Science & TechnologyS


Better Earth

The revolutionary 'contact lens' loaded with stem cells that restores sight - by helping the eye heal itself naturally

Anna Hodgekiss
Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 06:51 UTC
Stem Cell Contact Lens
© Daily Mail, UKScientists hope the biodegradable implant (pictured) loaded with stem cells that multiply will allow the body to heal the eye naturally.
A 'contact lens' loaded with stem cells could be a way to naturally repair or retain sight.

Scientists hope the biodegradable implant loaded with stem cells that then multiply will allow the body to heal the eye naturally.

Stem cells are the building blocks of tissue growth. They can transform into any other type of cell the body is built from and so should be able to repair everything from the brain to the heart.

The scientists at the University of Sheffield who developed the implant now hope the new technique could help millions of people across the world retain or even regain - their sight.

The technology has been designed to treat damage to the cornea, the transparent layer on the front of the eye, which is one of the major causes of blindness in the world.

With the new implant, by mimicking structural features of the eye, the researchers have developed a new method for producing very delicate thin membranes to help graft stem cells onto the eye itself.

Using a series of complex techniques, the researchers are able to make a disc of biodegradable material that can be fixed over the cornea. The disc is loaded with stem cells that then multiply, allowing the body to heal the eye naturally.
Read More...
Fish

The catfish that strands itself to kill pigeons

Ed Yong
Discover Magazine
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:00 UTC
Catfish Hunting Birds
© Discover Magazine
In Southwestern France, a group of fish have learned how to kill birds. As the River Tarn winds through the city of Albi, it contains a small gravel island where pigeons gather to clean and bathe.

And patrolling the island are European catfish - 1 to 1.5 metres long, and the largest freshwater fish on the continent. These particular catfish have taken to lunging out of the water, grabbing a pigeon, and then wriggling back into the water to swallow their prey. In the process, they temporarily strand themselves on land for a few seconds.

Other aquatic hunters strand themselves in a similar way, including bottlenose dolphins from South Carolina, which drive small fish onto beaches, and Argentinian killer whales, which swim onto beaches to snag resting sealions. The behaviour of the Tarn catfishes is so similar that Julien Cucherousset from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse describes them as "freshwater killer whales".
Read More...
Alarm Clock

Florida scientists prepare to release hundreds of thousands of genetically modified mosquitoes


RT
Fri, 07 Dec 2012 01:21 UTC
Aedes aegypti mosquitos
© Reuters / StringerAedes aegypti mosquitos, which can spread the dengue fever.
Hundreds of thousands of mutated mosquitoes could soon be unleashed in Florida, but don't worry: scientists say they have a plan.

It might sound like something out of a low-budget horror film, but the US Food and Drug Administration really is considering whether or not they should allow scientists to send thousands upon thousands of genetically altered insects into the wild.

If all goes as planned, mosquitos modified by some serious Frankenstein treatment will be introduced into the Florida Keys and ideally mate with skeeters that carry the deadly dengue fever, passing along in the process a fatal birth defect that will hopefully eradicate the offspring before birth. From there, scientists say they expect the population of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with the dangerous disease will be decimated in only a few generations without causing any major implications for the native ecosystem.
Read More...
Fireball

Close Approach of Apollo Asteroid 2012 XZ6

Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes
Remanzacco Observatory
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:06 UTC
M.P.E.C. 2012-X23, issued on 2012 Dec. 6, reports the discovery of the Apollo type asteroid 2012 XZ6 (discovery magnitude 15.4) by Catalina Sky Survey (mpc code 703) on images taken on December 05.3 with a 0.68-m Schmidt + CCD.

2012 XZ6 has an estimated diameter of 290 m - 650 m (based on the object's absolute magnitude H=19.8). On December 01, 2012 this asteroid had a close approach with Earth at about 41.6 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.1069 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers). 2012 XZ6 reached the peak magnitude 15.9 during the period December 02-04, 2012.

We performed some follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the Neocp, remotely from the H06 ITelescope network (near Mayhill, NM) on 2012, Dec. 05.44, through a 0.25-m f/3.4 reflector + CCD and from and remotely from the Siding Spring-Faulkes Telescope South (FTS) on 2012, Dec. 05.58, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD.
Read More...
Cell Phone

Emotion-detecting software listens in

Francie Diep
TechNewsDaily
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 12:46 UTC
Voice Detection
© University of RochesterScreenshot from new software under development that detects people's emotions from their tone of voice.
You spend all day talking into your cellphone. Maybe one day it will be able to listen in and figure out how you're feeling.

Researchers have created new software that is able to detect people's emotions from listening to their voices. "Basically, what we're doing is we're trying to use features of the voice, things like pitch and energy, to detect emotions from what someone is saying," said Wendi Heinzelman, the software's lead creator and a computer scientist and electrical engineer at the University of Rochester in New York.

The software doesn't need to gather information about what is actually being said; it just analyzes the tone of voice. It accurately pinpoints emotions - including sadness, happiness, fear and disgust - 81 percent of the time in people whose voices it has previously analyzed.

