Planets pulverized into dust near supermassive black holes

Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Bond (STScI)

Planets  may be pulverized into dust near supermassive black holes

ScienceDaily — Fat doughnut-shaped dust shrouds that obscure about half of supermassive black holes could be the result of high speed crashes between planets and asteroids, according to a new theory from an international team of astronomers.

The scientists, led by Dr. Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester, are publishing their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Supermassive black holes reside in the central parts of most galaxies. Observations indicate that about 50% of them are hidden from view by mysterious clouds of dust, the origin of which is not completely understood. The new theory is inspired by our own Solar System, where the so-called zodiacal dust is known to originate from collisions between solid bodies such as asteroids and comets. The scientists propose that the central regions of galaxies contain not only black holes and stars but also planets and asteroids.

Pumpkin Chemistry - Halloween Special (video)

Pumpkin Chemistry - Halloween Special

Three chemists do their best to destroy pumpkins using all the tricks up their lab coat sleeves!

Have a happy Halloween! 

Cool Video: Slow Motion Slinky

The slinky appears to defy gravity, bit it doesn't. A good explanation is here.

Scientists still working on a cure for cancer

I am the only one shocked we haven't found a cure for cancer after decades of research and billions of dollars? This new research is allegedly another step in that direction.

(PHYSORG)- In a technical tour de force, scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center have cataloged and cross-indexed the actions of 178 candidate drugs capable of blocking the activity of one or more of 300 enzymes, including enzymes critical for cancer and other diseases. Additionally, a free library of the results has been made available online to the research community. This unique library represents an important new tool for accelerating the development of an entire class of targeted cancer drugs.

The enzymes, called kinases, catalyze a wide array of vital biological activities. Unfortunately, they can also act as drivers for many forms of cancer. For this reason, the candidate drugs, called kinase inhibitors, have the potential to act as powerful anti-cancer agents. They can also interfere with normal processes in the body, however, resulting in side effects. With the new library, researchers will be able to analyze the complex interactions of these inhibitors with their targets to develop cancer drugs that block specific kinases responsible for disease while seeking to avoid major side effects. The results from the Fox Chase team's first-of-its-kind study will appear in the November issue of Nature Biotechnology.

"These results have pushed the field closer to finding truly specific inhibitors of the processes that drive cancer," says Jeffrey R. Peterson, Ph.D., associate professor in the Cancer Biology Program at Fox Chase and senior author on the new study. "We now have a collection of kinase inhibitors that are more well-characterized and understood than any other library. The next step is to use this information to identify specific, effective therapies that stop cancer in its tracks while avoiding healthy processes."

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Pacman nebula

The "Pacman" nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia. This image was shot in infrared light by NASA's orbiting WISE telescope. It is about 9,200 light-years from Earth.

(JPL-Caltech/UCLA/NASA)

Giant 16-Foot Female Burmese Python Killed In Everglades

The python had recently dined on a 76 pound female deer. Here are the snakes stats:

• Total length 15.65'
• Girth with prey 44.1"
• Snake mass with prey 215.4 pounds
• Snake mass without prey 139.1 pounds
• Prey (adult female deer) mass 76.3 pounds
• Deer skull and lower jaw retained for aging.

South Florida Water Management District

Insects can be literally scared to death

Insects are terrified of fish. the stress can actually kill them.

ScienceDaily  — The mere presence of a predator causes enough stress to kill a dragonfly, even when the predator cannot actually get at its prey to eat it, say biologists at the University of Toronto.

"How prey respond to the fear of being eaten is an important topic in ecology, and we've learned a great deal about how these responses affect predator and prey interactions," says Professor Locke Rowe, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and co-principal investigator of a study conducted at U of T's Koffler Scientific Reserve.

"As we learn more about how animals respond to stressful conditions -- whether it's the presence of predators or stresses from other natural or human-caused disruptions -- we increasingly find that stress brings a greater risk of death, presumably from things such as infections that normally wouldn't kill them," says Rowe.

Shannon McCauley, a post-doctoral fellow, and EEB professors Marie-Josée Fortin and Rowe raised juvenile dragonfly larvae (Leucorrhinia intacta) in aquariums or tanks along with their predators. The two groups were separated so that while the dragonflies could see and smell their predators, the predators could not actually eat them.

"What we found was unexpected -- more of the dragonflies died when predators shared their habitat," says Rowe. Larvae exposed to predatory fish or aquatic insects had survival rates 2.5 to 4.3 times less than those not exposed.

Flying Ants Invade Hawaii (video)

Windward Oahu residents are dealing with annoying flying ants. Fortunately, they don't bite.

Searching for alien life closer to home

SETI researcher proposes we look for signs of past alien life on Earth or in our solar system.

Any intelligent extraterrestrial life that exists probably won't announce itself by blowing up the White House, or win over the hearts of children as a lovable alien with a glowing finger. Many scientists simply hope to find evidence of them by scanning the skies for a radio signal from a distant star's alien civilization. But such efforts may also risk overlooking clues of past alien activity right here on Earth. 

If aliens did leave their mark on Earth by some wild chance, we could search for the possible "footprints" of alien technology or even analyze the DNA of terrestrial organisms for signs of intelligent messages or tinkering. Such a CSI-style forensics search could complement, rather than replace, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) astronomers who continue to look skyward, said Paul Davies, a physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz.

"My proposals aim to spread the burden from a small band of heroic radio astronomers to the entire scientific community," Davies said. "Projects like genomic SETI are an attempt to complement radio SETI, not undermine it."

Davies wants scientists to broaden their thinking about how aliens could have left behind their mark. Having worked with SETI for three decades, he has written about his ideas in a book, "The Eerie Silence" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010) and articles such as one that appeared in the online August edition of the journal Acta Astronautica.

But Davies does not think such intelligent alien life must necessarily exist. And his many years of supporting SETI have not stopped him from describing the needle-in-a-haystack search as "a search without any clue as to whether there is a needle there at all, or how large the haystack may be."

Left behind

There's also a chance that past visits to Earth by intelligent aliens left signs much closer to home. But probability and the length of the universe's age suggest that any such alien visit would have taken place before humans ever emerged on Earth, Davies said.

That means any traces of an alien visitation would have had to survive for hundreds of millions or billions of years for humans to still find them today.

"If there is another form of life on Earth, we could find it within 20 years, if we take the trouble to look," Davies told Astrobiology Magazine. "Of course, it may not be there, but searching our own planet is far easier than searching another one."

