QuoteReplyTopic: Science and Nature News Redux Posted: 30-Jun-2012 at 07:27
First-Ever Changes in an Exoplanet Atmosphere Detected
This artist's rendering illustrates the evaporation of HD 189733b's atmosphere in response to a powerful eruption from its host star. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope detected the escaping gases and NASA's Swift satellite caught the stellar flare.
An international team of astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made an unparalleled observation, detecting significant changes in the atmosphere of a planet located beyond our solar system.
The scientists conclude the atmospheric variations occurred in response to a powerful eruption on the planet's host star, an event observed by NASA's Swift satellite.
"The multiwavelength coverage by Hubble and Swift has given us an unprecedented view of the interaction between a flare on an active star and the atmosphere of a giant planet," said lead researcher Alain Lecavelier des Etangs at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics (IAP), part of the French National Scientific Research Center located at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.
The exoplanet is HD 189733b, a gas giant similar to Jupiter, but about 14 percent larger and more massive. The planet circles its star at a distance of only 3 million miles, or about 30 times closer than Earth's distance from the sun, and completes an orbit every 2.2 days. Its star, named HD 189733A, is about 80 percent the size and mass of our sun...........
Evidence of Life On Mars Could Come from Martian Moon Phobos
The image shows the orbits of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos and the spread of potential particle trajectories from an asteroid impact on Mars.
A mission to a Martian moon could return with alien life, according to experts at Purdue University, but don't expect the invasion scenario presented by summer blockbusters like "Men in Black 3" or "Prometheus."
"We are talking little green microbes, not little green men," said Jay Melosh, a distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences and physics and aerospace engineering at Purdue. "A sample from the moon Phobos, which is much easier to reach than the Red Planet itself, would almost surely contain Martian material blasted off from large asteroid impacts. If life on Mars exists or existed within the last 10 million years, a mission to Phobos could yield our first evidence of life beyond Earth."
Melosh led a team chosen by NASA's Planetary Protection Office to evaluate if a sample from Phobos could contain enough recent material from Mars to include viable Martian organisms. The study was commissioned to prepare for the failed 2011 Russian Phobos-Grunt mission, but there is continued international interest in a Phobos mission, he said. It will likely be a recurring topic as NASA reformulates its Mars Exploration Program.......
How to Bend It Like Beckham: Physics Students Calculate Perfect Soccer Ball Kicking Formula
Researchers found that the distance a ball bends (D) as a result of this force is related to the ball's radius (R), the density of air (Á), the ball's angular velocity (É), it's velocity through the air (v), it's mass (m) and the distance travelled by the ball in the direction it was kicked (x).
Now that David Beckham won't be appearing at the London 2012 Olympics, other members of Team GB wanting to brush up on their free-kicks can rest easy.
University of Leicester physics students have published a paper which sets out the optimum way of kicking a football (soccer ball) in order to make it bend into the goal.
The ex-England captain's curling free-kicks became legendary, and even inspired the title of the 2002 film Bend It Like Beckham.
Now, four master's students at the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy believe they have discovered a formula to explain how the football curves when a player puts spin on it.
Jasmine Sandhu, Amy Edgington, Matthew Grant and Naomi Rowe-Gurney found a relationship between the amount a football bends in the air, the speed it is travelling and the angular velocity -- or "spin" -- applied to the ball.
When a football spins in the air, it is subjected to a force called the Magnus force -- which causes it to curl sideways from the direction it was originally kicked..........
Clothing the Body Electric: Cotton T-Shirt Fabric Can Store Electricity, Maybe Keep Your Cell Phone Charged
Xiaodong Li (foreground) demonstrates the flexibility of a swatch of activated carbon textile.
Over the years, the telephone has gone mobile, from the house to the car to the pocket. The University of South Carolina's Xiaodong Li envisions even further integration of the cell phone -- and just about every electronic gadget, for that matter -- into our lives.
He sees a future where electronics are part of our wardrobe.
"We wear fabric every day," said Li, a professor of mechanical engineering at USC. "One day our cotton T-shirts could have more functions; for example, a flexible energy storage device that could charge your cell phone or your iPad."
Li is helping make the vision a reality. He and post-doctoral associate Lihong Bao have just reported in the journalAdvanced Materials how to turn the material in a cotton T-shirt into a source of electrical power.
Starting with a T-shirt from a local discount store, Li's team soaked it in a solution of fluoride, dried it and baked it at high temperature. They excluded oxygen in the oven to prevent the material from charring or simply combusting........
