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Stem Cell Researchers Create Heart And Blood Cells From Reprogrammed Skin Cells


sciencedaily.com
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:32 UTC
Stem cell researchers at UCLA were able to grow functioning cardiac cells using mouse skin cells that had been reprogrammed into cells with the same unlimited properties as embryonic stem cells.

The finding is the first to show that induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells, which don't involve the use of embryos or eggs, can be differentiated into the three types of cardiovascular cells needed to repair the heart and blood vessels.
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Cloud Lightning

NASA Spacecraft Tracks Raging Saturn Storm


sciencedaily.com
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:23 UTC
As a powerful electrical storm rages on Saturn with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than those found on Earth, the Cassini spacecraft continues its five-month watch over the dramatic events.

Scientists with NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission have been tracking the visibly bright, lightning-generating storm--the longest continually observed electrical storm ever monitored by Cassini.



Saturn storms
©NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
It is no Great Red Spot, but these two side-by-side views show the longest-lived electrical storm yet observed on Saturn by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The view at left was created by combining images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters, and shows Saturn in colors that approximate what the human eye would see. The storm stands out with greater clarity in the sharpened, enhanced color view at right.


Saturn's electrical storms resemble terrestrial thunderstorms, but on a much larger scale. Storms on Saturn have diameters of several thousand kilometers (thousands of miles), and radio signals produced by their lightning are thousands of times more powerful than those produced by terrestrial thunderstorms.
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Telescope

NASA Satellite Pins Down Timer In Stellar Ticking Time Bomb


sciencedaily.com
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:17 UTC
Using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite, a team of four astronomers has discovered a timing mechanism that tells them exactly when a superdense star will let loose incredibly powerful explosions.

"We found a clock that ticks slower and slower, and when it slows down too much, boom! The bomb explodes," says team leader Diego Altamirano of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Star thermonuclear explosion
©NASA
A thermonuclear explosion as it engulfs an entire neutron star.

The explosions occur on a neutron star, which is a city-sized remnant of a giant star that exploded in a supernova. But despite the neutron star's small size, it contains more material than our sun. The neutron star is not alone in space. It has a companion star, and the two objects orbit each other every 3.8 hours. This double-star system is known as 4U 1636-53 for its sky coordinates in the Southern Hemisphere.
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Magnify

Epigenetic Research Uncovers New Targets For Modification Enzymes


ScienceDaily
Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:39 UTC
Enzymes regulating genetic expression can be just as important as the genome itself, increasing evidence shows. The expanding field of epigenetics focuses on the multiple influences on DNA and surrounding molecules that determine whether genes are turned on or off during development and disease processes.
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Magnet

Scientists Ask: "Will Jupiter's Gravity Throw the Solar System Into Chaos"?

Rebecca Sato
The Daily Galaxy
Mon, 28 Apr 2008 05:39 UTC


mercury sunrise
©Walter Meyers
Mercury Sunrise

There been a lot of media attention over the possibility of asteroids and meteors striking Earth and causing cataclysmic damage, but now some scientists are saying that the planet Mercury (sunrise image above) could also possibly smash into our planet. Huh? That sounds bad.
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Coffee

Ancient rock drawings unearthed in northern China


Thaindian News
Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:17 UTC
New Dehli - With the help of local herdsmen , a huge cluster of ancient rock drawings has been unearthed in northern China's Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region.

Over one thousand drawings from the Bronze Era were discovered about 55 kilometers west of Hailiutu county, reports CCTV International.

Most of the pictures are carved on black granite along the mountainsides and they stretch about five kilometers into a valley near the Bayinhudu mountain.

The pictures are based mainly on daily life and involve a wide variety of subjects such as goats, longhorn-deer and dogs.

Some drawings depict hunting scenes and mysterious symbols while some single pieces contain dozens of patterns.
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Telescope

Ultra-dense Galaxies Found In Early Universe


Science Daily
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:06 UTC
A team of astronomers looking at the universe's distant past found nine young, unusually compact galaxies, each weighing in at 200 billion times the mass of the Sun. These young galaxies are the equivalent of a human baby that is 20 inches long, yet weighs 180 pounds.

"Seeing the compact sizes of these galaxies is a puzzle," said Pieter G. van Dokkum of Yale, who led the study. "No massive galaxy at this distance has ever been observed to be so compact, and it is not yet clear how one of these would build itself up to be the size of the galaxies we see today." The findings appeared in the April 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Milky Way Galaxy and an ultracompact galaxy
©NASA, ESA, A. Feild (STScI) and P. van Dokkum (Yale)
This illustration shows the comparative sizes of our Milky Way Galaxy and an ultracompact galaxy, which existed in the early universe. Although the compact galaxy is only a fraction of the size of our Milky Way, it contains the same number of stars. The small, dense galaxy could fit inside the central hub of our Milky Way.
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Telescope

Compact galaxies in early universe pack a big punch


ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:51 UTC


compact galaxies
©Credit: NASA, ESA, P. van Dokkum (Yale University), M. Franx (Leiden University, The Netherlands), and G. Illingworth (University of California and Lick Observatory, Santa Cruz)
These images taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show nine compact, ultra-dense galaxies as they appeared 11 billion years ago. The galaxies are only 5,000 light-years across and yet are 200 billion times more massive than the Sun.

Imagine receiving an announcement touting the birth of a baby 50 centimetres long and weighing 80 kilograms. After reading this puzzling message, you would immediately think the baby's weight was a misprint.

Astronomers looking at galaxies in the Universe's distant past received a similar perplexing announcement when they found nine young, compact galaxies, each weighing in at 200 billion times the mass of the Sun. The galaxies, each only 5,000 light-years across, are a fraction of the size of today's grownup galaxies but contain approximately the same number of stars. Each galaxy could fit inside the central hub of our Milky Way Galaxy.
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Display

Beating The Codebreakers With Quantum Cryptography


Science Daily
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:53 UTC
Quantum cryptography may be essentially solved, but getting the funky physics to work on disciplined computer networks is a whole new headache.

Cryptography is an arms race, but the finish line may be fast approaching. Up to now, each time the codemakers made a better mousetrap, codebreakers breed a better mouse. But quantum cryptography theoretically could outpace the codebreakers and win the race. Forever.

Already the current state of the art in classical encryption, 128-bit RSA, can be cracked with enough raw, brute force computing power available to organisations like the US National Security Agency. And the advent of quantum computing will make it even simpler. The gold standard for secret communication will be truly dead.

SECOQC bank transfer demostration
©SECOQC
SECOQC bank transfer demonstration.
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Bulb

Russia inches towards mission to Mars with breathable gas mixture


Russia Today
Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:46 UTC
Air is crucial to human life, and the absence of a breathable atmosphere is one of the main obstacles to discovering other planets. Russian scientists have reproduced a gas mixture that human beings may breathe on the way to Mars and when on the Red Planet.

Staff at the Moscow Biomedical Problems Institute have constructed an experimental capsule and reproduced within it the conditions that might be encountered during a mission to Mars.

capsule
©Unknown
Experimental capsule (computer graphics)
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