DISCOVERIES: NEW SCIENCE FINDINGS

A toast to your lungs

Drinking is good for you, and drinking is bad for you. Today, it's good. Though excess drinking was detrimental, people who drank some alcohol daily, but fewer than two drinks, had a 20 percent reduction in risk of lung disease, including asthma and emphysema, according to a study at Permanente Hospital in Oakland. This included smokers.

Vegetables for the skin

Scientists have discovered that a derivative of broccoli-sprout extract protects the skin against the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. The compound is called sulforaphane, according to the researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The highest doses of UV-induced redness and inflammation were reduced by an average of 37 percent. The practical application needs more work.

Body resists time change

Calling it one of the "human arrogances," a researcher at the University of Munich has found that the body never really accepts the change to Daylight Saving Time, instead abiding by its more natural inclination to be guided by the sun. The good news is that people adjusted easily to the change back to standard time. Next weekend, enjoy.

Lung cancer survival rate

Despite considerable expense, overall survival from lung cancer increased only a month between 1983 and 1997, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The five-year survival rate remains the same as it was in the late 1970s, about 16 percent. The team found that with metastic lung cancer, each year of life after diagnosis cost more than $1 million for treatment.

Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Science Daily — The University of California, Berkeley and the SETI Institute have announced that the first 42 radio dishes of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) have been activated and collecting scientific data from the far reaches of the universe. This is the first phase of a planned 350 radio dishes that will advance the capabilities of radio astronomy research. Paul G. Allen, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist whose foundation donated seed money that started the project in 2001, joined representatives of UC Berkeley and the SETI Institute to launch the array.

The Allen Telescope Array. (Credit: Image courtesy of SETI Institute)

“This is a great day for the science of radio astronomy and the study of the cosmos,” said Leo Blitz, UC Berkeley professor of astronomy and director of the university’s Radio Astronomy Laboratory, which is building the ATA with the SETI Institute. “Thanks to a unique intersection between the best in science, advanced, innovative technology and bold philanthropy, many secrets of the universe are a little closer to being revealed.”

"This project represents a potential breakthrough in building large arrays of radio telescopes that are extremely cost effective,” said Paul G. Allen, primary funder of the ATA. “As now deployed and with plenty of room for growth in the future, the telescope can fulfill a multitude of uses, including broad radio sky surveys and the search for evidence of extraterrestrial technology. I’m pleased to be able to contribute to such an important advancement and help build on the work this new telescope will do in the future. My hat is off to the team that worked so hard these last seven years to accomplish this significant milestone.”

Every object in space emits radio waves that can be collected and studied. From observation of these signals, radio astronomers can create a picture of astronomical bodies and events at great distances, revealing detail not discernable by telescopes operating at other wavelengths. The ATA will acquire data in a new way, imaging a large piece of the sky at once. What sets the ATA apart from earlier radio telescopes is its ability to collect and, analyze more information about celestial objects, and do this simultaneously for several projects. In addition, observational surveys can be made with greater speed than any previous or existing radio device.

“For SETI, the ATA’s technical capabilities exponentially increase our ability to search for intelligent signals, and may lead to the discovery of thinking beings elsewhere in the universe,” said astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “It is the first major telescope in the world built specifically for undertaking a search for extraterrestrial intelligence.”

The ATA opens the doors to a new era of scientific progress. The telescope’s potential discoveries include a better understanding of exploding stars (supernovas), black holes, and new, exotic astronomical objects that are predicted but not yet observed. It will also provide expanded search capabilities to determine if intelligent civilizations have evolved around other stars. The ATA is the first panchromatic, wide-angle, snapshot, radio camera ever built. It is the most effective tool to create radio images of a vast area of the sky ever placed in the hands of researchers.

Located in an arid valley near the town of Hat Creek, just north of Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California, the new array is already collecting important data. The first test images, released today from data gathered by the 42 ATA telescopes, include a radio map of the nearby Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33).

Beyond its speed and ability to both garner and analyze data, the ATA is also the first centimeter wavelength radio telescope with the ability to multi-task. While making innovative observations for radio astronomy, it can simultaneously interrogate solar-type stars for artificially produced signals that would reveal the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

This new capability increases many-fold the time astronomers can devote to large-scale surveys of the stars, as well as expanding the radio frequency band over which they can search. For SETI, in particular, this means that over the next two-dozen-years, the ATA will get a thousand times more data than has been accumulated in the past 45 years.

The ATA uses mass-produced, 20-foot diameter radio dishes and commercial telecommunications technologies combined with an innovative receiver design, and state-of-the-art digital signal processing technology. Working together, these small dishes create a telescope with a wide field of view ideally suited to rapidly surveying the sky. The layout of the 42 dishes was created by a computer model and is optimized to provide high quality radio imagery of the sky. The ATA can also filter out noise from man-made interference that in many radio telescopes would render much of the data unusable. The array can be easily upgraded as new advances in computer or telecommunications technology become available.

The total cost of the project to date, including research, development and construction costs for the array and the necessary radio astronomy and SETI signal detectors, is $50 million. The first phase of this project was funded through generous grants from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation totaling $25 million. UC Berkeley, the SETI Institute, the National Science Foundation, Xilinx, Nathan Myhrvold, Greg Papadopoulos, and other corporations and individual donors contributed additional funding. Both UC Berkeley and the SETI Institute are engaging in additional fundraising efforts to complete the full 350-dish array.

The full 350-dish array, when completed in approximately three years, will have unprecedented research capabilities. Capitalizing on constant advancements in computer technology, the ATA will be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of traditional instruments. The ATA team is prepared to install more dishes as additional funding is secured.

The Scientists Discovered Skull of New Amazing Dinosaur

The Scientists Discovered Skull of New Amazing Dinosaur

by Alexander Toldt 13:23, October 4th 2007

A group of scientists have unveiled on Wednesday the skull of a new amazing species of duckbill dinosaur. The skull, or in fact the dinosaur that possessed it, has really amazed the scientists, who have already called it “one of the most magnificent” ever! The new discovery is very important because it provides quite important clues about the evolution of the huge long gone plant-eaters. The skull has been found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and that is why the new species of dinosaur has been called the Gryposaurus monumentensis. The scientists have introduced it to the whole world on Wednesday during a press conference at Grand Staircase-Escalante, as well as through the pages of the Linnean Society’s “Zoological Journal”. The Gryposaurus monumentensis appears to have been a rugged and thick-boned huge dinosaur, having also no less than 800 teeth! Terry Gates, a paleontologist with the Utah Museum of Natural History from the University of Utah, has simply said that the Gryposaurus monumentensis “was a monster”. Monster or not, however, the new found amazing dinosaur is only one of the three dinosaur species that have been discovered in Utah and are now earning special renown. A therizinosaur, for example, which was a sickle-clawed dinosaur, has been discovered in the badlands near Big Water, Kane County, and now it is the subject of an important new exhibit from the Museum of Northern Arizona. The new discoveries are very important for the scientists because they bring new information about the extinct huge animals that lived on Earth long time ago.

The Genetic Code Of Parasitic Worm That Causes Elephantiasis Revealed

Science Daily — More than 150 million people worldwide are infected with filarial parasites -- long, thread-like worms that can live for years inside the human body and cause severe, debilitating diseases such as elephantiasis.

Mosquitoes spread the larvae of these parasitic nematodes from human to human, placing at risk more than a billion people who live in places in Africa, Asia and Latin America where filarial parasites thrive.

Now, a team of researchers funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has revealed the genetic secrets of one of these parasites.

In the September 21, 2007 issue of Science, the researchers report solving the complete genome of Brugia malayi, one of the worms that causes the often debilitating disease elephantiasis.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 40 million people around the world are seriously incapacitated and disfigured by elephantiasis. The WHO also estimates that about half a million people around the world have lost their vision due to onchocerciasis, or river blindness, which is caused by another type of filarial parasite.

"Filarial diseases are treatable, but the current treatments were discovered decades ago," says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. "There is an urgent need for new discoveries in this area because of the limitations of the current drugs, including toxicities and the development of resistance." The B. malayi genome reveals dozens of potential new targets for drugs or vaccines and should provide new opportunities for understanding, treating and preventing elephantiasis and similar diseases.

