Science & TechnologyS


Magic Wand

Dolphins' 'remarkable' recovery from injury offers important insights for human healing


Georgetown University Medical Center
Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:45 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Georgetown scientist teams up with dolphin experts to explore the sea animals' 'mysterious' wound healing abilities.

A Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) scientist who has previously discovered antimicrobial compounds in the skin of frogs and in the dogfish shark has now turned his attention to the remarkable wound healing abilities of dolphins.

A dolphin's ability to heal quickly from a shark bite with apparent indifference to pain, resistance to infection, hemorrhage protection, and near-restoration of normal body contour might provide insights for the care of human injuries, says Michael Zasloff, M.D., Ph.D.

For a "Letter" published today in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Zasloff, an adjunct professor at GUMC and former Dean of Research, interviewed dolphin handlers and marine biologists from around the world, and reviewed the limited literature available about dolphin healing to offer some new observations about what he calls the "remarkable" and "mysterious" ability of dolphins to heal.

"Much about the dolphin's healing process remains unreported and poorly documented," says Zasloff. "How does the dolphin not bleed to death after a shark bite? How is it that dolphins appear not to suffer significant pain? What prevents infection of a significant injury? And how can a deep, gaping wound heal in such a way that the animal's body contour is restored? Comparable injuries in humans would be fatal. "
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Sun

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

James Taylor
Forbes
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:26 UTC
satellite view of ice
© Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA's Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."
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Bad Guys

South Korean scientists create glowing dog: report

Jeremy Laurence
Reuters.com
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 04:51 UTC
South Korean scientists said on Wednesday they have created a glowing dog using a cloning technique that could help find cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, Yonhap news agency reported.

A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle, named Tegon and born in 2009, has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic, the report said.
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Meteor

Space scope spies soggy, stupendous Saturnian doughnut

Lester Haines
The Register
Tue, 26 Jul 2011 01:06 UTC
Incontinent moon squirts wetly onto ringed giant

satmoon
© The Register
The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory has discovered just where the water in Saturn's upper atmosphere comes from: a giant aqueous doughnut surrounding the planet, formed by H2O hosing from the moon Enceladus.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft previously spied the water plumes of Enceladus (see pic*), but until now scientists hadn't made the connection between these and Saturnian atmospheric water, first spotted in 1997 by the ESA's Infrared Space Observatory.

In fact, Enceladus's outpourings - estimated at 250kg per second - feed a massive torus which measures "more than 10 times the radius of Saturn", but is just one Saturn-radius thick. ESA explains: "Enceladus orbits the planet at a distance of about four Saturn radii, replenishing the torus with its jets of water."

The doughnut previously went undetected because its water vapour is transparent to visible light, but not to the infrared wavelengths Herschel can sniff.
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Beaker

Mitochondria share an ancestor with SAR11, a globally significant marine microbe


PhysOrg
Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:56 UTC
Mitochondria2 SAR11
© UnknownMarine bacteria called SAR11
A recent study by researchers at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and the Oregon State University provides strong evidence that mitochondria share a common evolutionary ancestor with a lineage of marine bacteria known as SAR11, arguably the most abundant group of microorganisms on Earth.

Billions of years ago, an astounding evolutionary event occurred: certain bacteria became obliged to live inside other cells, thus starting a chain of events that resulted in what is now the mitochondria, an organelle found in all eukaryotic cells.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Hawaii - Manoa (UHM) and the Oregon State University (OSU) provides strong evidence that mitochondria share a common evolutionary ancestor with a lineage of marine bacteria known as SAR11, arguably the most abundant group of microorganisms on Earth.

"This is a very exciting discovery," says Michael Rappe, Associate Researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at UHM. "The results that we present make sense in a lot of ways: the physiology of SAR11 makes them more apt to be dependent on other organisms, and based on the contemporary abundance of SAR11 in the global ocean, the ancestral lineage may have also been abundant in the ancient ocean, increasing encounters between this bacterial lineage with the host of the original symbiosis event."
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Telescope

A Dying Star's Last Gasps

Lisa-Joy Zgorski
Live Science
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 20:36 UTC
Image
© Gemini Observatory/AURAThe elegant beauty of this planetary nebula was discovered by an amateur astronomer and captured by the Gemini Observatory.
The image above depicts a recent discovery of a dying star's last gasps, an observation made by a team comprised of amateur and professional astronomers working together. Austrian amateur astronomer Matthias Kronberger and his team made the discovery of the nebula - shells of gas thrown out by some stars near the end of their lives - using the National Science Foundation-supported Gemini Observatory.
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Info

Gene May Explain 'Elephant Man' Disorder

Jocelyn Kaiser
Science Now
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:00 UTC
Elephant Man Disorder
© Proteus Research Foundation, UK; (inset) Royal London Hospital ArchivesShape shifter. The gene that gave Proteus syndrome to 16-year-old Jordan (wearing prosthetic legs) may also explain the Elephant Man's deformities.

