My out-of-townness is lasting longer than I'd expected and I just don't have the time online to write about news right now. I promise to be back very soon! Extra posts when I am!
-Miss Mouse
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Out of Town - Sowwy!
Sorry guys, I'm going to be out of town this weekend, and I just don't feel well enough today to write a worthwhile post. :\ I'll tweet some interesting headlines right now, though -check out the right hand side of the page.
Come back Tuesday for non-sick, non-out-of-town Science news!
:)
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
13 April 2010 - Sneaky Brain Cancer Cells, Watery Glue, Monopole Magnets, and Dance-Powered Street Lamps
Heya!
Hope everyone's week is off to a great start! I guess technically it's Wednesday, but does it still count as Tuesday if I've been up all night? ;)
I found a very interesting article regarding glioblastoma today, a very common and deadly brain cancer. The average patient only survives about 15 months past diagnosis, and closer research may show why. The main tumor generally shoots off occasional cells into the surrounding tissue, which then behave very differently from the growth itself. Those cells are not responsive to the same therapies given to the cancer patients alongside removal of the tumor, and will actually spawn new growths later on. As a result, pretty much every patient with glioblastoma relapses after treatment. Now that the cells have been looked at closer and this fact about their resistance revealed, new treatments to target them as well can start to be explored.
Over at the University of Utah, a lab is checking out sea creatures and their construction habits in an effort to uncover new ideas on underwater adhesives. Specifically, they're looking at Phragmatopoma californica, called the "sandcastle worm," which builds little, compartments for itself via tiny drops of glue and sand bits. Other labs around the country are looking at various other sorts of marine animals looking for clues to apply to the goal. Hopefully the methods they're working toward will aid not only in ocean-stuff, but also have first aid and health applications. Apparently they're making progress, although it is still too soon to try it out on people. :)
Not too long ago scientists managed to actually produce a magnet with only one end - a monopole, but it would only work in very, very cold temperatures. Now, however, an artificial version of this "spin ice" has been created that can behave like a monopole in room temperature. The method employs arranging nano-sized magnets into a honeycomb structure, which as a whole behaves as hoped. Very interesting! I believe the applications lie in quantum computing, but I'd be talking out my rear if I tried to go into more detail.
Last for today is just really neat - France has actually installed and tried out eight modules created by Sustainable Dance Floor on the streets. They're these sections installed into the pavement that generate power when walked across. The goal is to reduce waste in powering city public areas (like street lamps), and to change where that power comes from. Check it out:
Photo: Robin Utrecht/EPA
That's it for today (yesterday?), but check out the twitter feed on the right for more stories I didn't include here. :)
See you Thursday!
-Miss Mouse
References and Links:
Brain Cancer Relapses
Watery Glue
Warmish Magnets
DDR Power
Sunday, April 11, 2010
11 April 2010 - Stressed Mice, Tuned In Medicine, Drug Resistance, and Viruses Creating Energy
Hi! Hope everyone had a great weekend. :)
I don't know if you noticed or not, but I added this nifty little Twitter feature to the right hand side of the page, just under "Labels." This is for those of you who don't want to wait for each post to see new headlines! I'll be tweeting links to various articles I find here and there, or retweeting as the case may be. Just a nifty little idea.
First off, experiments in mice have found that the brains of those mice with only one copy of a gene that produces "brain-derived neurotrophic factor," or BDNF, are more affected by stress. Apparently, stress in these mice causes the hippocampus area of the brain to shrink and the dendrites to withdraw, whereas mice with the normal two copies of the gene, and therefore a normal amount of BDNF, show no physical change in that area of the brain. Researchers are now searching to find ways to control the amount of BDNF protein so they can determine when in development supplementation would be most effective. Very interesting!
I know I heard about hallucinogenic testing going on here and there in the recent past, but I just found another article about it. Scientists are gathering in California this week for a pretty big conference on the topic, particularly for use with OCD, end of life anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other psychological disorders. I cannot say this doesn't make me pretty happy. Check out the article link at the bottom of the post to read about various tests and reactions to psilocybin in groovy experiments. :)
Everyone's biggest fear when it comes to antibiotics is that a superbug will become resistant to everything and we'll have nothing left to beat infections with, right? Or is that just mine? In any case, researchers have taken a close look at vancomycin, the "last resort" antibiotic, and actually determined the mechanism by which bacteria develop resistance to it. It had been debated whether bacteria were tipped off to the antibiotic by noticing it directly, or noticing what it was doing to their cell walls. It turns out the former is the case, the knowledge of which may help to develop sneakier antibiotics that could still go unnoticed. Considering the growing number of people who are affected by resistant infections, this is pretty great progress!
Last for the weekend - researchers have devised a more direct method of splitting water molecules for use in solar powered energy...things. Mimicking the photosynthesis process of plants, a group of scientists have utilized a harmless virus in a gel (to hold conformation) to do the splitting so that hydrogen can be stored for use at any time, rather than only when the sun is shining. Original in its particular method, the system is still in its creation phase and needs to become more cost effective, efficient, and complete before going into effect. An end date isn't set, but it's a valuable concept and it's nice to see that it works!
Check out the Twitter feed on the right hand side of the page to see the articles I didn't include today, but were still pretty neat.
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you Tuesday!
-Miss mouse
References and Links:
Stressed Out Mice
Psychedelic Medicine
Resistance!
Virus Energy
Thursday, April 8, 2010
8 April 2010 - Omnomnomium, Things That Don't Suffocate, Volcanoes, Animal-Census, Autism
Hey!
As promised, I've got some pretty interesting news today! :)
First, you've probably already heard about element 117, and its recent, albeit brief, appearance in a Russian cyclotron. Researchers fired calcium ions for 150 days at a target made of berkelium, finally producing SIX atoms of 117. They existed for less than a second before decaying. Now...what to call it? Some amazing suggestions (from #namefornewelement on Twitter) include:
- Yomommium
- Nonsensium
- Omnomnomium
- Newishium
- Holycrapium
- Internetium
- Surprisium
- Pandemonium
- Fatassium
- DeLoreum
- Noobium
- Steve
- Wowthatsheavyum
- MasterChiefium
- Unobtainium
- Oneseventeenium
- Wootonium
- Porkchopsium
That's...amazing. :)
Next, the first multicellular organisms able to survive completely without oxygen have been found in the sediment of the Mediterranean. These three species of Loricifera are smaller than a millimeter and, oddly enough, have no mitochondria. In pretty much every other animal cell, mitochondria are responsible for converting nutrients to energy. These critters, however, use structures called hydrogenosomes to convert their food to energy without ever needing to use oxygen. Since their rather extreme environment resembles ancient Earth before widespread oxygen, it's possible these little guys might be a peek into the past.
Also, the Venus Express orbiter has found new infrared evidence that suggests Venus maaay in fact have active volcanoes. Of course by active, they mean within the past 250,000 years for most of them. Since Venus sports fewer scars by asteroids than expected, it had been theorized before that either a massive volcanic event covered most of the surface at once a long time ago, or ongoing volcanoes have filled in various craters here and there over time. This finding suggests the recent, active volcanoes option, which has interesting implications for the evolution of Earth, which is similar in many ways to Venus.
Back on Earth, a group of ecologists are planning to collect information on 160,000 species of life all over the planet to form a "barometer of life." They selected the species involved in order to best represent all ecosystems, and the plan is to update it every five years with new information from hundreds of cooperating experts and scientists. It's basically a census, but for animals, plants, and other. The project is hoping to provide better and more complete information to aid in gauging the "health" of the planet, determining risks to biodiversity and the environment by companies and human activities, drawing attention to the environment and its inhabitants, and directing spending. The project itself will cost an estimated 60 million USD, and will run an annual cost of around $5 million after that.
Last today, a few articles recently came out detailing advancements in Autism research. For those of you who know me well, you already know how big of a deal Autism spectrum disorders are for me, so this is really exciting! First, a program at Canisius College involving 5 weeks of "summer camp" programs for children affected by high functioning autism, Asperger's, and PDD-NOS paired with parent education has shown marked improvement in the emotional behaviors of participants. Compared with control groups, children in the program showed better social skills, emotional recognition, and conversational skills. The program is working on improving to a level where it can be distributed to communities. Second, it's been shown in separate experiments that oxytocin may be able to improve facial expression and emotion recognition in autistic individuals. The study was done on a small group of ADS-affected adolescents; the experimental group was given an oxytocin nasal spray and the control group a placebo spray. The experimental group showed clear improvement in recognizing emotions and facial expressions, but they say more testing will be needed to back up these results before we can be sure. Lastly, methods have been discovered involving DNA tagging, or methylation, to both diagnose autism disorders via blood tests or other DNA samples (rather than brain testing), and to potentially reverse its effects. There wasn't much to the article, but I really look forward to hearing more! :)
That's it for today, see you this weekend!
-Miss Mouse
References and Links:
Element 117
Multicellular Organisms Sans Oxygen
Volcanic Venus
Barometer of Life
Autism
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
6 April 2010 - Links
Hey!
I'm sorry, I was way too overwhelmed today to write a decent post, :( BUT I did find a bunch of great articles yesterday and today! So, here are your links:
Armored T-Shirts
Nanotube black holes
Rising River Temperatures in the US
Early Emphysema Tests
Pyrimidines for Cancer Treatments
For Those Concerned about the Speed of Nano Progress without Health Testing (me)
Toxoplasmosis via the Iberian Lynx
Neurons Cooperating to Get Message Heard
Drug That Caused Birth Defects in 60s May Be Useful in Stopping Bleeding
Enjoy, and I'm sorry I couldn't write more! I promise a real post on Thursday! :)
-Miss Mouse
Monday, April 5, 2010
4 April 2010 - Massive Quarks, Nanoprobing, HIV, Space, and Smelly Ants
Happy Easter, if that's your thing ;)
A lot happened between Thursday and today - it was pretty tough to pick what to write about!
First, a group of researchers have recently nailed down the mass of up and down quarks to a 1.5% certainty - a big jump from the previous 30%! Using a simulation technique called lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD), they have narrowed down the mass of the up quark to 2.01 MeV give or take 0.14 MeV, and the down quark to 4.79 +/- 0.16 MeV. Not only is this a pretty impressive accomplishment, it should be very helpful information for current research - especially if it can help the fellows over at the LHC. It does still need to be challenged and replicated, but it's still pretty exciting! For details about how they did it, check out the link at the bottom of this post.
Next, in the ever-growing world of nano, a new probe has been created capable of incorporating itself into cells without damaging them. Mimicking transmembrane proteins, the tip of the probe is coated with two chromium layers with a gold layer in between them, to line up with the hydrophilic and hydrophobic sections of the cell's membrane. Before, if you wanted to study the internal workings of a cell via probe, you would have to puncture a hole in it for the probe and it would die within a couple of hours. This 600 nm long silicon probe, however, may be able to remain in place without disturbing a cell for potentially up to a week. The developers are currently testing it for future uses including medicine delivery, observing signals within and between cells, and monitor therapy responses.
Over at the California Institute of Technology, scientists have discovered key information about a specific protein on the surface of a common variety of HIV. Called gp120, the protein is commonly utilized in attempts to create vaccines for the virus. Not only was the protein's structure verified in their experimentation, but they also noticed that an antibody called 21c interacting with the protein on the HIV envelope also simultaneously bound with a CD4 receptor on a T-cell - meaning it's marking the T-cell to get killed as well as the virus. This is called polyreactivity, and it raises many questions about the use of that antibody and ones like it in the future. Definitely not what they expected, just looking for the structure of the gp120 protein!
Now, news in space! Blasting off Friday and docking Sunday, the Russian Soyuz carried one US and two Russian astronauts to the International Space Station for a half year visit. Following them Monday will be 8 tons of supplies aboard the Discovery, including coolant and equipment for scientific studies. There was a problem noted with a valve in one of the rockets, but it's been determined to not pose a major risk to the flight. NASA has only four more flights planned.
Now, news in space! Blasting off Friday and docking Sunday, the Russian Soyuz carried one US and two Russian astronauts to the International Space Station for a half year visit. Following them Monday will be 8 tons of supplies aboard the Discovery, including coolant and equipment for scientific studies. There was a problem noted with a valve in one of the rockets, but it's been determined to not pose a major risk to the flight. NASA has only four more flights planned.
Lastly, "odorous" house ants, Tapinoma sessile, are known to take up residence in acorns in the woods of North America and remain in small groups of 50-100 ants. However, researchers have noticed that when these ants live in urban settings, they form gigantic colonies of more than 5 million ants and interfere with the growth of other colonies. Scientists are going to start looking toward their genetics for an answer to why the drastic shift.
Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a great weekend! See you Tuesday!
-Miss Mouse
References and Links:
Quarks
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/04/mass-of-the-common-quark-finally.html
Nanoprobe
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/stealthy-nanoprobe-slips-seamlessly-cell-walls
HIV Protein and Antibodies
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100402154919.htm
Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a great weekend! See you Tuesday!
-Miss Mouse
References and Links:
Quarks
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/04/mass-of-the-common-quark-finally.html
Nanoprobe
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/stealthy-nanoprobe-slips-seamlessly-cell-walls
HIV Protein and Antibodies
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100402154919.htm
Thursday, April 1, 2010
1 April 2010 - Invisible Mice, Vegetable Lambs, Gene Therapy with Nano, and Lukewarm Planet Earth
First for today...check it out! New news on the science world's favorite test animal.
That's your prank for the day. :) Now, while I'm pretty nervous about browsing the headlines for serious happenings in science, here are a few that caught my eye anyway.
First, and only slightly less silly, a group of scientists are doing a broad study checking out several plants used in old medicines in Vietnam. This has led them to the "vegetable lamb" plant, whose picture is simply too amazing not to include (credit "Wikimedia Commons"):
While this plant does NOT actually spawn baby sheep, like once thought, it does in fact contain interesting chemicals which prevent the body from breaking down bone. Hopefully, this new information will lead to more doors opening for the many people affected by osteoporosis!
Next! If you're familiar with gene therapy, you already know that to introduce new genes to a subject you need a vector, or something to carry those genes to where they need to go. A virus makes a pretty good vector, but the world of nano seems to be offering better. Scientists at Buffalo, Cleveland, and OKC have used a nanoparticle vector carrying a normal gene to replace faulty genes in mice with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease that causes retinal cells to die and eventually cause blindness. Mice injected with the carrier and gene both stopped deterioration of the retina cells AND experienced improved tissue, while mice injected with the gene alone or saline solution continued to lose vision. In addition, there seemed to be no negative effects caused by the nanoparticle vector!
Lastly, researchers are taking global warming debates back a few billion years to attempt to explain why, if the sun was 30% dimmer 4 bya, was the planet not a completely frozen popsicle. New findings in rock from Greenland shows CO2 content in the atmosphere of not more than 1000 ppm, which is around 3 times the current amount. This shoots a bit of a hole in the idea that the planet stayed warm because of massive amounts of CO2 causing a greenhouse effect, but leaves a big question mark on why. Those researchers are suggesting that perhaps reduced cloud cover (due to little of the required gases being produced by young life) in addition to greater ocean cover absorbing more sunlight could be the answer, but others argue these things could not have made enough of a difference, and that greenhouse gases still have to play a role to keep the earth thawed. We'll see!
Thank you for reading, and I'll see you Sunday!
-Miss Mouse
References and Links:
Vegetable Lamb
Gene Therapy Helps Blind See
Lukewarm Earth 4 BYA
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