"Fairy circles" that form in the arid grasslands of Namibia have baffled scientists for decades. In the latest attempt to explain the cause of these mysterious circular patches, a group of researchers turned to aerial images.

From the aerial images, the scientists discovered that fairy circles are distributed in surprisingly regular patterns, which might rule out the popular theory that termites are the creators.

"The occurrence of such patterning in nature is rather unusual," study researcher Stephan Getzin, of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany, said in a statement. "There must be particularly strong regulating forces at work." [Image Gallery: Amazing 'Fairy Circles' of the Namib Desert]

Fairy circles are barren patches, typically surrounded by a ring of thriving vegetation. They can grow to be 65 feet (20 meters) in diameter and can linger for as long as 75 years.

For the past several years, scientists have offered up a variety of hypotheses for why these rings form in the arid grasslands transitioning into the Namib Desert. Their explanations have ranged from grass-killing seeps of hydrocarbons to carnivorous ants to termite feeding patterns.

Mitochondria not only come exclusively from an organism's mother, they are the power generators of the cells, creating a source of chemical energy known as ATP or adenosine triphosphate. The amount of mitochondria in a cell is based upon the metabolic requirements of that particular cell and the numbers present may range from only one up into the thousands. Therefore, the more demanding the cell's energy requirements, the more of these so-called cellular power plants are required. While mitochondria are inherited maternally, it is currently unknown as to what exactly causes the destruction of the paternal side.

Paternal mitochondria are not passed on to an organism. They are either prevented from somehow doing so or are simply destroyed before they can be passed on to any offspring. Scientists are currently looking at this phenomenon to try to find both the reason behind this evolutionary enigma and the manner in which it occurs. Recently, Dr. Eli Arama and colleagues from Weizmann Institute have discovered some specialized cellular vesicles which come from the egg to be fertilized. These vesicles not only locate but also actively cause the destruction of the father's paternal mitochondria during the fertilization process.

The team from the Institute's Molecular Genetics Department worked with fruit flies to conduct this study. Past studies to determine the cause of the absence of the father's power cells were undertaken using worms and mice. Unfortunately, the sperm of worms are very different from those of a human, not having the same head or tail structures as mammals. While other studies were preformed on mice, those studies were trying to determine whether the absence was caused by some passive dilution process. The passive dilution theory, however, could not explain why autophagy markers, where vesicles actually engulf the cell's unwanted structures, were still found. It appears that they actually seek out the paternal mitochondria in order to actively destroy them instead of relying on a passive method of dilution.

Going on a first date? The chance that it leads to wedding bells may depend, in part, on how similar his or her DNA is to yours.

New research finds that people tend to pick spouses whose genetic profile shares similarities with their own. The effect is subtle (other similarities, such as similarity in education, have a larger influence), but it's important to understand that mating isn't truly genetically random, researchers report today (May 19) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The genetic effect might even signal or contribute to social inequality, they write. The current U.S. social system might inadvertently sort people by genetics, for example, or contribute to schisms seen at the level of our very DNA.

Picking a partner

When it comes to marriage, the adage "birds of a feather flock together" is more on-point than the idea that opposites attract. Many studies have found that people tend to marry others who are similar to them in education, social class, race and even body weight. The phenomenon is called assortative mating.

The question, according to study leader and University of Colorado research associate Benjamin Domingue, was whether these assortative mating differences are visible at the genetic level.

The researcher analyzed genetic data from 825 non-Hispanic white Americans who participated in the U.S. Health and Retirement Study. They compared the similarity of the DNA of married couples with the similarity of random, non-coupled individuals.

The results, mirrored in a follow-up study with data from the long-running Framingham Heart Study, revealed that married people have more similar DNA segments than random pairs of people.

Dogs and people have more in common than a love of Frisbees and long walks on the beach. A new study finds that certain dogs, just like certain humans, carry a gene mutation that causes albinism - a condition that results in little or no pigment in the eyes, skin and hair.

The study by researchers at Michigan State University identifies the exact genetic mutation that leads to albinism in Doberman pinschers, a discovery that has eluded veterinarians and dog breeders until now. Interestingly, the same mutated gene that causes albinism in this dog breed is also associated with a form of albinism in humans.

"What we found was a gene mutation that results in a missing protein necessary for cells to be pigmented," study co-author Paige Winkler, a doctoral student in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, said in a statement.

Winkler said the gene mutation found in Doberman pinschers is responsible for a condition known as oculocutaneous albinism, which also affects humans. The condition expresses certain characteristics in both humans and dogs.

"With an albino Doberman, you see a white or lighter-colored coat, pink noses and lips, along with pale irises in the eyes," Winkler said. "These traits are very similar to the characteristics humans display with this particular condition, causing light-pigmented skin and hair, along with eye discoloration and vision disturbances."

A reader/professor has sent me an internal memo he recently obtained from a meteorologist and member of the Deutsche Meteorologische Gesellschaft [German Meteorological Society], abbreviated as DMG. Clearly grave concern is emerging over a large swath of the broader German meteorological-climatological community in the wake of the Lennart Bengtsson witchhunt.


The memo was authored by a group of dissenting DMG-member meteorologists and intended to be published in the DMG reports, but never saw the light of day.

It reveals a growing and widespread worry over the suppression of scientific views among German Meteorological Society members. One of the authors of the memorandum wrote an e-mail to the reader who provided the copy to me. He writes:

"A circle of mostly older colleagues of the Free University of Berlin, who very much reject the tone one finds in today's field of climatology, has asked me to draft a memorandum on the subject and to publish it in the Reports of the German Meteorological Society. Shortened by a half and totally watered down, the memorandum appeared in the last issue. I now take the liberty to bring the original version to your attention.

