Science & TechnologyS


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How Blood Flow Force Protects Blood Vessels


ScienceDaily
Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
Most people know that exercise protects against heart attack and stroke, but researchers have spent 30 years unraveling the biochemistry behind the idea. One answer first offered by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center is that athletic hearts push blood through arteries with greater force, which alone triggers reactions that protect against dangerous clogs in blood vessels.

In the latest study out of Rochester, published recently in the journal Blood, researchers demonstrated that they are very close to understanding every step in one flow-sensitive chain reaction that protects arteries. Each step provides an opportunity to mimic with drugs the proven ability of fast, steady blood flow to open up blood vessels and avert the inflammation and blood clots that come with atherosclerosis.

Past research at the Medical Center and elsewhere had determined that two genes, Krüppel-like factor 2 (KLF2) and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS), are turned on by blood flow force to reverse atherosclerosis, but not how. The current study found for the first time that flow causes a structural change in the enzyme histone deacetylase 5 (HDAC5), which in turn influences whether the two key genes are turned on.
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Sherlock

New Species of Tyrannosaur Discovered in Southwestern U.S.


ScienceDaily
Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
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© David Baccadutre/New Mexico Museum of Natural History and ScienceThe skull of the holotype specimen (NMMNH P-27469) of Bistahieversor sealeyi on display in the Cretaceous Seacoast exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
New Mexico is known for Aztec ruins and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Paleontologists Thomas Williamson of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Thomas Carr of Carthage College is now bringing a new superstar to the state.

Bistahieversor sealeyi (pronounced: bistah-he-ee-versor see-lee-eye) is a new species of tyrannosaur discovered in the Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness of New Mexico. Tyrannosaurs include the famous meat-eating dinosaurs like T. rex, with their characteristic body and skull shape and their mouthful of ferocious teeth that make them easy for paleontologists and kids to recognize.

The skull and skeleton of Bistahieversor were collected in the first paleontological excavation from a federal wilderness area, and the specimen was airlifted from the badlands by a helicopter operated by the Air Wing of the New Mexico Army National Guard. "Bistahieversor sealeyi is the first valid new genus and species of tyrannosaur to be named from western North America in over 30 years," says Williamson.
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Rocket

Obama to drop Nasa moon mission in budget cutbacks

Sam Jones
Guardian.co.uk
Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:24 UTC
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© ReutersAstronaut Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 lunar mission in 1969. Nasa's hopes to return people to the moon by 2020 are likely to be scuppered in Barack Obama's budget.
Reports say planned human flights to the moon and Mars likely to be ditched in effort to rein in US deficit

Nasa's plans to send a manned mission to the moon and launch the US into a bold new era of space exploration are likely to remain on the ground today when Barack Obama unveils his budget.

The president wants to cut back or abandon 120 government programmes to help rein in the US deficit - among them the funding of the US space administration - as part of the $3.8tn (£2.4tn) budget.

According to the Washington Post, Obama will seek to shelve the $81bn Constellation programme, which called for a return to the moon by 2020 and human landings on Mars by the middle of the century. The plans were laid out by his predecessor, George Bush, in 2004.
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Pharoah

Egypt to soon announce King Tut DNA test results

Paul Schemm
Associated Press
Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:27 UTC
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© Associated Press, Ben Curtis, Pool, FileIn this Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007 file photo, Egypt's antiquities chief Dr. Zahi Hawass, center, supervises the removal of King Tut from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt.
Cairo - Egypt will soon reveal the results of DNA tests made on the world's most famous ancient king, the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun, to answer lingering mysteries over his lineage, the antiquities department said Sunday.

Speaking at a conference, archaeology chief Zahi Hawass said he would announce the results of the DNA tests and the CAT scans on Feb. 17. The results will be compared to those made of King Amenhotep III, who may have been Tutankamun's grandfather.

The effort is part of a wider program to check the DNA of hundreds of mummies to determine their identities and family relations. The program could help determine Tutankhamun's family lineage, which has long been a source of mystery.

The identity of Tut's parents is not firmly known. Many experts believe he is the son of Akhenaten, the 18th Dynasty pharaoh who tried to introduce monotheism to ancient Egypt almost 3,500 years ago, and one of Akhenaten's queens, Kiya. But others have suggested he was the son of a lesser known pharaoh who followed Akhenaten.

Tutankhamun was one of the last kings of Egypt's 18th Dynasty and ruled during a crucial, turmoil-filled period when Akhenaten's monotheism was ended and powers were returned to the priests of ancient Egypt's multiple deities.
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Telescope

Intense Moonlight


Space Weather
Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:02 UTC
Friday's night's full Moon was the biggest and brightest of 2010. "It certainly made an impression on me," says Martin McKenna of Maghera, Northern Ireland, "and not only because of its beauty in the sky. I decided to aim my camera at the ground for a different angle on the event." He snapped this picture using a Fujifilm S5600:

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© Martin McKenna - Maghera, Northern Ireland
"When the Moon emerged from behind a passing cloud, the land was transformed into an intense white spectacle, which got an instant 'wow' from me," he continued. "It looked like a giant spotlight was beaming down on Earth with an indescribable brilliance. These two images were taken between 02.00 and 02.30 UT and show with considerable accuracy how the landscape appeared to the naked eye."

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© Martin McKenna - Maghera, Northern Ireland
In Tucson, Arizona, where Pete Strasser regularly monitors the luminance of the Moon, Strasser says "this was the brightest full Moon I have measured, registering 0.040 foot-candles on my meter. All colors were readily visible to the naked eye."
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Sherlock

UK: Archaeologists Unearth Iron Age Settlement in Kent


BBC News
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:40 UTC
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© UnknownArchaeologists also found evidence of a medieval enclosure at the site
The remains of an Iron Age settlement have been unearthed by archaeologists working along the route of a new £1.3m water pipeline in Kent.

Evidence of a dwelling, postholes, pits, ancient hearths and pieces of pottery were found on land in Pembury.

South East Water plans to lay a 4.6km (2.9 mile) pipe between Kipping's Cross Service Reservoir and Pembury.

The archaeologists, who were employed by the firm to survey the route, will now record and preserve the finds.

The period known as the Iron Age took place in Britain between about 750BC and about AD40.
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Scientists Find Survival Factor for Keeping Nerve Cells Healthy


ScienceDaily
Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
Scientists at the Babraham Institute have discovered a novel survival factor whose rapid transport along nerve cells is crucial for keeping them alive. The same factor seems likely to be needed to keep our nerves healthy as we age.

These findings, published in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology, show that a molecule known as Nmnat2 provides a protective function; in its absence healthy, uninjured nerve cells start to degenerate and boosting levels of Nmnat2 can delay degeneration when the cells are injured. This suggests an exciting new therapeutic avenue for protecting nerves from disease and injury-induced degeneration.

This breakthrough by Drs Jon Gilley and Michael Coleman at Babraham, an institute of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), furthers our understanding of the basic biology of our nerves and provides new insight into the factors causing neurodegenerative diseases like Motor Neurone Disease and Multiple Sclerosis.
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Laptop

Benevolent hackers poke holes in e-banking

Jim Giles
New Scientist
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:40 UTC
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© Frazer HudsonSecurity could be lacking.
Online banking fraud doesn't just affect the naive. Last year, Robert Mueller, a director at the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, admitted he'd come within a mouse-click of being a victim himself. Now the extent of the problem has been brought into sharp relief, with computer scientists warning that banking culture is increasing the likelihood that customers are using vulnerable systems.

The convenience of online banking and electronic money has led to a revolution in the way we save and spend our earnings. Banking websites and payment systems are relentlessly targeted by criminals, though, so continuous improvements in security are needed to prevent fraud. But as was revealed at this week's Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference in Tenerife in the Canary Islands, some of the best-known security systems can still be compromised relatively easily.

All too often, banks' security systems are developed in secret, so their flaws are only identified when they are deployed, says Steven Murdoch, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge. This opens a window of opportunity for criminals.
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Blackbox

Firefly Mission to Study Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes

Patrick Barry
Science @ NASA
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:24 UTC
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© NASA/Robert KilgoreAn artist's concept of TGFs.
High-energy bursts of gamma rays typically occur far out in space, perhaps near black holes or other high-energy cosmic phenomena. So imagine scientists' surprise in the mid-1990s when they found these powerful gamma ray flashes happening right here on Earth, in the skies overhead.

They're called Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes, or TGFs, and very little is known about them. They seem to have a connection with lightning, but TGFs themselves are something entirely different.

"In fact," says Doug Rowland of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "before the 1990s nobody knew they even existed. And yet they're the most potent natural particle accelerators on Earth."

Individual particles in a TGF acquire a huge amount of energy, sometimes in excess of 20 mega-electron volts (MeV). In contrast, the colorful auroras that light up the skies at high latitudes are powered by particles with less than one thousandth as much energy.
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Telescope

Northern Lights


Space Weather
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:19 UTC
A solar wind stream hit Earth on January 30th. It was a minor gust, but enough to spark these Northern Lights over Tromsø, Norway:

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© Helge Mortensen
I was out taking some pictures of the landscape in full moonlight when the auroras decided to show up!" says photographer Helge Mortensen. "A 2.5 second exposure with my Canon 40D at ISO 800 nicely revealed the lights through the clouds."
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