New Paper: 3-D Simulations of Nova Explosions

Scientists explain irregular, inhomogeneous distribution of nova ejecta.

ScienceDaily — A new study has shown how mixing of elements occurs during a nova explosion, thus solving an enigma that has puzzled stellar astrophysicists for over half a century.

Scientists at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. BarcelonaTech (UPC) have for the first time simulated critical phenomena that occur during nova explosions. Their work has made it possible to precisely characterise the physical properties and chemical composition of the material ejected in novae, and this has yielded the solution to an enigma that has puzzled experts for over 50 years: the origin of the irregular, inhomogeneous distribution of nova ejecta.

The paper, published recently in Nature, has facilitated analysis of the role these thermonuclear explosions play in the chemical enrichment of the galaxy.
Keep on reading...

Video: Saving Dogs' Lives on Facebook

  Bruised Not Broken social media campaign tries to save canines from euthanasia. So far, they have saved every dog they featured!

Complex Organic Material Exists Throughout The Universe

Credit: NASA, C.R. O'Dell and S.K. Wong

Organic compounds appear to be synthesized without life forms.

Prof. Sun Kwok and Dr. Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong show that an organic substance commonly found throughout the Universe contains a mixture of aromatic (ring-like) and aliphatic (chain-like) components. The compounds are so complex that their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum. Since coal and oil are remnants of ancient life, this type of organic matter was thought to arise only from living organisms. The team's discovery suggests that complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space even when no life forms are present.

The researchers investigated an unsolved phenomenon: a set of infrared emissions detected in stars, interstellar space, and galaxies. These spectral signatures are known as "Unidentified Infrared Emission features". For over two decades, the most commonly accepted theory on the origin of these signatures has been that they come from simple organic molecules made of carbon and hydrogen atoms, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules. From observations taken by the Infrared Space Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, Kwok and Zhang showed that the astronomical spectra have features that cannot be explained by PAH molecules. Instead, the team proposes that the substances generating these infrared emissions have chemical structures that are much more complex. By analyzing spectra of star dust formed in exploding stars called novae, they show that stars are making these complex organic compounds on extremely short time scales of weeks.

Cool video: Robot rides a bike

This robot rides a bike without training wheels! (video)

Is there anything coffee can't do?

Drinking coffee reduces risk of skin cancer.

Scientists reported Monday that drinking coffee was associated with decreased risk of a common and slow-growing form of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma. It appears that caffeine may play a role, they said.

The team, based at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, presented their study at the American Assn. for Cancer Research International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.

Examining data from the Nurses' Health Study, which followed 72,921 people between 1984 and 2008, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which followed 39,976 people between 1986 and 2008, they found 25,480 skin cancer cases. Basal cell carcinomas represented 22,786 of the cases, squamous cell carcinomas 1,953 and melanomas 741.

Women who drank more than three cups of coffee had a 20% reduction in risk for basal cell carcinoma. Men who drank that much coffee had a 9% reduction in risk of the slow-growing cancer. People who drank the most coffee had the lowest risk. The team did not identify reduced risk for squamous cell carcinoma. Keep on reading...

Viral Video: World of Warcraft - Mists of Pandaria B-roll

Viral Video: World of Warcraft - Mists of Pandaria B-roll



World of Warcraft - Mists of Pandaria B-roll

Cool Video: October's Spellbinding northern lights

This cool October northern lights video was shot in Arkansas. Enjoy!



Via Space.com:

October's Spellbinding northern lights

Traditionally, only skywatchers in high-latitude locations can see aurora displays, but during strong solar weather events, they can be visible to observers at lower latitudes. A dark, clear sky away from city lights is vital to spot the displays. [Amazing Auroras of 2011]

Green auroras, caused by the ionization of atomic oxygen in the atmosphere, are the most common northern lights seen. Red aurora displays are rarer, and are caused by the ionization of molecular oxygen and nitrogen.

Northern lights, video, cool

Confirmed: Tanning beds increase risk of skin cancers

Repetitive tanning bed use increases risk of skin cancer by 11% to 15%.

The popularity of indoor tanning is widespread, with roughly 10 percent of Americans using a tanning facility each year. However, use of tanning beds has been shown to be associated with an increased risk for skin cancer, according to lead researcher Mingfeng Zhang, M.D., research fellow in the department of dermatology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

For this cohort study, Zhang and colleagues followed 73,494 nurses who participated in the Nurses' Health Study II from 1989 to 2009. They tracked tanning bed use during high school and college and when women were aged between 25 and 35 years old. They also tracked the overall average usage during both periods in relation to basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma.

Results showed that tanning bed use increased skin cancer risk with a dose-response effect. More tanning bed exposure led to higher risks. Compared with nonusers, the risk for basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma increased by 15 percent for every four visits made to a tanning booth per year; the risk for melanoma increased by 11 percent.

Silver and white cars are more environmentally friendly

Their lighter color keeps them cooler and saves air conditioning fuel costs.

(PhysOrg.com) -- From an environment standpoint, silver and white cars are cool; black cars are not. Researchers at the Berkeley Lab Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) say that the color of your car affects your car's fuel economy and how seriously you contribute to pollution. A light-colored shell reflects more sunlight than a dark car shell. The cooler the color, the cooler the cabin air, and the less of a need to run your air conditioner.

Ronnen Levinson, scientist in the Heat Island Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is lead author of the study. The research was published in Applied Energy.

The researchers had two cars in the sun for an hour, one black and the other silver, parked facing south, in Sacramento, California. The silver Honda Civic (shell SR 0.57) had a cabin air temperature of about 5-6°C (9-11°F) lower than an identical black car (shell SR 0.05).

A silver (or white) shell would allow for a lower-capacity air conditioner as well. The cars were run through five identical cycles of soaking in the sun. Each cycle consisted of an hour with the air conditioners off, followed by a half hour of cooling with the air conditioners running at maximum. The researchers measured the roof, ceiling, dashboard, windshield, seat, door, vent air and cabin air temperatures in each car along with weather conditions in the lot.

U.S. Dismantles It's Last Mega Nuke Bomb

The age of large mega nuclear bombs has ended for the U.S.

Why did Neanderthals have short legs?

Short legs may have allowed Neanderthals to move over mountainous terrain more efficiently.

