Science & Technology

Why Is the New Deep-Sea Antarctic Octopus So Pale?

Katherine Harmon
Scientific American
Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:13 UTC

Recent expeditions to Antarctic seafloor vents have yielded haunting new images of hairy-bellied yeti crabs, a seven-armed starfish and an eerily pale octopus its curling arms encased in almost translucent skin.

This octopus, along with the dives' other finds, were documented via ROV (remotely operated vehicle) and described earlier this week in PLoS Biology.

"The first survey of these particular vents, in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, has revealed a hot, dark, 'lost world' in which whole communities of previously unknown marine organisms thrive," Alex Rogers, a professor in Oxford University's zoology department who led the team, said in a prepared statement.

The octopus, found at 2,394 meters below sea level (nearly a mile and a half down), of course, isn't the first deep-sea or the first vent-dwelling octopus to be discovered. But it shares the same ghostly pallor as others that have been observed at similar depths. Why would these creatures, whose shallow-water cousins are so famous for their flamboyant camouflage, be slinking along as pale as a ghost?

Clever Canines: Dogs Can 'Read' Our Communication Cues

Joseph Castro
Live Science
Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:01 UTC

Dogs can understand our intent to communicate with them and are about as receptive to human communication as pre-verbal infants, a new study shows.

Researchers used eye-tracking technology to study how dogs observed a person looking at pots after giving the dogs communicative cues, such as eye contact and directed speech. They found that the dogs' tendency to follow the person's gaze was on par with that of 6-month-old infants.

The study suggests that dogs have evolved to be especially attuned to human communicative signals, and early humans may have selected them for domestication particularly for this reason, the researchers said.

Other scientists are excited that the eye-tracking method has been successfully adapted for dogs. "This opens many new opportunities in studying dog cognition," said Juliane Kaminski, a cognitive psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who was not involved in the research.

No Surprise Here: US Pentagon-backed 'time cloak' stops the clock

Agence France-Presse
Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:21 UTC

Pentagon-supported physicists on Wednesday said they had devised a "time cloak" that briefly makes an event undetectable.

The laboratory device manipulates the flow of light in such a way that for the merest fraction of a second an event cannot be seen, according to a paper published in the science journal Nature.

It adds to experimental work in creating next-generation camouflage -- a so-called invisibility cloak in which specific colours cannot be perceived by the human eye.

"Our results represent a significant step towards obtaining a complete spatio-temporal cloaking device," says the study, headed by Moti Fridman of Cornell University in New York.

The breakthrough exploits the fact that frequencies of light move at fractionally different speeds.

The so-called temporal cloak starts with a beam of green light that is passed down a fibre-optic cable.

The beam goes through a two-way lens that splits it into two frequencies -- blueish light which travels relatively fast, and reddish light, which is slower.

New Worms' Silk Has Spider Strength

Francie Diep
InnovationNewsDaily
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:07 UTC

Think of it as softness blended with strength: One research team has genetically engineered a silkworm that spins cocoons composed of about 95 percent silkworm proteins and 5 percent spider silk proteins. The composite silk is significantly stronger than regular silkworm silk and, researchers hope, as easy to produce in large quantities as regular silk.

The research team reported on their results from two genetically engineered silkworms in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Spider silk's strength, lightness and flexibility make it an appealing material for sutures, artificial ligaments and tendons, bulletproof vests and more. So far, however, nobody has been able to harvest enough spider silk for practical use.

One problem is that people can't farm spiders. The animals are territorial and, if kept in close quarters, have a tendency to eat each other. To get spider silk without cannibalizing spiders, several research teams have engineered cells and even goats to produce spider silk proteins. But that leads to a problem: how to spin that protein into large quantities of silken threads.

Bees being turned into 'zombies' by parasite

Mike Swain
Daily Mirror
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:41 UTC

Honey bees are abandoning their hives and being turned into "zombies" by a deadly fly parasite in their stomachs.

The parasite makes the bees flee their hives and then walk round and round in circles before dying. It also makes them seek out bright lights.

The parasite lays its' eggs inside the abdomen of the honey bee. About a week after the bee dies, the pupae emerge from the throats and heads of the dead bees.

Scientists discovered the parasite by accident but they believe it may help them discover what is causing colony collapse disorder which is devastating honey bees in Europe and America cutting some populations in half.

Unusual Russian Quasicrystal Rock has Ancient Extraterrestrial History

Nola Taylor Redd
Christian Science Monitor
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:20 UTC

A rock made of a type of crystal never before seen outside a laboratory is most likely a meteorite from the early days of the solar system, geologists say.

