Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 05 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Science & Technology
Map

Magnify

Mystery Unlocked by UCLA Scientists: How Protein Mirror-image Phenomenon Arises

Stuart Wolpert
Eurekalert.org
Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© Thomas G. Mason and Kun Zhao
Colored patches represent parallelogram outlines around pairs of triangles that have formed chiral super-structures. Parallelograms having different "handedness" and orientations are color-coded and superimposed over each other.
The overwhelming majority of proteins and other functional molecules in our bodies display a striking molecular characteristic: They can exist in two distinct forms that are mirror images of each other, like your right hand and left hand. Surprisingly, each of our bodies prefers only one of these molecular forms.

This mirror-image phenomenon - known as chirality or "handedness" - has captured the imagination of a UCLA research group led by Thomas G. Mason, a professor of chemistry and physics and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

Mason has been exploring how and why chirality arises, and his newest findings on the physical origins of the phenomenon were published May 1 in the journal Nature Communications.

"Objects like our hands are chiral, while objects like regular triangles are achiral, meaning they don't have a handedness to them," said Mason, the senior author of the study. "Achiral objects can be easily superimposed on top of one another."
      Read More...
Beaker

Automated Process Dissects Inner Mechanics of Neurons

Tiffany Kaiser
DailyTech
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:33 UTC
Image
© Georgia Tech
Neuromatic Devices research team
The new automated process is faster than traditional method while delivering comparable results

MIT and Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have created a new automated method that pinpoints certain characteristics of neurons in the brain.

The research was conducted by Ed Boyden, associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT; Craig Forest, an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech, and Suhasa Kodandaramaiah, a graduate student. The three developed the new automated process for dissecting the inner mechanics of neurons in the brain.

The researchers based their new automated technique off of a 30-year-old method called whole-cell patch clamping. Whole-cell patch clamping involved a hollow glass pipette, which touches the cell membrane of a neuron. Upon contact the pipette opens up a small pore in the membrane. Then electrical activity within the cell is recorded.
      Read More...
Sun

What People in 1859 Thought of the Great Solar Storm (Hint: They Were Very Confused)


Discover Magazine
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:25 UTC
On September 1, 1859, the sky erupted in color: "alternating great pillars, rolling cumuli shooting streamers, curdled and wisped and fleecy waves - rapidly changing its hue from red to orange, orange to yellow, and yellow to white, and back in the same order to brilliant red," read a New York Times account. This was the aurora seen around the world.
Image
© Frederic Edwin Church
An 1865 painting by Frederic Edwin Church, possibly inspired by the aurora of 1859.
Meanwhile, the telegraph operators were perplexed to find that the system suddenly failed. None of the lines worked, and telegraph paper spontaneously caught on fire. The aurora and disconnected telegraphs were both the working of the largest solar storm recorded in history.
      Read More...
Eye 1

Study finds psychopaths have distinct brain structure

Kate Kelland
Reuters
Mon, 07 May 2012 17:25 UTC
psychopaths brains 1
© Reuters/Institute of Psychiatry King's College London
A brain scan shows areas of reduced grey matter volume in the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain of the psychopathic group of antisocial men compared to the non-psychopathic group of antisocial men.
Scientists who scanned the brains of men convicted of murder, rape and violent assaults have found the strongest evidence yet that psychopaths have structural abnormalities in their brains.

The researchers, based at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said the differences in psychopaths' brains mark them out even from other violent criminals with anti-social personality disorders (ASPD), and from healthy non-offenders.

Nigel Blackwood, who led the study, said the ability to use brain scans to identify and diagnose this sub-group of violent criminals has important implications for treatment.

The study showed that psychopaths, who are characterized by a lack of empathy, had less grey matter in the areas of the brain important for understanding other peoples' emotions.
      Read More...
Info

Human Body Part That Stumped Leonardo da Vinci Revealed

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Tue, 08 May 2012 11:10 UTC
Leonardo's Drawing
© The Royal Collection (c) 2012, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Leonardo da Vinci's sketches of a fetus in the womb, made between 1510 and 1513.
Leonardo da Vinci's 500-year-old illustrations of human anatomy are uncannily accurate with just one major exception: the female reproductive system.

That's probably because Leonardo had a tough time finding female corpses to dissect, explains Peter Abrahams, a practicing physician at the University of Warwick Medical School in the United Kingdom.

Abrahams, a clinical anatomist, has lent his knowledge to an audio tour of the exhibit of Leonardo's anatomical drawings that opened May 4 in Buckingham Palace.

The Italian Renaissance artist learned anatomy as a way to improve his drawings of the human form, but he also brought a scientist's eye to the discipline.

"He wanted to understand how it worked," Abrahams told LiveScience. "He looked at humans like a mechanic would do. Most of that work is very, very relevant today."

Anatomists in Leonardo's time often dissected unclaimed bodies, such as of drunks and vagrants, and those bodies were more likely to be male, Abrahams said.