"Having a complete genetic blueprint gives us a better understanding of what genes are important for different processes so you can target them more specifically," says Elodie Ghedin, Ph.D., who led the sequencing project while at the Institute for Genomic Research, now part of the J. Craig Venter Institute, a not-for-profit research organization based in Rockville, Maryland. Dr. Ghedin is now a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
When a mosquito bites someone infected with B. malayi, it ingests microscopic worms that develop into infectious larvae. These larvae are then deposited onto the skin of the next person bitten. Once the parasites penetrate the skin, they wend their way to the body's lymphatic system--a network of fine vessels and organs that drains fluid from the body's tissues and plays a key role in coordinating the immune response by concentrating immune cells in the lymph nodes.

Male and female worms cluster, intertwining in the draining vessels just below the lymph nodes, and mate. A fertile female may produce 1,000 or more larvae a day and grow to be three or four inches long.

This filarial union can cause severe disease. Because they most often position themselves in front of vessels draining liquid from the lymph nodes, the worms can effectively obstruct the drainage. This causes the surrounding tissues to fill with fluid and swell to elephantine proportions.

As the disease progresses, tissues in the swelling arms, legs or scrotum can die or become infected, turning black and oozing puss. To make matters worse, the fluid accumulation can lead to permanent disfigurement over time as the swollen limbs become solid masses with connective tissue, blood vessels and nerve endings. Reducing the bulbous tissue may require major surgery.

Female B. malayi worms can live up to eight years in the human body. This longevity complicates elephantiasis treatment because existing drugs for treating the disease target the larvae only and do not completely kill the adult worms. The drugs often must be taken for years, and the worms can cause massive immune reactions when they die, releasing foreign molecules in the body.

The worm's longevity is curious because it lives for years in the shadow of the lymph node, where immune cells meant to clear the body of infections congregate. One way the worm survives is by releasing chemicals that dampen the human immune response. B. malayi is so good at this that most people who are infected have no symptoms: The worms can live in their bodies for years without their even knowing it.

Understanding how this particular parasite has adapted to humans may yield medical benefits far beyond those places where elephantiasis is common, according to collaborator Alan L. Scott, Ph.D., of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Worms can be viewed as foreign tissue transplanted into the human body. But unlike baboon hearts or pig kidneys, which the immune system quickly rejects, worms can survive for years in the body.

Discovering how they do so may someday benefit transplant surgery, according to Dr. Scott.
Along with NIAID, J. Craig Venter Institute, and Johns Hopkins, collaborators on the project included researchers from the University of Edinburgh; New England Biolabs; the University of California, Davis Genome Center; Smith College; Imperial College, London; the University of Dundee; Divergence, Inc; Washington University; Lyon College; The Australian National University; the University of Toledo; the New York Blood Center; the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto; the University of Göttingen; and the University of Alabama.

SCIENCE: Geneticists Crack the Species Code

BROOKLIN, Canada, Sep 14 (IPS) - Scientists are enthusiastic about a new DNA barcoding technology that will help keep illegal fish and timber out of global markets, slow the spread of invasive pests, and improve food safety and disease prevention and offer better environmental monitoring.

U.S. government regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are beginning to utilise the three-year-old technology. "It's now a proven technology, everyone wants to use it," said David Schindel, executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, comprised of 160 scientific and regulatory organisations from 50 countries and based at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. "It's also an incredibly important technology for developing countries to research and protect their biodversity," Schindel told IPS.

DNA barcoding is a fast, low-cost tool to identify plant and animal species developed in 2003 by Paul Herbert of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario at Canada's University of Guelph. DNA is found in all living things, and is a complex molecule that contains all the genetic instructions for an organism to develop. Not surprisingly, the DNA of a human is different and more complex than that of a worm -- although mouse DNA is similar to human DNA. The genetic differences within the millions of pieces that make up DNA among animal species were very hard to find. Herbert's breakthrough was the discovery of a portion of a gene that is unique to each animal species -- its "DNA barcode".

This week, 350 DNA experts from 46 nations are meeting in Taipei with health officials, government agencies and others to get a better understanding of how to use this new technology to improve consumer protection and food safety, prevent disease, monitor changes in the environment, and more. Barcoding the world's several thousand species of mosquitoes is expected to become a priority since they are responsible for 500 million human malarial infections and a million deaths each year.

Mosquitoes also transmit many other devastating diseases, like West Nile virus and dengue, as well as parasites. "Key to disease management is vector control," said scientist Yvonne-Marie Linton of London's Natural History Museum, and leader of the Mosquito Barcoding Initiative (MBI). Until now, control efforts have been consistently undermined by species misidentification.

DNA barcoding can tremendously assist the world's expert mosquito taxonomists struggling to keep up with new species discoveries, she added. Researchers elsewhere worldwide are focused on barcoding other biting insects -- blood-sucking pests to birds, people and other mammals alike -- causing diseases, stress and allergic reactions. Another priority is fungi. Ecologically important for life on Earth, some 90-99 percent of fungi remain undocumented. Identifying both disease-producing and medically-useful fungi is important.

Previous meetings in Africa have identified other priorities such as barcoding insect pests that affect crops, fish species and insect pollinators, said Schindel. Networks are being established so that a biologist in Cameroon can take a sample, extract the DNA and send it to a lab there or elsewhere in Africa, where the sample's genes can be sequenced. That gene sequence is then compared with others in Genbank, a massive online database containing nearly 300,000 gene sequences. "If there is no match, then it might be a previously unidentified species, but the sequence will reveal related species," Schindel explained.

There is no cost to access these databanks, and the Consortium is committed to keeping the databases free and open to all, he said. Barcoding is also playing an important role in protecting biodiversity, the complex web of plants and animals that keeps ecosystems healthy. It's impossible to protect countries' biodiversity without knowing what's there, Schindel noted. Moorea, an island in French Polynesia, has become a laboratory for a French-U.S. collaboration that is building a barcode library for all terrestrial and marine species.

In South America, scientists and regulators want to use the technology to identify fish species to better monitor fish stocks and quotas and prevent sales of threatened or endangered species. Equally urgent for countries like Brazil is the ability to quickly identify the species of hardwood tree that a piece of lumber is made from. "When a tree has been turned into a pile of lumber it's very hard to know what species it was," Schindel said.

In the United States, the FDA has already barcoded 100 commercial fish species, following several fatal cases of toxic puffer fish sold as monk fish. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to use barcoding to better regulate commercial fish catches and do research on what fish are eating by analysing the contents of their guts. DNA barcoding also allows for fast identification of invasive species, says Scott Miller, an entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution.

"Invasive species can now come from anywhere in the world because of global transport systems," Miller told IPS. Preventing the spread of invasives is best done early before they become widely established, and the key to early action is identification. "That identification is vital in a region like the Galapagos Islands with so many endemic species easily disrupted by invasives," Miller said.

In 10 years' time or less, Galapagos port officials and inspectors will have a wireless DNA barcoder on their belts to identify species on the spot, he hopes. "Barcoding is expanding our knowledge of nature and is simultaneously providing tangible, specific and significant benefits to society," concluded Schindel.

Garlic and Cow Belching: A Global Warming Cure?

Weird But Possibly True: Garlic Nixes Farm Animals’ Methane Gas

Who knew? Besides the vegan-eatin’ PETA folks that is.

Belching farm animals account for 16% of our planet’s methane, a gas even more responsible for global warming than carbon dioxide. As Popular Science reports in October, a new study has found that lacing the diets of cows with garlic can decrease their, uh, emissions, by up to 50%.

Shaun Lowe/iStock

Time to try this out on family and friends, too!

The question is … will the eventual meat be pre-infused with the fragrance and flavor of garlic?

Radiation Absorbing Mineral Found In the Arctic

"A mineral has recently been found that exhibits the astounding property of being able to remove radiation from water-based solutions. 'After coming into contact with the mineral, radioactive water becomes completely safe. Had this mineral been available to physicists after the Chernobyl or Three Mile Island disasters, the consequences might have been very different, as both accidents resulted in contamination from radioactive water.' Also, the article notes that although only grams of the material have been found, tons of it are needed; they are confident they could artificially reproduce it."

Arctic’s microbes being studied for new discoveries

Y. Mallikarjun

— Photo: Special Arrangement

Microbes from the Arctic could serve as workhorses of biotechnology to catalyse reactions at low temperature.

HYDERABAD: After finding 25 bacterial species in the Antarctica, a scientist here has begun studying the microbial diversity in the Arctic region for discovering new genes, bio-molecules and enzymes with potential applications for biotechnology, pharmaceutical and detergent industries.

S. Shivaji, director-grade scientist, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), who collected soil, water and sediment samples from the numerous glaciers and the Arctic ocean to prospect the microbial diversity, told The Hindu here on Wednesday that the microbes from the Arctic could serve as workhorses of biotechnology to catalyse reactions at low temperature. He was part of the five-member First Indian Scientific Expedition to Arctic that returned recently after a trip to the North Pole.