ScienceDaily — While most studies have concluded that a cold climate led to the short lower legs typical of Neandertals, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that lower leg lengths shorter than the typical modern human's let them move more efficiently over the mountainous terrain where they lived. The findings reveal a broader trend relating shorter lower leg length to mountainous environments that may help explain the limb proportions of many different animals.

Their research was published online in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and will appear in print in the November issue.

"Studies looking at limb length have always concluded that a shorter limb, including in Neandertals, leads to less efficiency of movement, because they had to take more steps to go a given distance," says lead author Ryan Higgins, graduate student in the Johns Hopkins Center of Functional Anatomy and Evolution. "But the other studies only looked at flat land. Our study suggests that the Neandertals' steps were not less efficient than modern humans in the sloped, mountainous environment where they lived."

Neandertals, who lived from 40,000 to 200,000 years ago in Europe and Western Asia, mostly during very cold periods, had a smaller stature and shorter lower leg lengths than modern humans. Because mammals in cold areas tend to be more compact, with a smaller surface area, scientists have normally concluded that it was the region's temperature that led to their truncated limbs compared to those of modern humans, who lived in a warmer environment overall.

Ancient cooking pots tell a story

Image courtesy of Anders Fischer

The change from fishing, hunting and gathering to agriculture may not have been as abrupt as previously thought.

Humans may have undergone a gradual rather than an abrupt transition from fishing, hunting and gathering to farming, according to a new study of ancient pottery.

Researchers at the University of York and the University of Bradford analysed cooking residues preserved in 133 ceramic vessels from the Western Baltic regions of Northern Europe to establish whether these residues were from terrestrial, marine or freshwater organisms...

The project team studied ceramic pots from 15 sites dating to around 4,000 BC– the time when the first evidence of domesticated animals and plants was found in the region. The research, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is published online in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The research team found that fish and other aquatic resources continued to be exploited after the advent of farming and domestication, with pots from coastal locations containing residues enriched in a form of carbon found in marine organisms.

Around one-fifth of coastal pots contained other biochemical traces of aquatic organisms, including fats and oils absent in terrestrial animals and plants. At inland sites, 28 percent of pots contained residues from aquatic organisms, which appeared to be from freshwater fish.

Lead author Dr Oliver Craig, of the Department of Archaeology at York, said: "This research provides clear evidence people across the Western Baltic continued to exploit marine and freshwater resources despite the arrival of domesticated animals and plants. Although farming was introduced rapidly across this region, it may not have caused such a dramatic shift from hunter-gatherer life as we previously thought."

NASA's flying telescope

The $500 million Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy lives onboard a modified Boeing 747. (video)

Largest study ever finds no link between cell phones and cancer

This study included 358,403 mobile phone subscribers over an 18-year period and found no link from cell phone use and tumors.

ScienceDaily — There is no link between long-term use of mobile phones and tumours of the brain or central nervous system, finds new research published online in the British Medical Journal.

In what is described as the largest study on the subject to date, Danish researchers found no evidence that the risk of brain tumours was raised among 358,403 mobile phone subscribers over an 18-year period.

The number of people using mobile phones is constantly rising with more than five billion subscriptions worldwide in 2010. This has led to concerns about potential adverse health effects, particularly tumours of the central nervous system.

Previous studies on a possible link between phone use and tumours have been inconclusive particularly on long-term use of mobile phones. Some of this earlier work took the form of case control studies involving small numbers of long-term users and were shown to be prone to error and bias. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields, as emitted by mobile phones, as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

Saving Hermit Crabs With 3D Shell Printing

Modern science comes to the rescue of Hermit Crabs.

Hermit crabs don’t make their own shells. They scavenge their homes. And now, hermit crabs are facing a housing shortage as the worldwide shell supply is decreasing. With a shell shortage, hermit crabs around the world are being forced to stick their butts into bottles, shotgun shells, and anything else they can find. This is not acceptable. As a community, we can reach out to this vulnerable species and offer our digital design skills and 3D printing capabilities and give hermit crabs another option: 3D printed shells.

Miles Lightwood, AKA TeamTeamUSA, is doing exactly that as an artist in residence here at MakerBot. His big project is Project Shellter, to provide 3D printed shells for hermit crabs the world over. We are inviting all MakerBot Operators and digital designers on Thingiverse to design shells and participate in SCIENCE!

Wonders of the world recreated in sand (video)

 Awesome:

Over 100 sculptures formed entirely out of sand – including The Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids of Giza and Corcovado mountain – have been created by a task force of international artists.

No glue was used for any of the sculptures, only water and pressed sand. An exhibition space of over 32,300 square feet has been dedicated to the works.

Evolutionary theory challenged by new research

The idea evolution takes place in rapid spurts is under fire.

(PhysOrg.com) -- New research from the University of Reading overturns conventional views on the nature of evolution, arguing that mammals did not develop into their many different forms in one early and rapid burst of evolution but rather found many different evolutionary routes.

It is widely assumed that species often diverge rapidly early in their evolution, and that this is followed by a longer, drawn-out period of slower evolutionary fine-tuning.

Explanations for this pattern suppose that mammals moved into a largely unoccupied niche and geographical space as they came to be the dominant vertebrate group on Earth. Then, as time went on, niche space and unexplored geographical regions became scarce, reducing opportunities for diversification.

However, the research led by Professor Mark Pagel, in conjunction with Dr Chris Venditti and Dr Andrew Meade, shows that there is no necessary connection between the rates at which new species emerge and the underlying rates of evolution of their features. Thus, the majority of mammal species, including two of the most prevalent orders of mammals (the rodents and bats), have no history of substantial and sustained increases in the rates at which they evolve.

Instead, these species achieved high rates of ‘speciation' or the production of new species, even though their rates of evolution were close to normal for mammals.

South Korea to develop new stealth fighter (KF-X) by 2020

Many are skeptical the South Koreans can start production on their new KF-X stealth fighter by 2020. If their success in the global auto market is any measure, they will succeed.

In a seminar today at the Seoul Air Show, South Korean government officials outlined the strategy and plans for the KF-X, a twin-engined stealth fighter with a design goal of achieving manoeuvrability, speed and range performance between a Lockheed Martin F-16 and a Boeing F-15.

South Korea wants to develop the KF-X over the next nine years, with mass production beginning after 2020. Indonesia has already joined the programme, and talks with Turkey are continuing.

If developing an all-new stealth fighter is not enough of a challenge, South Korea also intends to equip the KF-X with a set of all-new weapons, including indigenous missiles in the Raytheon AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-120 AMRAAM class, guided bombs and an anti-ship missile. South Korean officials have released a development budget estimate of about US$5 billion, which seems (wildly?) optimistic.