Greetings and cordial asscoication yours, ************ "

I've deleted the name to protect the source. What follows is the original, un-watered down version of the memorandum - translated in English:

Researchers have worked out how to make matter from pure light and are drawing up plans to demonstrate the feat within the next 12 months.

The theory underpinning the idea was first described 80 years ago by two physicists who later worked on the first atomic bomb. At the time they considered the conversion of light into matter impossible in a laboratory.

But in a report published on Sunday, physicists at Imperial College London claim to have cracked the problem using high-powered lasers and other equipment now available to scientists.

"We have shown in principle how you can make matter from light," said Steven Rose at Imperial. "If you do this experiment, you will be taking light and turning it into matter."

The scientists are not on the verge of a machine that can create everyday objects from a sudden blast of laser energy. The kind of matter they aim to make comes in the form of subatomic particles invisible to the naked eye.

The original idea was written down by two US physicists, Gregory Breit and John Wheeler, in 1934. They worked out that - very rarely - two particles of light, or photons, could combine to produce an electron and its antimatter equivalent, a positron. Electrons are particles of matter that form the outer shells of atoms in the everyday objects around us.

Over at his Website, Debunking Christianity, John Loftus has put up a very brief post titled, What About the Origins of Life Itself? It reads as follows:

We know that we descended from a common ancestor. We know this. Evolution is a fact. Many believers agree about this, even a growing number of evangelicals. But what about the origins of life itself? The answer is simple. Ready? Since the evolution of life has a natural explanation then so also does the origins of life, we just don't know how yet. Give science time. Don't punt to a god explanation just as believers shouldn't have done before Darwin. Comprende?

A commenter named formerlutheran responded:

Science has yet to figure out exactly how the first little spark of "life" began, so the honest answer is "don't know, but we are working on it." The apologists trumpet "You don't know, therefore God." The inevitable question is then, "Okay then, where did your God come from?" The apologist answer is, "It is a mystery." (Translation) the apologist is "don't know, but if we can shout loud enough and use really, really big words people won't notice."

Loftus then posted a follow-up reply, praising science at the expense of theism:

The difference between the mysterious answer the theist offers and science is that theists have no way to solve that mystery, which has remained a mystery from the beginning and will always remain a mystery. Science however, has a method and just might figure it out.

Another commenter named Luiz Fernando Zandra posed another objection to the theory of Intelligent Design:

Let's not forget that we can't argue for the fine-tuning argument and for a miraculous origin of life. If we need a miracle for life to start in this universe, then the universe is not fine tuned for life. Period. If the desire of the believer is to support the idea that the universe is fine tuned for life in order to produce evidence for a designer, then he must abandon the idea that life can't occur naturally.

In this short post, I'd like to set the record straight.

The evidence for the primordial gravitational waves that caused a sensation when it was announced in March could be less strong than previously thought, according to a cosmologist, adding to reports of existing rumours that questioned the work.

The observation recorded by the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole in March would confirm a weird but popular theory that the Universe ballooned from subatomic to macroscopic size during its first tiny fraction of a second.

Gravitational waves originated in this cosmic 'inflation' would make their presence known by polarizing the thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang - the cosmic microwave background - in a particular swirling pattern known as b-modes. But dust in the Milky Way galaxy scatters microwaves with this same pattern, and this galactic microwave radiation must be carefully identified and subtracted to see the primordial fingerprint.

Raphael Flauger of New York University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton suggested in a lecture presented on 15 May at Princeton University in New Jersey that one of six methods used by the BICEP2 astronomers to distinguish primordial b-modes from the foreground was not applied correctly.

A senior German official has warned that Google may have such a dominant market position that a breakup of the company "must be seriously considered."

Such a move - which would be difficult to enforce because Google is based in the United States - could be a last resort for countries seeking to prevent the Internet search giant from systematically crowding out competitors, said Sigmar Gabriel, who is Germany's economy minister and vice chancellor.

"A breakup, of the kind that has been carried out for electricity and gas grids, must be seriously considered here," Gabriel wrote in an op-ed published Friday by German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "But it can only be a last resort. That's why we are focusing on anti-trust style regulation of Internet platforms."

Google has for years faced criticism over its dominant position in Europe, where no serious local rival has emerged to challenge its search business. But Gabriel's comments reflect a new sense of urgency among European governments and businesses that the continent's home-grown Internet industry risks being smothered by American rivals.

On Thursday, some 400 companies - including major German and French publishers - announced they were submitting a new anti-trust complaint against Google. The grouping, calling itself Open Internet Project, alleges that Google promotes its own products in search results at the expense of rivals.

Cbet nr. 3868, issued on 2014, May 16, announces the discovery of an apparently asteroidal object (~ magnitude 18.2) on CCD images taken on 2014, May 09.3 by R. J. Sanders with the Catalina Sky Survey's 0.68-m Schmidt telescope. This object has been found to show cometary appearance by observers elsewhere. The new comet has been designated C/2014 J1 (CATALINA).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 50 unfiltered exposures, 15-sec each, obtained remotely on 2014, May 16.4 from Q62 (iTelescope network, Siding Spring) through a 0.70-m f/6.6 CDK astrograph + CCD, shows that this object is slightly diffused. The FWHM of this object was measured about 20% wider than that of nearby field stars of similar brightness (at the moment of our imaging session the Moon - 0.98 phase - was just about 40 degree away from the comet).

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)
M.P.E.C. 2014-K04 assigns the following parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2014 J1: T 2014 June 13.44; e= 1.0; Peri. = 191.98; q = 1.74; Incl.= 160.18.