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Science & Technology
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Andromeda galaxy.
Andromeda galaxy.
In a vast cosmic experiment equivalent to hitting "redial," astronomers in a dozen countries are aiming telescopes to listen in once again on some of the stars that were part of the world's first search for alien life 50 years ago.
The coordinated signal-searching campaign began this month to mark the 50th anniversary of Project Ozma, a 1960 experiment that was christened the world's first real attempt in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence - or SETI.
Like Project Ozma, which got its name from a character in L. Frank Baum's series of books about the Land of Oz, the new search is called Project Dorothy.
Project Ozma was conducted by astronomer Frank Drake of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. Drake is also famous for devising the Drake equation, which predicts the number of alien civilizations with whom we might be able to communicate. The formula is based on factors including the rate of star formation in the galaxy and the percentage of stars thought to have planets. Making educated guesses for some of the equation's terms, scientists have used it to predict we could find evidence of ET intelligence within the next 25 years.
UC Davis researchers have found a new pathway for repairing DNA damaged by oxygen radicals. The results are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This new inducible pathway gives cells greater capacity to repair oxidative damage," said Peter Beal, professor of chemistry at UC Davis and senior author of the paper.
As part of its inflammatory response, the body's immune system produces oxygen radicals, or reactive oxygen species, to kill bacteria, parasites or tumors. But chronic inflammation, for example in the gut, has been linked to cancer, said co-author Professor Sheila David, also of the Department of Chemistry.
Oxygen radicals are strongly linked to cancer and aging and are also formed during metabolism and upon exposure to environmental toxins and radiation. Understanding more about how this damage can be repaired could lead to a better understanding of the causes of some cancers.
Oxygen radicals can react with the four bases that make up the "letters" of DNA -- A, C, G and T -- so that the "spelling" of genes gets changed. The accumulation of spelling errors (called mutations) can lead to cancer.
"This new inducible pathway gives cells greater capacity to repair oxidative damage," said Peter Beal, professor of chemistry at UC Davis and senior author of the paper.
As part of its inflammatory response, the body's immune system produces oxygen radicals, or reactive oxygen species, to kill bacteria, parasites or tumors. But chronic inflammation, for example in the gut, has been linked to cancer, said co-author Professor Sheila David, also of the Department of Chemistry.
Oxygen radicals are strongly linked to cancer and aging and are also formed during metabolism and upon exposure to environmental toxins and radiation. Understanding more about how this damage can be repaired could lead to a better understanding of the causes of some cancers.
Oxygen radicals can react with the four bases that make up the "letters" of DNA -- A, C, G and T -- so that the "spelling" of genes gets changed. The accumulation of spelling errors (called mutations) can lead to cancer.
© National Maritime Museum
A painting of the French frigate from around 1780
A painting of the French frigate from around 1780
With 25 guns and a plunder-thirsty crew, La Marquise de Tourny was the scourge of the British merchant fleet some 260 years ago. For up to a decade, the French frigate terrorized English ships by seizing their cargoes and crew under a form of state-sanctioned piracy designed to cripple British trade.
Then, in the mid-18th century, the 460-ton vessel from Bordeaux, which seized three valuable cargo ships in a single year and distinguished itself by apparently never being captured by the English, disappeared without a trace. Nearly 300 years later, the fate of La Marquise and its crew can finally be revealed.
Wreckage from the frigate, including the remarkably well-preserved ship's bell carrying its name and launch date of 1744, has been found in the English Channel some 100 miles south of Plymouth by an American exploration company, suggesting that the feared privateer or "corsair" sank with the loss of all hands in a storm in notoriously treacherous waters off the Channel Islands.
The vessel is the first of its type to be found off British waters and one of only three known around the world, offering a unique insight into a frenetic phase of Anglo-French warfare when both countries set about beefing up their meagre navies in the mid-1700s by providing the captains of armed merchant vessels with "Letters of Marque" to take to the seas and capture enemy ships in revenge for attacks on other cargo convoys.
© Arab News
The rock with a hieroglyphic inscription dating back to at least 1160 B.C.
The rock with a hieroglyphic inscription dating back to at least 1160 B.C.
"The rock was bearing an inscription of King Ramses III, one of the kings who ruled ancient Egypt from 1192 B.C.to 1160 B.C.," said SCTA Vice President for Antiquities and Museums Ali Ibrahim Al-Ghabban at a news conference on Sunday at the Commission on National Museum.
Al-Ghabban said the discovery was made in July. Since then researchers have posited that Tayma was on an important land route between the western coast of Arabia and the Nile Valley. Recent discoveries at the site prove Tayma was inhabited as far back as the Bronze Age (2,000 B.C.). The trade route has been used by caravans for centuries to carry goods such as incense, copper, gold and silver.
"The route connected the Nile Valley, Port Qulzum, the city of Suez, and then went by sea to Srabit near the port of Abu Zenima on the Gulf of Suez, where the archaeologists found a temple dedicated to King Ramses III, then across the Sinai Peninsula, where they also found several inscriptions similar to that found in Tayma," said Al-Ghabban.