Back to the Future in an Electric DeLorean

Back to the Future in an Electric DeLorean. DeLorean is currently retrofitting old models and plans to make built-to-order electric DeLoreans around 2013.

From ABC News:

"Marty, you've got to come back with me! Back to the future!"

It is one of those great bits from film history -- Doc Brown, the mad genius inventor from 1985's "Back to the Future," builds a time machine out of that iconic-but-failed sports car of the early 1980s, the DeLorean DMC-12.

There is still a DeLorean Motor Co. of Humble, Texas, which supplies parts and occasionally builds new cars for DeLorean lovers, and it has now announced a new version -- a DeLorean powered entirely by electricity.

"The car of the future has really become the car of the future," joked James Espey, a vice president at DeLorean, which has about 60 employees.

So far, said Espey, the company has retrofitted one car with an electric motor. If all goes well, he said, the company would start selling built-to-order electric DeLoreans around 2013. The sticker price (if a custom-built car can have a sticker): about $90,000.

Can antiviral drugs slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease?

Can antiviral drugs slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease?

ScienceDaily — Antiviral drugs used to target the herpes virus could be effective at slowing the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a new study shows.

The University of Manchester scientists have previously shown that the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1) is a risk factor for Alzheimer's when it is present in the brains of people who have a specific genetic risk to the disease.

AD is an incurable neurodegenerative condition affecting about 18 million people worldwide. The causes of the disease or of the abnormal protein structures seen in AD brains -- amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles -- are completely unknown.

The Manchester team has established that the herpes virus causes accumulation of two key AD proteins -- β-amyloid (Aβ) and abnormally phosphorylated tau (P-tau) -- known to be the main components of plaques and tangles respectively. Both proteins are thought by many scientists to be involved in the development of the disease.

"We have found that the viral DNA in AD brains is very specifically located within amyloid plaques," said Professor Ruth Itzhaki, who led the team in the University's Faculty of Life Sciences. "This, together with the production of amyloid that the virus induces, suggests that HSV1 is a cause of toxic amyloid products and of plaques.

"Our results suggest that HSV1, together with the host genetic factor, is a major risk for AD, and that antiviral agents might be used for treating patients to slow disease progression."

Amazing Video: Luckiest man alive?

BASE jumper's parachute fails to open, but the man survives 900-foot plunge into water.

Man hunted in North America 1000 years earlier than previously thought

The date of man's migration to North America keeps moving back in time.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2011) — A new and astonishing chapter has been added to North American prehistory in regards to the first hunters and their hunt for the now extinct giant mammoth-like creatures -- the mastodons. Professor Eske Willerslev's team from the Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, has in collaboration with Michael Waters' team at the Center for the Study of the First Americans, University of Texas A&M, shown that the hunt for large mammals occurred at least 1,000 years before previously assumed.

This new study concludes that the first-known hunters in North America can now be dated back at least 14,000 years.

"I am sure that especially the Native Americans are pleased with the results of the study. It is further proof that humans have been present in North America for longer than previously believed. The "Clovis First" theory, which many scientists swore to just a few years back, has finally been buried with the conclusions of this study," says Professor Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen.

Spearhead found in mastodon
It is the finding and analysis of a tip from a human-made projectile point (spearhead) gathered from the remains of a mastodon that is behind the rewriting of North American prehistory. The spearhead, which itself was carved out from a mastodon-bone, was found at the Manis site in the state of Washington when archaeologists excavated a mastodon in the late 1970s.

However, 30 years would pass before a team of researchers was able to put a date on the spearhead and establish the identity of both the bone and the spearhead that had been embedded into the rib of the defeated mastodon. This was done through, amongst other things, DNA analysis, protein sequencing, advanced computer technology, Carbon-14 dating as well as comparisons with other mastodon findings in North America, for instance in the state of Wisconsin.

Astronomers have detected cloud of water vapor that could form icy comets

Credit: Tim Pyle, Spitzer Science Center, CalTech

There is enough water in this newly discovered space cloud to create oceans an several dry planets.

(PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, astronomers have detected around a burgeoning solar system a sprawling cloud of water vapor that's cold enough to form comets, which could eventually deliver oceans to dry planets.

Water is an essential ingredient for life. Scientists have found thousands of Earth-oceans' worth of it within the planet-forming disk surrounding the star TW Hydrae. TW Hydrae is 176 light years away in the constellation Hydra and is the closest solar-system-to-be.

University of Michigan astronomy professor Ted Bergin is a co-author of a paper on the findings published in the Oct. 21 edition of Science.

The researchers used the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI) on the orbiting Hershel Space Observatory to detect the chemical signature of water.

"This tells us that the key materials that life needs are present in a system before planets are born," said Bergin, a HIFI co-investigator. "We expected this to be the case, but now we know it is because have directly detected it. We can see it."

Viral Video: Science Museum, London - Interactive 3D Projection

 Via YouTube:

Watch a fully interactive 3D projection, hosted by Sensodyne Repair & Protect, where the public are able to damage the Science Museum, London through hitting a punch bag set up in front of it. The harder they hit it, the more damage they do!

White roofs lead to more global warming?

Before you paint your roof white in an effort to reduce global warming, you should read this.

A new study published in the Journal of Climate claims that painting rooftops white—a method championed by energy secretary  Steven Chu and others to combat climate change—only minimally reduces local cooling, and actually causes a slight increase in overall global warming.
How the Heck:

• The researchers used a global climate model called  GATOR-GCMOM [PDF], which incorporates a host of data from satellites and weather stations worldwide. It models how relationships between various environmental conditions, like the presence of clouds or pollutants, will affect local and global climate.
• The model found that more white roofs means less surface heat in cities (which is obvious enough to anyone who’s sat in a car with a black interior in the sun). Lower local temperature means less water evaporates and rises up to eventually form clouds, says lead author and Stanford University researcher Mark Jacobson. The decrease in clouds allows more sunlight to reach the Earth’s surface, leading to higher temperatures overall.
• The model also predicts that much of the light reflected by rooftops will eventually be absorbed by dark carbon soot and particulates that are especially prevalent in the air above urban areas. This could limit local cooling and cause warming elsewhere as the particles drift away.

600 gamma-ray sources are complete mysteries

Most gamma-ray sources are from a pulsar or blazar, but 600 are unknown.

