Prehistoric 'shieldcroc' species of ancient crocodile discovered

Credit: Henry Tsai/University of Missouri

Shieldcroc has thick-skinned shield on its head and is the newest discovery of crocodile species.

A University of Missouri researcher has identified a new species of prehistoric crocodile. The extinct creature, nicknamed "Shieldcroc" due to a thick-skinned shield on its head, is an ancestor of today's crocodiles. Its discovery provides scientists with additional information about the evolution of crocodiles and how scientists can gain insight into ways to protect the species' environment and help prevent extinction. The discovery was published this week in the journal PLoS ONE.

"Aegisuchus witmeri or 'Shieldcroc' is the earliest ancestor of our modern crocodiles to be found in Africa," said Casey Holliday, co-researcher and assistant professor of anatomy in the MU School of Medicine. "Along with other discoveries, we are finding that crocodile ancestors are far more diverse than scientists previously realized."

Shieldcroc is the newest discovery of crocodile species dating to the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 95 million years ago. This period is part of the Mesozoic Era, which has been referred to as the "Age of the Dinosaurs;" however, numerous recent discoveries have led to some scientists calling the era the "Age of the Crocs," Holliday said.

Video: Sea World helps correct mammal's 's-shaped' spine

Rescuing a whale with scoliosis

Solved: The Mystery of Vanishing Electrons in Earth's Outer Radiation Belt

 Credit: NASA/Tom Bridgman

Astronomers now know where the disappearing energetic electrons in Earth's outer radiation belt go.

ScienceDaily — UCLA researchers have explained the puzzling disappearing act of energetic electrons in Earth's outer radiation belt, using data collected from a fleet of orbiting spacecraft.

In a paper published Jan. 29 in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Physics, the team shows that the missing electrons are swept away from the planet by a tide of solar wind particles during periods of heightened solar activity.

"This is an important milestone in understanding Earth's space environment," said lead study author Drew Turner, an assistant researcher in the UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences and a member of UCLA's Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP). "We are one step closer towards understanding and predicting space weather phenomena."

During powerful solar events such as coronal mass ejections, parts of the magnetized outer layers of sun's atmosphere crash onto Earth's magnetic field, triggering geomagnetic storms capable of damaging the electronics of orbiting spacecraft. These cosmic squalls have a peculiar effect on Earth's outer radiation belt, a doughnut-shaped region of space filled with electrons so energetic that they move at nearly the speed of light. Keep on reading...

Pythons devastating Everglades mammals

Medium sized mammals are down as much as 99 percent according to some estimates.

(PHYSORG)- A burgeoning population of huge pythons - many of them pets that were turned loose by their owners when they got too big - appears to be wiping out large numbers of raccoons, opossums, bobcats and other mammals in the Everglades, a study says.

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that sightings of medium-size mammals are down dramatically - as much as 99 percent, in some cases - in areas where pythons and other large, non-native constrictor snakes are known to be lurking.

Scientists fear the pythons could disrupt the food chain and upset the Everglades' environmental balance in ways difficult to predict.

"The effects of declining mammal populations on the overall Everglades ecosystem, which extends well beyond the national park boundaries, are likely profound," said John Willson, a research scientist at Virginia Tech University and co-author of the study.

Video: Canadian teens send lego man to near space

The actual height was 80,000 feet and they did it for less than $500.



Via Cosmic Log at MSNBC:

It's very cool that two 17-year-old Canadians sent a flag-toting Lego figurine into the sky on a weather balloon, as part of a weekend project that cost less than $500. It's cooler still that they got back some fantastic video of the toy silhouetted against the backdrop of a curving Earth beneath a black sky. But let's not call it putting a "Lego man in space." Even though the balloon ascended to around 80,000 feet, that's only a quarter of the way to the boundary of outer space.

That distinction doesn't take anything away from the feat that Toronto teens Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad pulled off this month: The high-school students worked during four months' worth of free Saturdays to put together their balloon-borne experimental package, including four cameras, a cell phone with a GPS app, a home-sewn parachute and a Lego "minifig" holding a Canadian flag.

Is global warming over for now?

Scientists at U.K.'s Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit have confirmed global warming has stopped for now.