World's oldest, largest meteorite crater discovered
Scientists have discovered what they say is the oldest and largest meteorite crater on Earth which is believed to have formed some three billion years ago.
The crater found near the town of Maniitsoq in Greenland currently measures about 62 miles (or 100 km) from one side to another. But before it eroded, it was likely more than 500 km wide, which would make it the biggest and oldest crater ever found on Earth, said Danish researcher Adam Garde.
Calculations suggest that the crater was caused by a 30km-wide meteorite, a massive one which if hits Earth today would wipe out all higher life, Garde told OurAmazingPlanet.
In the three billion years since the impact, the land has been eroded down to about 25 km below the original surface. But the effects of the intense shock wave and heat penetrated deep into the Earth, and remain visible today, said Garde, a researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
Garde had been conducting research on Greenland's geology and noticed several strange features that didn't make sense. In September 2009, he came up with the extreme explanation of an impact from a meteorite.
His team collected samples over the years and published the results in the current issue of journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. He's now “100 per cent positive” it's a crater, for several reasons, he said.
For one, he found widespread crushed rocks in a circular shape that seemed to be caused by the shock waves of a massive impact. Second, there are deposits of a melted mineral called K-feldspar (or potassium-feldspar) that could have been liquefied only at extremely high heat, like that caused by anmeteorite's crash-landing.
First Heralded Single Photon Source Made from Silicon
This is an illustration of the process of photon pair generation, in which input pump photons spontaneously generate special pairs of new photons that emerge at precisely the same time, with one at a slightly lower frequency and the other a slightly higher frequency, after which heralding occurs.
In an important step towards more practical quantum information processing, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of California, San Diego; and the Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy, have demonstrated the first heralded single photon source made from silicon. This source complements two other recently developed silicon-based technologies -- interferometers for manipulating the entanglement of photons and single photon detectors -- needed to build a quantum optical circuit or a secure quantum communication system.
The line between "interesting" and practical in advanced electronics and optics often comes down to making the new device compatible with existing technology. According to NIST scientist Kartik Srinivasan, the new 0.5 mm x 0.05 mm-sized heralded photon generator meshes with existing technology in three important ways: it operates at room temperature; it produces photons compatible with existing telecommunications systems (wavelengths of about 1550 nanometers); and it's in silicon, and so can be built using standard, scalable fabrication techniques.
A "heralded" photon is one of a pair whose existence is announced by the detection of its partner -- the "herald" photon. To get heralded single photons, the group built upon a technique previously demonstrated in silicon called photon pair generation.........
Easter Island Drug Raises Cognition Throughout Life Span in Mice
Cognitive skills such as learning and memory diminish with age in everyone, and the drop-off is steepest in Alzheimer's disease. Texas scientists seeking a way to prevent this decline reported exciting results this week with a drug that has Polynesian roots.
The researchers, appointed in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, added rapamycin to the diet of healthy mice throughout the rodents' life span. Rapamycin, a bacterial product first isolated from soil on Easter Island, enhanced learning and memory in young mice and improved these faculties in old mice, the study showed.
"We made the young ones learn, and remember what they learned, better than what is normal," said Veronica Galvan, Ph.D., assistant professor of physiology at the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, part of the UT Health Science Center. "Among the older mice, the ones fed with a diet including rapamycin actually showed an improvement, negating the normal decline that you see in these functions with age."
The drug also lowered anxiety and depressive-like behavior in the mice, Dr. Galvan said. Anxiety and depression are factors that impair human cognitive performance. Lead author Jonathan Halloran conducted scientifically reliable tests to accurately measure these cognitive components in the rodents.
Venturing into the open
Mice are burrowers that prefer tunnels with walls. To observe behavior, Halloran used an elevated maze of tunnels that led to a catwalk. "All of a sudden the mice are in open space," Halloran said. "It's pretty far from the floor for their size, sort of like if a person is hiking and suddenly the trail gets steep. It's pretty far down and not so comfortable."
Mice with less anxiety were more curious to explore the catwalk. "We observed that the mice fed with a diet containing rapamycin spent significantly more time out in the open arms of the catwalk than the animals fed with a regular diet," Halloran said.
The second test measured depressive-like behavior in the rodents. Mice do not like to be held by their tails, which is the way they are moved from cage to cage. Inevitably they struggle to find a way out. "So we can measure how much and how often they struggle as a measure of the motivation they have to get out of an uncomfortable situation," Dr. Galvan said.
Rapamycin acts like an antidepressant
Some mice barely struggle to get free, but if an antidepressant is administered they struggle a lot more. This behavior is very sensitive to the action of antidepressants and is a reliable measure of whether a drug is acting like an antidepressant, Dr. Galvan said.
"We found rapamycin acts like an antidepressant -- it increases the time the mice are trying to get out of the situation," she said. "They don't give up; they struggle more."
The reductions of anxiety and depressive-like behavior in rapamycin-treated mice held true for all ages tested, from 4 months of age (college age in human years) to 12 months old (the equivalent of middle age) to 25 months old (advanced age).
Feel-good chemicals elevated
The researchers measured levels of three "happy, feel-good" neurotransmitters: serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. All were significantly augmented in the midbrains of mice treated with rapamycin. "This is super-interesting, something we are going to pursue in the lab," Dr. Galvan said.
Dr. Galvan and her team published research in 2010 showing that rapamycin rescues learning and memory in mice with Alzheimer's-like deficits. The elevation of the three neurotransmitters, which are chemical messengers in the brain, may explain how rapamycin accomplished this, Dr. Galvan said.
Rapamycin is an antifungal agent administered to transplant patients to prevent organ rejection. The drug is named for Rapa Nui, the Polynesian title for Easter Island. This island, 2,000 miles from any population centers, is the famed site of nearly 900 mysterious monolithic statues.
Bone-eating marine worms use acid to feed on the skeletons of fish and whales
Deep sea worms use acid to eat the bones of seabed skeletons, according to US scientists.
The so-called "zombie worms" of the Osedax family are known to bore into bones and remove nutrients.
Fresh analysis of the root-like tissues the worms use to attach to bones has identified acid-secreting enzymes.
Until now scientists did not understand how the tiny creatures fed on bone, as they lack the body parts needed to "drill" physically.
Dr Sigrid Katz from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego will present the team's research at the Society for Experimental Biology's annual conference.
ound at the bottom of the sea living on the fallen skeletons of whales and fish, the unusual group of worms have caused fascination since their "accidental" discovery in 2002 by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).
The MBARI team provided the whale bones and specimens used by Dr Katz and her colleagues.
Scientists were perplexed when they only discovered females but further investigation revealed that the males remained in their microscopic larval stage, living inside the female worms.
The unusual group's name Osedax is Latin for "bone devourer", and the worms have no mouth, gut or anus yet are still able to remove nutrients from bones.
Previous studies have revealed that symbiotic bacteria inside the worms digest the fats and oils extracted, but the question of how the worms physically bore into the bones had been a mystery........
Mass Extinctions Reset the Long-Term Pace of Evolution
The fossil mollusks in this Maryland outcrop lived approximately 15 million years ago. UChicago paleontologists Andrew Z. Krug and David Jablonski analyzed the fossil record of mollusks for the last 200 million years, finding that mass extinctions don't just remove evolutionary lineages, they exert a long-term influence on evolutionary rates among the survivors.
A new study indicates that mass extinctions affect the pace of evolution, not just in the immediate aftermath of catastrophe, but for millions of years to follow. The study's authors, University of Chicago's Andrew Z. Krug and David Jablonski, will publish their findings in the August issue of the journal Geology.
Scientists expected to see an evolutionary explosion immediately following a mass extinction, but Krug and Jablonski's findings go far beyond that.
"There's some general sense that the event happens, there's some aftermath and then things return to normal," said Krug, a research scientist in geophysical sciences at UChicago. But in reality, Krug said, "Things don't return to what they were before. They operate at a different pace, sometimes more rapidly, other times more slowly. Evolutionary rates shift, and that shift is permanent until the next mass extinction."
Krug and Jablonski's suggestion that the potential for rapid speciation and expansion of survivors and new groups of organisms in the "emptier" world following a mass extinction "is a reasonable possibility as one source of rate change," said paleontologist Richard Bambach of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, who was not directly involved in the UChicago study..........
Tevatron Scientists Announce Their Final Results On the Higgs Particle
After more than 10 years of gathering and analyzing data produced by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Tevatron collider, scientists from the CDF and DZero experiments have found their strongest indication to date for the long-sought Higgs particle. The Tevatron results indicate that the Higgs particle, if it exists, has a mass between 115 and 135 GeV/c2, or about 130 times the mass of the proton.
After more than 10 years of gathering and analyzing data produced by the U.S. Department of Energy's Tevatron collider, scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations have found their strongest indication to date for the long-sought Higgs particle. Squeezing the last bit of information out of 500 trillion collisions produced by the Tevatron for each experiment since March 2001, the final analysis of the data does not settle the question of whether the Higgs particle exists, but gets closer to an answer.