He would look into whether the microbes living in the pristine glaciers of the Arctic are similar to those on the icy continent of Antarctica or unique to their environment. He would also study how they thrive in sub-freezing temperatures when organisms living in tropical conditions cannot survive below 8 degrees C.

Genes identified

Many of the of the discovered species in the Antartica were named in honour of that continent, India and the two Indian permanent stations, Dakshin Gangotri and Maitri located there. Using these organisms, he identified genes required for survival of micro-organisms at sub-zero temperatures and enzymes of biotechnological potential.

Describing the expedition’s experience, he said: “The pristine cold environment embraced us with its purity, cleanliness, glaciers and the colourful ocean. It was literally a top-of-the-world feeling. I was so excited that I wanted to work from the very day of arrival and then realised that during this period, the Arctic was one long day without any night since the sun does not set in the Arctic between May and August. I could sample the numerous glaciers dotting the Ny-Alesund, where we set up our camp”

Explaining the uniqueness of sampling the glaciers in North Pole, he said there was no anthropogenic influence there, unlike anywhere else in the world. Another striking feature of the Arctic, unlike Antarctica, was that 6-7 per cent of the land area was covered with vegetation, including a number of beautiful flowers.

These life forms could serve as excellent model systems to unravel the biological basis of adaptation to low temperature and reveal the various strategies adapted by them to survive and reproduce.

Scientists' plea to use new hybrid embryos

· Animal-human link to aid research
· Pro-life groups voice opposition

• Jo Revill, Whitehall editor
• The Observer
• Sunday August 26 2007

Cloned embryo

Britain's leading scientists have made a final plea for the right to create the first animal-human embryos for medical research using eggs taken from dead cows.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority will announce its decision next week on whether to give permission to UK laboratories to create the hybrid embryos to advance the understanding of genetic diseases.

The issue is controversial because it involves scientists taking an animal egg, removing its genetic material and putting DNA from a human cell into it. This can be used to create lines of stem cells which can then be made part of studies into incurable genetic diseases such as motor neurone disease.

However, it has caused controversy as some campaigners and religious groups argue that it is unethical to mix human and animal cells in this way.

Dr Stephen Minger has applied for a licence to do work using hybrids, in order to understand more about a range of neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and motor neurone disease.

He said: 'I'm cautiously optimistic that the authority will allow us a licence. I hope we have made the case that by doing this research, we can study a number of genetic diseases far more clearly. The cell discoveries we make could then be used to develop therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer's which affect so many people, but for which we now have almost no therapy to offer.'

Minger, senior lecturer in stem cell biology at King's College London, believes it makes far more sense to use a hybrid than taking a human embryo, created using a human egg and sperm, because scientists could use eggs taken from ovaries of thousands of cows that are slaughtered every day.

To do this work they would need a large number of embryos to make stem cells, far more than could be achieved by asking women to donate their eggs for research. Stem cells are immature cells that can be engineered to develop into many different kinds of tissue, which is important for medical research.

'When I start talking to people about it, sometime there is a "yuck factor" and they think it's weird,' said Minger. 'But once you've explained how it works, and why we are doing it, they do see the point of it, and actually think it's a good idea.

'To me, it seems just very practical to use the cows' eggs, as a by-product of a process [the animals' slaughter] that is already happening.' Another scientist, Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, head of genetics at the National Institute of Medical Research in London, said: 'I can see absolutely no reason why these sorts of experiments shouldn't proceed. I think the scientists wishing to carry them out have made a very clear case for them.'

The government recently shifted its position on animal-human hybrid embryos: having been initially against the concept, it is now proposing to allow partial hybrids, where a complete set of human genes is inserted into an animal's egg cell, for research purposes only, through a new Human Tissue and Embryo Bill aimed at overhauling the laws surrounding fertility treatment.

The move has prompted strong protests from some religious and anti-abortion groups that oppose any such research. Anti-embryo campaigners had said earlier this year it was appalling that the government had, in their view, bowed to pressure from 'a random collection of self-interested scientists'.

The Catholic Church has made clear its opposition. Bishops told the parliamentary committee scrutinising a draft bill to allow the research to go ahead, that they opposed the creation of any embryo solely for research - they believe that all life begins at conception. They said they were also anxious to limit the destruction of such life once it had been brought into existence.

In a submission to the committee, they said: 'At the very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and be treated accordingly.'

Unique New Species of Light-Harvesting Bacteria

Scientists have identified a new species of light harvesting bacteria in Mushroom Spring in Yellowstone National Park, pictured here. The spring gets its unique color from thick microbial mats living on the surface--a cross section of the mat is shown in the inset. Credit: David Ward, Montana State University

n the bubbling muck of Yellowstone National Park, scientists have discovered a new species of bacteria that uses light for energy. Known as Candidatus Chloracidobacterium thermophilium, the new species is different than other types of photosynthetic bacteria, such as cyanobacteria (also called blue-green algae): it carries an antenna loaded with the light-harvesting molecule chlorophyll, which allows it to compete with other species living in the hot springs' brightly colored microbial mats. The findings are published today in the journal Science.

Scientists discovered the bacterium using metagenomics, a variation on genomics that entails sequencing the genomes of entire microbial communities in order to identify new species. Metagenomics provides microbiologists with a new way to identify novel bacterial species, the vast majority of which can't be grown in the lab. (See "Our Microbial Menagerie" and "Why Termite Guts Could Bring Better Biofuels.")

The steaming pools of Yellowstone, which can reach higher than 150 ºF, were also the site of one of the most important microbial discoveries of molecular biology: Thermus aquaticus, a heat-loving bacterium that gave scientists an enzyme crucial for efficiently replicating DNA. Researchers hope that the recent discovery will shed light on how bacteria efficiently harvest light, perhaps inspiring new ways to make energy.

UH astronomer is recognized for discovery about the universe

By Helen Altonn / haltonn@starbulletin.com

A University of Hawaii astronomer won a share of a prestigious international science award yesterday for his role in the astonishing discovery that the universe is expanding at an ever-faster rate.

Astronomer John L. Tonry was part of a research team working on Mauna Kea that won the $500,000 Gruber Cosmology Prize, awarded annually for discoveries that alter our perception and comprehension of the universe.

He couldn't be reached immediately for comment, but UH astronomer Gareth Wynn-Williams said the idea that expansion of the universe is accelerating is "one of the biggest discoveries in science in the last few years. A very important part of the evidence comes from the work this prize is awarded for."

Tonry discovered supernovae explosions in distant galaxies using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in 1997.

He said in an Institute for Astronomy news release that the CFHT data coupled with data from the Keck Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope "were the key to identifying the accelerating universe."

Wynn-Williams said the $500,000 will be split between two groups that were working independently using different telescopes and came up with the same answer.

He said the acceleration of the universe's expansion implies "a new constituent of the universe which we call dark energy. We have no real idea of what it is at all. But it seems to resemble matter in the way that it follows the laws of gravity."

Brian Schmidt of Australian National University led one team; Saul Perlmutter of the University of California-Berkeley headed the other one.

The big surprise, Wynn-Williams said, is the astronomers expected to find the universe slowing down as it expands because of gravitational forces between galaxies.

Their finding that the expansion actually is accelerating instead was accepted quickly because it fits into Einstein's general theory of relativity, he said. "It was a very successful theory. It contained an odd little term that people kind of ignored. Even Einstein sort of ignored it. ... So this is perhaps why this was accepted. It hasn't required us to throw out a major theory. We just looked at it more carefully."

The Gruber Foundation in a news release said, "An accelerating universe was a crazy result that was hard to accept. Yet, two teams, racing neck and neck, simultaneously, came to the same conclusion. Their discovery led to the idea of an expansion force, dubbed dark energy. And it suggests that the fate of the universe is to just keep expanding faster and faster."

Top Ten Discoveries of the Mars Rovers

"Space.com brings us the top ten discoveries of the Martian rovers that landed there in 2004. They were expected to last three months but, as Slashdot has covered time and time again, they have lasted over three years. From minor discoveries about the formation of Mars to images of atmospheric phenomena, to final and definitive proof of a Mars with water, these two robots have definitely reserved themselves a place in the history books. Pending a dust storm, they may not even be done with their mission yet."

[+] mars, nasa, science, space, rovers (tagging beta)

What Came Before Alexander The Great? A Multidisciplinary Approach

Science Daily — Our modern western civilization traces its roots to the Mediterranean region, and determining exactly when and where civilizations took hold remains an ongoing quest.