Heinzelman still has plenty of basic research to do to, but if development goes well, her discoveries could go into emotion-detecting apps for market research or for helping people analyze how they are perceived by others, she said. Her findings could also help robots understand human emotions, which might make robot caretakers or co-workers of the future easier to work with.
Read More...
Attention

Verizon's creepy idea to spy on TV viewers


TechNewsDaily
Thu, 06 Dec 2012 08:10 UTC
Spy
© Petr Malyshev, Shutterstock
A couple snuggling in front of the TV could end up getting bombarded by commercials for romantic vacations, flowers or even condoms and birth control pills. That creepy invasion-of-privacy scenario comes from a Verizon patent idea that envisions spying on TV viewers for the sake of serving up related ads.

Verizon aims to track the behavior of TV watchers as they sing happy songs, play with a pet dog, or enjoy some supposedly private time with a loved one on the couch. The tracking system would then search terms related to the behaviors it sees - such as "cuddling" or "romance" - and present viewers with TV ads related to that topic during commercial breaks, according to the patent filing first discovered by FierceCable.

The romance scenario is just one example detailed in the patent filing. But Verizon also describes the capability to detect a person's mood from whether he or she is singing or humming a "happy" song, so that it can select ads geared for happy people.

Similar patent filing examples include fighting, wrestling, playing a game or somehow competing with another person. The system could also identify objects such as pets, soft drink cans or a bag of chips in a person's hand, and room decorations or furniture.
Read More...
Bulb

Why bad science is like bad religion

Dr Rupert Sheldrake
Huffington Post
Sat, 01 Dec 2012 09:59 UTC
In both religion and science, some people are dishonest, exploitative, incompetent and exhibit other human failings. My concern here is with the bigger picture.

I have been a scientist for more than 40 years, having studied at Cambridge and Harvard. I researched and taught at Cambridge University, was a research fellow of the Royal Society, and have more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I am strongly pro-science. But I am more and more convinced that that the spirit of free inquiry is being repressed within the scientific community by fear-based conformity. Institutional science is being crippled by dogmas and taboos. Increasingly expensive research is yielding diminishing returns.

Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth. They believe that science has already solved the fundamental questions. The details still need working out, but in principle the answers are known.

Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system. But the "scientific worldview," based on the materialist philosophy, is enormously prestigious because science has been so successful. Its achievements touch all our lives through technologies like computers, jet planes, cell phones, the Internet and modern medicine. Our intellectual world has been transformed through an immense expansion of scientific knowledge, down into the most microscopic particles of matter and out into the vastness of space, with hundreds of billions of galaxies in an ever-expanding universe.
Read More...
Wolf

Dogs can sniff out lung cancer, pilot study shows


France 24
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
guilty dog
Dogs are surprisingly adept at sniffing out lung cancer, results from a pilot project in Austria published on Wednesday suggested, potentially offering hope for earlier, life-saving diagnosis.

"Dogs have no problem identifying tumour patients," said Peter Errhalt, head of the pulmonology department at Krems hospital in northern Austria, one of the authors of the study.

The test saw dogs achieve a 70-percent success rate identifying cancer from 120 breath samples, a result so "encouraging" that a two-year study 10 times larger will now take place, Errhalt said.
Read More...
Moon

Moon is battered, reveals new gravity map

Sean Patterson
WebProNews
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:58 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/GSFC
A new gravity map of Earth's moon shows a record of billions of years of impacts on its surface. The new map, generated by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, is now the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. It will allow scientists to learn about the internal structure of the moon, its tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks, and craters.

"What this map tells us is that more than any other celestial body we know of, the moon wears its gravity field on its sleeve," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL Principal Investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "When we see a notable change in the gravity field, we can sync up this change with surface topography features such as craters, rilles or mountains."

The gravity map was created from data taken by two washing machine-sized spacecraft (GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, or "Ebb" and "Flow") orbiting the moon. The probes transmit radio signals to each other to precisely measure the distance between them while orbiting the moon. As they pass over areas of greater or lesser gravity on the moon, the distance between them shifts slightly.
Read More...
Info

Upwelling of deep ocean water adds more mercury to coastal fog

Brett Smith
RedOrbit
Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:24 UTC
Coastal Fog
© Kristina Wellbrock / Shutterstock
Scientists from California have linked rising levels of methylmercury in their state's coastal fog to upwelling from deep ocean water.

Lead researcher Peter Weiss-Penzias, an environmental toxicologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was quick to point out that the amount of the toxic mercury compound detected in coastal fog is not a direct public health concern.

"These are parts-per-trillion levels, so when we say elevated, that's relative to what was expected in atmospheric water," he said. "The levels measured in rain have always been fairly low, so the results from our first measurements in fog were surprising."

The team first recorded the elevated mercury levels in coastal fog back in 2011 and published their findings in the February 2012 edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The paper noted that the mercury levels detected in coastal fog were higher than those found in rain water and the upwelling of ocean water could be responsible.

In the summer of 2012, the team collected more samples of coastal fog along with water samples at different depths in Monterey Bay.

Weiss-Penzias said the new results, which were presented earlier this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, suggest an upwelling mechanism that facilitates the passage of methylmercury into coastal fog through evaporation.
Read More...