© Agence France-Presse
Archaeologists from the Pucllana museum work at Huaca Pucllana ancient pre Inca site, in Miraflores district, Lima.
Archaeologists from the Pucllana museum work at Huaca Pucllana ancient pre Inca site, in Miraflores district, Lima.
The dogs "have hair and complete teeth", said Jesus Holguin, an archaeologist at the museum in Pachacamac, located some 25km south of Lima.
Holguin told AFP on Wednesday that experts were still trying to determine their breed.
The mummified remains of four children were also found at the site, archaeologists said. The mummified dogs were found two weeks ago wrapped in cloth and buried in one of Pachacamac's adobe brick pyramids.
Archaeologists believe the animals were offerings related to a funeral, "although we do not know if this was related to an important personality of the Inca period," said archaeologist Isabel Cornejo.
© NASA
The previously unseen structures, detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, extend 25,000 light-years north and south from the galactic core.
"We think we know a lot about our own galaxy," Princeton University astrophysicist David Spergel, who was not involved in the discovery, said during a press briefing Tuesday. But "what we see here are these enormous structures ... [that] suggest the presence of an enormous energetic event in the center of our galaxy."
For now the source of all that energy is unclear, said study co-author Doug Finkbeiner, an associate professor of astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gamma rays are the most energetic forms of light, and in space they tend to come from violent events such as supernovae or from extreme objects such as black holes and neutron stars.
The newfound bubbles, meanwhile, are made of hot, charged gas that's releasing the same amount of energy as a hundred thousand exploding stars.
"So you have to ask, where could energy like that come from" in the Milky Way? Finkbeiner said.
A team of Université Laval and Danisco researchers has unlocked a secret of bacteria's immune system. The details of the discovery, which may eventually make it possible to prevent certain bacteria from developing resistance to antibiotics, are presented in the Nov. 4 issue of the journal Nature.
The team led by Professor Sylvain Moineau of Université Laval's Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Bioinformatics showed that this mechanism, called CRISPR/Cas, works by selecting foreign DNA segments and inserting them into very specific locations in a bacterium's genome. These segments then serve as a kind of immune factor in fighting off future invasions by cleaving incoming DNA.
The researchers demonstrated this mechanism using plasmids, DNA molecules that are regularly exchanged by bacteria. The plasmid used in the experiment, which contained a gene for antibiotic resistance, was inserted into bacteria used in making yogurt, Streptococcus thermophilus. Some of the bacteria integrated the segments of DNA from the resistance gene into their genome, and subsequent attempts to reinsert the plasmid into these bacteria failed. "These bacteria had simply been immunized against acquiring the resistance gene, commented Professor Moineau. This phenomenon could explain, among other things, why some bacteria develop antibiotic resistance while others don't."
The team led by Professor Sylvain Moineau of Université Laval's Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Bioinformatics showed that this mechanism, called CRISPR/Cas, works by selecting foreign DNA segments and inserting them into very specific locations in a bacterium's genome. These segments then serve as a kind of immune factor in fighting off future invasions by cleaving incoming DNA.
The researchers demonstrated this mechanism using plasmids, DNA molecules that are regularly exchanged by bacteria. The plasmid used in the experiment, which contained a gene for antibiotic resistance, was inserted into bacteria used in making yogurt, Streptococcus thermophilus. Some of the bacteria integrated the segments of DNA from the resistance gene into their genome, and subsequent attempts to reinsert the plasmid into these bacteria failed. "These bacteria had simply been immunized against acquiring the resistance gene, commented Professor Moineau. This phenomenon could explain, among other things, why some bacteria develop antibiotic resistance while others don't."
© SpaceWeather.com
Japanese comet hunter Masanori Uchina first noticed the sundiver in coronagraph images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on Nov. 13th. At the time it was a dim and distant speck, but now the comet is brightening rapidly as it approaches the hot sun. The bright glare of the sun hides these events from human eyes, but not from certain spacecraft: Join SOHO for a ringside seat.
NASA will hold a news conference at 12:30 p.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 15, to discuss the Chandra X-ray Observatory's discovery of an exceptional object in our cosmic neighborhood.
The news conference will originate from NASA Headquarters' television studio, 300 E St. SW in Washington and carried live on NASA TV.
Media representatives may attend the conference, join by phone or ask questions from participating NASA locations. To RSVP or obtain dial-in information, journalists must send their name, affiliation and telephone number to Trent Perrotto at: trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov by 10 a.m. EST on Nov. 15. Reporters wishing to attend the conference in-person must have a valid press credential for access. Non-U.S. media also must bring passports.
The news conference will originate from NASA Headquarters' television studio, 300 E St. SW in Washington and carried live on NASA TV.
Media representatives may attend the conference, join by phone or ask questions from participating NASA locations. To RSVP or obtain dial-in information, journalists must send their name, affiliation and telephone number to Trent Perrotto at: trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov by 10 a.m. EST on Nov. 15. Reporters wishing to attend the conference in-person must have a valid press credential for access. Non-U.S. media also must bring passports.
