Science & TechnologyS


Cow Skull

The Effects of Genetically Modified Foods on Animal Health

Rady Ananda
Global Research
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:06 UTC
In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto's GM maize.

All three varieties of GM corn, Mon 810, Mon 863 and NK 603, were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. Made public by European authorities in 2005, Monsanto's confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats that these researchers analyzed is the same data, ironically, that was used to approve them in different parts of the world.
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Fish

Relic reveals Noah's ark was circular

Maev Kennedy
UK Guardian
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:18 UTC
Noah's ark
© Brooklyn Museum/CorbisA 19th-century illustration by Currier & Ives shows the traditional vision of Noah’s ark.
That they processed aboard the enormous floating wildlife collection two-by-two is well known. Less familiar, however, is the possibility that the animals Noah shepherded on to his ark then went round and round inside.

According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft.

The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history while serving in the RAF from 1945 to 1948.

The relic was passed to his son Douglas, who took it to one of the few people in the world who could read it as easily as the back of a cornflakes box; he gave it to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, who translated its 60 lines of neat cuneiform script.

There are dozens of ancient tablets that have been found which describe the flood story but Finkel says this one is the first to describe the vessel's shape.
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Info

US: Plateau was ancient salt-making site

Dana M. Nichols
RecordNet
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:56 UTC
Image
© USGS
San Andreas, CA - Hundreds of basins carved into a football field-sized granite ledge in a remote Sierra Nevada wilderness are the remains of what may be the oldest manufacturing operation in North America, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study whose results were released in December.

The researchers concluded that the more than 350 basins three to four feet in diameter were used to evaporate salt from the briny flow of a nearby spring.

"The water was carried to the individual basins, probably in water-tight baskets, where it dried in the summer heat, leaving a salt residue on the basin floor," said Jim Moore, USGS geologist and co-author of the report.

"Such a large enterprise produced far more salt than was needed by the local tribe for cooking, preserving food, and attracting animals for hunting, and they had a large surplus of the valuable item left over for trade with other tribes."

Moore and other researchers estimate the site could have produced about 2.5 tons of salt per year.

At least some scholars are skeptical that the site could be the oldest or largest salt production operation on the continent.
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Camera

8% Blue Moon Eclipse


Space Weather
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:05 UTC
Blue moons--rare. Blue moons on New Year's Eve--really rare. A lunar eclipse of a Blue Moon on New Year's Eve--well, that's just ridiculous.

Image
© Calvin Hall
Yet that's exactly what happened on Dec. 31st in Europe, Asia, Africa and parts of Alaska. The Blue moon on New Year's Eve passed through the outskirts of Earth's shadow, producing this 8% lunar eclipse.
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Better Earth

Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'

Jonathan Leake
The Sunday Times
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:31 UTC
dolphins
Dolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps
Dolphins have been declared the world's second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as "non-human persons".

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.
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Saturn

Space Elevator: Bold idea could become reality by 2030

Dick Pelletier
Examiner
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:00 UTC
Welcome to the Liftport Space Elevator. Our first stop will be the Bigelow Sky Hotel where some of you will begin your vacation among the stars. We will then continue on to the GEO area, 22,300 miles high where the rest of you will board a Virgin Shuttlecraft and continue to your destinations. For your convenience, the elevator is Internet-enabled allowing contact with loved ones on Earth. The trip takes seven days, so relax in your luxury suite and enjoy the beautiful views from space."

Although this sounds like science fiction, and indeed for the past 30 years that is how most people viewed this audacious idea; but science has recently made huge advances in nanotech which will soon, experts say, provide all the materials necessary for this daring dream to come true.

The basic concept works like this: a rocket-launched satellite will drop a ribbon made from carbon nanotubes to a Pacific Ocean platform. The ribbon will extend 62,000 miles high, and powered by laser-generated electricity, will lift loads of people and freight into space at 120 mph.
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Chalkboard

NASA's next frontier: Venus, the moon, or an asteroid

Jennifer Guevin
CNET News
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:45 UTC
Image
© NASAWhich should it be? The moon, Venus, or a nearby asteroid?
NASA has chosen three options it will consider as its next target for future scientific space exploration--Venus, the moon, or an asteroid.

The three areas of focus are finalists in a competition designed to help the space agency determine where it should spend its time and money to get the most scientific value out of research about our solar system. It's part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, which already has two missions under way. The first is the New Horizons mission, a spacecraft that's currently on its way to Pluto and has already sent back images from a quick flyby of Jupiter. The second is called Juno, a large-scale survey of Jupiter that's planned for launch in 2011. This competition will determine the focus of New Frontiers' third mission.
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Chalkboard

Two Proteins Act as Molecular Tailors in DNA Repair


Science Daily
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:34 UTC
Every day tiny segments of our DNA are chipped or fragmented or get stuck together when they should really be pulled apart. But what our genome necessarily lacks in stability it makes up for with a phalanx of guards that monitor and repair the damage.

In new research in the journal Science, researchers at Rockefeller University and Harvard Medical School have pinpointed the role that two well-known proteins play in the repair of one of the most lethal types of DNA damage. The damage, known as inter-strand crosslinks, occurs when the two strands of the double helix are linked together, blocking replication and transcription.

"Our cells encounter, on average, 10 inter-strand crosslinks a day," says Agata Smogorzewska, head of the Laboratory of Genome Maintenance at Rockefeller University. "We suspected that these two proteins directly participated in the repair process. Until now, we knew that they localized to the sites of damage but we had no idea what they were doing there. This work breaks that barrier."

Comment: Chemo Does Not Cure: Often It Inflicts Damage and Spreads Cancer

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Chalkboard

Scientists Identify DNA That Regulates Antibody Production


Science Daily
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:31 UTC
Performance enhancers are the currency of a competitive society. But there's one that we have always had: For millions of years, segments of our DNA have improved the performance of our genome, revving up protein production at those times we need it most. New research from Rockefeller University and the University of Michigan Medical School now show that these genome enhancers regulate how our bodies make germ-fighting antibodies, molecules that keep savvy viruses and bacteria at bay.

The research, which appears this month in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, represents a major technological advance that will allow scientists to understand the role of enhancers in the immune system -- work that has stymied researchers for decades. "Many people left the field because working with antibody enhancers was so difficult," says F. Nina Papavasiliou, head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Biology at Rockefeller. "It seemed like there was no way around the problem."

Enhancers are short swaths of DNA that regulate genes from a distance, often megabases away. Generally, this distance from the genes they regulate makes enhancers hard to study. But immunoglobulin enhancers have been particularly problematic because of an additional twist: they are close to chromosome ends, which makes altering their local sequence especially difficult.
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Sun

Our sun's heliosphere is shrinking

Richard Gray
Telegraph.co.uk
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:00 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The protective bubble around the sun that helps to shield the Earth from harmful interstellar radiation is shrinking and getting weaker, Nasa scientists have warned.

New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade and is now at it lowest level since the space race began 50 years ago.

Scientists are baffled at what could be causing the barrier to shrink in this way and are to launch mission to study the heliosphere.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, will be launched from an aircraft on Sunday on a Pegasus rocket into an orbit 150,000 miles above the Earth where it will "listen" for the shock wave that forms as our solar system meets the interstellar radiation.

Dr Nathan Schwadron, co-investigator on the IBEX mission at Boston University, said: "The interstellar medium, which is part of the galaxy as a whole, is actually quite a harsh environment. There is a very high energy galactic radiation that is dangerous to living things.
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