• Scientists at South China Agricultural University in Guangdong Province say that the 10 piglets could help them develop cheaper drugs for humans

• Same technique used to create glow-in-the-dark rabbits in Turkey earlier this year, where they are now working to produce fluorescent sheep

Chinese scientists have created the world's first glow-in-the-dark pigs that emit a fluorescent green light.

The piglets acquired their bizarre ability to glow under 'black' or UVA light after their embryos were injected with DNA from a jellyfish.

Experts claim that the 10 young animals should live as long as any other pig and that the findings could help develop cheaper drugs for humans.

A recent naked-eye visible nova that erupted the first week in December 2013 is still showing its stuff, and this new "hot off the press" image from Rolf Wahl Olsen in New Zealand reveals its unusual color. "I managed to grab a close-up of Nova Centauri 2013 with my new 12.5″ f/4 scope," Rolf said via email to Universe Today. "Curiously, I have only so far seen wide field images of this nova, and none that actually show it's very unusual strong pink colour."

Nova Centauri 2013 (in the Southern constellation of Centaurus) was discovered by John Seach from Australia on December 2, 2013, and it was visible at about magnitude 5.5. It subsequently brightened to reach a peak at magnitude 3.3.

Rolf's image was taken today (it's already Dec. 28, 2013 in New Zealand!) when the nova had faded to around magnitude 4.5. You can see a larger version here on Flickr or click the image above for a larger version on Rolf's website.

Why is it pink?

An Iowa State University professor resigned after admitting he falsely claimed rabbit blood could be turned into a vaccine for the AIDS virus.

Dr. Dong-Pyou Han spiked a clinical test sample with healthy human blood to make it appear that the rabbit serum produced disease-fighting antibodies, officials said.

The bogus findings helped Han's team obtain $19 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health, said James Bradac, who oversees the institutes' AIDS research.

Clues from a crater-like sinkhole on the island of Kauai point back to a giant wave that came from Alaska at about the time European explorers were pushing west, seeing the Mississippi River for the first time.

The Makauwahi Sinkhole on the southeast shore of Kauai holds the mysterious equivalent of about nine shipping containers full of rocks, corals and shells from the Pacific Ocean. For the material to breach the amphitheater-like limestone walls of the feature required a wave about 25 feet high, said Rhett Butler of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology in Honolulu. Butler gave a presentation on the subject at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in San Francisco in December 2013.

General Motors (NYSE:GM) is among several companies working toward the development of robotics technology that will allow humans to work closely alongside robots without risking safety, with the goal of having robots aid human workers in their jobs rather than replacing humans completely.

Bloomberg reports that GM is working on a 'robo-glove' that will increase the strength of an employee's hand. This type of technology could be used in auto manufacturing, but also has applications in any kind of job that requires repetitive movement which can result in injury. Bloomberg cited the slaughterhouse floor as another place where human-guided robots would be useful to help prevent work-related injuries.

The robo-glove, which looks like a blue snow glove, would create twenty pounds of gripping power with minimal effort and reduce injuries for repetitive and difficult motions, like installing windows into car doors. "Typically we would put up these big gates to keep people and robotics separated," said Scott Whybrew, director for global manufacturing engineering vehicle systems at GM, to Bloomberg. "Human-safe robotics, though, gives us the ability for robots to work side-by-side with the operators."

Access to potable water is a problem in much of the world, but the impact is felt especially hard in the coastal deserts of Peru. There, annual rainfall is a mere half an inch, but atmospheric humidity is abundant - about 98 percent. Researchers at Peru's University of Engineering and Technology believed that they could turn that humidity into life-preserving water.


Before this experiment, the people in the villages surrounding Lima got their drinking water from wells. The wells were dirty and polluted, and certainly didn't provide water that anyone would want to drink. Then a billboard went up that would make life easier for everyone in the area.

Picture a bacteria cell like a balloon. Puncture the wall of the balloon, and it bursts. That's how some antibiotics work: in bacteria, the cell wall is made of a molecule called peptidoglycan, and by interfering with production of peptidoglycan, the antibiotic kills the bacteria.

Associate professor of chemistry Michael VanNieuwenhze says that for 50 years, researchers inferred that the bacteria chlamydia had peptidoglycan in its cell wall, but, "It was difficult to find because the bacterial cell was actually hidden inside of a host cell. So you have to, if you will, parse the cellular machinery of two different cells to get at the peptidoglycan, if in fact it existed," VanNieuwenhze says.

