He looked into the heavens and saw more than anyone had seen before. Four hundred years ago, Galileo Galilei took two curved pieces of glass, made them into lenses and looked through them to create a telescope.
Now a new original production, "Galileo: The Power of the Telescope," takes over the Daniel M. Soref Planetarium, 800 W. Wells St., and tells the story about how Galileo's discoveries changed Western culture's view of the cosmos.
The program turns the Soref into a time machine, traveling back to Pisa, Italy, to look at Galileo's ground-breaking idea that the Earth revolves around the sun. The show is narrated by Dava Sobel, author of the award-winning "Galileo's Daughter."
"Galileo" runs daily at 12:30 p.m. through March 19. Call (414) 319-4629 for ticket information.
- Jackie Loohauis-Bennett
Monday, November 2, 2009
Monday, May 12, 2008
New drug for cancer in 5 years
Published Date: 04 May 2008
By Kate Foster
THE lives of half of all cancer victims could be saved or prolonged as a result of clinical trials set to start within five years, Scotland's leading researcher in the field revealed last night.
Professor Sir David Lane said work on his earlier discoveries into the link between genes and cancer had reached the stage where drug trials in humans were likely to begin in "four to five years".Lane, in his first interview since returning to Scotland from a three-year post in Singapore, predicted that if the trials were successful up to 7,000 Scottish cancer sufferers annually could be saved, 10 times as many in the UK and millions across the world.
Lane, who is based at Dundee University, is revered in scientific circles for his discovery of the p53 gene and work on how it helps prevent cancer by "switching off" the damaged cells that can cause tumours.Speaking exclusively to Scotland on Sunday, he revealed that his own groundbreaking experiments, as well as research by other scientists across the world, had reached a "very exciting" stage.Many tumours begin when p53 is prevented from doing its vital anti-cancer work by other chemicals in the body.
According to Lane, a molecule has been created which allows p53 to carry on fighting the disease. The molecule, Nutlin 3, works by blocking a protein called MDM2 which itself can inhibit p53.Theoretically, a drug containing Nutlin 3 could be used to help treat virtually all types of cancer, including lung, leukaemia, breast and colon. Approximately half of all cancers involve the p53 gene being blocked by MDM2.Lane said: "There are things coming to clinical trial soon and that's very exciting. I expect in the next four or five years there will be clinical trials of drugs that work by turning on p53.
It's very clear that it's getting very close now and that's a big excitement."He added: "The thing we would start with would be trials of leukaemia because it's easier to monitor how drugs are working there by taking tumour cells from the blood and seeing if they are being damaged."Lane predicted: "Cancer will become more and more a treatable disease where the expected outcome is a successful treatment. We are getting towards that already with breast cancer. It's a combination of early detection, trials, and treatments."The difference I feel now is that it feels like we are really on the right track. You can feel the progress. There were times 20 years ago when there weren't drugs coming though and this was such a difficult disease to treat.
Now we know we are doing the right things. That's not to be complacent because with the ageing population cancer is going to be a major disease but I am really optimistic about what we are doing."Lane called on the scientific community to work together. "There are a lot of hurdles and the costs go up enormously, hundreds of millions to do full clinical approval, so it's a long staircase," he said. "In the end it's not just one person that gets it there, it's a combination of the scientists, the clinicians, the patients and the public who fund it."Lane discovered the importance of p53 – since dubbed the 'tumour suppressor gene' or the 'guardian of the genome' – in 1979. It is hoped that new treatments based on p53 will be more effective and less toxic than traditional therapies such as chemotherapy.
Although cancer deaths are falling in Scotland, the disease remains the nation's biggest killer, claiming 15,000 lives in 2006.Dr Karen Vousden, director of the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, said: "There are very few types of cancer that would not be helped by this. It could benefit up to 50% of all cancer cases."Potentially this could have an enormous impact. There are still hurdles to overcome.
But you can't help but be excited by this."Andrea Stiglianou, coordinator of the Leukaemia Society, said: "Anything that leads towards better treatments and enables people to lead better quality lives is really gladly welcomed. Sadly, we are still losing patients, so this is welcomed 100%."Lane has returned to Dundee after three years at Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology.He will now spend most of his time at his research base in Dundee University as well as taking a strategic role with Cancer Research UK, steering its research and investment.
By Kate Foster
THE lives of half of all cancer victims could be saved or prolonged as a result of clinical trials set to start within five years, Scotland's leading researcher in the field revealed last night.
Professor Sir David Lane said work on his earlier discoveries into the link between genes and cancer had reached the stage where drug trials in humans were likely to begin in "four to five years".Lane, in his first interview since returning to Scotland from a three-year post in Singapore, predicted that if the trials were successful up to 7,000 Scottish cancer sufferers annually could be saved, 10 times as many in the UK and millions across the world.
Lane, who is based at Dundee University, is revered in scientific circles for his discovery of the p53 gene and work on how it helps prevent cancer by "switching off" the damaged cells that can cause tumours.Speaking exclusively to Scotland on Sunday, he revealed that his own groundbreaking experiments, as well as research by other scientists across the world, had reached a "very exciting" stage.Many tumours begin when p53 is prevented from doing its vital anti-cancer work by other chemicals in the body.
According to Lane, a molecule has been created which allows p53 to carry on fighting the disease. The molecule, Nutlin 3, works by blocking a protein called MDM2 which itself can inhibit p53.Theoretically, a drug containing Nutlin 3 could be used to help treat virtually all types of cancer, including lung, leukaemia, breast and colon. Approximately half of all cancers involve the p53 gene being blocked by MDM2.Lane said: "There are things coming to clinical trial soon and that's very exciting. I expect in the next four or five years there will be clinical trials of drugs that work by turning on p53.
It's very clear that it's getting very close now and that's a big excitement."He added: "The thing we would start with would be trials of leukaemia because it's easier to monitor how drugs are working there by taking tumour cells from the blood and seeing if they are being damaged."Lane predicted: "Cancer will become more and more a treatable disease where the expected outcome is a successful treatment. We are getting towards that already with breast cancer. It's a combination of early detection, trials, and treatments."The difference I feel now is that it feels like we are really on the right track. You can feel the progress. There were times 20 years ago when there weren't drugs coming though and this was such a difficult disease to treat.
Now we know we are doing the right things. That's not to be complacent because with the ageing population cancer is going to be a major disease but I am really optimistic about what we are doing."Lane called on the scientific community to work together. "There are a lot of hurdles and the costs go up enormously, hundreds of millions to do full clinical approval, so it's a long staircase," he said. "In the end it's not just one person that gets it there, it's a combination of the scientists, the clinicians, the patients and the public who fund it."Lane discovered the importance of p53 – since dubbed the 'tumour suppressor gene' or the 'guardian of the genome' – in 1979. It is hoped that new treatments based on p53 will be more effective and less toxic than traditional therapies such as chemotherapy.
Although cancer deaths are falling in Scotland, the disease remains the nation's biggest killer, claiming 15,000 lives in 2006.Dr Karen Vousden, director of the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, said: "There are very few types of cancer that would not be helped by this. It could benefit up to 50% of all cancer cases."Potentially this could have an enormous impact. There are still hurdles to overcome.
But you can't help but be excited by this."Andrea Stiglianou, coordinator of the Leukaemia Society, said: "Anything that leads towards better treatments and enables people to lead better quality lives is really gladly welcomed. Sadly, we are still losing patients, so this is welcomed 100%."Lane has returned to Dundee after three years at Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology.He will now spend most of his time at his research base in Dundee University as well as taking a strategic role with Cancer Research UK, steering its research and investment.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
New engravings and sculptures uncovered in Raidan Temple
New engravings, sculptures and drawings have been found recently in the Raidan Temple archaeological site in Dhafar. The temple was discovered last year, and the new findings were uncovered by a German mission headed by Professor Paul Yule, an archaeology expert from Heidelberg University.
The joint mission undertaking the excavation at Dhafar consists of both German and Yemeni experts. The new findings consist of drawings on horizontal strips. On the bottom, there is a row of drawings of bulls’ heads. Above this strip there is an embroidery-like inscription of leaves and grapes, and on the top level there is a strip of animal drawings such as deer, gazelles, tigers and some mythical winged animals engraved on stones that constitute one side of the temple’s wall.
On the wall of the other side of the temple there is a block of stone 135 centimeters tall on which a full picture of a king with a crown on his head and a sword at his side, holding an engraved scepter and a bunch of plants in his hand. The findings are estimated to be dated between 100 and 300 AD, for the facial engraving is similar to those found in south-west Iran dating from this period, and the temple was built around the same time. “Though there is a word engraved in an ancient language above the king’s picture, pronounced ‘wedan’, it is not the name of the king.
It may have a religious meaning which specialists and future findings may shed light on this,” said Fuad al-Qashm, general manager of the Ibb bureau of archaeology and antiquities museums. Al-Qashm believes that the new discoveries are rare and that they have great importance, for they reveal an important period of Yemen’s history and civilization. Officials think that the findings are only a glimpse of what lies beneath the earth, as this region was the headquarters and capital of the Himyarite Kingdom established by King Thi Raidan in 115 BCE which lasted for 650 years.
