Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Galactic 'spaghetti monster' powered by magnetic fields

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:25 UTC
Long-lived magnetic fields are sustaining a mammoth network of spaghetti-like gas filaments around a black hole, a new study suggests. Previously, it was not clear what prevented the delicate filaments from being destroyed by competing gravitational forces.

galaxy NCG 1275
©Fabian et al./NASA
Filaments of gas ejected from the centre of the galaxy NCG 1275 may not be able to form stars, perhaps explaining why massive galaxies don't get as big as they should

The black hole lies at the heart of a large galaxy known as NGC 1275, which itself lies near the centre of a cluster of galaxies called Perseus.

As the black hole sucks in gas from its surroundings, it powers jets of matter that produce bubbles of energetic particles in the surrounding cluster gas. As these bubbles grow and rise, cooled gas from NGC 1275's core gets drawn into long tendrils in their wake, like the strings that trail behind balloons.

Until now, no one was sure quite how old these gas filaments were or how they avoided being torn apart by the galaxy cluster's immense gravitational forces. "Quite what the filaments are and how they are produced hasn't been known," says study author Andrew Fabian of Cambridge University in the UK.

But Hubble Space Telescope images used in the study, the most detailed yet taken of the galaxy, are changing that.
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Magnify

Phoenix microscope takes first image of Martian dust particle


Small Times
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:02 UTC
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever image of a single particle of Mars' ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope.

The particle -- shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen from another world -- is a rounded particle about one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across. It is a speck of the dust that cloaks Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that regularly envelop the planet and produce Mars' distinctive red soil.

mars dust
©AFM
This color image is a three dimensional (3D) view of a digital elevation map of a sample collected by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Atomic Force Microscope.
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Bulb

Hydrogels provide scaffolding for growth of bone cells

Jocelyn Duffy
EurekAlert
Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:33 UTC
Hyaluronic hydrogels developed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers may provide a suitable scaffolding to enable bone regeneration. The hydrogels, created by Newell Washburn, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski and Jeffrey Hollinger, have proven to encourage the growth of preosteoblast cells, cells that aid the growth and development of bone. Doctoral student Sidi Bencherif will present this research, Sunday, Aug. 17 at the 236th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia.
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Light Sabers

Army Moves Ahead With Mobile Laser Cannon


Wired.com
Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:44 UTC
The Army is moving ahead with plans to mount a laser cannon on a massive, 35-ton-plus truck.

hell gun
©Wired.com

The service just handed Boeing a $36 million contract to "continue developing a truck-mounted, high-energy laser weapon system that will destroy rockets, artillery shells and mortar rounds," according to a company statement.

Under the High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) Phase II contract, awarded Aug. 15, Boeing will complete the design of, then build, test and evaluate, a rugged beam control system on a Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck. Boeing also will develop the system-engineering requirements for the entire HEL TD laser weapon system.
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Info

Stem cells could allow "blood farms," company says

Maggie Fox
Reuters
Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:39 UTC
Embryonic stem cells can be used to grow vats of red blood cells, which could lead to the creation of "farms" that could provide limitless sources of blood, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

The team at Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology hopes the finding might help save the struggling company, which is desperately seeking investors to keep it afloat.

"I think it's really a big break for us," said Dr. Robert Lanza, scientific director of the company, one of a few commercial ventures trying to make a business out of the emerging stem cell field.

Stem cells are the body's master cells, replenishing various cells and tissues as they die. Stem cells taken from days-old embryos are especially powerful, with the ability to produce any cell type.
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Info

Chemical Liberated By Leaky Gut May Allow HIV To Infect The Brain, Scientists Find


Science Daily
Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:34 UTC
In up to 20 percent of people infected with HIV, the virus manages to escape from the bloodstream and cross into the brain, resulting in HIV-associated dementia and other cognitive disorders. Now, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found strong evidence that a component of the cell walls of intestinal bacteria - a chemical present in high levels in the blood of HIV-infected people - helps HIV to penetrate the usually-impregnable blood brain barrier (BBB).

