Science & TechnologyS


Chalkboard

A Chip For The Eye? Artificial Vision Enhancers Being Put To The Test


Science Daily
Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:02 UTC
Visually impaired or blind patients with degenerative retina conditions would be very happy if they were able to regain mobility, find their way around, be able to lead an independent life and to recognize faces and read again. These wishes were documented by a survey conducted by a research team ten years ago to find out what patients' expectations of electronic retina prostheses (retina implants) were.

Today these wishes look set to become reality, as the presentations to be given at the international symposium "Artificial Vision" on 19 September 2009 at the Wissenschaftszentrum Bonn demonstrate. The symposium is being staged by the Retina Implant Foundation and the Pro Retina Stiftung zur Verhütung von Blindheit (Pro Retina Foundation for the Prevention of Blindness), a foundation of the patients' organization Pro Retina Deutschland e.V.
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Family

Pediatric Strokes More Than Twice As Common As Previously Reported


Science Daily
Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:57 UTC
Imaging studies along with diagnostic codes on medical charts show that the rate of strokes in infants and children is two to four times higher than commonly thought, researchers report in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

"Traditional methods using diagnostic codes work fairly well to identify stroke in studies on adults, but they miss a large proportion of cases when applied to infants and children," said Heather J. Fullerton, M.D., senior author of the study and associate professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (USCF).

The inaccurate count occurs because some coders aren't use to applying stroke codes to children or are due to typing errors.

Suspecting that childhood strokes might be under-counted in research based on diagnostic codes alone, researchers from UCSF analyzed the records of 2.3 million children from 0 - 19 years old enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente managed care plan in Northern California from1993 - 2003.
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Evil Rays

HG Wells's Birthday: Google UFO Doodles Explained


Telegraph.co.uk
Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:37 UTC
Google UFO
© GoogleGoogle has revealed that its alien-themed doodles are a tribute to author HG Wells, who wrote 'War of the Worlds'
Herbert George Wells, who wrote the famous science fiction novel War of the Worlds, "encouraged fantastical thinking about what is possible, on this planet and beyond", said Google in a blog post.

For weeks, web users have speculated about the meaning of Google's mysterious doodles. The first appeared on September 5, and showed a flying saucer hovering over the Google logo and "abducting" the letter "O". Google issued a teaser message on its Twitter account, which translated as "All your O belong to us", a nod to Zero Wing, a cult Japanese video game. Clicking on the logo took web users through to a page of search results for the term "unexplained phenomenon".
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Blackbox

"Unexpected" Man Found Amid Ancient Priestesses' Tombs

John Roach
National Geographic
Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:48 UTC
Unexpected Man 1
© Luis Jaime Castillo ButtersA gilded mask found on the floor of a pre-Inca Mache tomb in Peru is similar to another one affixed to a nearby coffin
In an "unexpected" discovery, a rattle-wielding elite male has been found buried among powerful priestesses of the pre-Inca Moche society in Peru, archaeologists announced Monday.

Surrounded by early "smoke machines" as well as human and llama bones, the body was among several buried inside a unique double-chambered tomb that dates back to A.D. 850, said archaeologist Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, of the Catholic University of Peru in Lima.
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Meteor

What Do Dinosaurs And The Maya Have In Common?


Science Daily
Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:01 UTC
Mayapan
© iStockphoto/John HakThe main pyramid at Mayapan
One of the world's most famous asteroid craters, the Chicxulub crater, has been the subject of research for about twenty years. The asteroid impact that formed it probably put an end to the dinosaurs and helped mammals to flourish.

Together with an Anglo-American team, an ETH Zurich researcher has studied the most recent deposits that filled the crater. The results provide accurate dating of the limestones and a valuable basis for archaeologists to research the Maya.