For example, the armies of Alexander the Great swept across the region, leading to the establishment of the city of Alexandria on the shores of the Mediterranean in BC 332. But what came before Alexander?

Was there a settlement that preceded Alexandria, and if so, what can we learn about the people who lived and died there?

These are some of the questions addressed by Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and his co-workers in a paper in the August GSA Today.

By applying a multidisciplinary approach, involving archeology, sedimentology and geochemistry, to the study of sediment cores collected from Alexandria's Eastern Harbor, Stanley and his colleagues have demonstrated that a settlement occupied the region for at least seven centuries prior to the arrival of Alexander.

Ceramic shards, high lead levels, and the use of building stones imported from other regions all attest to a once flourishing urban center as far back as BC 1000. These discoveries indicate that much is still to be learned about the early development of western civilization, and an effective means of achieving this is by integrating geologic and archaeological methodologies.

Study Shows Dinosaurs Lived Alongside Their Precursors

Graduate Students’ Findings From Dig in New Mexico Contradict Widely Held Theory
BY Erin Olivella-Wright
Contributing Writer
Monday, July 23, 2007

After years of excavating fossils in the arroyos of New Mexico, researchers published a report Friday in the journal Science explaining that dinosaurs and their precursors lived contemporaneously, despite what scholars had previously thought.

In the summer of 2005, lead excavators Randall Irmis and Sterling Nesbitt, graduate students at UC Berkeley and Columbia University, respectively, launched the project after visiting the site at Hayden Quarry. The quarry became a hotspot for archeological activity after a group of hikers discovered some fossils there in 2002.

The excavators returned in the summer of 2006 with funding from the National Geographic Society, the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Fund and the Jurassic Foundation and came away with new discoveries about dinosaurs in the Late Triassic Period.

Before the graduate students’ discoveries, academics thought that the precursors to dinosaurs had died out before the reign of the dinosaurs, but the report says that new evidence proves this to be false.

Using uranium and lead dating from nearby sites, the researchers were able to conclude that dinosaurs were living in New Mexico alongside the basal dinosauromorphs, the precursors to the dinosaurs, for between 15 million and 20 million years.

As there are no radioactive materials in the Hayden Quarry, the authors are giving themselves a 5 million year margin of error, Irmis said.

Irmis said he is excited by the findings, as they are the first of their kind.

“This has never been found anywhere else in the world,” he said.

He stressed that while the team never found a full skeleton, there were enough fossils to deduce the differences between the dinosaurs and the basal dinosauromorphs.

“Overall, they look a lot like dinosaurs, but there are a few anatomical features that are found in the hip and the leg that are found in the dinosaurs but not the dinosaur precursors,” he said.

Nesbitt, a UC Berkeley alumnus, also said he is impressed with the results, especially given the location of the fossils.

“It’s pretty incredible because we found something that everyone didn’t expect in North America. (Now) North America is just as important for dinosaur origins as South America,” he said.

Irmis said the results of the study show that dinosaurs are prime examples of adaptive radiation and added that perhaps the most significant result of the findings is further support for the theory of evolution.

“I hope that the findings encourage other people to accept evolution as a scientific process,” he said.

Nesbitt said overall that he is pleased to have generated findings that could lead to other discoveries .

“To start the sequence of discovery is pretty neat,” he said. “(We are) going from one leg bone to revising what we know about early dinosaur evolution.”

Ascent of dinosaurs more gradual than once thought

• View Larger Image

This illustration shows four extinct animals -- two dinosaurs and two more primitive dinosaur relatives -- found at a site in northern New Mexico. Shown are the dinosaur precursors Dromomeron romeri (lower left) and a Silesaurus-like animal (bottom center), and the dinosaurs Chindesaurus bryansmalli (top center, with prey in its mouth) and a coelophysoid theropod (upper right). REUTERS/Science/Artwork by Donna Braginetz/Handout

More pictures: <> | Next >

Will Dunham, Reuters

Published: Thursday, July 19, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The ascent of the dinosaurs to the throne of the animal kingdom may have been more gradual than previously believed, scientists said on Thursday.

New fossil discoveries dating from about 215 million years ago showed some of the earliest dinosaurs lived for millions of years side by side with related animals long seen as their ancestors and precursors, scientists said on Thursday.

Many scientists had thought these reptiles -- very much like dinosaurs, but more primitive -- died out around the time of the appearance of the first true dinosaurs, which were dog-sized beasts not giants, roughly 230 million years ago.

"When dinosaurs first evolved, they were not very common and they were pretty small," said Randall Irmis of the University of California-Berkeley, who worked on the study.

"So they're not the dominant predators or creatures on land at all during most of the Triassic. And it's only really until the Jurassic when they really explode in diversity and reach these huge sizes that we're so familiar with," Irmis added.

Scientists previously hypothesized that the first dinosaurs quickly out-competed their more primitive cousins, known as "basal dinosauromorphs," condemning them to extinction. But the new findings indicate that any such competition was prolonged.

The newly found fossils from New Mexico dating from the Triassic period showed that the first dinosaurs co-existed with these animals -- "dinosaur wannabes," as one scientist called them -- for perhaps 15 to 20 million years.

"For the first time, we're finding the earliest dinosaurs and their closest relatives together," paleontologist Kevin Padian of the University of California-Berkeley, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.

"That tells us that the transition to the beginning of the age of dinosaurs was not a very-rapid affair and that, therefore, it wasn't instant competitive superiority."

Irmis said these dinosaur precursors are not thought to have been direct evolutionary ancestors of the dinosaurs but rather having shared a close common ancestor.

NEWLY DISCOVERED BEASTS

The scientists discovered new dinosaur precursors including one 3 to 5 feet long called Dromomeron and another unnamed one about three times larger that walked on four legs and ate plants with a beaked snout.

Relatively small bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs also were found, including Chindesaurus, which measured about 6 feet (2 meters) long, as well as remains of an apparent close relative of the well-known Triassic dinosaur carnivore Coelophysis.

The fossils were found at the Hayden Quarry at Ghost Ranch, a site that over the decades has yielded many exquisite fossils. For example, hundreds of Coelophysis fossils were found in the 1940s at Ghost Ranch, making it among the best documented of all dinosaurs.

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Mythical satyr may be preserved in salt

Unicorns, giants and fairies — the UFOs of antiquity — have yet to turn up in any archaeologist's shovel.

Aside from their frequent appearances on ancient frescoes, statuary and artwork, such fanciful creatures of mythology don't have a clear origin, although some have linked the mermaid to lonely sailors who glimpsed dugongs (also known as sea cows) in the distance and made a giant leap.

But a recent discovery in an Iranian salt mine, one scholar suggests, may shed light on the origins of a famous satyr of antiquity, one so well known that it merited a visit from the emperor himself. The satyr is a goat-man in Greek legend who dances and frolics, playing pipes and chasing nymphs all day, living in a woodsy version of the Playboy Mansion.

In June, a man's body, naturally mummified within an ancient salt mine, was found outside the Iranian city of Zanjan. Six such discoveries have been made since 1993, according to the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies foundation based in London. Earlier salt man finds go back as far as 540 B.C., around the time of the ancient Achaemenid dynasty.

Archaeologists treasure natural mummy discoveries — such as "Otzi," the ice-entombed man preserved in an Alpine glacier and uncovered in 1991 — because preservation of soft tissues, even beards in the case of the salt men, allows for DNA analysis and other tools of forensic science.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Mayor | Roman emperor | Constantine

Stanford University's Adrienne Mayor, a folklorist, specializes in analyzing how fossil discoveries in prehistory may have contributed to legends such as the Titans of Greek mythology (botched reconstructions of mammoth bones) or mystic water serpents in Native American legends (fossilized fish-tailed crocodiles preserved in desert rock deposits).

As far back as the era of the great Roman emperor Constantine, who reigned from 312 to 337, cities had their own special attractions, Mayor explains. The early Christian writer St. Jerome (the patron saint of librarians in the Roman Catholic Church, who died in the year 420) recounted that Constantine made a special trip from Constantinople (Istanbul today) to Antioch, once a great city of his empire, to view an exhibit of a "satyr" that had been extremely well-preserved in salt.

In an earlier book, The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times, Mayor suggested that the "satyr" was likely a fake, the patched-together bodies of a man and goat. But now she thinks the recently discovered salt man might provide another explanation. "Obviously, satyrs are mythic creatures," Mayor says. But the head of the man preserved in salt since about 540-300 B.C. "bears a striking resemblance to ancient Greek and Roman depictions of satyrs," she says, which are shown to have similar hair and beard, a snub nose and protruding jaw.

