowires. These fine protein filaments could shuttle electrons back and forth, allowing communities of bacteria to act as one super-organism. Now Lars Peter Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark and his team have found tantalising evidence to support this controversial theory.

"The discovery has been almost magic," says Nielsen. "It goes against everything we have learned so far. Micro-organisms can live in electric symbiosis across great distances. Our understanding of what their life is like, what they can and can't do - these are all things we have to think of in a different way now."

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Celsius X VI II and its Mysterious $300,000 Mechanical Cellphone

This x-ray is the only image of the papillion available
© Celsius X-VI-II
On March 18, at the Baselworld watch show in Switzerland, a vaporous French company called Celsius X-VI-II will unveil the Papillon, a $300,000 mobile phone that is packed with the most advanced micro-mechanics of any gadget ever created.

All of this according to a recent profile in PCMag, one that frankly raises more questions than it answers. In the piece, Celsius co-founder Alejandro Ricart offers a vague picture of his team's ambition, citing high-end Swiss watches as the inspiration for his company's ultra-luxury, mechanical mobile phone.

"We want to take the useful functions of the cell phone and try to re-think them, and re-create them in a mechanical way," he explained. One such suggested mechanism is a kinetic hinge that powers the phone when it's flipped open and closed shut.

Sascha Segan, PCMag's reporter, seems pretty enthralled by the whole business, describing the device as a "hand-made art-watch with more than 600 mechanical components, many of which are visible to the naked eye."

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Going up in the world? Beat the rush hour with first commercial jetpack for £50,000

It is the perfect way for city high-fliers to miss the morning rush hour. A company is set to produce the first commercial JETPACKS - and one could be yours for just £50,000.

The traffic jam-beating packs will be manufactured after a multi-million pound deal was signed with an international aircraft company this week.

Martin Aircraft Company, in Christchurch, New Zealand, aims to make 500 packs a year allowing first-person propulsion through the skies for commuters.

JetPack
© CatersThe world's first factory making space-age JET PACKS is going into production. It can travel at 60MPH for 30 miles

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Scientists Make Important Discovery in Gene Regulation

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© University of EssexProteins at work.
Scientists at the University of Essex have a greater understanding of how our genes are controlled following a major research project.

The findings of the study, which looked at how proteins work as teams to control genes in the cells, could also help to unravel the mechanisms of disease such as cancer.

The five-year research, funded by the Medical Research Council, has been published in Molecular and Cellular Biology.

The research team, led by Dr Elena Klenova from the Department of Biological Sciences, looked at the protein called CTCF, which was previously identified as a key 'controller' of many of our genes, making them either active or inactive.

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Brain map reveals secret of intelligence

What exactly is intelligence? Researchers are one step closer to answering that question after mapping out the brain structures involved in human intelligence.

After examining the brains of more than 200 patients with brain lesions, researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Iowa mapped the location of the lesions and correlated the images with each patient's IQ score. This helped them produce a map of the brain regions that influence intelligence.

The map reveals that intelligence -- rather than residing in a single structure -- is built by a network of regions across both sides of the brain.

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First Physiological Evidence Of Brain's Response To Inequality

The human brain is a big believer in equality - and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it.

Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's.

These conclusions, and the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that led to them, are described in the February 25 issue of the journal Nature.

"This is the latest picture in our gallery of human nature," says Colin Camerer, the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics at Caltech and one of the paper's coauthors. "It's an exciting area of research; we now have so many tools with which to study how the brain is reacting."

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Human Brain Encodes Nouns and Verbs in Different Regions

The brain that activates when a person learns a new noun is different from the part used when a verb is learnt, researchers have shown.

"Learning nouns activates the left fusiform gyrus, while learning verbs switches on other regions (the left inferior frontal gyrus and part of the left posterior medial temporal gyrus)", Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells, co-author of the study and an ICREA researcher at the Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit of the University of Barcelona, tells SINC.

The Catalan researcher, along with psychologist Anna Mestres-Missé, who is currently working at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, and neurologist Thomas F Münte from the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, in Germany, have just published the results of their study confirming the neural differences in the map of the brain when a person learns new nouns and verbs in the journal Neuroimage.

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Do Genes Play a Role in PTSD? Study of Rwanda Genocide Survivors Suggests Yes

A study of Rwandan Genocide survivors, some with and some without post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, suggests that genetic factors influence the relationship between a person's "traumatic load", or the number of traumatic events he or she experiences, and their likelihood of developing PTSD.

You can read about the study by Dr Iris-Tatjana Kolassa, from the department of Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology at the University of Konstanz in Germany, and other colleagues in Germany and Switzerland, in the 15 February print issue of the Elsevier journal Biological Psychiatry.

Although there is no exact official figure, estimates suggest that 1 in 5 of the population of Rwanda, or up to 1 million people lost their lives in the 1994 genocide, which occurred over about 100 days.

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Ancient DNA Reveals Caribou History Linked to Volcanic Eruption

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© iStockphoto/Andrew ColemanResearchers report that DNA recovered from ancient caribou bones reveals a possible link between several small unique caribou herds and a massive volcanic eruption that blanketed much of the Alaskan Yukon territory in a thick layer of ash 1,000 years ago.
DNA recovered from ancient caribou bones reveals a possible link between several small unique caribou herds and a massive volcanic eruption that blanketed much of the Alaskan Yukon territory in a thick layer of ash 1,000 years ago, reports research published in Molecular Ecology.

It's just part of the story being read from ancient caribou remains by an international team of scientists from the U.S., U.K. and Canada who have been studying the history of this iconic and fragile Canadian species.

Tyler Kuhn, a Whitehorse native and Simon Fraser University graduate researcher, were able to coax short bits of ancient DNA from caribou bones found in 6,000-yr-old ice patches scattered across an area just north of the British Columbia border.

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Quantum Physics Breakthrough: Scientists Find an Equation for Materials Innovation

Princeton engineers have made a breakthrough in an 80-year-old quandary in quantum physics, paving the way for the development of new materials that could make electronic devices smaller and cars more energy efficient.

Scientist
© Frank WojciechowskiProfessor Emily Carter and graduate student Chen Huang developed a new way of predicting important properties of substances. The advance could speed the development of new materials and technologies.
By reworking a theory first proposed by physicists in the 1920s, the researchers discovered a new way to predict important characteristics of a new material before it's been created. The new formula allows computers to model the properties of a material up to 100,000 times faster than previously possible and vastly expands the range of properties scientists can study.

"The equation scientists were using before was inefficient and consumed huge amounts of computing power, so we were limited to modeling only a few hundred atoms of a perfect material," said Emily Carter, the engineering professor who led the project.