The discovery of the Chicxulub asteroid crater was detective work: in 1980, based on iridium anomalies in clay sediments - which could only be formed extraterrestrially - the American physicist Walter Alvarez postulated a devastating asteroid impact at the transition from the Cretaceous to the Paleogene around 65 million years ago.
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Sun

Approaching Sunspot


Space Weather
Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:47 UTC
Image
© NASA
NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft stationed over the sun's eastern limb is monitoring an active region not yet visible from Earth. STEREO's extreme ultraviolet telescope captured this image on Sept. 19th.

The tangle of hot, magnetized plasma circled above almost certainly overlies a large new-cycle sunspot. We'll soon find out. The sun's rotation is turning the active region toward Earth and it could pop over the sun's eastern limb as early as Sept. 21st. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments.
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Magnify

Protein Helps Distinguish Chromosome Ends from DNA Breaks


ScienceDaily
Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:00 UTC
The Stowers Institute's Baumann Lab has demonstrated how human cells protect chromosome ends from misguided repairs that can lead to cancer. The work, published in The EMBO Journal, a publication of the European Molecular Biology Organization, follows the team's 2007 in vitro demonstration of the role of the hRAP1 protein in preventing chromosome ends from being fused to new DNA breaks.

Chromosomes are linear. Their ends (called telomeres) should look like DNA breaks to the proteins that repair them. But somehow, cells are able to distinguish chromosome ends from DNA breaks. In this work, the team demonstrated that the human RAP1 protein plays a key role in preventing chromosome ends from being fused to new DNA breaks. Chromosome end fusions result in genomic instability, which can cause cancer. These findings suggest that RAP1 plays a critical role in cancer prevention in humans.

"Protecting naturally occurring chromosome ends from erosion and fusions may increase longevity and reduce cancer risk," said Jay Sarthy, formerly a graduate student in the Baumann Lab and lead author on the paper. "A protein that protects chromosome ends may provide an attractive target for drugs that can help to stave off aging and cancer."
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Blackbox

Wind, not water, may explain Red Planet's hue

Ker Than
New Scientist
Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:13 UTC
Image
© NASA/ESA/Hubble TeamMars is red now (left), but it may have looked charcoal (right) in the past
Mars's distinctive red hue may be the result of thousands of years of wind-borne sand particles colliding with one another - and not rust, a new study argues.

Scientists generally agree that Mars's red colour is caused when a dark form of iron called magnetite oxidises into a reddish-orange form called haematite.

Just how the transformation came about is a matter of debate. Many researchers say water caused the oxidation. But some argue that hydrogen peroxide and ozone, which might be created when ultraviolet light breaks down carbon dioxide and oxygen in the Martian atmosphere, could be to blame.

Now, planetary scientist Jonathan Merrison of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues say the trigger may be wind.
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Satellite

Probe gets clearest glimpse yet of cosmic dawn

David Shiga
New Scientist
Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:05 UTC
The Planck spacecraft has obtained its first peek at the afterglow of the big bang, revealing it in unprecedented detail. Its first map of the entire sky is set to be complete in about six months.

The European Space Agency spacecraft was launched into space on 14 May. It is observing the glow of hot gas from just 380,000 years after the big bang - about 13.73 billion years ago - called the cosmic microwave background.

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Attention

Evidence Points to Conscious 'Metacognition' in Some Nonhuman Animals


University at Buffalo News
Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:16 UTC
Some animals may be able to reflect upon their states of mind

Image
© UnknownDolphins like Natua, pictured here, may share with humans the ability reflect upon their states of mind, says UB researcher David Smith.
Buffalo, New York -- J. David Smith, Ph.D., a comparative psychologist at the University at Buffalo who has conducted extensive studies in animal cognition, says there is growing evidence that animals share functional parallels with human conscious metacognition -- that is, they may share humans' ability to reflect upon, monitor or regulate their states of mind.

Smith makes this conclusion in an article published the September issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Science (Volume 13, Issue 9). He reviews this new and rapidly developing area of comparative inquiry, describing its milestones and its prospects for continued progress.
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