"I think it's very likely that an ancient discovery of a similarly preserved 'salt man' in northwestern Iran is the basis for St. Jerome's account of the 'satyr' preserved in salt and examined by the Emperor Constantine and numerous other curious visitors in Antioch," Mayor concludes.

Expert opinions are mixed. Roman historian Andrew Merrills of England's University of Leicester, says in an e-mail: "Overall, it sounds like a great big 'maybe' to me. Interesting story, fabulous idea, but I wouldn't want to build too much of an argument on it." But archaeologist Bruce Hitchner at Tufts University in Massachusetts calls the idea credible.

The 540 B.C. salt man from Iran most resembles an elderly satyr figure commonly seen in Greek art, called Silenus, says Mayor. Silenus was usually depicted with long golden hair, a beard, a bulging forehead, a snub nose and an open mouth. Mayor suspects the early images of satyrs may have sprung from such discoveries, transformed into art (with the addition of a goat's body) in stories traded by travelers of the ancient world.

"When I saw the picture of the salt man, I was just struck by how much like a satyr he looks," Mayor says. "Satyr plays were very popular in antiquity, so everyone knew what satyrs looked like. There's no reason to think people back then wouldn't have made the same connection."

New discoveries about red planet keeps professor well read

Every time NASA sends a probe to Mars, Sacramento State Professor Chris Taylor has to toss out his text book.

Taylor teaches astrophysics at the university. His specialty is galaxy formation but he also teaches planetary science. With all the attention given to Mars lately, the text books he uses are outdated almost as soon as they are printed.

“The Mars missions do not directly influence my research, but they do influence what I teach because what we know about Mars changes so rapidly,” Taylor says. “I just switched text books because the one I had was published in 2000, and now it’s just about useless.”

He’ll need an even newer text book in a few years. Next month, NASA will launch a new probe that will continue the search for water, and possibly life, on the red planet. The probe, called Phoenix, will explore an area near the northern polar cap, and new discoveries can be expected, Taylor says. “The entire thrust of NASA’s missions to Mars has been figuring out whether or not there was life on Mars at one point. So each mission brings us a new piece of the puzzle,” he says.

Phoenix will dig into the icy soil to determine whether frozen water near the surface was ever liquid enough to sustain a livable environment for microbes, according to NASA. “The theory is that if there were once large oceans or lakes there may have been life in those environments. If the water retreated and went underground, life may have adapted to those conditions and gone there as well,” Taylor says.

Meanwhile, the two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which were sent to Mars in 2003, continue to patrol the planet and provide new information. The rovers were expected to function for about 90 days, Taylor says, but they are still sending back information, even though they are a little beaten up by the Martian terrain, harsh climate and age. “A wheel on one of the rovers is broken, so it drags as it moves,” Taylor says. “Technicians turned the onboard camera around to look at the track and saw that the wheel had dug out a trench a few millimeters deep exposing a layer containing silica. When you see this mineral on earth that means there is water. So even when you make a mistake you discover something new on Mars.” Those discoveries and others like it are helping rewrite the book on Mars and that’s okay with Taylor. “Planetary science, at its most basic level, tells us more about the Earth and directly impacts our knowledge of things like the greenhouse effect. By studying other planets we can learn more about what could happen here on Earth,” he says.

Scientists find new links to genetic conditions, including "restless legs syndrome"

Scientists have uncovered more genetic links to a number of well known diseases, as well as new connections to two health conditions that aren't as well understood.

It's those discoveries that may pack the biggest punch for patients. Among the latest batch of genetic discoveries are new genes for heart disease and new insight into genes linked to macular degeneration.

The first gene links to two common but poorly understood and often questioned conditions, a severe form of premenstrual syndrome called PMDD, and the even more common restless leg syndrome were also discovered.

The hallmark symptom of restless leg syndrome is an uncontrollable urge to move the legs, especially at night. NBC reporter Jaye Watson now knows she can blame a gene for the nighttime kick-fest."It's that feeling in my legs, the unbearable need to move them, and it starts, like that and it starts like every 20 seconds," explained Watson.

Emory University's Dr. David Rye, also a restless leg suffer, helped find the connection.A genetic link can work wonders at validating conditions like PMDD and RLS. It's an endorsement that brings peace of mind for patients,and the potential to revolutionize treatment.

Six new sulphide zones discovered at Argentex Zinc-Indium Pinguino Project, Argentina

TORONTO, July 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Argentex Mining Corporation announced today that the company has successfully tested six new zones during its fourth drill program at the polymetallic Pinguino property in Santa Cruz, Argentina.

In total, 18 HQ diamond drill holes covering 1,357 meters (4,452 feet) were concluded before the onset of winter conditions in the Patagonia region. The six new zones were drilled to test near-surface gossanous vein in bedrock within newly completed trenches. Visual inspection of the core shows that all zones returned significant intersections of vein sulphides.

"These intersections confirm an increase in the number of known sulphide veins at Pinguino. In addition to Marta Centro and Yvonne we now have a further six sulphide-rich zones that remain open at depth and along strike," said Ken Hicks, President of Argentex. "We are excited about the potential for expansion of mineralization at Pinguino and we look forward to further drill testing of these new discoveries as well as other high-priority targets."

Prior to this latest drill program, drill testing of known mineralization had been limited to the Marta Centro and Yvonne veins, which represent only 10% of the extensive geophysical anomalies defined to date. Preparations for further drilling are scheduled to commence in September.

Following the completion of previous drill programs at the sulphide-rich Marta Centro and Yvonne zones, Argentex intensified exploration work at Pinguino earlier this year to include additional trenching and drilling at Yvonne Sur, Yvonne Norte, Sonia, Kasia, Savary and Luna. Surface targets were identified based on their geological signature, which combines anomalous geophysics and geochemistry, and a total of 20 individual trenches tested these six distinct and previously unexplored overburden-covered zones.

Visual inspection of the HQ diamond drill core shows that significant sulphide intersections were returned in all six of these trenched areas.

Results from previous drill programs at Marta Centro and Yvonne revealed consistent polymetallic zinc-lead-indium-silver-gold-copper mineralization, which remains open-ended along strike and to depth. A total of 23 holes drilled into Marta Centro showed a consistent high-grade base metal core surrounded by wide intervals of disseminated mineralization.

Samples have been submitted to Acme Analytical Labs for analysis and findings will be reported upon receipt and compilation of results.
About Pinguino

Argentex's Pinguino property is located in Argentina's Patagonia region, within the Deseado Massif of Santa Cruz province. Both silver-gold and base metal discoveries have been made through the completion of approximately 9,350 meters (30,675 feet) of diamond drilling to date. Mineralization remains open-ended along strike and at depth, and numerous targets remain to be tested by drilling. Previous exploration has focused on zinc-indium-lead-silver-gold-copper discoveries in the Marta Centro and Yvonne areas of the property. Recent machine trenching and shallow drilling have intersected new sulphide veins at Yvonne Sur, Yvonne Norte, Sonia, Kasia, Savary and Luna.

Pinguino is easily accessible, situated approximately 500 meters (1,640 feet) above sea level in low-relief topography. An existing system of all-weather roads provides year-round access to the property.

Quality Assurance

Exploration on the Pinguino property is being conducted under the supervision of Mr. Kenneth Hicks, P.Geo., Argentex's President and a "qualified person" as defined by Canada's National Instrument 43-101.

Samples selected for analysis are sent to Acme Analytical Laboratories' sample preparation lab in Mendoza, Argentina. From there sample pulps are sent to Santiago, Chile for fire assay gold analysis and to Vancouver, Canada for Group 1DX multi-element MS-ICP analysis. Samples with over-limit zinc, lead, silver and/or copper are reanalyzed using an ore-grade high detection limit 7AR analysis, also conducted in Vancouver. Acme Analytical Laboratories is an accredited ISO 9000:2001 full-service commercial laboratory with its head office in Vancouver. Referee analyses will be carried out by Alex Stewart (assayers) Argentina S.A. in Mendoza, Argentina. Argentex, Acme and Alex Stewart all maintain comprehensive and independent Quality Control/Quality Assurance programs. Drilling was conducted by Connors Drilling, a Canadian company with an office in Mendoza, Argentina.

DNA discovery reveals Greenland's warm past

Scientists have uncovered evidence that within the past million years southern Greenland was warmer than previously thought, and even covered in lush forests, a discovery suggesting its ice sheet could be more stable than previously thought against climate change temperature rises.
An analysis of DNA found at the bottom of ice cores drilled to a depth of more than a mile (2km) in south Greenland, and dated to between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago, has shown a surprising variety of plant and insect life was present then.

