Science & TechnologyS


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Molecular fireworks could produce '30-minute genomes'

Jessica Griggs
New Scientist
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:22 UTC
The Human Genome Project completed its first draft in 2000 after 10 years' work. Now a Californian company has unveiled details of a technique that it says could sequence a person's entire genome in half an hour, for under $1000.

Sequencing is the process of working out the order in which nucleotide bases appear in a strand of DNA. Until recently, this was only possible for short portions of DNA, so the most common technique involved chopping DNA into short strands, working out the sequence in each and then stitching the data together to recreate the complete genome. This process has to be repeated many times with overlapping strands of DNA to get an accurate map, which is one reason it takes so long.

A more promising approach is to watch a molecule of double-stranded DNA being constructed from a single strand in real time. The trouble is that this occurs on such a small scale that it has been impossible to see. Now a team at Pacific BioSciences in Menlo Park, California, says it has worked out how this can be done (Science, DOI: link).
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Cloud Lightning

Supersonic hurricane neutraliser

Justin Mullins
New Scientist
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:19 UTC
Each year, hurricanes or typhoons may cause billions of dollars' worth of damage and a large number of fatalities. It would be hugely significant if we could find an effective way of reducing the destructive power of these storms, which convert heat energy from warm oceans into damaging kinetic energy in the atmosphere.

Now Arkadii Leonov at the University of Akron in Ohio says that the complex air flows and other atmospheric "machinery" that produce this prodigious power are surprisingly delicate.
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Rocket

Shuttle heads home from space station

Marcia Dunn
Associated Press
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:33 UTC
Endeavour
© APThis picture of the space shuttle was taken as Endeavour on Friday departed the international space station.
Cape Canaveral, Fla. - Space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of seven on Friday departed the international space station.

It ended a 12-day visit that left the orbiting complex with more modern and deluxe living quarters for bigger crews.

Endeavour pulled away as the two spacecraft soared 220 miles above the Pacific, just east of Taiwan.

With pilot Eric Boe at the controls, Endeavour slowly backed up 450 feet and completed a full lap around the space station. The shuttle is due back on Earth on Sunday.

Cameras snapped in both directions as Endeavour circled the space station.
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Info

Earth's crust was drifting 4 billion years ago


New Scientist
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:01 UTC
Plate tectonics, crucial for creating the oceans and atmosphere essential for life, began around a billion years earlier than we thought.

Michelle Hopkins and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, have found evidence of tectonics in zircon deposits that formed about 4 billion years ago. Analysis showed that minerals trapped within the zircon crystals had formed at a lower temperature and higher pressure than expected for crust of that age (Nature, vol 456, p 493).
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Meteor

Scientists find space rock that streaked through skies of Western Canada

Bob Weber
The Canadian Press
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:15 UTC
Image
© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Geoff Howe University of Calgary graduate student Ellen Milley poses with fragments of a 10-tonne meteorite she found in a small pond approximately 40 kilometres from Lloydminster, Sask., Friday, Nov. 28, 2008, several days after the space rock created a massive fireball crossing the sky Nov. 20.
Buzzard Coulee, Sask. - The light was fading late Thursday afternoon when the two scientists drove through this pretty little valley just east of the central Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary, but it was still bright enough to spot something on a modest little pond.

"It was a piece of rock frozen into the pond," said University of Calgary graduate student Ellen Milley. "It triggered us to stop."

Geologist Alan Hildebrand knew as soon as he got a close look at it and the other bits of black, dimpled rock nearby that he was looking at emissaries from outer space.

"I know what a meteorite looks like and these are meteorites, very simple," he said.

The fist-sized chunks of black, dimpled rock are small fragments of a 10-tonne meteor that blazed across Prairie skies last week, older than the Earth and from an as-yet-undetermined asteroid belt unimaginably far away.
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Black Cat

Using Invisibility To Increase Visibility


Science Daily
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:49 UTC
Research into the development of invisibility devices has spurred two physicists' thought on the behaviour of light to overcome the seemingly intractable problem of optical singularities which could soon lead to the manufacturing of a perfect cat's eye.
CAT
© Science DailyResearch into the development of invisibility devices has spurred two physicists' thought on the behaviour of light to overcome the seemingly intractable problem of optical singularities which could soon lead to the manufacturing of a perfect cat's eye. (Credit: iStockphoto)
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Bulb

Epigenetic Traits Inherited Not Only Through DNA


redOrbit
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:51 UTC
A class of small RNAs inherited from the mother determines offspring's fertility trait

Hereditary information flows from parents to offspring not just through DNA but also through the millions of proteins and other molecules that cling to it. These modifications of DNA, known as "epigenetic marks," act both as a switch and a dial - they can determine which genes should be turned on or off, and how much message an "on" gene should produce.
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Satellite

Space Shuttle and Space Station in Rare and Beautiful Double Flyby


Space Weather
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:39 UTC
Space shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station this morning, and the two spacecraft are now orbiting Earth in tandem. Endeavour is scheduled to land in Florida on Sunday, Nov. 30th.

Between now and then, many sky watchers (especially those in Europe) will be able to see the shuttle and the space station cutting across the night sky together--a rare and beautiful "double flyby."
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Info

Did lack of comet impacts help life evolve?

David Shiga
New Scientist
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:57 UTC
It seems we got off lightly in the cosmic lottery. Deadly comet impacts may be much rarer in our solar system than in others nearby.

We can't directly measure the rate of comet collisions in other solar systems but we can detect signs of the dust that such smashes kick up because the dust gets warmed by the star and so gives off infrared radiation. That radiation shows up as extra infrared in the spectrum of light coming from the star. Because such dust should dissipate quickly, it is thought to provide a good snapshot of the recent collision rate.

Jane Greaves of the University of St Andrews, UK, analysed observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope and found that the vast majority of sun-like stars near us have more dust than our solar system does and therefore have had more collisions in their vicinity. Our solar system may be one of the few that have been safe for life. Greaves presented her results at the Cosmic Cataclysms and Life symposium in Frascati, Italy, this month.
comet being torn to shreds around a dead star
© C GSF/Caltech/JPL/NASAThis artist's concept illustrates a comet being torn to shreds around a dead star, or white dwarf, called G29-38.

Comment: While comet impacts may be "much rarer" in our solar system than others, it certainly does not mean they do not strike ours. For a more enlightening and detailed study, read Forget about Global Warming, We are One Step From Extinction!

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Magnify

Researchers find oldest-ever stash of marijuana


Canadian Press
Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:20 UTC
Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
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