Science & TechnologyS


Butterfly

World's Oldest Fossil Impression Of Flying Insect Discovered: Found In Suburban Strip Mall


Science Daily
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:24 UTC
Image
© Jodi Hilton, Tufts UniversityTufts geology major Richard J. Knecht holding halves of the fossil.
While paleontologists may scour remote, exotic places in search of prehistoric specimens, Tufts researchers have found what they believe to be the world's oldest whole-body fossil impression of a flying insect in a wooded field behind a strip mall in North Attleboro, Mass.

During a recent exploration as part of his senior project, Richard J. Knecht, a Tufts geology major, and Jake Benner, a paleontologist and senior lecturer in the Geology Department, set out to hunt for fossils at a location they learned of while reading a master's thesis that had been written in 1929. With chisels and hammers, the team reached the shale and sandstone outcropping described in the paper. There they delicately picked away pieces of rock before reaching a section that yielded fossils. Just below the surface, they uncovered a fossilized impression of a flying insect.
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Sun

Sunspots an omen of weather woes?

Charles Perry
Times & Transcript
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:06 UTC
More data needed before making such a 'leap,' says astronomer

The lack of sunspots this year has some scientists wondering if this could be an indicator that much colder weather is on the way.
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Magnify

Response To Immune Protein Determines Pathology Of Multiple Sclerosis


Science Daily
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:01 UTC
New research may help reveal why different parts of the brain can come under attack in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). According to a new study in mice with an MS-like disease, the brain's response to a protein produced by invading T cells dictates whether it's the spinal cord or cerebellum that comes under fire.
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Cowboy Hat

Male pattern baldness pinpointed on DNA


Globe and Mail
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:38 UTC
A McGill University researcher has found a mysterious stretch of DNA that can make men lose their hair.

The discovery could lead to new ways to prevent male pattern baldness or a quick genetic test to determine if a man is likely to hang on to his hair. But it also may help researchers better understand the human genome.

The section of chromosome 20 that Brent Richards and his colleagues have implicated in baldness isn't a gene.

It is in a gene desert, one of the many long stretches of DNA that fill the gaps between the roughly 20,000 genes in the human genome.
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People

What makes an Arab an Arab?


The National
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:54 UTC
Iraqi family
© AP Photo / Yahya AhmedThis Iraqi family can point to social and cultural factors that define them as an Iraqi, but a genome mapping programme will try to get to the bottom of the genetic factors in the Arab identity
What defines someone's identity? Cultural, geographic, historical, linguistic, religious and political factors all contribute to self-definition - but working out what it means to be an Arab on a genetic level is the goal of a far-reaching project that has the potential to influence the health of millions of people.

One hundred people who describe themselves as Arabs - half of them originating on the Arabian peninsula and the rest from the wider Arabic nations including Egypt, Syria and the Maghreb - will have their entire genetic makeup sequenced by the Arab Genome Project.
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Bulb

Unraveling The Complexity Of Human Disease


Science Daily
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:48 UTC
Impressive advances in our understanding of the genetic basis of disease were outlined at the 3rd ESF Functional Genomics Conference in Innsbruck, Austria.

The mysteries of the human genome are slowly being revealed -- but the more we uncover the more complicated the picture becomes. This was one key message to emerge from the European Science Foundation (ESF)'s 3rd Functional Genomics Conference held in Innsbruck, Austria, on 1-4 October.
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Meteor

New comet discovered where comets aren't usually found

Norval Scott
Globe and Mail
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:45 UTC
Calgary - Astronomer Rob Cardinal didn't expect the time he spent installing new software at the University of Calgary's Baker-Nunn telescope earlier this month to change his life.

But days later, his computer was telling him there had been some unusual movement through the telescope - motion that Mr. Cardinal hadn't detected while gazing through it.

But after some sleepless nights peering through cloud cover and finally spying what he'd missed, Mr. Cardinal is now the confirmed finder of C2008 T2, a never-before-identified comet travelling through the solar system.

Or, as it will also be known, Comet Cardinal.
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Bomb

High Powered New Explosive Developed


Science Daily
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:44 UTC
Since the discovery of nitroglycerin in 1846, the nitrate ester group of compounds has been known for its explosive properties. A whole series of other nitrate esters have been subsequently put to use as explosives and fuels.

A research team led by David E. Chavez at Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) has now developed a novel tetranitrate ester. The compound has a particularly interesting characteristic profile: it is solid at room temperature, is a highly powerful explosive, and can be melt-cast into the desired shape.

Nitrate esters are organic nitric acid compounds that can contain enormous explosive force. However, their liquid physical state makes handling very difficult. By mixing in various other components, Alfred Nobel developed dynamite, a distinctly safer and easier to handle nitroglycerine-based explosive. The only solid nitrate ester used as an explosive before is nitropenta. Because of its high melting point of about 140 °C, nitropenta must be pressed into the desired form.
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Pharoah

Archaeological Dig Uncovers Roman Mystery


Science Daily
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:38 UTC
University of British Columbia archaeologists have dug up a mystery worthy of Indiana Jones, one that includes a tomb, skeletons and burial rites with both Christian and pagan elements.

This summer, Prof. Roger Wilson led excavations at Kaukana, an ancient Roman village located near Punta Secca, a small town in the south-eastern province of Ragusa in Sicily.
clay amphora
© Roger WilsonArcheologist Roger Wilson pulls out the clay amphora from its 1,500 year hiding place.

Combing through the sand-buried site, the 15-member team made a series of startling discoveries. Central to the mystery was finding a tomb inside a room in a house dating from the sixth century AD.

Wilson explains that tombs during this period are normally found only in cemeteries outside the built-up area of a town, or around the apse of a church. And since the building was substantial with mortared walls and internal plaster, this would have been likely a tomb for the wealthy.
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Meteor

An Inside Look at Comet Holmes

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:59 UTC
The astronomy world buzzed in the Fall of 2007 when Comet Holmes - a normally humdrum, run-of-the-mill comet - unexpectedly flared and erupted. Its coma of gas and dust expanded away from the comet, extending to a volume larger than the Sun. Professional and amateur astronomers around the world turned their telescopes toward the spectacular event. Everyone wanted to know why the comet had suddenly exploded.
Comet Holmes
© NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope observed the comet, but provided few clues. And now, observations taken of the comet after the explosion by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope deepen the mystery, showing oddly behaving streamers in the shell of dust surrounding the nucleus of the comet. The data also offer a rare look at the material liberated from within the nucleus. "The data we got from Spitzer do not look like anything we typically see when looking at comets," said Bill Reach of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at Caltech.
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