The Tevatron scientists unveiled their latest results on July 2, two days before the highly anticipated announcement of the latest Higgs-search results from the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.
"The Tevatron experiments accomplished the goals that we had set with this data sample," said Fermilab's Rob Roser, cospokesperson for the CDF experiment at DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. "Our data strongly point toward the existence of the Higgs boson, but it will take results from the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to establish a discovery."
Scientists of the CDF and DZero collider experiments at the Tevatron received a round of rousing applause from hundreds of colleagues when they presented their results at a scientific seminar at Fermilab. The Large Hadron Collider results will be announced at a scientific seminar at 2 a.m. CDT on July 4 at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland...........
'Trophy Molecule' Breakthrough May Result in Cleaner, Cooler Nuclear Energy
Nuclear power plant.
Experts at The University of Nottingham are the first to create a stable version of a 'trophy molecule' that has eluded scientists for decades.
In research published in the journalScience, the team of chemists at Nottingham has shown that they can prepare a terminal uranium nitride compound which is stable at room temperature and can be stored in jars in crystallized or powder form.
Previous attempts to prepare uranium-nitrogen triple bonds have required temperatures as low as 5 Kelvin (-268 °C) -- roughly the equivalent temperature of interstellar space -- and have therefore been difficult to work with and manipulate, requiring specialist equipment and techniques.
The breakthrough could have future implications for the nuclear energy industry -- uranium nitride materials may potentially offer a viable alternative to the current mixed oxide nuclear fuels used in reactors since nitrides exhibit superior high densities, melting points, and thermal conductivities and the process the scientists used to make the compound could offer a cleaner, low temperature route than methods currently used..........
The first images of an upward surge of the Sun's gases into quiescent coronal loops have been identified by an international team of scientists. The discovery is one more step towards understanding the origins of extreme space storms, which can destroy satellite communications and damage power grids on Earth.
The study published July 2 by University of Cambridge scientists working with colleagues in India and the USA is the first to visualise the movement of gases at one million degrees in coronal loops -- solar structures that are rooted at both ends and extend out from active regions of the Sun. Active regions are the 'cradle' for explosive energy releases such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
The observation will help scientists understand what is considered to be one of the most challenging issues in astrophysics -- how solar structures are heated and maintained in the upper solar atmosphere. Extreme solar activity can lead to severe space storms that interfere with satellite communications and damage electric power transmission grids on Earth. Solar activity is cyclical, with the next maximum forecast to occur around May 2013, and severe space weather is now listed very high on the UK's 2012 National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies........
Healthy family. Being a parent reduces your risk of catching a cold -- possibly because of unknown "psychological or behavioral differences between parents and nonparents."
Being a parent reduces your risk of catching a cold -- possibly because of unknown "psychological or behavioral differences between parents and nonparents," according to a study in the July issue ofPsychosomatic Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society.
The risk of becoming ill after exposure to cold viruses is reduced by about half in parents compared to nonparents, regardless of pre-existing immunity, according to research led by Rodlescia S. Sneed, MPH, and Sheldon Cohen, PhD of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. The study suggests that other, yet unknown factors related to being a parent may affect susceptibility to illness.
Being a Parent Protects Against Colds
The researchers analyzed data on 795 adults from three previous studies of stress and social factors affecting susceptibility to the common cold. In those studies, healthy volunteers were given nose drops containing cold-causing rhinovirus or influenza viruses.
After virus exposure, about one-third of volunteers developed clinical colds -- typical symptoms of a cold plus confirmed infection with one of the study viruses. The analysis focused on whether being a parent affected the risk of developing a cold, with adjustment for other factors.........
Drought Monitor Shows Record-Breaking Expanse of Drought Across United States
US drought map based on analysis of data, last updated July 3, 2012.
More of the United States is in moderate drought or worse than at any other time in the 12-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, officials from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said July 5.
Analysis of the latest drought monitor data revealed that 46.84 percent of the nation's land area is in various stages of drought, up from 42.8 percent a week ago. Previous records were 45.87 percent in drought on Aug. 26, 2003, and 45.64 percent on Sept. 10, 2002.
Looking only at the 48 contiguous states, 55.96 percent of the country's land area is in moderate drought or worse -- also the highest percentage on record in that regard, officials said. The previous highs had been 54.79 percent on Aug. 26, 2003, and 54.63 percent on Sept. 10, 2002.
"The recent heat and dryness is catching up with us on a national scale," said Michael J. Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center. "Now, we have a larger section of the country in these lesser categories of drought than we've previously experienced in the history of the Drought Monitor."