Two years after identifying the Russian rock's unusual composition, a team of scientists thinks it has nailed down its origin. The researchers say it is a quasicrystal formed under conditions far more likely in space than inside the Earth, and that its chemical composition of metallic copper and aluminum resembles what is found in so-called carbonaceous chondrites - the primitive meteorites that scientists think were remnants shed from the original building blocks of planets.

Crystals are symmetrical, neatly ordered patterns of atoms that repeat themselves regularly. They are found commonly in nature in different types of rock.

Thirty years ago, through experiments changing the structure of crystals, laboratories began producing quasicrystals, a strange arrangement of atoms that repeats with two different frequencies rather than one. Rather than a simple ratio of, say, 2:1, the ratio of atoms in a quasicrystal is based on an irrational number, such as the square root of 2:1. (This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry honored Dan Shechtman for his 1982 discovery of quasicrystals.)

First Hybrid Shark Found

Amy Coopes
Agence France-Presse
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 07:35 UTC

Scientists said on Tuesday that they had discovered the world's first hybrid sharks in Australian waters, a potential sign the predators were adapting to cope with climate change.

The mating of the local Australian black-tip shark with its global counterpart, the common black-tip, was an unprecedented discovery with implications for the entire shark world, said lead researcher Jess Morgan.

"It's very surprising because no one's ever seen shark hybrids before, this is not a common occurrence by any stretch of the imagination," Morgan, from the University of Queensland, said.

"This is evolution in action."

Colin Simpfendorfer, a partner in Morgan's research from James Cook University, said initial studies suggested the hybrid species was relatively robust, with a number of generations discovered across 57 specimens.

The find was made during cataloging work off Australia's east coast when Morgan said genetic testing showed certain sharks to be one species when physically they looked to be another.

Bizarre Crystal Hitched Ride on Meteorite

Jeanna Bryner
Live Science
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:04 UTC

© Paul Steinhardt, Princeton University
A rock sample containing quasicrystals unearthed in the Koryak Mountains in Russia.

A rock fragment containing a previously unidentified natural quasicrystal may be the remnant of a meteorite that originated in the early solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago before Earth even existed.

Until now, researchers had assumed such quasicrystals, whose atoms are arranged in a quasi-regular pattern rather than the regular arrangement of atoms inside a crystal, were not feasible in nature. In fact, until now the only known quasicrystals were synthetic, formed in a laboratory under carefully controlled conditions. (This year's Nobel Prize in chemistry honored Dan Shechtman for his 1982 discovery of quasicrystals, which at the time were thought to break the laws of nature.)

"Many thought it had to be that way, because they thought quasicrystals are too delicate, too prone to crystallization, to form naturally," researcher Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University said. The new finding, described this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests "quasicrystals are much more common in the universe than we thought," Steinhardt added.

Large Hadron Collider Confirms Discovery of First New Particle

Douglas Perry
TomsGuide.com
Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:12 UTC

However, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) published confirmation about the first new observed particle by the Atlas experiment at CERN. Called the Chi_b (3P) is part of the bigger story that will help scientists fill in the gaps of the theory that binds matter.

"The new particle is made up of a 'beauty quark' and a 'beauty anti-quark', which are then bound together," explained Roger Jones in a conversation with BBC News. "People have thought this more excited state should exist for years but nobody has managed to see it until now." It may also provide new hints where to look for the Higgs particle.

At this point, the Higgs boson is still hypothetical and simply predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. There is the hope that the LHC will confirm the existence of this particle, which would also confirm that the Standard Model is correct and explain why matter has mass. Recent experiments at the LHC suggested that the Higgs boson has a mass of 115 - 130 GeV/c2. Researchers believe that they can either confirm or deny the existence of the particle next year.

U.S. Navy Unveils "Cicada": Now Even the Drones Have Drones

Jason Mick
DailyTech
Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:36 UTC

Tiny drones are marvelously versatile, much like their insect namesakes

The U.S. Navy Research Lab's Tempest Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) may not be the mother of all drones, but it is the mother of two drones, at least. Hoisted up to 53,000 feet onto a high-flying trajectory via releasable balloon, the Tempest UAV "gives birth" in flight, launching a pair of mini "Cicada" drones.

The tiny Cicadas are an exercise in efficiency, with their logic boards doubling as wings. The Cicada UAVs are gliders, complete with smartphone-like two-axis gyroscopes and GPS circuits for navigation.

Several variants have been produced. The Cicada Mark I can be launched by firing it from a gun into the air. The Cicada Mark III is designed with special wings for improved range and stability, and is the model used by Tempest "mothership". Cicada stands for Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft.