Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts

2013-10-10

Diamonds on other planets

Diamonds may be hiding on other planets - CNN.com


(CNN) -- Move over, Lucy: Researchers say Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus may also be in the sky, with diamonds.

The atmospheres of these gas-ball planets have the perfect temperature and pressure conditions to host carbon in the form of diamond, say Mona Delitsky of California Specialty Engineering in Pasadena, California, and Kevin Baines of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Their research was presented Wednesday at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences conference in Denver.



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2013-10-09

Diamond-Bearing Pebble Provides Evidence of Comet Striking Earth

Libyan Desert Glass: Diamond-Bearing Pebble Provides Evidence of Comet Striking Earth


A mysterious black pebble found by an Egyptian geologist at the Libyan Desert Glass strewnfield provides the first ever evidence of a comet entering Earth’s atmosphere and exploding.


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2013-05-26

The Narwhal's Mysterious Tusk

Narwhal Tusk Discoveries

The narwhal, Monodon monoceros, has long fascinated sea explorers, scientists and aristocracy. This arctic whale is characterized by a single spiraled tusk extending six to nine feet, emerging from the upper jaw and through the lips of adult males. Some females may exhibit a tusk and, in rare instances, a male with two tusks has been observed. Often associated with the horn of the unicorn, the narwhal tooth has found its way into the books of scientific rarities and mythical tales.


The Narwhal's Mysterious Tusk - YouTube

This species of whale has an unusual and mysterious tusk, once harvested and sold as a unicorn horn for 10 times its weight in gold.




HowStuffWorks "The Narwhal Tusk"


The narwhal's tusk isn't unique at first glance. Elephants, rhinos and walruses all have these long, protruding teeth. But this one is different from any other tooth you've ever seen.

[...]

... The soft, sensitive part is on the outside, while the dense, hard part makes up the middle. Ten million tiny holes lie right on the surface on the tusk. Human teeth have these little tubules too, which is why sometimes the cold bothers your teeth, but they're covered with enamel. Imagine having all your nerves exposed in the icy waters of the Arctic. Why would the most sensitive part of a tooth be on the outside?

Harvard Gazette: Marine biology mystery solved

Function of 'unicorn' whale's 8-foot tooth discovered by Harvard School of Dental Medicine researcher


Nweeia has discovered that the narwhal's tooth has hydrodynamic sensor capabilities. Ten million tiny nerve connections tunnel their way from the central nerve of the narwhal tusk to its outer surface. Though seemingly rigid and hard, the tusk is like a membrane with an extremely sensitive surface, capable of detecting changes in water temperature, pressure, and particle gradients. Because these whales can detect particle gradients in water, they are capable of discerning the salinity of the water, which could help them survive in their Arctic ice environment. It also allows the whales to detect water particles characteristic of the fish that constitute their diet. There is no comparison in nature in tooth form, expression, and functional adaptation.


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2013-05-07

In Vivo Flexible Large Scale Integrated Circuits

Team develops in vivo flexible large scale integrated circuits (w/ Video)


A team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST has developed in vivo silicon-based flexible large scale integrated circuits (LSI) for bio-medical wireless communication.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-05-team-vivo-flexible-large-scale.html#jCp
A team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST has developed in vivo silicon-based flexible large scale integrated circuits (LSI) for bio-medical wireless communication.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-05-team-vivo-flexible-large-scale.html#jCp
A team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST has developed in vivo silicon-based flexible large scale integrated circuits (LSI) for bio-medical wireless communication.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-05-team-vivo-flexible-large-scale.html#jCp
A team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST has developed in vivo silicon-based flexible large scale integrated circuits (LSI) for bio-medical wireless communication.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-05-team-vivo-flexible-large-scale.html#jCp
A team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST has developed in vivo silicon-based flexible large scale integrated circuits (LSI) for bio-medical wireless communication.

A KAIST Research Team Developed in Vivo Flexible Large Scale Integrated Circuits - Technobahn

Professor Keon Jae Lee's team fabricated radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) interconnected with thousand nano-transistors on silicon wafer by state-of-the-art CMOS process, and then they removed the entire bottom substrate except top 100 nm active circuit layer by wet chemical etching. The flexible RF switches for wireless communication were monolithically encapsulated with biocompatible liquid crystal polymers (LCPs) for in vivo bio-medical applications. Finally, they implanted the LCP encapsulated RFICs into live rats to demonstrate the stable operation of flexible devices under in vivo circumstances.

Professor Lee said, "This work could provide an approach to flexible LSI for an ideal artificial retina system and other bio-medical devices. Moreover, the result represents an exciting technology with the strong potential to realize fully flexible consumer electronics such as application processor (AP) for mobile operating system, high-capacity memory, and wireless communication in the near future."



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2013-05-03

OpenWorm an Open-Source Virtual Worm

BBC News - Virtual worm project wriggles into life

The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans is one of the most widely studied creatures on Earth
Soon you could have an artificial creature living in your web browser.
Programmers and scientists have joined together to try to create a comprehensive computer model of the Caenorhabditis elegans nematode worm.

OpenWorm Is An Open-Source Virtual Worm, Accurate In Every Way | Popular Science

Elegant Elegans The OpenWorm 3D Browser iPhone app lets you peek into C. elegans at the cellular level. MetaCell, LLC
Predictive models are essential in engineering fields, but less common in biology, though accurate simulations of living organisms could help us understand disease, drug efficacy and neuroscience.

OpenWorm, a new open-source project devoted to creating a complete virtual model of a worm, aims to bring simulation into the living world by creating a digital organism--C. elegans, a nematode commonly used as a model organism in biology research.




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2013-04-20

The flow around the butterfly

The Mathematical Butterfly: Simulations Provide New Insights On Flight | Inside Science


The researchers ran three different simulations of this mathematical butterfly, and found that the insect used the forces from teensy whirlpools in the air created during each flap of its wings to create lift. They noticed that the butterfly's flight was bumpy as it moved through the air, with lots of ups and downs as it pushed itself forward. 
There were some surprises in the tiny flows of air surrounding the butterflies. "The flow around the butterfly is much more turbulent than expected," says Yokoyama.

The researchers surmised that the minute bumpiness of the air causes butterflies' signature flit, and also may help protect them against predators – the more they duck and weave, the harder it is to catch them. The research was published earlier this year in the journal Physics of Fluids. 

High speed video - Painted Lady butterfly (front) - YouTube



High speed video recorded at 3000 fps.
See www.jhuinsectflight.com for more information on Tiras Lin's research project at Johns Hopkins University.


Mathematical butterflies provide insight into how insects fly

Using data from observations of butterfly flight in wind tunnels, the researchers conducted three different types of simulations with their model that were defined by the position and attitude of the thorax: tethered (where the thorax is fixed), prescribed (where the thorax is programmed to move in an expected manner) and free-flight (where the thorax movement is unrestricted). They found that their mathematical butterfly did -- as predicted -- make use of the tiny, swirling vortices that form in the direction of travel during a downward flap, pushing air down and providing lift. However, they also observed that the flow around the butterfly is much more turbulent than expected. This turbulent flow triggers the complex trajectories characteristic to the flights of butterflies that may be one of the strategies by which the insects avoid predators.

Phys. Fluids (1994-Present) - Physics of Fluids

Aerodynamic forces and vortical structures in flapping butterfly's forward flight
Naoto Yokoyama, Kei Senda, Makoto Iima, and Norio Hirai
Phys. Fluids 25, 021902 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4790882 (24 pages)
Online Publication Date: 21 February 2013
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2013-04-14

Curly Hair and Humidity


What Makes Hair Curly? | LifesLittleMysteries.com

Curly hair tends to be much drier than straight hair because it is easier for the oils secreted from the scalp to travel down the shaft of a straight hair than a curly one (this is why curly hair often turns into frizzy hair).

And as anyone with curly hair knows, humidity can make your hair even curlier (or frizzier). The reason: Hair fiber absorbs the water and forces the shaft to revert to its original (less straight) structure.

Why Humidity Makes Your Hair Curl | Surprising Science

Hair’s chemical structure, it turns out, makes it unusually susceptible to changes in the amount of hydrogen present in the air, which is directly linked to humidity. Most of a hair’s bulk is made up of bundles of long keratin proteins, represented as the middle layer of black dots tightly packed together in the cross-section at right.

[...]

This type of bond is permanent—it’s responsible for the hair’s strength—and isn’t affected by the level of humidity in the air.
But the other type of connection that can form between adjacent keratin proteins, a hydrogen bond, is much weaker and temporary, with hydrogen bonds breaking and new ones forming each time your hair gets wet and dries again. (This is the reason why, if your hair dries in one shape, it tends to remain in roughly that same shape over time.)

Hair Science News: Temporary Changes


Hydrogen bonds are weak physical cross bonds in the hair. When hair is wet, the hydrogen bonds are broken, allowing hair to be formed into a new shape.

When the hair is dried and cooled, they rejoin, allowing the hair to take on the new shape.



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2013-04-12

Music's Effects on the Mind

Brain scans predict how much you'll pay for music - Technology & Science - CBC News


Signals from a specific region of the brain can help scientists predict what music people are tempted to buy and how much money they're willing to spend on it, a new study suggests.

Research slated for publication Friday in the journal Science identified the particular area that becomes active when people hear a song for the very first time. Measuring activity in that area — known as the nucleus accumbens — allows scientists to accurately assess the degree to which people are enjoying the sounds they're hearin

Why Your Brain Loves That New Song - ScienceNOW

Neural harmony. Several brain regions work together to produce good vibrations when listening to favorite music.
Credit: Peter Finnie and Ben Beheshti
When jazz legend John Coltrane first heard Charlie Parker play the saxophone, the music hit him "right between the eyes," he once said. According to neuroscientists, Coltrane was exactly right. When we hear music that we like, even for the first time, a part of the brain's reward system is activated, a new study has shown. The region, called the nucleus accumbens, determines how much we value the song—even predicting how much a person is willing to pay for the new track.

Brain's music pleasure zone

Researchers scanned the brains of subjects while they listened to new songs and asked how much they would spend on buying the tracks. They found that the most popular songs - those which people were prepared to pay more for - were also the ones that elicited the strongest response in the nucleus accumbens, a structure in the centre of the brain that is involved in reward processing.

[...]

"This part of the brain is the part that has stored all the templates of the music we've heard in the past and will be unique for each individuals," she said. "The way that we like music is 100% unique to who we are and what we've heard in the past and the way that our superior temporal gyrus has been shaped. The brain is working a bit like a music-recommendation system."

The latest results shed further light into Salimpoor's 2011 study, which found that the experience of pleasure when listening to music was mediated by the release of the brain's reward chemical, dopamine. She said that music seemed to tap into the circuitry in the brain that had evolved to drive human motivation. This ancient reward system, when listening to music, was being used to provide a cognitive reward.

Favourite music evokes same feelings as good food or drugs | Science | The Guardian

The experience of pleasure is mediated in all these situations by the release of the brain's reward chemical, dopamine, according to results of experiments carried out by a team led by Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, which are published today in Nature Neuroscience.


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2013-04-05

The source of first life on Earth discovered

Power behind primordial soup discovered - University of Leeds


Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.

[...]

“The mystery of how living organisms sprung out of lifeless rock has long puzzled scientists, but we think that the unusual phosphorus chemicals we found could be a precursor to the batteries that now power all life on Earth. But the fact that it developed simply, in conditions similar to the early Earth, suggests this could be the missing link between geology and biology,” said Dr Terry Kee, from the University’s School of Chemistry, who led the research.

Experiments suggest that unusual phosphorus chemicals from meteorites could have given power to Earth’s “primordial soup.”

Experiments suggest that unusual phosphorus chemicals from meteorites could have given power to Earth’s “primordial soup.”


Meteorites could have been source of life's batteries - life - 04 April 2013 - New Scientist

To see whether pyrophosphite could have formed when meteorites landed on early Earth, Kee's team studied a Siberian meteorite that contained a lot of phosphorus. They incubated fragments of the meteorite in acidic water collected from volcanic ponds in Iceland, thought to be chemically similar to the water on primordial Earth. After four days in the water, the meteorite samples had released large quantities of phosphite. When this was dried out, it transformed into pyrophosphite (Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, doi.org/kzc). "We have shown that it's very easy to form," Kee says.
His idea is bolstered by the discovery in 2009 that geothermal pools in California contain lots of phosphite. These pools resemble the primordial environment, suggesting that early Earth was also rich in the material.


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2013-03-31

Superorganisms

Superorganism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


A superorganism is an organism consisting of many organisms. [...] The technical definition of a superorganism is "a collection of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the collective,"[1] phenomena being any activity "the hive wants" such as ants collecting food or bees choosing a new nest site.


Robots Mimic Ant Colony Behavior | TechNewsDaily.com


Robot swarms can mimic how ant colonies navigate complex mazes relatively mindlessly, researchers have found ― knowledge that could help to improve designs for manmade transportation networks.

Scientists are fascinated by ant colonies because they can form collectives called "superorganisms" that function as single organisms do. Investigation into how ants behave has revealed more about how such group behavior arises, and some researchers are using that knowledge to help build smarter robot swarms, said Simon Garnier, a scientist who studies animal behavior at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

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2013-03-29

A Biological Transistor

Biological transistor enables computing within living cells | Engineering

A team of Stanford University bioengineers has taken computing beyond mechanics and electronics into the living realm of biology. They have developed a biological transistor made from genetic material — DNA and RNA. The team calls its invention the “transcriptor.”



Scientists create transistor-like biological device | Science | The Guardian

The biological device behaves like a transistor, one of the tiny switches that are etched on to microchips in the billions to perform computer calculations.

The researchers demonstrated the device inside E coli bacteria, one of the most common bugs used in genetic engineering. The work marks one of the latest advances in the growing field of synthetic biology, which recasts biology as a toolset for engineers.

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2013-03-27

Mini-Supernova Discovered

New Type of Star Explosion Discovered | Type Iax Supernovas | Space.com

Astronomers have discovered a new kind of supernova, a star explosion so weak that scientists dubbed it a miniature stellar blast.

Supernovas represent the deaths of stars, which collapse in powerful explosions. They generally are classified into two main types; the new class, called Type Iax, "is essentially a mini-supernova," said lead researcher Ryan Foley, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "It's the runt of the supernova litter."


This artist's conception shows the suspected progenitor of a new kind of mini supernova called Type Iax. Material from a hot, blue helium star at right is funneling toward a carbon/oxygen white dwarf star at left, which is embedded in an accretion disk. In many cases the white dwarf survives the subsequent explosion. Image released March 26, 2013. CREDIT: Christine Pulliam (CfA)

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2013-03-25

Heart repair without surgery

Heart repair breakthroughs replace surgeon's knife - Yahoo! News


Heart care is in the midst of a transformation. Many problems that once required sawing through the breastbone and opening up the chest for open heart surgery now can be treated with a nip, twist or patch through a tube.

[...]

All rely on catheters — hollow tubes that let doctors burn away and reshape heart tissue or correct defects through small holes in blood vessels.

"This is the replacement for the surgeon's knife. Instead of opening the chest, we're able to put catheters in through the leg, sometimes through the arm," said Dr. Spencer King of St. Joseph's Heart and Vascular Institute in Atlanta. He is former president of the American College of Cardiology. Its conference earlier this month featured research on these novel devices.



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2013-03-23

Lab-Made Body Parts

Science Fiction Comes Alive as Researchers Grow Organs in Lab - WSJ.com



Building a complex human organ in the lab is no longer a dream of science fiction. At London's Royal Free Hospital, a team of 30 scientists is manufacturing a variety of body parts, including windpipes, noses and ears. WSJ's Gautam Naik reports.  Photo: Gareth Phillips

[...]

The problem had been cracked by Dr. Taylor. She said that when human stem cells were put into a heart scaffold in 2010, they seemed to know just where to go. "They organized themselves in a way I didn't believe," said Dr. Taylor, who now works at the Texas Heart Institute but makes regular visits to Madrid to help with the experiments. "It's amazing that the [scaffold] can be as instructional as it is. Maybe we don't need to micromanage every aspect of this."
A person's heart grows in the womb where its cells receive the right mixtures of oxygen and nutrients and chemicals to grow into a working organ. To duplicate that process in a laboratory, scientists uses a device called a bioreactor, which has various tubes ferrying materials to the heart and whisking away waste products. The lab's bioreactor—a cylindrical device nearly a foot in diameter—is being designed by Harvard Bioscience Inc., HBIO +3.61% a maker of medical devices in Holliston, Mass. The machine will be ready for experiments in April, according to Dr. Aviles.

Dr. Aviles said he hopes to have a working, lab-made version ready in five or six years, but the regulatory and safety hurdles for putting such an organ in a patient will be high. The most realistic scenario, he said, is that "in about 10 years" his lab will be transplanting heart parts.

He and his team already have grown early-stage valves and patches that could be used some day to repair tissue damaged by heart attack.




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2012-11-23

The Science of Appetite Overeating and Weight Loss

The Science of Appetite - Beating Overeating - YouTube



Want to lose weight but can't stop eating? There's a reason for that. Find out how you can beat the desire to overeat and bring yourself one step closer to being your healthy self!

Ghrelin - What is Ghrelin?

Ghrelin is a hormone produced mainly by P/D1 cells lining the fundus of the human stomach and epsilon cells of the pancreas that stimulates hunger. Ghrelin levels increase before meals and decrease after meals. It is considered the counterpart of the hormone leptin, produced by adipose tissue, which induces satiation when present at higher levels. In some bariatric procedures, the level of ghrelin is reduced in patients, thus causing satiation before it would normally occur.

What is Leptin?

Leptin is a 16 kDa protein hormone that plays a key role in regulating energy intake and energy expenditure, including appetite and metabolism. It is one of the most important adipose derived hormones. The ''Ob(Lep)'' gene (Ob for obese, Lep for leptin) is located on chromosome 7 in humans.