NASA's Fermi team recently released the second catalog of gamma-ray sources detected by their satellite's Large Area Telescope (LAT). Of the 1873 sources found, nearly 600 are complete mysteries. No one knows what they are.

"Fermi sees gamma rays coming from directions in the sky where there are no obvious objects likely to produce gamma rays," says David Thompson, Fermi Deputy Project Scientist from Goddard Space Flight Center.

Gamma rays are by their very nature heralds of great energy and violence. They are a super-energetic form of light produced by sources such as black holes and massive exploding stars. Gamma-rays are so energetic that ordinary lenses and mirrors do not work. As a result, gamma-ray telescopes can't always get a sharp enough focus to determine exactly where the sources are.

For two thirds of the new catalog's sources the Fermi scientists can, with at least reasonable certainty, locate a known gamma ray-producing object*, such as a pulsar or blazar, in the vicinity the gamma-rays are coming from. But the remaining third – the "mystery sources" -- have the researchers stumped, at least for now. And they are the most tantalizing.

Princeton University researchers study effect of giant meteorite striking the Earth

Princeton University researchers study effect of giant meteorite striking the Earth.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Seeking to better understand the level of death and destruction that would result from a large meteorite striking the Earth, Princeton University researchers have developed a new model that can not only more accurately simulate the seismic fallout of such an impact, but also help reveal new information about the surface and interior of planets based on past collisions.

The researchers -- based in the laboratory of Jeroen Tromp, the Blair Professor of Geology in Princeton's Department of Geosciences -- simulated the meteorite strike that caused the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, an impact 2 million times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb that many scientists believe triggered the mass extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The team's rendering of the planet showed that the impact's seismic waves would be scattered and unfocused, resulting in less severe ground displacement, tsunamis, and seismic and volcanic activity than previously theorized.

The Princeton simulations also could help researchers gain insight into the unseen surface and interior details of other planets and moons, the authors reported. The simulations can pinpoint the strength of the meteorite's antipodal focus -- the area of the globe opposite of the crater where the energy from the initial collision comes together like a second, smaller impact. The researchers found this point is determined by how the features and composition of the smitten orb direct and absorb the seismic waves. Scientists could identify the planet or moon's characteristics by comparing a crater to the remnants of the antipodal point and calculating how the impact waves spread....

"We have developed the first model to account for how Earth's surface features and shape would influence the spread of seismic activity following a meteorite impact. For the Earth, these calculations are usually made using a smooth, perfect sphere model, but we found that the surface features of a planet or a moon have a huge effect on the aftershock a large meteorite will have, so it's extremely important to take those into account.

"After a meteorite impact, seismic waves travel outward across the Earth's surface like after a stone is thrown in water. These waves travel all the way around the globe and meet in a single point on the opposite side from the impact known as the antipode. Our model shows that because the Earth is elliptical and its surface is heterogeneous those waves travel with different speeds in different areas, changing where the waves end up on the other side of the world and the waves' amplitude when they get there. These waves also are influenced by the interior. The effect on the opposite side is a result of the complete structure. Keep on reading...

New radar sees through walls at a distance

Credit: Lincoln Lab, MIT

New 'see through walls' radar technology developed at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory has powerful urban combat implications.

ScienceDaily — The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.

Much as humans and other animals see via waves of visible light that bounce off objects and then strike our eyes' retinas, radar "sees" by sending out radio waves that bounce off targets and return to the radar's receivers. But just as light can't pass through solid objects in quantities large enough for the eye to detect, it's hard to build radar that can penetrate walls well enough to show what's happening behind. Now, Lincoln Lab researchers have built a system that can see through walls from some distance away, giving an instantaneous picture of the activity on the other side.

The researchers' device is an unassuming array of antenna arranged into two rows -- eight receiving elements on top, 13 transmitting ones below -- and some computing equipment, all mounted onto a movable cart. But it has powerful implications for military operations, especially "urban combat situations," says Gregory Charvat, technical staff at Lincoln Lab and the leader of the project. Keep on reading...

Can eating twinkies make young men infertile?

Junk food that is high in trans fats can damage sperm.

JUNK food, particularly products containing trans fats, can make healthy young men infertile by damaging their sperm, a joint American and Spanish study out today showed. 
 
Fertility doctors from Harvard University and the University of Murcia, southeastern Spain, analysed sperm from hundreds of men aged between 18 and 22 and found those who ate a high proportion of junk food had poorer quality sperm than those with a nutritious diet.

All the men were assessed to ensure they were in optimum shape and had no other problems that may affect their reproductive system, The Sun reported.

The sperm of men with poor diets was found to be less likely to survive the journey to fertilise an egg, even if the men were a healthy weight and exercised.

Meanwhile, a separate Japanese study, also out today, found that taking moderate regular exercise can be good for a man's sperm.

Can having allergies prevent brain tumors?

A new study indicates people with allergies may have a reduced risk of developing deadly brain tumors.

(Medical Press)- A study published online Oct. 18 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute provides some new but qualified support for the idea that the immune system's response to allergies may reduce the risk of developing deadly brain tumors.

People with somewhat elevated blood levels of immunoglobulin E (IgE), antibodies that carry out the body's immune response to allergens, were significantly less likely to develop gliomas, and those who did survived somewhat longer, than those with clinically normal IgE levels, according to the study by a team of researchers at Brown University and several other institutions in the United States and Europe.

"These results suggest that there is something different about the immune response to tumor cells in people with allergies," said corresponding author Dominique Michaud, associate professor of epidemiology in the Public Health Program at Brown University. "In terms of fighting the cancer or preventing it from growing, people who have allergies might be protected. They might be able to better to fight the cancer."

Questions answered, questions raised

The new study employed a methodology that addresses questions raised by previous studies that have also reported similar associations between IgE, or allergy symptoms, and brain tumors. Instead of asking people who have or have not been diagnosed with brain tumors to describe their allergy history or to take IgE tests, the study delved into the detailed records of tens of thousands of people who participated in four broad-based health studies: the Physicians' Health Study, the Nurses' Health Study, the Women's Health Study, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Keep on reading...

Foursquare is fastest growing phenomena with over 10 million users

If you are a businessman and don't know about Foursquare, this is a must see video.

Video: The Power of Foursquare

100,000-Year-Old Artist's Toolkit and Workshop Found in South Africa

Credit: Prof. Chris Henshilwood, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Stone-age man used ochre to provide color to his world.

ScienceDaily — An ochre-rich mixture, possibly used for decoration, painting and skin protection 100,000 years ago, and stored in two abalone shells, was discovered at Blombos Cave in Cape Town, South Africa.

"Ochre may have been applied with symbolic intent as decoration on bodies and clothing during the Middle Stone Age," says Professor Christopher Henshilwood from the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, who together with his international team discovered a processing workshop in 2008 where a liquefied ochre-rich mixture was produced.

The findings are published in the journal Science on Oct. 14, 2011.

The two coeval, spatially associated toolkits were discovered in situ (not been moved from its original place of deposition) and the kits included ochre, bone, charcoal, grindstones and hammerstones. The grinding and scraping of ochre to produce a powder for use as a pigment was common practice in Africa and the Near East only after about 100,000 years ago.

"This discovery represents an important benchmark in the evolution of complex human cognition (mental processes) in that it shows that humans had the conceptual ability to source, combine and store substances that were then possibly used to enhance their social practices," explains Henshilwood. Keep on reading...

Video: Quantum Levitation

 This Quantum Levitation video is amazing.

Suspending a superconducting disc above or below a set of permanent magnets. The magnetic field is locked inside the superconductor ; a phenomenon called 'Quantum Trapping'.

What did ancient Greek sailors have in their amphorae?

JMSAZ

If you thought the ancient Greeks only transported wine in their amphorae, you are mistaken.

(PhysOrg.com) -- While many historians have assumed that Greek sailors were using amphorae, or ancient storage containers, to transport and trade wine, new DNA testing is providing evidence that these containers were used for many different products.

The research, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, reveals the DNA results of vegetables, herbs and nuts in a sampling of jars tested.

Led by archaeologist Brendan Foley from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and geneticist Maria Hansson from Lund University in Sweden, the researchers retrieved DNA samples from nine amphorae that were obtained from sunken ships and dated back to the fifth and third centuries BC.

As assumed by historians and the trade of wine, the DNA of grapes was found in five of the nine containers. Six of the jars also showed the DNA of olives, presumably from olive oil. The containers also revealed DNA hits from ginger, walnut, juniper, legumes, mint, oregano and thyme. Each container showed multiple DNA samples suggesting that the containers were reused and carried different products each time.

Archaeological and written evidence from the time period shows that trade included such items as wine, oil, honey, resin, fruit, fish and other meats. The results of this study provide more evidence that wine was not the only product traded from these containers.

TerraMax: The Self-Driving Robotruck (Video)

Army convoys are frequently attacked: The TerraMax, a self-driving robotic truck, is intended get soldiers out of the cabs of vehicles and save from attack.

Future computers may be able to rewire themselves

Future computers may be able to rewire themselves.

Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a new nanomaterial that can "steer" electrical currents. The development could lead to a computer that can simply reconfigure its internal wiring and become an entirely different device, based on changing needs.

As electronic devices are built smaller and smaller, the materials from which the circuits are constructed begin to lose their properties and begin to be controlled by quantum mechanical phenomena. Reaching this physical barrier, many scientists have begun building circuits into multiple dimensions, such as stacking components on top of one another.

The Northwestern team has taken a fundamentally different approach. They have made reconfigurable electronic materials: materials that can rearrange themselves to meet different computational needs at different times.

"Our new steering technology allows use to direct current flow through a piece of continuous material," said Bartosz A. Grzybowski, who led the research. "Like redirecting a river, streams of electrons can be steered in multiple directions through a block of the material -- even multiple streams flowing in opposing directions at the same time."

Grzybowski is professor of chemical and biological engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and professor of chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

Meet the shotgun chosen by the U.S. Marines

John S. Farnham,

“Nothing causes criminals to back off more hurriedly than does the presence of a shotgun. Shotguns scare people as do no other weapon.”

Benelli's M4

Baby Giant Pacific Octopuses Engage in Tug-of-War Over Food (video)

Cute baby Giant Pacific Octopuses eat.

Baby Octopuses Eating

Experimental drug shows promise for early Alzheimer's

Alzheimer's brain

The experimental drug, Gantenerumab, shows promise for early Alzheimer's patients.

(Reuters) - An experimental drug being developed by Roche Holding AG removed amyloid plaques from the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients in a small early-stage study, according to data published in the Archives of Neurology, the Swiss drugmaker said on Monday.

Many researchers suspect the build-up of such plaques may be a cause of the memory robbing disease, although that theory has yet to be definitively proved.

The next step will be to investigate whether removal of brain amyloid translates into clinical benefit for patients at doses of the experimental drug, gantenerumab, that are well tolerated and safe, Roche said.

Gantenerumab, a biotech drug designed to bind to amyloid plaques in the brain and remove them, is being targeted at the early stages of Alzheimer's with the hope it can slow progression of the disease while patients are still able to function.

The Phase I study of 16 Alzheimer's patients tested gantenerumab at two doses against a placebo over six months of treatment.

The Roche drug led to a dose-dependent reduction of brain amyloid, while amyloid load increased in patients receiving a placebo, the company said.

Alzheimer's

Strange Brown Dwarf Star Cluster Found

Brown Dwarf Star Credit: Wikimedia commons

Astronomers have found an unusual number of brown dwarf stars in the cluster NGC 1333.

Astronomers have spotted higher-than-expected numbers of the strange celestial objects known as brown dwarfs hanging out in the cluster NGC 1333, a gas and dust cloud that harbors young stars. The results suggest that there may be something particular about the environment in NGC 1333 that causes bountiful brown dwarf formation.

Brown dwarfs are mid-range objects, too large to be considered a planet but not quite large enough to burn hydrogen and become a star. Most have a mass between approximately 20 and 80 times the mass of Jupiter and, when young, they glow brightly in infrared wavelength due to the heat of their formation.

Using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope in Chile, both of which observe the infrared, researchers spotted 30 to 40 new brown dwarfs in NGC 1333. The researchers estimate that for every two stars in the cluster, there is one brown dwarf — significantly more than in other star-forming regions. The findings appear Oct. 11 in the Astrophysical Journal.

brown dwarf stars

Speeding neutrinos explained by relativistic motion of the GPS clocks?

Credit: National Institute of Nuclear Physics (ITFN) in Italy

A physicist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands claims he has an explanation for the neutrinos that appeared to be FTL.

It's now been three weeks since the extraordinary news that neutrinos travelling between France and Italy had been clocked moving faster than light. The experiment, known as OPERA, found that the particles produced at CERN near Geneva arrived at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy some 60 nanoseconds earlier than the speed of light allows.