Image
©Albert Einstein College of Medicine
BBB breakdown: The slide at left, above, shows a brain section of a control (non-HIV-infected) mouse following exposure to LPS. Proteins (stained yellow) lining the BBB exhibit some breaks but are relatively uncompromised.

The findings, published in the August issue of the Journal of Virology, could lead to strategies for preventing HIV from entering the brain and causing serious complications.

"Previous research has suggested that it's not individual HIV viruses that get into the brain but rather HIV-infected immune cells known as monocytes," says Dr. Harris Goldstein, director of the Einstein-Montefiore Medical Center for AIDS Research and senior author of the study. "Using an animal model, we wanted to find out first of all whether being infected with HIV enables monocytes to do what they don't usually do - escape from blood vessels and enter brain tissue."
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Telescope

Astronomers Find Unusual New Denizen Of The Solar System


Science Daily
Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:49 UTC
A "minor planet" with the prosaic name 2006 SQ372 is just over two billion miles from Earth, a bit closer than the planet Neptune. But this lump of ice and rock is beginning the return leg of a 22,500-year journey that will take it to a distance of 150 billion miles, nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, according to a team of researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II).

Image
©N. Kaib
The orbit of the newly discovered solar system object SQ372 (blue), in comparison to the orbits of Neptune, Pluto, and Sedna (white, green, red). The location of the Sun is marked by the yellow dot at the center. The inset panel shows an expanded view, including the orbits of Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter inside the orbit of Neptune. Even on this expanded scale, the size of Earth's orbit would be barely distinguishable from the central dot.

The discovery of this remarkable object was reported today in Chicago, at an international symposium titled "The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Asteroids to Cosmology." A paper describing the discovery technique and the properties of 2006 SQ372 is being prepared for submission to The Astrophysical Journal.

The orbital paths of the major planets are nearly circular, but the orbit of 2006 SQ372 is an ellipse that is four times longer than it is wide, said University of Washington astronomer Andrew Becker, who led the discovery team. The only known object with a comparable orbit is Sedna -- a distant, Pluto-like dwarf planet discovered in 2003 -- but 2006 SQ372's orbit takes it more than one-and-a-half times further from the Sun, and its orbital period is nearly twice as long.

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Calculator

Aboriginal Kids Can Count Without Numbers


Science Daily
Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:51 UTC
Knowing the words for numbers is not necessary to be able to count, according to a new study of aboriginal children by UCL (University College London) and the University of Melbourne. The study of the aboriginal children - from two communities which do not have words or gestures for numbers - found that they were able to copy and perform number-related tasks.

Image
©iStockphoto/Dan Talson
A new study of the aboriginal children -- from two communities which do not have words or gestures for numbers -- found that they were able to copy and perform number-related tasks.

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that we possess an innate mechanism for counting, which may develop differently in children with dyscalculia.

Professor Brian Butterworth, lead author from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, says: "Recently, an extreme form of linguistic determinism has been revived which claims that counting words are needed for children to develop concepts of numbers above three. That is, to possess the concept of 'five' you need a word for five. Evidence from children in numerate societies, but also from Amazonian adults whose language does not contain counting words, has been used to support this claim.
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Magnet

Sloshing Inside Earth Changes Protective Magnetic Field

Jeremy Hsu
Space.com
Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:31 UTC
Something beneath the surface is changing Earth's protective magnetic field, which may leave satellites and other space assets vulnerable to high-energy radiation.

The gradual weakening of the overall magnetic field can take hundreds and even thousands of years. But smaller, more rapid fluctuations within months may leave satellites unprotected and catch scientists off guard, new research finds.
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Display

Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games


The TimesOnline
Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:21 UTC
'Emily' will set a new precedent for photo-realistic characters in video games and films, says her creator, Image Metrics

Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology.

Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated.

She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.

Researchers at a Californian company which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films started with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down down the facial movements down into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a 'control system'.

Comment: Have a look at the following marketing presentation by Image Metrics - to fully appreciate the implications of the above article.

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