The monitor uses a ranking system that begins at D0 (abnormal dryness) and moves through D1 (moderate drought), D2 (severe drought), D3 (extreme drought) and D4 (exceptional drought).
Moderate drought's telltale signs are some damage to crops and pastures, with streams, reservoirs or wells getting low. At the other end of the scale, exceptional drought includes widespread crop and pasture losses, as well as shortages of water in reservoirs, streams and wells, creating water emergencies. So far, just 8.64 percent of the country is in either extreme or exceptional drought.
"During 2002 and 2003, there were several very significant droughts taking place that had a much greater areal coverage of the more severe and extreme drought categories," Hayes said. "Right now we are seeing pockets of more severe drought, but it is spread out over different parts of the country.
"It's early in the season, though. The potential development is something we will be watching."
The U.S. Drought Monitor is a joint endeavor by the National Drought Mitigation Center at UNL, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and drought observers across the country.
To examine the monitor's current and archived national, regional and state-by-state drought maps and conditions, go tohttp://droughtmonitor.unl.edu.
Tevatron Scientists Announce Their Final Results On the Higgs Particle
After more than 10 years of gathering and analyzing data produced by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Tevatron collider, scientists from the CDF and DZero experiments have found their strongest indication to date for the long-sought Higgs particle. The Tevatron results indicate that the Higgs particle, if it exists, has a mass between 115 and 135 GeV/c2, or about 130 times the mass of the proton.
After more than 10 years of gathering and analyzing data produced by the U.S. Department of Energy's Tevatron collider, scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations have found their strongest indication to date for the long-sought Higgs particle. Squeezing the last bit of information out of 500 trillion collisions produced by the Tevatron for each experiment since March 2001, the final analysis of the data does not settle the question of whether the Higgs particle exists, but gets closer to an answer.
The Tevatron scientists unveiled their latest results on July 2, two days before the highly anticipated announcement of the latest Higgs-search results from the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.
"The Tevatron experiments accomplished the goals that we had set with this data sample," said Fermilab's Rob Roser, cospokesperson for the CDF experiment at DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. "Our data strongly point toward the existence of the Higgs boson, but it will take results from the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to establish a discovery."
Scientists of the CDF and DZero collider experiments at the Tevatron received a round of rousing applause from hundreds of colleagues when they presented their results at a scientific seminar at Fermilab. The Large Hadron Collider results will be announced at a scientific seminar at 2 a.m. CDT on July 4 at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland...........
Why Chronic Pain Is All in Your Head: Early Brain Changes Predict Which Patients Develop Chronic Pain
When people have similar injuries, why do some end up with chronic pain while others recover and are pain free? The first longitudinal brain imaging study to track participants with a new back injury has found the chronic pain is all in their heads -- quite literally.
When people have similar injuries, why do some end up with chronic pain while others recover and are pain free? The first longitudinal brain imaging study to track participants with a new back injury has found the chronic pain is all in their heads -- quite literally.
A new Northwestern Medicine study shows for the first time that chronic pain develops the more two sections of the brain -- related to emotional and motivational behavior -- talk to each other. The more they communicate, the greater the chance a patient will develop chronic pain.
The finding provides a new direction for developing therapies to treat intractable pain, which affects 30 to 40 million adults in the United States.
Researchers were able to predict, with 85 percent accuracy at the beginning of the study, which participants would go on to develop chronic pain based on the level of interaction between the frontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens.
The study is published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
"For the first time we can explain why people who may have the exact same initial pain either go on to recover or develop chronic pain," said A. Vania Apakarian, senior author of the paper and professor of physiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine..........
Dr Rhys Allan from the institute's Molecular Immunology division, was part of a research team that found asthma-promoting immune cells could be rewired so they no longer cause inflammation.
Reprogramming asthma-promoting immune cells in mice diminishes airway damage and inflammation, and could potentially lead to new treatments for people with asthma, researchers have found.
The researchers were able to reprogram the asthma-promoting cells (called Th2 (T-helper 2) cells) after identifying an enzyme that modifies the DNA of these cells. The enzyme could be a target for the development of new treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases, in particular allergic asthma, caused by an excess of Th2 cells.
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researcher Dr Rhys Allan led the research while working at Institut Curie, Paris. The research team from Institut Curie, National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France, National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), France, and Montpellier Cancer Research Institute published the study July 4 in the journal Nature.
Dr Allan said the research team discovered that the enzyme Suv39h1 could switch off genes to control the function of Th2 cells, which are key to the allergic response.........
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