The Himyarite Kingdom was the largest and most powerful ancient Yemeni state in southern Arabia between 300 and 525 BCE, because it expanded its power to the north and annexed the Saba state in Marib.
This created the first united kingdom in history 2000 years ago; called ‘Saba-Tho-Raidan’, headed by King Sharhabil Bin Ya’for Bin Abdo Karb Asa’d Asa’d al-Kamil, which controlled much of the east-west perfume and incense trade. The Ibb governorate witnessed the rise and fall of almost all Yemeni civilizations. Most state and kingdom capitals were there, with many remains surviving the wear of time.
The joint mission undertaking the excavation at Dhafar consists of both German and Yemeni experts. The new findings consist of drawings on horizontal strips. On the bottom, there is a row of drawings of bulls’ heads. Above this strip there is an embroidery-like inscription of leaves and grapes, and on the top level there is a strip of animal drawings such as deer, gazelles, tigers and some mythical winged animals engraved on stones that constitute one side of the temple’s wall.
On the wall of the other side of the temple there is a block of stone 135 centimeters tall on which a full picture of a king with a crown on his head and a sword at his side, holding an engraved scepter and a bunch of plants in his hand. The findings are estimated to be dated between 100 and 300 AD, for the facial engraving is similar to those found in south-west Iran dating from this period, and the temple was built around the same time. “Though there is a word engraved in an ancient language above the king’s picture, pronounced ‘wedan’, it is not the name of the king.
It may have a religious meaning which specialists and future findings may shed light on this,” said Fuad al-Qashm, general manager of the Ibb bureau of archaeology and antiquities museums. Al-Qashm believes that the new discoveries are rare and that they have great importance, for they reveal an important period of Yemen’s history and civilization. Officials think that the findings are only a glimpse of what lies beneath the earth, as this region was the headquarters and capital of the Himyarite Kingdom established by King Thi Raidan in 115 BCE which lasted for 650 years.
The Himyarite Kingdom was the largest and most powerful ancient Yemeni state in southern Arabia between 300 and 525 BCE, because it expanded its power to the north and annexed the Saba state in Marib.
This created the first united kingdom in history 2000 years ago; called ‘Saba-Tho-Raidan’, headed by King Sharhabil Bin Ya’for Bin Abdo Karb Asa’d Asa’d al-Kamil, which controlled much of the east-west perfume and incense trade. The Ibb governorate witnessed the rise and fall of almost all Yemeni civilizations. Most state and kingdom capitals were there, with many remains surviving the wear of time.
Monday, March 17, 2008
New probe data sheds light on dark matter
By Josephine Wolff
Data transmissions by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) provide multiple insights into the formation of the universe and its infancy, said several University researchers who were involved in designing and launching the satellite. The probe’s mission is led by a partnership between NASA and the University, in collaboration with scientists at several other institutions.
The data allowed researchers to calculate a more precise estimate of the age of the universe, now thought to be 13.7 billion years old, with only a 120 million year margin of error, said physics professor Lyman Page, one of the team’s lead researchers. Page added that the satellite has also helped scientists determine what actual processes were going on when the universe was less than a billionth of a billionth of a second old.
“We can start to probe those earliest times with a new degree of confidence,” he said.
The pictures transmitted by the probe have also helped the researchers make important discoveries about the formation of the first stars.
“Currently the WMAP data is pretty much the only way to gain information as to when the universe was ionized by the first generation of stars,” said Eiichiro Komatsu, an astronomy professor at the University of Texas-Austin who worked on the WMAP project from 2001 to 2003, when he was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton.
The data showed that the first stars must have formed during the first 500 million years after the Big Bang, astrophysics professor David Spergel ’82 said.
This discovery will have important implications for the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to be launched in 2013 by NASA, Komatsu said.
“One of [the Webb Telescope’s] prime science goals is to see the sources of ... the first generation of stars directly,” Komatsu said. “It is important to know when a significant fraction of these sources were around, so that we know where to look using this telescope.”
Discovering dark matter
The WMAP transmissions also provide the first evidence for the existence of the mysterious dark matter astrophysicists have long suspected composes much of the universe.
“[WMAP data] implies that atoms make up only 5% of the universe,” Spergel said in an e-mail. “The next roughly 20% is made up of ‘dark matter,’ most likely a new class of subatomic particles that interact[s] only extremely weakly with normal matter. The remaining 75% is made up of ‘dark energy’ associated with empty space.”