There were trees such as alder, spruce, pine and members of the yew family, and invertebrates related to beetles, flies, spiders, butterflies and moths.
"We have shown for the first time that southern Greenland, which is currently hidden under more than 2km of ice, was once very different to the Greenland we see today," said Eske Willerslev, an archaeologist at the University of Copenhagen. "Back then it was inhabited by a diverse array of conifer trees and insects."

Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta and co-author of the paper, said that the silty ice found underneath the Greenland glacier created a natural freezer that preserved prehistoric DNA - the samples have provided the oldest authenticated DNA obtained to date. "These findings allow us to make a more accurate environmental reconstruction of the time period from which these samples were taken." The area was "significantly warmer than most people thought".

The results of the studies are published today in the journal Science.

Over geological timescales the Earth's temperature rises and falls, leading to ice ages and periods of relative warmth. Between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago it would have been about 10C in summer and -17C in winter. When temperatures later fell the area was covered in ice and this ice sheet seems surprisingly to have remained in place when temperatures rose again about 130,000 years ago. During this last interglacial period temperatures were 5C warmer than today.

"If our data is correct, then this means that the southern Greenland ice cap is more stable than previously thought," said Professor Willerslev. "This may have implications for how the ice sheets respond to global warming."

According to climate change models, a two-degree rise in global temperatures could cause a collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and dangerously high sea levels by the end of the century. Recent data suggests the rate of ice loss from Greenland has tripled since 2004.

The results also show that biological molecules from the ice cores can be used to reconstruct environments - the material available is in very low concentrations but the information would be worth the effort, said Enrico Cappellini, of York university. "Given that 10% of the terrestrial surface is covered by thick ice sheets it could open up a world of new discoveries."

NASA looking in wrong places for alien life

EXTRATERRESTRIAL life may well be so weird we would not immediately recognise it, space experts said yesterday.

Scientists looking for alien life should be seeking the unfamiliar as well as the familiar, they said.

NASA's current approach to "follow the water" is logical assuming alien life is comparable to that on Earth - based on water, carbon and DNA - but the "life as we know it" approach could easily miss something exotic, the US National Academy of Sciences panel advised.

"The purpose of this whole report was to be able to look for life on other planets and moons with an open mind ... and not maybe miss some other life form because we are looking for some obvious life form," said John Baross, professor of oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle, who chaired the committee.

The US space agency commissioned the report from the National Research Council.

The panel of biochemists, planetary scientists, geneticists and other experts considered all possible ways life can arise and exist.

Recent discoveries of extremophiles - organisms living in conditions of heat, cold and dark and using chemicals once thought incompatible with life - have changed ideas of where life can survive.

Prof Baross said lab experiments also showed water did not necessarily have to be the basis for life.

It might be possible for a living organism to use methane, ethane, ammonia or even more bizarre chemicals.

"We had some discussion about how weird to make this because there are so many concepts out here.

"There are so many theories about what life is and what could be a living system."

NASA and other groups are looking hard for extraterrestrial life.

Telescopes search for spectral signatures from other planets that might suggest water is on the surface.

Robots on Mars are seeking evidence of water, past or present.

"We wanted to actually think outside of that box a little bit and at least try to articulate some of the other possibilities besides water-carbon life."

They suggested NASA should return to some of the more promising places in our own solar system to look for evidence of life, such as Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, and even steamy Venus.

Understanding how explosions on the Sun affect the Earth

By Danielle Reeves

Scientists who study violent activity on our Sun are explaining how large explosions of particles from the Sun can affect satellites, space craft and even electrical power lines on Earth, at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition this week.

The exhibit explains what happens when an immense eruption known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) happens on the Sun. CMEs are the largest explosions in the solar system and when they occur a mass of particles weighing roughly the same as Mount Everest is launched out into space. The exhibit was organised by scientists from Imperial College London, University College London, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Armagh Observatory, University of Cambridge, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and The University of Central Lancashire.

If a CME occurs in the direction of the Earth, the particles can cause significant problems to the electrical systems of spacecraft and satellites in orbit around the planet. Some CMEs have also been known to affect electrical power lines on Earth, and the highly energetic particles that are thrown out of the Sun could pose a radiation risk to astronauts in space, and even to passengers in aeroplanes that pass near the Earth’s poles.

The exhibit’s stand at the Royal Society will enable members of the public to talk to scientists involved in research to predict when CMEs are headed towards Earth. There will be 3D videos and posters describing the journey of a CME from its initiation on the Sun to its arrival at the Earth, and models of the satellites scientists use to observe them.

Dr Steve Bradshaw from Imperial’s Department of Physics, one of the scientists involved in the exhibition, explained: "Our best defence against CMEs is to have plenty of warning when one is heading towards the Earth, so that pre-emptive action can be taken to protect ourselves and the sensitive electronic equipment that we depend on."

Two solar observing missions were recently launched that should give scientists significantly more warning and time to be prepared than they have had in the past. The Hinode satellite will help solar physicists to better understand the physical processes taking place on the Sun that lead to CMEs, which will lead to more accurate forecasting of when a CME will erupt. The STEREO satellites will allow researchers to track CMEs in-flight between the Sun and the Earth, and by providing a stereoscopic view of their path through space - in the same way that our two eyes provide us with depth perception – the research team will be more quickly able to determine whether the CME is heading straight for us.

Dr Bradshaw added: "The Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition provides scientists with an ideal opportunity to talk to the public about their work. The research we’re doing on CMEs gives a new insight into some impressive explosions on our nearest star, which are fascinating for both scientists and the public to see, and I’m looking forward to sharing our discoveries this week."

From Recovering T-Rex Blood Cells to New Discoveries in Heredity

NOVA science

NOW looks at startling new research that has recovered ancient proteins from dinosaur bones. Could dino DNA be next? Speaking of DNA, it may be the master code of life but something else is pulling the switches. Understanding this switching system, called the epigenome, may lead to cancer cures and even an explanation of why identical twins are not identical. Host and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson investigates this exciting work in the opening two segments of the latest NOVA scienceNOW, airing Tuesday, July 24 at 8 pm ET/PT on PBS (check local listings).

In other explorations, NOVA scienceNOW takes a trip to the courtyard of CIA headquarters where an enigmatic sculpture displays a coded message that has so far stymied the nation's top code breakers, not to mention legions of amateurs. The show also profiles the amazing rise of a poor kid from Belize to the abstract realm of cosmological research, and Tyson closes with another mind-bending "Cosmic Perspective.

All we know about dinosaurs comes from fossils. Thanks to paleobiologist Mary Schweitzer these old bones are telling us more than ever. Schweitzer defied the long-held belief that it was fruitless to search for preserved soft tissues in dinosaur remains. Most experts held that such structures should have decayed away long ago, but Schweitzer has found evidence of delicate structures such as blood vessels and red blood cells that miraculously survived for millions of years. Recently she examined one cross section of 68-million-year-old bone and confidently announced: What we have here is a pregnant Tyrannosaurus rex!

Once nurture seemed clearly distinct from nature. Now it appears that our diets and lifestyles literally change the expression of our genes. How? By influencing a vast network of chemical switches inside our cells. Called collectively the epigenome, the switches turn genes on and off and may account for the fact that identical twins grow less identical as they age. This new understanding may give us potent new medical therapies and even cures, because many diseases now appear to stem from errors in the epigenome, and such epigenetic errors seem easier to correct than genetic ones. Epigenetic cancer therapy, for example, seems already to be yielding stunning results.

Robot Dives Deep for Sinkhole Slime

By Henry Bortman


In May, researchers successfully conducted the third and final field test of the autonomous underwater robot, DEPTHX. Their objective was to explore Cenote Zacatón, the world’s deepest water-filled sinkhole.

Zacatón lies near one end of a chain of sinkholes stretching nearly half a mile across Rancho La Azufroza (Sulfur Ranch), located in northeastern México, roughly 20 miles from the Gulf Coast. Even without the sinkholes, the biology of the region would make a fascinating subject of study. The landscape is dotted with a muddle of tropical deciduous trees and bromeliads growing side-by-side with agaves and cacti typical of desert climates. Each day, as dawn approaches, a flock of green parrots takes wing, shrieking and squawking as they circle the rim of Zacatón. Later in the day, the air grows thick with butterflies, more than a dozen different species, some with wingspans exceeding six inches. It is a languid, sun-drenched setting.

