Archive
Virus Epidemic Within Our Genome Revealed
Thursday, 03 May 2012 08:58
‘For years scientists have been struggling with the enigma that more than 90 percent of every mammal’s genome has no known function. A part of this ‘dark matter’ of genetic material is known to harbour pieces of DNA from ancient viruses that infected our ancestors going back as far as the age of the dinosaurs.
Researchers at Oxford University, the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York, and the Rega Institute in Belgium wanted to know how these ancient viruses got into their hosts’ genomes in such abundance.’
NASA’s Cassini Finds Saturn’s Moon Phoebe Has Planet-Like Qualities
April 27, 2012 12:58 PM EDT
Data from NASA‘s Cassini mission reveal Saturn’s moon Phoebe has more planet-like qualities than previously thought.
Scientists had their first close-up look at Phoebe when Cassini began exploring the Saturn system in 2004. Using data from multiple spacecraft instruments and a computer model of the moon’s chemistry, geophysics and geology, scientists found Phoebe was a so-called planetesimal, or remnant planetary building block. The findings appear in the April issue of the Journal Icarus.
“Unlike primitive bodies such as comets, Phoebe appears to have actively evolved for a time before it stalled out,” said Julie Castillo-Rogez, a planetary scientist at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “Objects like Phoebe are thought to have condensed very quickly. Hence, they represent building blocks of planets. They give scientists clues about what conditions were like around the time of the birth of giant planets and their moons”
Human genes engineered into experimental GMO rice being grown in Kansas
Wednesday, May 02, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer at naturalnews.com
(NaturalNews) Unless the rice you buy is certified organic, or comes specifically from a farm that tests its rice crops for genetically modified (GM) traits, you could be eating rice tainted with actual human genes. The only known GMO with inbred human traits in cultivation today, a GM rice product made by biotechnology company Ventria Bioscience is currently being grown on 3,200 acres in Junction City, Kansas — and possibly elsewhere — and most people have no idea about it.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035745_GMO_rice_human_genes_Kansas.html#ixzz1thrwb000
Venus to Appear in Once-In-A-Lifetime Event
ScienceDaily (May 1, 2012)
On 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
It will take Venus about six hours to complete its transit, appearing as a small black dot on the Sun’s surface, in an event that will not happen again until 2117.
In this month’s Physics World, Jay M Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, Massachusetts, explores the science behind Venus’s transit and gives an account of its fascinating history.
Read full story: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120501085556.htm
New Primordial Protozoan Species Is Not in Any Known Kingdom of Life
New Primordial Protozoan Species Is Not in Any Known Kingdom of Life
A tiny microorganism found in Norwegian lake sludge may be related to the very oldest life forms on this planet, a possible modern cousin of our earliest common ancestor. It is not a fungus, alga, parasite, plant or animal, yet it has features associated with other kingdoms of life. It could be a founding member of the newest kingdom on the tree of life, scientists said.
‘Nanofishnet’ Could Be the First Metamaterial to Impossibly Bend Light in the Visible Spectrum
By Clay DillowPosted 04.30.2012 at 2:09 pm
Metamaterials hold the elusive promise of the true invisibility cloak, one that bends light right around objects to make them invisible to viewers. But most metamaterials with any kind of potential can only be fabricated in very small sizes, and even the ones that work well–and there are a few–generally don’t work in the visible spectrum. But researchers from Spain and the UK have reported that they have constructed what may be the first practical metamaterial that works in the visible range.
The material was designed with optical switching in mind–sub-picosecond pulsing of light in fiber optics networks or in highly tuned pulsing lasers–but the researchers themselves are convinced that its layered structure could be scaled up into usable, practically-sized objects. Everyone in the materials science community isn’t so optimistic, but the fact that it works at all in the visible range marks something of a breakthrough in the field.
Visible light has been a particularly tough nut to crack when it comes to metamaterials, which essentially bend light unnaturally to achieve a desired effect. Light waves in the visible spectrum tend to degrade to nothing after passing through materials just a fraction of a wavelength thick, so it’s tough to make a metamaterial that can bend light in a predetermined way without also losing the visible light wave altogether.
The UK/Spanish team (from King’s College London and the Valencia Nanophotonics Technology Center, respectively) overcame this through a novel layered construction of silver and hydrogen silsesquioxane (a type of glass). Using a focused ion beam, they punched tiny holes through the layers to create a structure they refer to as a “nanofishnet.” This combination of materials, layering, and nanofishnet structure allows the material to create the necessary negative magnetic permeability (a necessary ingredient for metamaterials that you can learn more abouthere) in the red and near-infrared parts of the spectrum.
By varying the size of the holes in the nanofishnet the team was able to adjust the materials index of refraction, giving them some degree of freedom when it comes to “programming” the material for different kinds of light. So while the team hasn’t created the wundermaterial that will enable our invisibility-cloaked future, they have created a metamaterial that works in one sliver of the spectrum and that could perhaps be cajoled into working in other slivers as well. Click through toIEEE Spectrum for a much more detailed explanation of this.
Water drop at 10.000 fps
Neurons in Bird Brains Encode Earth’s Magnetic Field, Giving Pigeons Reliable Internal GPS
By Rebecca Boyle at http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/neurons-bird-brains-encode-earths-magnetic-field-giving-pigeons-reliable-internal-gps
NASA Invests In Satellites That Beam Power Down to Earth
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 04.11.2012 at 4:05 pm
As spaceborne energy-harvesting schemes go, this one seems faintly possible — an array of curved mirrors directing sunlight toward solar cells, their energy production microwaved down to Earth. It’s so realistic, actually, that NASA is providing funding for a proof-of-concept study.
A former NASA engineer named John Mankins, now with a company called Artemis Innovation Management Solutions, detailed his plans at a NASA innovation conference recently. The concept is called called Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array (SPS-ALPHA), and it would harvest solar energy from a perch in high Earth orbit.
It would consist of a modular array of movable thin-film mirrors, which could be taken into space using current cargo ships and assembled piece by piece. This would be less expensive than building a gigantic array and launching it. These curved mirrors would redirect sunlight toward an internal collection of photovoltaic panels, and the solar energy would be converted into microwaves. Then the Earth-facing portion, or the bottom of the margarita glass in the image at top, would transmit low-frequency, low-intensity waves toward Earth. At the receiving end, power plants would convert the microwave energy into electricity, adding it to the power grid.
It’s not as comprehensive — nor potentially destructive — as building a Dyson sphere around the Earth, but it’s sort of along the same lines, building a space-based system that can harness solar radiation and somehow beam it back to the planet. Mankins’ design is inspired by nature, according to an account of his presentation over at Space.com. It does sort of look like a flower.
His project, first announced last fall, is part of NASA’s NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts project, under the Office of the Chief Technologist. A one-year study is ongoing.
[via PhysOrg]
New Study Finds Vast Galactic Network, No Sign of Dark Matter
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 04.25.2012 at 12:37 pm
Is dark matter in danger? A few days after scientists said there’s no dark matter near our sun, a team of researchers in Germany now says there’s no dark matter in our galactic neighborhood. The team found a vast structure of globular clusters and satellite galaxies surrounding the Milky Way in a smooth, evenly distributed pattern. Most models of galactic distribution and evolution require the gravitational effects of dark matter, but in this model, it doesn’t seem to exist.
Believe nothing 