The result has sent a ripple of excitement through the physics community. Since then, more than 80 papers have appeared on the arXiv attempting to debunk or explain the effect. It's fair to say, however, that the general feeling is that the OPERA team must have overlooked something.

Today, Ronald van Elburg at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands makes a convincing argument that he has found the error.

First, let's review the experiment, which is simple in concept: a measurement of distance and time.
The distance is straightforward. The location of neutrino production at CERN is fairly easy to measure using GPS. The position of the Gran Sasso Laboratory is harder to pin down because it sits under a kilometre-high mountain. Nevertheless, the OPERA team says it has nailed the distance of 730 km to within 20 cm or so.

The time of neutrino flight is harder to measure. The OPERA team says it can accurately gauge the instant when the neutrinos are created and the instant they are detected using clocks at each end.

But the tricky part is keeping the clocks at either end exactly synchronised. The team does this using GPS satellites, which each broadcast a highly accurate time signal from orbit some 20,000km overhead. That introduces a number of extra complications which the team has to take into account, such as the time of travel of the GPS signals to the ground.

But van Elburg says there is one effect that the OPERA team seems to have overlooked: the relativistic motion of the GPS clocks. Keep on reading...

Why you should buy your mom a beer

A pint of beer a day could help older women guard against osteoporosis

Older women could guard against osteoporosis in later life by drinking a pint of beer a day.


A new study has shown that ale is an ideal source of dietary silicon, which is crucial in the formation of new bone. Bone is continuously being lost and reformed and silicon is vital for helping to renew it.


Although silicon is contained in some plants and beans, one of the richest and most easily absorbed sources is beer, as it is an ingredient of the malt used in the brewing process. Several previous studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between the amount of silicon in a person’s diet and their bone mineral density. 


In the new study, Professor Jonathan Powell, head of nutrition research at Cambridge University, studied the effects of beer on bone formation and found that ethanol – which is also present in alcohol – helps to prevent bone loss and silicon encourages the growth of new bone.

‘Silicon combines with the hormone oestrogen to produce a beneficial effect and as women age, their oestrogen levels fall, and so, as they get older, it is important for women to take in a good daily amount of silicon,’ says Prof Powell.

Video: Dumbest Stuff on Wheels

SPEED show highlights vehicular mayhem. Great redneck action.

DARPA Invites You to Design the Next Miniature Unmanned Air Vehicle (video)

DARPA is using crowdsourcing for design of the next generation of miniature UAV's. There is a $100k prize!

What did early hominids eat?

Paranthropus boisei, dubbed "Nutcracker Man." may not have cracked nuts after all.

ScienceDaily — New assessments by researchers using the latest high-tech tools to study the diets of early hominids are challenging long-held assumptions about what our ancestors ate, says a study by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Arkansas.

By analyzing microscopic pits and scratches on hominid teeth, as well as stable isotopes of carbon found in teeth, researchers are getting a very different picture of the diet habitats of early hominids than that painted by the physical structure of the skull, jawbones and teeth. While some early hominids sported powerful jaws and large molars -- including Paranthropus boisei, dubbed "Nutcracker Man" -- they may have cracked nuts rarely if at all, said CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Matt Sponheimer, study co-author.

Such findings are forcing anthropologists to rethink long-held assumptions about early hominids, aided by technological tools that were unknown just a few years ago. A paper on the subject by Sponheimer and co-author Peter Ungar, a distinguished professor at the University of Arkansas, was published in the Oct. 14 issue of Science.

Earlier this year, Sponheimer and his colleagues showed Paranthropus boisei was essentially feeding on grasses and sedges rather than soft fruits preferred by chimpanzees. "We can now be sure that Paranthropus boisei ate foods that no self-respecting chimpanzee would stomach in quantity," said Sponheimer. "It is also clear that our previous notions of this group's diet were grossly oversimplified at best, and absolutely backward at worst."

"The morphology tells you what a hominid may have eaten," said Ungar. But it does not necessarily reveal what the animal was actually dining on, he said.

Meet Meka: The "sociable" robot (video)

Sociable robots such as this one from Meka Robotics may have uses in medicine, eldercare, and education.

Meka Robotics at IROS 2011

GM to change course and make all electric vehicle for U.S. market

Spark Cutaway Credit: GM

GM is to change course and make all electric vehicle for the U.S. market. Have they gotten a message from low Volt sales?

(Technology Review)- General Motors plans to sell an electric version of the Spark, a mini-car that it currently sells outside the United States. GM will sell the gasoline version of the Spark in the U.S. starting next year, and will follow with the electric version in select U.S. markets and around the world in 2013. The electric Spark will be powered by batteries made by A123 Systems, based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The car is a departure from GM's current strategy for electric vehicles, exemplified by the Chevrolet Volt. For short trips—about 35 miles—the Volt can run on battery power alone. For longer trips, a gasoline engine generates electricity to power the car. The range-extending gas engine is meant to address one of the main drawbacks of electric cars—their limited range on a charge. But adding an engine, and the complex transmission needed to coordinate power from the engine and electric motors, adds significantly to the vehicle's cost.

T. Rex May Have Been Bigger Than Thought

A teenage T. Rex grew as fast as 3,950 pounds per year!

ScienceDaily — A new study reveals that T. rex grew more quickly and reached significantly greater masses than previously estimated. In a departure from earlier methods, the new study uses mounted skeletons to generate body mass estimates.

In a new study just published in the online journal PLoS ONE, a team of scientists led by Professor John R. Hutchinson of The Royal Veterinary College, London, and Peter Makovicky, PhD, curator of dinosaurs at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago applied cutting edge technology and computer modeling to "weigh" five Tyrannosaurus rex specimens, including The Field Museum's iconic SUE skeleton. Their results reveal that T. rex grew more quickly and reached significantly greater masses than previously estimated.

In a departure from earlier methods, the new study uses mounted skeletons to generate body mass estimates. Makovicky notes, "Previous methods for calculating mass relied on scale models, which can magnify even minor errors, or on extrapolations from living animals with very different body plans from dinosaurs. We overcame such problems by using the actual skeletons as a starting point for our study."