But what lies below ground, in the dark waters of Zacatón, where only microbial life can survive, is what has piqued the interest of scientists and engineers from Stone Aerospace, the University of Texas at Austin, Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, the Colorado School of Mines, and other institutions, who make up the DEPTHX team.

The DEPTHX project was funded by NASA’s ASTEP (Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets) program. ASTEP projects typically involve both technology and science components. The robot incorporates a number of innovative technologies. It is the first underwater vehicle that can be placed in an enclosed water-filled space and, without any previous knowledge, safely navigate its way around, build a three-dimensional map of its environment, and collect samples of scientific interest -- all without human intervention.

Mapping and sampling Zacatón was DEPTHX’s most challenging task to date. In March of this year, the craft explored Poza La Pilita, a smaller sinkhole near Zacatón.

DEPTHX enabled investigators to explore an otherwise inaccessible ecosystem that extends far below the Earth’s surface. The robot had a mechanical arm that could be extended 2 to 3 meters (6.5 to 10 feet); at its end was a spring-loaded penetrator that could sense when it came within a few inches of the cenote’s wall. Once in position, it grabbed a gob of the microbial biofilm that coats the entire interior surface of the sinkhole, and brought it back to the surface for later laboratory analysis. Positioning the 1.5-ton robot precisely -- not too far from the uneven surface of the cenote wall to obtain a sample, but not so close that the penetrator slams into rock and gets bent -- was challenging, particularly when the robot was doing its own navigation. But DEPTHX successfully obtained half a dozen samples of microbial Zacatón wall slime. The deepest of these came from close to the bottom of the cenote, at a depth of 272 meters (892 feet).

Finding the bottom of Zacatón was another of DEPTHX’s accomplishments. Previously, no-one had been able to determine for certain how deep the cenote was. As it turns out, the bottom is sloped, ranging from 315 meters (1033 feet) at its high end down to 320 meters (1050 feet). And it may go even deeper. At the low end of the cenote, the robot found what appeared to be a narrow tunnel that extended outward, and perhaps farther downward. Because the research team was pressed for time, however, and because they wanted to make sure they could safely get the craft back to the surface, they told DEPTHX to come home without exploring the tunnel.

John Spear, the lead microbiologist on the DEPTHX team, speculates that this deep channel is connected to an underground system of thermally heated water. About one million years ago, geologists believe, the Zacatón region was a site of intense hydrothermal activity, not unlike Mammoth Hot Springs in present-day Yellowstone National Park. Although thermal activity around Zacatón has calmed down considerably since those fiery days, there are clear signs that something is still stirring underground: a pervasive scent of sulfur hovers around the cenote, and Zacatón’s water is a constant 30 degrees C (86 degrees F). In fact, says Spears, one of the surprising discoveries made by DEPTHX is that the temperature in Zacatón is constant all the way through its thousand-foot water column. He expected to find temperature variation with depth, a more common scenario.

“If we stuck DepthX in a place like Yellowstone Lake, for example, you would see gradients of change in temperature. It would probably be warm on the surface, cold in the middle, and then down at the thermal vents warm again,” Spear said. But something is keeping Zacatón unusually well-mixed. I asked Spear what caused the mixing. “Don’t know,” he replied, but in a later email he added that “there is a large amount of geothermally heated water flowing through the system.”

Whatever its cause, the unexpected uniformity put a kink in the research team’s sample-collection plans. They had hoped to use gradients in the water’s temperature, in its salinity and in its level of dissolved oxygen to guide DEPTHX toward the best sampling locations. Places where such changes occur are interesting because they are often accompanied by an ecological change. Different types of organisms thrive in cooler water than in warmer water, for example.

Often, there is also a visual indicator of such changes. In Yellowstone, where Spear has worked extensively, “I could walk up to a hot spring and say, ‘I want a sample right there,’ mainly because of my visual interpretation of it, what I see,” he says. Green, for example, indicates the presence of photosynthetic organisms, which can survive only in relatively cool water. Yellow-, orange- and red-hued organisms dominate in hotter waters.

“You’d like the robot to do the same thing, use a visual cue to understand a place,” Spear says. He was hoping to be able to use “color changes on the walls of the cenote,” which “might correlate with chemistry,” to guide the robot toward good places to collect samples. But, apart from a shallow oxygenated zone near Zacatón’s surface, the microbial life that clung to the cenote walls was visually uniform, from top to bottom.

Nevertheless, Spear expects the DNA analysis that his lab will perform over the next few months on the Zacatón samples to yield valuable results. Preliminary analysis of samples collected a couple of years ago by a diver, at a depth of 85 meters (280 feet), turned up “six new groups of bacteria.” And by “six new groups” Spear emphasized, he didn’t mean six new species. “The bacteria domain [one of the three main branches on the tree of life] has about 100 different divisions or phyla in it. So we found six new ones, from here,” he explained. “That’s kind of equivalent to walking out your door in the morning and finding plants for the first time.” To be fair, Spear points out that “you can often find new groups” even in places as pedestrian as common garden soil. “It could even be something that’s living between your teeth.” Still, six is a pretty good haul for one sinkhole. “And we think we can find more,” he adds.

The samples that Spear’s lab will analyze were collected while DEPTHX was under human control. Because the robot’s time in Zacatón was limited, DEPTHX engineers had to choose between pursuing science goals or technology goals, and they decided to tell the robot where to collect its samples, rather than to let the craft’s onboard computers make autonomous choices.

But the robot’s software-engineering team, which hails from Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, also got a chance to put the robot’s sophisticated technology to the test. In Poza Verde (Spanish for “Green Pool”), a wider but shallower cenote near Zacatón, DEPTHX was tested in “exploration mode." In this mode, the robot is not given any instructions about where to go or what to do. It’s dropped into the water and simply told to go find interesting stuff. It is responsible both for navigating its way around and for deciding what is interesting. The engineering team judged this test a success.

That is promising, because exploration mode will have to work well for the next phase of the robot’s life. Later this year, DEPTHX will morph into ENDURANCE, the same robot but with a slightly different configuration, and will transition from exploring balmy semitropical waters to swimming about in chilly ice-covered lakes.

The first such cold-water test will take place in February 2008, in the Midwest. That will be a trail run for an even more challenging mission late in 2008: autonomous exploration of the waters of Antarctica’s Lake Bonney, an ice-covered lake about 3 km (1.8 miles) long and 1.5 km (0.9 miles) wide.

To date, very little is known about Lake Bonney. Peter Doran, a University of Illinois at Chicago associate professor and the principal investigator for the ENDURANCE project, and his colleagues have been studying the lake for several years, measuring its temperature, salinity and a handful of other parameters. But those measurements have all been made “in the center of the lake,” Doran says. “We go back to the same spot every year.” ENDURANCE, he says, will enable researchers for the first time to develop a portrait of the lake - its temperature, its chemistry, and its microbial ecology - in three dimensions.

New Discoveries In Neural Stem Cells Have Implications For The Design Of Brain Therapies

Scientists have discovered that adult neural stem cells, which exist in the brain throughout life, are not a single, homogeneous group. Instead, they are a diverse group of cells, each capable of giving rise to specific types of neurons. The finding, the team says, significantly shifts the perspective on how these cells could be used to develop cell-based brain therapies.

The results of their study are reported online in Science Express, and will be published in an upcoming issue of Science.

Adult neural stem cells give rise to the three major types of brain cells -- astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and neurons. Their role in producing neurons is of particular interest to scientists because neurons orchestrate brain functions -- thought, feeling and movement. If scientists could figure out how to create specific types of new neurons, they potentially could use them to replace damaged cells, such as the dopamine-producing neurons destroyed in Parkinson's disease.

In recent years, scientists have determined that adult neural stem cells are located primarily in two regions of the brain -- the lining of the brain's fluid-filled cavity, known as the subventricular zone, and a horseshoe shaped area known as the hippocampus. The laboratory of the senior author of the current study, UCSF's Arturo Alvarez-Buylla identified the stem cells in the subventricular zone in 1999 (Cell, June 11, 1999).

While scientists have known that neural stem cells in the developing brain produce particular types of neurons based on where the stem cells are located in the embryo, studies carried out in cell culture have suggested that adult neural stem cells of the fully formed brain can give rise to many types of brain cells.

In the current study, conducted in mice, the team set out to explore whether neural stem cells in different locations of the subventricular zone are all the same. They did so using a method they developed to follow the fate of early neonatal and adult neural stem cells in 15 different regions of the subventricular zone. These cells typically produce young neurons that migrate to the olfactory bulb, where they mature into several distinct types of interneurons, neurons that are essential for the sense of smell.

To the team's surprise, the adult neural stem cells in the various regions of the subventricular zone each gave rise to only very specific subsets of interneurons. Moreover, the stem cells were not susceptible to being re-specified. When they were taken out of their niche and transplanted into another region of the subventricular zone, they continued to produce the same subset of interneurons. Similarly, they retained their specialized production of distinct subtypes of neurons when removed from the animals' brains and exposed to a cocktail of growth factors in a culture dish.

The findings, says the lead author of the study, Florian T. Merkle a graduate student in the Alvarez-Buylla lab, suggests that while adult neural stem cells of the subventricular zone can produce the three major types of brain cells -- astrocytes, neurons and oligodendrocytes -- when it comes to neurons they seem to be specified, or programmed, to produce very specific subtypes.

"The data supporting the finding is remarkably clean and was highly unexpected," says senior author Alvarez-Buylla, UCSF Heather and Melanie Muss Professor of Neurological Surgery. "We've been studying this region of the brain for many years and Florian's data has produced a different scenario, so we have to readjust now."

"We should abandon the idea that these cells are good for making any kind of neuron. This is just not going to be the case unless we find ways to reprogram these cells genetically."

The insight, says Merkle, is a key step toward understanding the molecular mechanisms of neural stem cell potential. "Now you could compare adult stem cells in different regions at the genetic level. Since different neural stem cells make different types of neurons, maybe you could determine which genes are important for making, say, dopaminergic cells. In theory you could activate these genes in embryonic stem cells in the culture dish to try to create the desired type of neuron."

The Alvarez-Buylla lab has identified neural stem cells in the adult human brain, but it is not known if these cells are heterogeneous. If human brains show a similar regionalization of stem cells, it might also be possible, says Alvarez-Buylla, to harvest them from the brains of patients, expand their numbers in the culture dish to obtain a particular neuron type, and transplant them back into patients.

Notably, the distribution of adult neural stem cells throughout the subventricular zone raises the possibility, he says, that the cells' activity is regionally modulated in order to regulate the production of different types of neurons. "This may provide a mechanism for the brain to dynamically fine tune the olfactory bulb circuitry, raising a fascinating basic question about neuronal replacement: Why are so many different types of neurons, with such diverse origins, required for olfactory function?"

"The implication for cell-based therapies might be that it isn't sufficient to replace one neuron," he says. "You might have to replace combinations of different neuronal types when it comes to reestablishing neural function."

The finding, he says, has not been without its hints. In 1996, the lab reported (PNAS, Dec. 1996) what he describes as "an amazing network of pathways" that collect adult neural stem cells from throughout the wall of the lateral ventricle of the subventricular zone.

"It's taken us 10 years," he says, "to figure out that these pathways reflect the transport of young neurons of different types born in unique locations."

Astronomers Find Thousands of New Galaxies

By SPACE.com

More than a thousand previously unknown dwarf galaxies have been detected in the Coma cluster of galaxies 320 million light-years away by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Though tiny compared to bigger galaxies, dwarf galaxies play a crucial role in cosmic evolution. Astronomers think they were the first galaxies to form, providing the building blocks for larger galaxies. They're also the most numerous type of galaxies around: Computer simulations, in fact, suggest that giant clusters of galaxies should contain more dwarf galaxies than astronomers have observed.

To find the thousands of "missing" galaxies, astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, stitched together 288 individual exposures from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Each exposure lasted 70 to 90 seconds, forming a large mosaic covering 1.3 square degrees of sky when combined with the image data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Though a small chunk of the sky, the team found almost 30,000 new objects in a relatively short period of time.

To the team's surprise, many of the new objects turned out to be Coma galaxies, not galaxies beyond the cluster. Leigh Jenkins, a GSFC astronomer, estimates that about 1,200 of the faint objects are dwarf galaxies-many more than have been previously identified.

"We have suddenly been able to detect thousands of faint galaxies that weren't seen before," Jenkins said. Her team's study of the Coma cluster is detailed in a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

How can astronomers see such faint galaxies? The universe emits a wealth of visible light, which allows us to se stars with an unaided eye. But most of the light from space is invisible to humans-which is why telescopes like Spitzer that can "see" infrared light help astronomers make new discoveries in well-studied parts of the cosmos.

The team may have found thousands of new objects, but additional Coma dwarf galaxies might be lurking in the Spitzer telescope data, the team said. By using telescopes that can see even "deeper" into the cosmos, the astronomers are currently trying to find out how many of the faintest objects belong to the Coma cluster.

why menthol feels fresh

Scientists have identified the receptor in cells of the peripheral nervous system that is most responsible for the body's ability to sense cold.


The finding, reported on-line in the journal "Nature" (May 30, 2007), reveals one of the key mechanisms by which the body detects temperature sensation. But in so doing it also illuminates a mechanism that mediates how the body experiences intense stimuli – temperature, in this case – that can cause pain.


As such, the receptor – known as menthol receptor TRPM8 -- provides a target for studying acute and chronic pain, as can result from inflammatory or nerve injury, the researchers say, and a potential new target for treating pain.


"By understanding how sensory receptors work, how thresholds for temperature are determined, we gain insight into how these thresholds change in the setting of injury, such as inflammatory and nerve injury, and how these changes may contribute to chronic pain," says senior author David Julius, PhD, chairman and professor of physiology at UCSF.


The methanol receptor, and other temperature receptors discovered in recent years by the Julius lab, offer potential targets for developing analgesic drugs that act in the peripheral, nervous system, rather than centrally, where opiate receptors act, he says.


The finding is a milestone in an investigation the team began several years ago. In 2002, the researchers discovered that the receptor was activated by chemical cooling agents such as menthol, a natural product of mint, and cool air. They reported their discovery, or "cloning," of the receptor in "Nature" (March 7, 2002), hypothesizing that the receptor would play a key role in sensing cold. However, some subsequent papers questioned this theory.


In the current study, the team confirmed their hypothesis by "knocking out" the gene that synthesizes the receptor, both in sensory neurons in cell culture and in mice. The cells in culture were unresponsive to cooling agents, including menthol. The genetically engineered mice did not discriminate between warm and cold surfaces until the temperature dropped to extremes.


"It's been known for years that menthol and related cooling agents evoke the psychophysical sensation of cold – somehow by interacting with the aspect of the sensory nervous system that's related to cold detection," says Julius.


The current study, he says -- led by Diana M. Bautista, PhD, and Jan Siemens, PhD, of the Julius lab and Joshua M. Glazer, PhD, of the lab of co-senior author Cheryl Stucky, PhD, of the Medical College of Wisconsin – puts that question to rest.


As the mice lacking the gene were not completely insensitive to cold -- they avoided contact with surfaces below 10 degrees C, though with reduced efficiency -- the next step, says Julius, will be to illuminate this residual aspect of cold sensation.


The finding is the latest of a series of discoveries led by the Julius lab on the molecular mechanisms of temperature sensation and pain. In 1997, the lab cloned the gene for the capsaicin receptor, the main pungent ingredient in some chili peppers (Nature, Oct. 23, 1997), and in 2000 reported that, in mice, the receptor triggers the nerves to fire pain signals when they are exposed to high ambient heat or the fiery properties of peppery food. (Science, April 14, 2000). The study demonstrated that capsaicin and noxious heat elicit the sensation of burning pain through activation of the same receptor on sensory neurons.


Most recently, they identified the receptor of isothiocyanate compounds, which constitute the pungent ingredients in such plants as wasabi and yellow mustard. In response to high temperatures, the receptor produces pain and irritation.


"All of these studies use natural products to understand pain mechanisms in the periphery of the body, where they are first sensed," says Julius.


Ultimately, pain signals are transmitted from the peripheral nervous system into the body's central nervous system – moving through nerves in the spinal cord and brain stem up to the brain, which prompts a response, or "feeling." Co-author of the current study Allan Basbaum, PhD, also of UCSF, is a pioneer of research into the mechanism of chronic pain within the central nervous system.


The Julius team's complementary work is focused at the level of the sensory nerve fiber, where the signals are first initiated. "We want to know," Julius says, "how do you detect these stimuli to begin with" How do your sensory nerve endings do this to begin with" And what are the biochemical and biophysical mechanisms that account for this""


All three receptors the Julius lab has discovered are members of the TRP family of ion channels expressed on sensory neurons. The latest finding adds to the evidence, says Julius, that TRP channels are the principal transducers of thermal stimuli in the mammalian periphery nervous system.