Science & TechnologyS


Radar

How Cocaine Scrambles Genes in the Brain

Maia Szalavitz
Time
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:36 UTC
Image
© Mark Karrass / Corbis
It's hardly a secret that taking cocaine can change the way you feel and the way you behave. Now, a study published in the Jan. 8 issue of Science shows how it also alters the way the very genes in your brain operate. Understanding this process could eventually lead to new treatments for the 1.4 million Americans with cocaine problems, and millions more around the world.

The study, which was conducted in mice, is part of a hot new area of research called epigenetics, which explores how experiences and environmental exposures affect genes. "This is a major step in understanding the development of cocaine addiction and a first step towards generating ideas for how we might use epigenetic regulation to modulate the development of addiction," says Peter Kalivas, Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina, who was not associated with the study.
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Magnify

Silencing Brain Cells with Yellow and Blue Light


ScienceDaily
Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:00 UTC
Image
© Arthur Toga/UCLA School of MedicineNeuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., recently developed a way to turn off abnormally active brain cells using multiple colors of light.
Neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a powerful new class of tools to reversibly shut down brain activity using different colors of light. When targeted to specific neurons, they could potentially lead to new treatments for abnormal brain activity associated with disorders including chronic pain, epilepsy, brain injury and Parkinson's disease.

Such disorders could best be treated by silencing, rather than stimulating abnormal brain activity. These new tools, or 'super silencers,' exert exquisite control over the timing in which overactive neural circuits are shut down --an effect that is not possible with existing drugs or other conventional therapies.

The National Science Foundation's division of mathematical sciences supports the research through a grant to the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative, which is comprised of four research groups in the Boston area focused on questions in neuroscience. The collaborative brings together researchers with expertise ranging from experimental design to mathematical modeling. The research paper, "High-Performance Genetically-Targetable Optical Neural Silencing by Light-Driven Proton Pumps," appears in the Jan. 7 issue of the journal Nature.
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Info

Golden ratio discovered in a quantum world

Prof. Alan Tennant
Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:27 UTC
Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB), in cooperation with colleagues from Oxford and Bristol Universities, as well as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, have for the first time observed a nanoscale symmetry hidden in solid state matter. They have measured the signatures of a symmetry showing the same attributes as the golden ratio famous from art and architecture. The research team is publishing these findings in Science on the 8. January.

On the atomic scale particles do not behave as we know it in the macro-atomic world. New properties emerge which are the result of an effect known as the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In order to study these nanoscale quantum effects the researchers have focused on the magnetic material cobalt niobate. It consists of linked magnetic atoms, which form chains just like a very thin bar magnet, but only one atom wide and are a useful model for describing ferromagnetism on the nanoscale in solid state matter.
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Calculator

Pi calculated to 'record number' of digits


BBC News
Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:00 UTC
Pi number
© BBC NewsPi is an irrational number, meaning its digits go on forever
A computer scientist claims to have computed the mathematical constant pi to nearly 2.7 trillion digits, some 123 billion more than the previous record.

Fabrice Bellard used a desktop computer to perform the calculation, taking a total of 131 days to complete and check the result.

This version of pi takes over a terabyte of hard disk space to store.
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Better Earth

Earth 'to be wiped out' by supernova explosion

Ben Leach
The Telegraph
Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:15 UTC
The Earth could soon be wiped out by the explosion of a star more than 3,000 light years away, according to American scientists.

T Pyxidis
© NASAT Pyxidis
The star, called T Pyxidis, is set to self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.

Although the star is thought to be around 3,260 light-years away - a fairly short distance in galactic terms - the blast from the thermonuclear explosion could strip away the Earth's ozone layer, the scientists said.

Astronomers from Villanova University, Philadelphia, in the US, said the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite has shown them that T Pyxidis is really two stars, one called a white dwarf that is sucking in gas and steadily growing. When it reaches a critical mass it will blow itself to pieces.
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Satellite

Ancient Mars lakes revealed in new images

Tariq Malik
Space.com
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:53 UTC
Lakes might have been habitats for life, if there ever was life on Mars
mars lakes
© Nasa/JPLThis close-up view of Mars zooms in on channels connecting ancient depressions, suggesting that lakes once drained into each other about 3 billion years ago, researchers say.

Vast lakes of melted ice existed on Mars more recently than previously thought during a warm, wet spell on the red planet, new images suggest.

The lakes might have been habitats for life, if there ever was life on Mars. So far, however, there is no firm evidence of any Martian biology, past or present.

The photographs, taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, reveal a network of winding channels linking together several depressions in the Martian surface. Researchers say those channels could only have been caused by Martian lake water running between the depressions about 3 billion years ago - which is 1 billion years more recent than earlier estimates.
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Cell Phone

Google to launch Nexus One smartphone

Matt Warman
The Daily Telegraph
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:57 UTC
Google smart phone
© TwitterThe Google Nexus One is expected to be released in early January
Google is to launch its first official mobile phone, the Nexus One, in a move that will see the search giant directly challenge the dominance of Apple's iPhone.

Called the Nexus One, Google will unveil the handset at its Silicon Valley headquarters in America tomorrow, and the device is set to go on sale there from January 12. A UK launch date has not yet been announced, but it is likely to follow early this year.
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Telescope

NASA's new planet-hunting telescope finds two new mystery objects, unlike stars or planets

Seth Borenstein
Associated Press
Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:18 UTC
Washington - NASA's new planet-hunting telescope has found two mystery objects that are too hot to be planets and too small to be stars.

The Kepler Telescope, launched in March, discovered the two new heavenly bodies, each circling its own star. Telescope chief scientist Bill Borucki of NASA said the objects are thousands of degrees hotter than the stars they circle. That means they probably aren't planets. They are bigger and hotter than planets in our solar system, including dwarf planets.

"The universe keeps making strange things stranger than we can think of in our imagination," said Jon Morse, head of astrophysics for NASA.
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Sherlock

New Tomb Found in Ancient Egyptian Grounds


Myanmar News
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:59 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Archaeologists in Egypt have dug into what they are describing as the largest known tomb south of Cairo.

The tomb, which is situated in the ancient necropolis of Sakkara, dates back 2,500 years.

Sakkara was the burial ground for Egypt's ancient capital.

The tomb is one of two newly discovered tombs found by an Egyptian team and is said to contain important artefacts within its limestone rock walls.

Ancient coffins, skeletons and the mummies of eagles have already been discovered in the small rooms and passageways of the tomb.
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Health

Vitamin C 'Cures' Mice With Accelerated Aging Disease


Science Daily
Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:58 UTC
A new research discovery published in the January 2010 print issue of the FASEB Journal suggests that treatments for disorders that cause accelerated aging, particularly Werner's syndrome, might come straight from the family medicine chest. In the research report, a team of Canadian scientists shows that vitamin C stops and even reverses accelerated aging in a mouse model of Werner's syndrome, but the discovery may also be applicable to other progeroid syndromes.

People with Werner's syndrome begin to show signs of accelerated aging in their 20s and develop age-related diseases and generally die before the age of 50.

"Our study clearly indicates that a healthy organism or individuals with no health problems do not require a large amount of vitamin C in order to increase their lifespan, especially if they have a balanced diet and they exercise," said Michel Lebel, Ph.D., co-author of the study from the Centre de Recherche en Cancerologie in Quebec, Canada. "An organism or individual with a mutation in the WRN gene or any gene affected by the WRN protein, and thus predisposes them to several age-related diseases, may benefit from a diet with the appropriate amount of vitamin C."
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