Using new DNA sequencing techniques, researchers have tracked down the gene defect underlying a rare disease called Proteus syndrome that causes bone and skin tissue to grow to sometimes grotesque proportions. The mutation may explain the affliction of the Elephant Man, a deformed Englishman whose tragic life in the late 1800s has been portrayed on stage and film.

Proteus syndrome, named for the shape-shifting Greek sea god, is thought to affect only a few hundred people. Skin and other tissues grow abnormally, leading to enlarged feet, hands, and tumors that can cause pain and other problems and sometimes require amputation. Because the disease doesn't run in families, and only some parts of the body are affected, German dermatologist Rudolf Happle hypothesized in 1987 that instead of resulting from an inherited mutation that permeates all the cells of a new embryo, it might be caused by a spontaneous mutation that appears in one cell early in development. The resulting person would then be a mix of normal cells and ones with the mutation. (Happle speculates the mutation would be fatal to an embryo if it affected all cells.)

But confirming that "mosaic" hypothesis hasn't been easy because geneticists could not follow their typical strategy of tracking the gene by studying families in which some members inherit the disease and others don't, says Leslie Biesecker, chief of the National Human Genome Research Institute's Genetic Diseases Research Branch in Bethesda, Maryland, who has studied Proteus patients for 16 years.
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Magic Wand

Birds Massage Each Other

Jennifer Viegas
Discover News
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:40 UTC
Birds Preening
© Chris van RooyenThe green woodhoopoe preening.

Some birds massage each other, according to a new study that found the stress levels of both masseuses and their subjects are lowered after their quality time together.

The study, published in the latest issue of Royal Society Biology Letters, further determined that subordinates seem to enjoy massages the most when they are given by their superiors.

It may be that subordinates are more likely to be the stressed ones in a group," Andy Radford, author of the study, told Physorg.com. "So if they get a massage from a usually threatening dominant individual, it's particularly relaxing, because it means they're accepted and so feel secure."

Radford, a researcher in the School of Biological Sciences at the Unviversity of Bristol, focused his attention on green woodhoopoes, large tropical birds native to Africa. After receiving massage-like grooming by another bird, they reduce their activity levels and relax in a sort of happy stupor for a noticeable period.

Other birds engage in such behavior too, apparently even with other species. Check this out:
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Info

Cancers Are Newly Evolved Parasitic Species, Biologist Argues

Rebecca Boyle
PopSci
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:06 UTC
Cancer Cells
© Wellcome Images Breast Cancer Cells Dividing - This confocal micrograph shows two human breast cancer cells dividing. The cell at the top is at prophase, showing the condensing chromosomes prior to their separation. The cell at the bottom is in anaphase, where the chromosomes are in the process of pulling apart.

Cancer patients may feel like they have alien creatures or parasites growing inside their bodies, robbing them of health and vigor. According to one cell biologist, that's exactly right. The formation of cancers is really the evolution of a new parasitic species.

Just as parasites do, cancer depends on its host for sustenance, which is why treatments that choke off tumors can be so effective. Thanks to this parasite-host relationship, cancer can grow however it wants, wherever it wants. Cancerous cells do not depend on other cells for survival, and they develop chromosome patterns that are distinct from their human hosts, according to Peter Duesberg, a molecular and cell biology professor at the University of California-Berkeley. As such, they're novel species.

He argues that the prevailing theories of carcinogenesis, or cancer formation, are wrong. Rather than springing from a few genetic mutations that spur cells to grow at an uncontrolled pace, cancerous tumors grow from a disruption of entire chromosomes, he says. Chromosomes contain many genes, so mis-copies, breaks and omissions lead to tens of thousands of genetic changes. The result is a cell with completely new traits: A new phenotype.
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Info

First Asteroid Companion of Earth Discovered at Last

Charles Q. Choi
Space.com
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:01 UTC
2010 TK7
© Paul Wiegert, The University of Western OntarioThis almost edge-on view of the Earth's orbit and that of the Trojan asteroid 2010 TK7 shows (in green) the vertical motion of the asteroid relative to the Earth over the course of several years. The asteroid was discovered by NASA's WISE telescope and is the first confirmed Trojan asteroid in Earth's Lagrange points.

The first in a long-sought type of asteroid companion to Earth has now been discovered, a space rock that always dances in front of the planet along its orbital path, just beyond its reach.

The asteroid, called 2010 TK7, is nearly 1,000 feet (300 meters) across and currently leading the Earth by about 50 million miles (80 million kilometers).

The asteroid is the first in a category known as Earth's Trojans, a family of space rocks that could potentially be easier to reach than the moon, even though its member asteroids can be dozens of times more distant, researchers said. Such asteroids, which have long been suspected but not confirmed until now, could one day be valuable destinations for missions, especially loaded as they might be with elements rare on Earth's surface, they added.

To imagine where Trojan asteroids are, picture the sun and Earth as being two points in a triangle whose sides are equal in length. The other point of such a triangle is known as a Trojan point, or a Lagrangian point after the mathematician who discovered them. The sun and Earth have two such points, one leading ahead of Earth, known as its L-4 point, and one trailing behind, its L-5 point.
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