Science & TechnologyS


Heart

Embryo heartbeat drives stem cell creation


United Press International
Tue, 19 May 2009 20:38 UTC
U.S. medical scientists say their discovery that an embryo's heartbeat drives blood cell formation might lead to new treatments for blood diseases.

Biologists have long wondered why the embryonic heart begins beating so early, before tissues actually need to be infused with blood.
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Rocket

Rendezvous around the Moon


British Broadcasting Corporation
Tue, 19 May 2009 01:04 UTC
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The moonshot architecture took a while to emerge
Exactly 40 years ago, Apollo 10 blasted off Earth; its mission in the words of Commander Tom Stafford "to sort out the unknowns and pave the way for a lunar landing". Continuing his series of essays marking the 40th anniversary of the moonshots, Dr Christopher Riley reflects on Nasa's method for landing on the Moon and the Apollo legacy of space rendezvous.
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Info

Peruvian Stalagmites Hold Clues To Climate Change


ScienceDaily
Tue, 19 May 2009 00:53 UTC
How will the Netherlands, dominated by water, be affected by future climate change? Dutch researcher Martin van Breukelen hopes to answer that question by analyzing stalagmites from the South American Amazon tributaries in Peru as a way to reconstruct climate changes in the past.
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Bizarro Earth

Pollution Can Change Your DNA in 3 Days, Study Suggests

Ker Than
National Geographic News
Mon, 18 May 2009 17:34 UTC
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Breathing in polluted air may wreak havoc on our DNA, reprogramming genes in as few as three days and causing increased rates of cancer and other diseases.

So says a new study that tracked DNA damage in 63 steel-foundry workers in Brescia, Italy, who, under their normal factory conditions, were exposed to particulate matter.

The same damage may occur in city dwellers exposed to normal air, the researchers say.

Particulate matter includes suspended, tiny bits of dust, metal, or soot in the air, which can lodge deep in the lungs. Exposure to the substance has been linked to respiratory diseases, lung cancer, and heart problems.

Scientists know little about how inhaling particulate matter can cause health problems, according to lead study author Andrea Baccarelli of the University of Milan.
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Magnify

Life's First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory

Brandon Keim
wired.com
Mon, 18 May 2009 17:45 UTC
A fundamental but elusive step in the early evolution of life on Earth has been replicated in a laboratory.

Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made. Until now, they couldn't explain how these ingredients might have formed.

"It's like molecular choreography, where the molecules choreograph their own behavior," said organic chemist John Sutherland of the University of Manchester, co-author of a study in Nature Wednesday.
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Info

USA Could Lose New Moon Race


Space Daily
Mon, 18 May 2009 00:23 UTC
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© UnknownChina and India have both expressed interest in sending astronauts to the Moon. Former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has spoken of the possibility a Chinese manned lunar mission by 2016.
The USA could lose a new "race to the Moon" with China, according to a space analyst. Dr Morris Jones, an Australian writer and space analyst, claims that America is losing its strategic lead in spaceflight. He claims that a rapidly advancing Chinese space program will soon have the capability to send Chinese astronauts to the Moon.

In his latest book, The New Moon Race (Rosenberg Publishing, Australia), Jones outlines the steady development of spaceflight trends around the world, and spotlights the growing strength of Asian space programs.
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Info

Spirit Has Good And Bad News


Mars Daily
Mon, 18 May 2009 00:27 UTC
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© SPX
Spirit is embedded in loose, soft terrain on the west side of Home Plate. There is a real risk the rover may be high-centered (underside touching) on a small mound of rocks right under the belly of the rover. Additionally, a left wheel motor stall occurred during the last rover motion on Sol 1899 (May 6, 2009). No motion has been commanded since.

The project is engaged in a recovery activity. This involves extensive remote sensing observations by the rover of the local soil characteristics, and ground testing using the surface system testbed rover in the sandbox at JPL.

There has been no recurrence of the anomalous behavior that happened between Sol 1872 (April 9, 2009) and Sol 1881 (April 18, 2009). There is still no explanation for the previous anomalies, and the investigation is continuing.
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Magnet

Is Everything Made of Mini Black Holes?

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Thu, 14 May 2009 16:02 UTC
black holes
© Coyne and Cheng
In 1971 physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that there might be "mini" black holes all around us that were created by the Big Bang. The violence of the rapid expansion following the beginning of the Universe could have squeezed concentrations of matter to form miniscule black holes, so small they can't even be seen in a regular microscope. But what if these mini black holes were everywhere, and in fact, what if they make up the fabric of the universe? A new paper from two researchers in California proposes this idea.
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Telescope

Astronauts complete tricky Hubble surgery

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Sun, 17 May 2009 04:08 UTC
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© NASAAstronaut Michael Good saluted his crewmates on Friday during the second spacewalk of Atlantis' mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. On Saturday, astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel emerged to tackle one of the most challenging tasks of the mission, the repair of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys
In an orbital first, astronauts opened up and installed new electronics on one of the Hubble Space Telescope's most important instruments on Saturday. But NASA must now wait for the results of a battery of tests to see if the ambitious repair job was a success.

The space shuttle Atlantis is currently orbiting Earth on an 11-day mission to refurbish Hubble and extend its life until at least 2014. This is the fifth and last mission to service the telescope, which NASA hopes will leave Hubble with its best vision yet.

After two days of spacewalks that ran over-schedule, astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel made short work of the repair of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), expected to be one of the most challenging tasks of the mission.
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Bizarro Earth

How Neanderthals met a grisly fate: devoured by humans

Robin McKie
Guardian.co.uk/The Observer
Sun, 17 May 2009 02:16 UTC
A fossil discovery bears marks of butchering similar to those made when cutting up a deer

One of science's most puzzling mysteries - the disappearance of the Neanderthals - may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert.

The controversial suggestion follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

Fernando Rozzi, of Paris's Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, said the jawbone had probably been cut into to remove flesh, including the tongue. Crucially, the butchery was similar to that used by humans to cut up deer carcass in the early Stone Age. "Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them," Rozzi said.
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