The team used 3-D laser scans of mounted skeletons as a template for generating fleshed-out digital models whose masses could then be computed. The laser scans are accurate to less than half an inch for skeletons that are up to 40 feet long. Digital body cross-sections were reconstructed along the length of each skeleton using the relationships of the soft tissues to skeletons in birds and crocodiles as a guide. A digital skin was then overlaid to generate a body volume, whose mass was calculated after empty spaces such as lungs and the mouth cavity were modeled and subtracted.

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Forests appear to have a greater capacity to soak up carbon dioxide gas than previously thought

Simulating a future atmosphere caused CO2-soaked trees to grew 26 percent more than those exposed to normal levels of carbon dioxide.

(PHYSORG)- North American forests appear to have a greater capacity to soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas than researchers had previously anticipated.

As a result, they could help slow the pace of human-caused climate warming more than most scientists had thought, a U-M ecologist and his colleagues have concluded.

The results of a 12-year study at an experimental forest in northeastern Wisconsin challenge several long-held assumptions about how future forests will respond to the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide blamed for human-caused climate change, said University of Michigan microbial ecologist Donald Zak, lead author of a paper published online this week in Ecology Letters.

"Some of the initial assumptions about ecosystem response are not correct and will have to be revised," said Zak, a professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

To simulate atmospheric conditions expected in the latter half of this century, Zak and his colleagues continuously pumped extra carbon dioxide into the canopies of trembling aspen, paper birch and sugar maple trees at a 38-acre experimental forest in Rhinelander, Wis., from 1997 to 2008.

Some of the trees were also bathed in elevated levels of ground-level ozone, the primary constituent in smog, to simulate the increasingly polluted air of the future. Both parts of the federally funded experiment---the carbon dioxide and the ozone treatments---produced unexpected results.

In addition to trapping heat, carbon dioxide is known to have a fertilizing effect on trees and other plants, making them grow faster than they normally would. Climate researchers and ecosystem modelers assume that in coming decades, carbon dioxide's fertilizing effect will temporarily boost the growth rate of northern temperate forests. Keep on reading...

Sickle Cell Disease Corrected in Adult Mice

Researchers off hope for cure of sickle cell disease.

ScienceDaily — National Institutes of Health-funded scientists have corrected sickle cell disease in adult laboratory mice by activating production of a special blood component normally produced before, but not after, birth.

"This discovery provides an important new target for future therapies in people with sickle cell disease," said Susan B. Shurin, M.D., acting director of the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which co-funded the study. "More work is needed before it will be possible to test such therapies in people, but this study demonstrates that the approach works in principle."

Researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston and the University of Texas at Austin corrected sickle cell disease in mice that had been bred to have the inherited blood disorder. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) -- all part of the NIH -- funded the research. The results of the study will appear online Oct. 13 in the journal Science.

Sickle cell disease results from an abnormality in hemoglobin, the protein found in red blood cells that is responsible for transporting oxygen throughout the body. People living with sickle cell disease have two copies of an altered gene that produces sickle hemoglobin instead of normal adult hemoglobin. Sickle hemoglobin changes shape after releasing its oxygen, causing the red blood cell to become stiff, misshapen and sticky, and slowing blood flow to tissues. This process damages organs and causes pain.

Video: Amazing Time-Lapse Landscapes

Dustin Farrell's digital art captures locations in Arizona and Utah.

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

New model suggests potential causes of volcano super-eruptions

Volcanic system super-eruptions occur about every 100,000 years. The Yellowstone one was about 2,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Scientists are trying to understand the factors that influence these eruptions.

(PHYSORG)- The "super-eruption" of a major volcanic system occurs about every 100,000 years and is considered one of the most catastrophic natural events on Earth, yet scientists have long been unsure about what triggers these violent explosions.

However, a new model presented this week by researchers at Oregon State University points to a combination of temperature influence and the geometrical configuration of the magma chamber as a potential cause for these super-eruptions.

Results of the research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, were presented at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis, Minn.

Patricia "Trish" Gregg, a post-doctoral researcher at OSU and lead author on the modeling study, says the creation of a ductile halo of rock around the magma chamber allows the pressure to build over tens of thousands of years, resulting in extensive uplifting in the roof above the magma chamber. Eventually, faults from above trigger a collapse of the caldera and subsequent eruption.

"You can compare it to cracks forming on the top of baking bread as it expands," said Gregg, a researcher in OSU's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. "As the magma chamber pressurizes at depth, cracks form at the surface to accommodate the doming and expansion. Eventually, the cracks grow in size and propagate downward toward the magma chamber.

"In the case of very large volcanoes, when the cracks penetrate deep enough, they can rupture the magma chamber wall and trigger roof collapse and eruption," Gregg added.

The eruption of super-volcanoes dwarfs the eruptions of recent volcanoes and can trigger planetary climate change by inducing Ice Ages and other impacts. One such event was the Huckleberry Ridge eruption of present-day Yellowstone Park about two million years ago, which was more than 2,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington.

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The Medicine Hunter visits the New York Botanical Garden and finds a dangerous plant used for medicinal purposes.

Turning liquid to solid with high electric field

Credit: Georgia Institute of Technology

Scientists have demonstrated in simulations it is possible to turn liquid droplets of certain materials solid through electric-field-induced phase transformation.

ScienceDaily  — Physicists have demonstrated in simulations that under the influence of sufficiently high electric fields, liquid droplets of certain materials will undergo solidification, forming crystallites at temperature and pressure conditions that correspond to liquid droplets at field-free conditions. This electric-field-induced phase transformation is termed electrocrystallization.

The study, performed by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology, appears online and is scheduled as a feature and cover article in the 42^nd issue of Volume 115 of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

"We show that with a strong electric field, you can induce a phase transition without altering the thermodynamic parameters," said Uzi Landman, Regents' and Institute Professor in the School of Physics, F.E. Callaway Chair and director of the Center for Computational Materials Science (CCMS) at Georgia Tech.

In these simulations, Landman and Senior Research Scientists David Luedtke and Jianping Gao at the CCMS set out first to explore a phenomenon described by Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor in 1964 in the course of his study of the effect of lightning on raindrops, expressed as changes in the shape of liquid drops when passing through an electric field. While liquid drops under field-free conditions are spherical, they alter their shape in response to an applied electric field to become needle-like liquid drops. Instead of the water droplets used in the almost decade-old laboratory experiments of Taylor, the Georgia Tech researchers focused their theoretical study on a 10 nanometer (nm) diameter liquid droplet of formamide, which is a material made of small polar molecules each characterized by a dipole moment that is more than twice as large as that of a water molecule.