Many scientists have suspected that dark matter exists, specifically particles called neutrinos, but its existence was never before confirmed by evidence, said Charles Bennett, WMAP’s principal investigator and a physics and astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins.
“Dark matter has never been detected directly in the laboratory; we’ve only inferred its existence from astronomical observations,” said Gary Hinshaw, an astrophysicist with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “Neutrinos have been detected, but not this kind. These are produced shortly after the Big Bang.”
The cosmic neutrino background that the probe shows is only a small fraction of the total dark matter in the universe, Hinshaw added.
“[The neutrino background] has always been assumed to be there ... [The] challenge was to actually see it in the data,” Komatsu said. “Particle physicists are detecting neutrinos on the ground, but those neutrinos are from the atmosphere, sun, or nuclear reactors. The energy of the cosmic neutrino background is at least a million times smaller than their neutrinos, which means that it is extremely difficult to detect them ... with the current technology.” Though the WMAP has helped clarify questions about dark matter, dark energy remains an unknown and unexpected quantity that the WMAP may help explain in the future, Bennett said.
Data transmissions by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) provide multiple insights into the formation of the universe and its infancy, said several University researchers who were involved in designing and launching the satellite. The probe’s mission is led by a partnership between NASA and the University, in collaboration with scientists at several other institutions.
The data allowed researchers to calculate a more precise estimate of the age of the universe, now thought to be 13.7 billion years old, with only a 120 million year margin of error, said physics professor Lyman Page, one of the team’s lead researchers. Page added that the satellite has also helped scientists determine what actual processes were going on when the universe was less than a billionth of a billionth of a second old.
“We can start to probe those earliest times with a new degree of confidence,” he said.
The pictures transmitted by the probe have also helped the researchers make important discoveries about the formation of the first stars.
“Currently the WMAP data is pretty much the only way to gain information as to when the universe was ionized by the first generation of stars,” said Eiichiro Komatsu, an astronomy professor at the University of Texas-Austin who worked on the WMAP project from 2001 to 2003, when he was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton.
The data showed that the first stars must have formed during the first 500 million years after the Big Bang, astrophysics professor David Spergel ’82 said.
This discovery will have important implications for the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to be launched in 2013 by NASA, Komatsu said.
“One of [the Webb Telescope’s] prime science goals is to see the sources of ... the first generation of stars directly,” Komatsu said. “It is important to know when a significant fraction of these sources were around, so that we know where to look using this telescope.”
Discovering dark matter
The WMAP transmissions also provide the first evidence for the existence of the mysterious dark matter astrophysicists have long suspected composes much of the universe.
“[WMAP data] implies that atoms make up only 5% of the universe,” Spergel said in an e-mail. “The next roughly 20% is made up of ‘dark matter,’ most likely a new class of subatomic particles that interact[s] only extremely weakly with normal matter. The remaining 75% is made up of ‘dark energy’ associated with empty space.”
Many scientists have suspected that dark matter exists, specifically particles called neutrinos, but its existence was never before confirmed by evidence, said Charles Bennett, WMAP’s principal investigator and a physics and astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins.
“Dark matter has never been detected directly in the laboratory; we’ve only inferred its existence from astronomical observations,” said Gary Hinshaw, an astrophysicist with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “Neutrinos have been detected, but not this kind. These are produced shortly after the Big Bang.”
The cosmic neutrino background that the probe shows is only a small fraction of the total dark matter in the universe, Hinshaw added.
“[The neutrino background] has always been assumed to be there ... [The] challenge was to actually see it in the data,” Komatsu said. “Particle physicists are detecting neutrinos on the ground, but those neutrinos are from the atmosphere, sun, or nuclear reactors. The energy of the cosmic neutrino background is at least a million times smaller than their neutrinos, which means that it is extremely difficult to detect them ... with the current technology.” Though the WMAP has helped clarify questions about dark matter, dark energy remains an unknown and unexpected quantity that the WMAP may help explain in the future, Bennett said.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, October 12, 2007
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.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
The Scientists Discovered Skull of New Amazing Dinosaur
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 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 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, 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. |
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
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?
Sunday, September 9, 2007
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."
Monday, September 3, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Scientists' plea to use new hybrid embryos
· Animal-human link to aid research
· Pro-life groups voice opposition
- 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.'
Monday, July 30, 2007
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.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
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."
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."
Saturday, July 28, 2007
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." 
Friday, July 27, 2007
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.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
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.
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.”
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Ascent of dinosaurs more gradual than once thought
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
Will Dunham, Reuters
Published: Thursday, July 19, 2007WASHINGTON (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.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
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.
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."
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