"It was definitely harder to get female bodies to dissect, and he didn't have many opportunities," Abrahams said.
      Read More...
Meteor

New Astronaut Photo Highlights Impact Crater


OurAmazingPlanet
Tue, 08 May 2012 09:31 UTC
Ouarkziz Crater
© NASA
This photo of Algeria’s Ouarkziz Crater was snapped by astronauts aboard the International Space Station on April 21, 2012.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have snapped a stunning new photo of a heavily eroded impact crater in Algeria.

The image shows Ouarkziz Crater, a 2.2-mile-wide (3.5-kilometer) hole in the ground in northwestern Algeria, near the border with Morocco. It was formed by an asteroid impact less than 70 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era, which is also known as the "Age of Dinosaurs."

A much larger impact a few million years later famously brought this age to an end. A space rock measuring roughly 6 miles (10 km) across slammed into Earth just off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago, driving the dinosaurs to extinction and clearing a path for the rise of the mammals.

For comparison, the dinosaur-killing asteroid left a crater about 110 miles (180 km) wide.
      Read More...
Sun

Sunspot AR1471's Coronal Mass Ejection Heading Towards Earth May 9


SpaceWeather.com
Tue, 08 May 2012 09:50 UTC
Sunspot AR1471 erupted on May 7th, producing an M1-class solar flare and an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME). According to a forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather lab, the cloud will reach Earth on May 9th at 13:40 UT (+/- 7 hours).
Image
© Alan Friedman
AR1476
      Read More...
Evil Rays

Scientists switch mouse's genes off and on with radio waves


io9.com
Tue, 08 May 2012 09:04 UTC
Image
© Mathagraphics, via Shutterstock
Some laboratory mice were given specially engineered insuling-producing genes. These genes were then remotely activated using radio waves. This could mean a whole new field of medical procedures in which we turn genes on and off at will.

This breakthrough is the work of geneticists at New York's Rockefeller University. It's a pretty circuitous path from the initial burst of radio waves to the activation of the gene, and there's still a lot of refinement and improvement that needs to be made before this can be used in medical treatments, but still - we're talking about the ability to modify the behavior of genes without ever going inside a patient's body. That's a potentially colossal advance.
      Read More...
Sun

Annular Solar Eclipse on May 20 - 21, 2012


timeanddate.com
Mon, 07 May 2012 22:37 UTC
The first solar eclipse in 2012 will be an annular solar eclipse on May 20 - 21. It is the first annular eclipse to be seen from the United States in 18 years and the first one to be visible from earth in more than 2 years.

The eclipse will also be seen from eastern Asia and the northern Pacific. It starts in Asia at 20:56 (8.56pm) Universal Time (UT) on May 20, 2012, and ends in the US at 02:49 (2.49am) UT on May 21, 2012.

Check out when the eclipse starts all over the world

The Eclipse's Path

2012 Solar Eclipse Path
© timeanddate.com
The dark strip in the center indicates the best locations for viewing the eclipse. Here the moon will appear in the center of the sun's disk. The eclipse will also be visible in the areas that are shaded red, but to a lesser degree. The fainter the red shading the less the sun will appear to be covered.
Animated map of the eclipse can be seen here. Map of the eclipse path can be seen here also. You can also check the Google map of the eclipse path here. On the Google map click on your location to see the eclipse times.

Time zone converter

The World Clock's Time Zone Converter helps you find when the eclipse will occur in your local time. Universal Time (UT), a timescale based on the earth's rotation, is about 0.58 seconds behind Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) during most of May 2012. UTC is in the time zone converter.
      Read More...
Chess

Whence the Domestic Horse?

Sarah C. P. Williams
ScienceNow
Mon, 07 May 2012 15:05 UTC
Domesticated Horse
© Vera Warmuth
Saddle up. To study the ancestor of domesticated horses, scientists gathered genetic data from horses around Europe that had been shaped the least by human breeding, such as this animal in Kyrgyzstan.
Shards of pottery with traces of mare's milk, mass gravesites for horses, and drawings of horses with plows and chariots: These are some of the signs left by ancient people hinting at the importance of horses to their lives. But putting a place and date on the domestication of horses has been a challenge for archaeologists. Now, a team of geneticists studying modern breeds of the animal has assembled an evolutionary picture of its storied past.

Horses, the scientists conclude, were first domesticated 6000 years ago in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe, modern-day Ukraine and West Kazakhstan. And as the animals were domesticated, they were regularly interbred with wild horses, the researchers say.

"This is a very good paper," says biologist Michael Hofreiter of the University of York in the United Kingdom. "Nobody has applied this method of population modeling to horses before."

Throughout their history, horses have been interbred, traded between populations of people, and moved across continents. All of this makes their genetic history hard to follow. Moreover, the wild ancestor of horses, Equus ferus, is extinct, complicating researchers' efforts to compare the genetics of domestic animals with wild ones. Previous research nailed down a broad area - the Eurasian Steppe, which stretches from Hungary and Romania through Mongolia - as the region where horses originated and were domesticated. But earlier genetic studies relied mostly on mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from a mother, to try to understand horses' evolutionary history.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts