7 March 2011 - It Came from Outer Space

I think when I expected to write a blog for Monday morning that more would have happened on the weekend.  So today we have an article about possible aliens in meteorites.  And by "aliens" I mean bacteria.  Still exciting, but uninterested in Reece's Pieces.

A fella from NASA with an extensive resume of poking bacteria (see article) cracked open a few meteorites and published his very interesting findings Friday.  That paper explained fossilized bacteria he had found inside that he believes originated off-planet.  Obviously this is causing a big stir and a lot of reviews, in addition to re-raising the argument on the origin of life and cells as we know them.  I will be excited to see how it turns out!  Numerous experts/professionals have been invited to review the paper, and I foresee a lot of passionate critiques in both directions.

Photo from article, copyright PNAS

-Miss Mouse



References and Links:
Aliens in Rocks
http://topicfire.com/share/News-Flash-NASA-Scientist-Solid-Evidence-of-ET-Fossil-Life-in-Meteorite-Fragment-16997301.html

30 September 2010 - Bashful Apologizing, Nifty Site, New Planet, and Teeth.

I am super bad at the blogging right now, I'm so sorry.  I keep getting ready to write, pulling up Twitter to view all the delicious Science of the day, and realizing that I can't access my feed on this computer (at least not politely).  My own lappy, she is le broken.


When she is le fixed, I will be much more psyched about writing 24-7.  In the meantime...call me majorly unreliable.  I'm writing a book, though... does that count?  :p


I CAN however, peruse the awesomely awesome major Sci news sites and pick out a few intermesting headliners for ya.  Here ye be:


First is not news at all, but this really cool site I found while trying to figure out what the disappearing "star" in the sky was.  By entering your coordinates in this site, you can find all kinds of nifty things going on when you look up (provided it isn't terribly cloudy).


Also on the topic of the world beyond our atmosphere, I'm really, really excited about this:  a potentially habitable planet has been located circling the red dwarf Gliese 581 in the Libra constellation, 20 light years away.  Actually, two new planets were found, but one in particular seems to be in the ideal position to sustain life.  It's approximately 3 or 4 times as massive as Earth, orbits the star in about 37 days, and one side is perpetually facing the star (resulting in a wide range of more or less steady temperatures).  It's called Gliese 581g, and before we found it (and another, which is apparently a less exciting planet) there were two others, c and d, that were on opposite sides of the habitable zone.  One was too hot, one was too cold, and now we have baby bear's planet.  One thing I'm not sure I agree with is the claim that the swiftness with which it was detected insinuates a higher rate of occurrence of nearby habitable planets, but I suppose I'm not very good with statistics.  One way or another, isn't that neat?


Next, research at the University of Illinois has proven it possible to reattach teeth by buttering them with stem cells.  Okay, it isn't quite that simple.  Their experiment took stem cells from the mouths of mice, marked and grew them, applied them to rat molars, and attached those where they ought to go.  While not the most delightful thing to think about, the results showed the stem cell treated teeth successfully integrated back into the mouth, whereas non-treated teeth had no such luck.  The hope is to use the method to battle tooth loss from injuries, dental problems, or even replace missing teeth with false ones in a more true manner.


Mmkay, that's it for tonight.  I've got work to do.  :)  See you soon!
-Miss Mouse


References and Links:
Leave stem cells under your pillow
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100929123630.htm
Baby Bear's Planet G
http://www.physorg.com/news204999128.html

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

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100406181611.htm

Multicellular Organisms Sans Oxygen

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/anoxic-animals/

Volcanic Venus

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/venus-volcanism/

Barometer of Life

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/08/barometer-of-life

Autism

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100408123245.htm

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/563095/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100408105200.htm

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

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100331122652.htm

Gene Therapy Helps Blind See

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100331141623.htm

Lukewarm Earth 4 BYA

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/03/why-didnt-early-earth-freeze-the.html

27 March 2010 - Eggs, Nano-Healers, and Baby Stars

Hellos!

I just came across an article stating that mother birds leave “messages” for their chicks within the eggs, so that the chicks develop differently when they hatch.  The association seen here is that chicks (canaries, in this experiment) born from “generous” (well-fed?) parents beg more as adolescents, where as eggs birthed by stingier parents beg less.  This was tested by switching the eggs between two mothers of said habits/nutrition and noting the begging done by the chicks.  This makes two interesting points, imo.  First, depending on at what point in nesting the eggs were switched, the development of feeding expectations has less to do with the care of the egg and more to do with the signals within once laid.  This might not have been news to them, but it was pretty new to me.  Second, as the article points out, the begging behavior which corresponds with the two different conditions seems to be more focused on the energy necessary to be expended by the chick, in constant asking for food, and less to do with the mother’s convenience.  I wonder if this will bring about a new form of selection in birds?

Researchers at the Los Alamos National Lab have recently put forth findings by computer simulations of nanocrystalline materials “healing” damage to nuclear reactors by exposure to high radiation.  Basically, radiation hitting the materials of the reactor cause some atoms to be forced out of place, leaving a tiny hole where they used to be.  The frequent damage over time causes the material to become affected in a nasty way.  However, nanocrystalline materials have been shown, through this program in various simulations, to trap or “load” these lost particles from damage, then, and this is the surprise part, to “unload” these later on into gaps in the material near them, filling in the damage caused by radiation and effectively healing it.  Now, we were already pretty sure they took in these particles in the first place, but releasing them into nearby gaps?  That’s pretty cool.  Now, this is definitely outside my expertise, so if you’d like a better explanation of how they did it and what they found, check out the link at the bottom of this post for the report in Science Daily.  :)

Last for today, astronomers have captured beautiful and amazing photographs of a “star nursery” from 10 billion light-years away.  Normally, this would be a tough thing to accomplish.  However, very large galaxy clusters happen to be in the way, bending the light just enough for us to get a terrific view.  Apparently, the effect of those clusters makes the nursery (SMMJ2135-0102) appear 16 times larger.  Check out the photo gallery here:  Photo Galleries at PopSci

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you Tuesday with more Science!
-Miss Mouse

References and Links:
Egg Messages

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311141209.htm

Self-Healing Nuclear Reactors

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100325151347.htm

Bending Light to See a Star Nursery

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/bending-gravity-researchers-capture-star-birthing-region-10-billion-light-years-away