The effects of leptin were observed by studying mutant obese mice that arose at random within a mouse colony at the Jackson Laboratory in 1950. These mice were massively obese and excessively voracious. [...]

Precision Nutrition » Leptin, Ghrelin, Weight Loss: It’s Complicated

Leptin and ghrelin seem to be the big players in regulating appetite, which consequently influences body weight/fat. When we get hungrier, we tend to eat more. When we eat more, obviously, we maintain our body weight or gain that weight back.

Both leptin and ghrelin are peripheral signals with central effects. In other words, they’re secreted in other parts of the body (peripheral) but affect our brain (central).

Leptin is secreted primarily in fat cells, as well as the stomach, heart, placenta, and skeletal muscle. Leptin decreases hunger.

Ghrelin is secreted primarily in the lining of the stomach. Ghrelin increases hunger.

Both hormones respond to how well-fed you are; leptin usually also correlates to fat mass — the more fat you have, the more leptin you produce. Both hormones activate your hypothalamus (a part of your brain about the size of an almond).

And here’s an important point: both hormones and their signals get messed up with obesity.


Scientific Weight Loss Tips - YouTube



Tired of searching for the perfect diet or pill to shed some pounds? Find out the top weight loss tips, with solid science to back them up.

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2012-11-07

Chondrocladia Lyra a Harp-Shaped Carnivorous Sponge

Extraordinary harp-shaped carnivorous sponge discovered living on the Pacific Ocean floor | Mail Online

  • Chondrocladia lyra lives at depths of 11,000ft of the coast of California
  • Marine biologists discovered it using remote-control deep-sea vehicles
  • It traps traps and eats tiny crustaceans using hooks on its branching limbs
Marine biologists scouring the seabed have discovered an new species of carnivorous sponge that bears a remarkable resemblance to a harp or lyre.

A team from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing, California, found the weird deep-sea predator off their state's northern coast.

They named the new species Chondrocladia lyra - or harp sponge - because the basic structure of its body is shaped like the musical instrument.


Scientists describe extroardinary new carnivorous sponge


Clinging with root-like "rhizoids" to the soft, muddy sediment, the harp sponge captures tiny animals that are swept into its branches by deep-sea currents. Typically, sponges feed by straining bacteria and bits of organic material from the seawater they filter through their bodies. However, carnivorous harp sponges snare their prey—tiny crustaceans—with barbed hooks that cover the sponge's branching limbs. Once the harp sponge has its prey in its clutches, it envelops the animal in a thin membrane, and then slowly begins to digest it.

[...]
The harp sponge's unusual shape and exposure to currents may also help it to reproduce more effectively. The swollen balls at the tip of the sponge's upright branches produce packets of sperm. These sperm packets are released into passing currents and are captured on the branches of other nearby sponges. The sperm then works its way from the packets into the host sponge to fertilize its eggs. As the fertilized eggs mature, these contact sites swell up, forming bulges part way up the host sponge's branches (see photo).





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2012-10-31

IBM's Nanotube Chip Breakthrough


I.B.M. research reports Nanotube Chip Breakthrough (IBM Innovation Center Silicon Valley)

John Markoff writes in the New York Times:

I.B.M.scientists are reporting progress in a chip-making technology that is
likely to ensure that the basic digital switch at the heart of modern
microchips will continue to shrink for more than a decade.

The advance, first described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on
Sunday, is based on carbon nanotubes — exotic molecules that have long
held out promise as an alternative to silicon from which to create the
tiny logic gates now used by the billions to create microprocessors and
memory chips.

Ready for nanotech brains? IBM’s nanotube breakthrough gets us closer | VentureBeat

Carbon nanotubes are tiny wires that can conduct digital computer signals at five or 10 times the speed of traditional silicon chips. They have been around since the 1990s, but researchers have had a tough time getting them to behave. When they try to line these wires together in a useful grid as part of a computer design, the wires have a tendency to behave like wet spaghetti noodles.




Ready for nanotech brains? IBM’s nanotube breakthrough gets us closer | VentureBeat


[...] For the first time since research began on these carbon nanotubes, IBM has succeeded in placing them with near-perfect accuracy on the surface of a silicon chip in order to make electronic circuits.

Guha said the accomplishment is big one, though there are several obstacles that still stand in the way of mass production.

If those challenges are met, then we will see a huge leap in computing performance, as microprocessors for everything from PCs to smartphones will be able to take advantage of the technological advance. They could have applications in integrated circuits, energy storage and conversion, biomedical sensing, and DNA sequencing.

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