Biochemistry graduate student Erkin Kuru led the research team that discovered a way to confirm the existence of peptidoglycan in chlamydia. Kuru's team developed a molecular probe that incorporated itself into peptidoglycan and lit up in a specific way when bombarded with light photons.

Now that the existence of peptidoglycan has been confirmed in chlamydia, Kuru says research can move forward on diagnosis techniques and possible new treatments.

"One advantage of inhibiting peptidoglycan in bacteria is, our cells do not have peptidoglycan cell walls. And any drug that would be specific to this peptidoglycan molecule would be basically nontoxic to the humans," Kuru says.

VanNieuwenhze says that means researchers can now come up with a new antibiotic specific to kill chlamydia, hitting it on its peptidoglycan cell walls.

The research team published their paper in Nature this month, and Kuru says reception in the scientific community has been positive.

As scientists race to pinpoint the cause of the global collapse of honey bee populations that pollinate a third of the world's crops, environmental groups have indentified one culprit: US authorities who continue to approve pesticides implicated in the apian apocalypse.

Case in point: The US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) conditional approval in May of sulfoxaflor, a type of agricultural pesticide known as a neonicotinoid. The European Union has banned neonicotinoids for two years in response to scientific studies linking their use to the sudden death of entire beehives, a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Over the past six years, CCD has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives worth $2 billion. Bee colonies in the US are so decimated that it takes 60% of the nation's bee population to pollinate a single crop, California almonds. And that's not just a local problem; California supplies 80% of the world's almonds.

Now environmental and food safety groups are seeking to overturn the EPA's green-lighting of neonicotinoids in a series of lawsuits that for the first time invoke the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) to protect the bees. "EPA inadequately considered, or ignored entirely, sulfoxaflor's harm to pollinators and the significant costs that harm will impose on the agricultural economy, food security, and natural ecosystems," attorneys for the nonprofit Center for Food Safety and other groups argued in a legal brief (PDF) filed in December in litigation aiming to revoke the approval of sulfoxaflor.

Christmas came early for the city's car washes yesterday as hundreds of people lined up to get a thick layer of red dust removed from their vehicles.

"They were just covered," said staff at Mister Carwash on Braeswood Place in West U. "People could barely see out of the windshield."

Owner John Starks says they saw twice as many cars as usual, "we had around 500 cars in here yesterday, it was a good day for us."

The National Weather Service says the dust came from Mexico and was picked up by a weather system over the weekend. Then once the rain started, it came down.

"We often get cold fronts that pick up dust in West Texas also, that can be carried as far as Louisiana," says Kent Prochazka from our local weather service office in League City.

He said dust can be carried a lot further than that, too.

"We've had cases of dust from the Sahara Desert being dropped in Florida." Dust from the Gobi desert in Mongolia has even made it all the way across the Pacific Ocean to the Western states of the U.S.

When Comet ISON was discovered and a preliminary orbit for it was worked out, it was initially announced that it could be the "comet of the century." Of course, the 21st century is only 12 years old (from 2001) and ISON turned out to be a dud. But out there in the far recesses of space there is certainly some unknown comet worthy of such an honorific title that will ultimately put on a unique and memorable show sometime during this century.

There will always be bright and spectacular comets, but in each century there is always one that will stand above the others. Below I provide my own list of the five most spectacular comets that have appeared in each century starting from the 16th and running through the 20th century. Take note that four of these five dazzlers appeared in the latter half of their century and that the average time between appearances amounts to 97 years. Considering that Comet Ikeya-Seki passed by in 1965, the next prospective "Comet of the Century" might not appear - according to our small sampling - until maybe 2029 at the earliest ... and maybe not even until the next century (in 2103!). Then again, stupendously bright comets are totally unpredictable and can suddenly appear at almost any time.

Greatest Comet of the 16th Century: The Great Comet of 1577

This comet passed to within 16.7 million miles (26.9 million kilometers) of the sun on Oct. 27, but was not sighted until five days later, when it was described in an account from Peru as an exceptionally brilliant object. Contemporary descriptions note that it was seen through the clouds like the moon. By Nov. 8, it was reported by Japanese observers as a "broom star," appearing "as bright as the moon" with a white tail spanning over 60 degrees (your clenched fist held at arm's length measures 10 degrees). The famous astronomer Tycho Brahe first saw the comet as a reflection in his garden fish pond on Nov. 13, and likened its brightness to Venus. The comet was still as bright as zero magnitude in December before it finally dropped below the limit of naked-eye visibility on Jan. 26, 1578. (Magnitude is a measure of a celestial object's brightness, with smaller numbers corresponding to brighter objects.)