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.


The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

Twitter Sellout: Twitter Planning to Allow Countries to Censor Tweets

Iran and China are the most happy recipients of this news from Twitter.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Twitter, a tool of choice for dissidents and activists around the world, found itself the target of global outrage Friday after unveiling plans to allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws.

It was a stunning role reversal for a youthful company that prides itself in promoting unfettered expression, 140 characters at a time. Twitter insisted its commitment to free speech remains firm, and sought to explain the nuances of its policy, while critics - in a barrage of tweets - proposed a Twitter boycott and demanded that the censorship initiative be scrapped.

"This is very bad news," tweeted Egyptian activist Mahmoud Salem, who operates under the name Sandmonkey. Later, he wrote, "Is it safe to say that (hash)Twitter is selling us out? Keep on reading...

Cross posted here.

Amazing new creatures found in jungle of Suriname (Video)

New species of animals discovered in South America

Tumor-targeted bioluminescent bacteria offer potential for targeted cancer drug delivery

Tumor-targeted bioluminescent bacteria offer potential for targeted cancer drug delivery.

Tumor-targeted bioluminescent bacteria have been shown for the first time to provide accurate 3-D images of tumors in mice, further advancing the , according to a study published in the Jan. 25 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.

 The specially engineered probiotic bacteria, like those found in many yogurts, were intravenously injected into mice with tumors, after which the researchers took full body bioluminescent images. The 3-D images revealed information about the number and location of the bacteria, to the level of precisely revealing where within the tumor the bacteria were living, providing much more information on the interaction of bacteria and tumors than was previously available using similar two-dimensional imaging methods.

Salvage divers find potential UFO on Baltic Sea floor. (video)

 Salvage divers find potential UFO on Baltic Sea floor. They plan to return in May when the weather is better.

(Yahoo News)- A team of salvage divers has discovered an unexplained object resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Sweden.

"This thing turned up. My first reaction was to tell the guys that we have a UFO here on the bottom," said Peter Lindberg, the leader of the amateur treasure hunters.

Sonar readings show that the mysterious object is about 60 meters across, or, about the size of a jumbo jet. And it's not alone. Nearby on the sea floor is another, smaller object with a similar shape. Even more fascinating, both objects have "drag marks" behind them on the sea floor, stretching back more than 400 feet.
"Could this be the Star Wars Millenium Falcon, a plug to an inner world or a marine version of Stonehenge?" asks CNN's Brooke Bowman:

Video

Best video of Aurora Australis taken from the International Space Station (video)

Aurora Australis Over The Indian Ocean


Via YouTube:

Amazing video of the Aurora Australis taken by the crew of Expedition 28 on board the International Space Station. This sequence of shots was taken September 7, 2011 from 17:38:03 to 17:49:15 GMT, from the French Southern and Antarctic Lands in the South Indian Ocean to southern Australia.

In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the Aurora Borealis (or the northern lights). Named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas, by Pierre Gassendi in 1621. Auroras seen near the magnetic pole may be high overhead, but from farther away, they illuminate the northern horizon as a greenish glow or sometimes a faint red, as if the Sun were rising from an unusual direction. The aurora borealis most often occurs near the equinoxes.

Its southern counterpart, the Aurora Australis (or the southern lights) which are seen in this video, has almost identical features to the Aurora Borealis and changes simultaneously with changes in the northern auroral zone and is visible from high southern latitudes in Antarctica, South America and Australia.

Which Weighs More? Matter or Anti-Matter?

Scientists try to determine the effect of gravity on anti-matter.

(PHYSORG)- Does antimatter behave differently in gravity than matter? Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have set out to determine the answer. Should they find it, it could explain why the universe seems to have no antimatter and why it is expanding at an ever increasing rate.

In the lab, the researchers took the first step towards measuring the free fall of "positronium" – a bound state between a positron and an electron. The positron is the antimatter version of the electron. It has identical mass to the electron, but a positive charge. If a positron and electron encounter each other, they annihilate to produce two gamma rays.

Physicists David Cassidy and Allen Mills first separated the positron from the electron in positronium so that this unstable system would resist annihilation long enough for the physicists to measure the effect of gravity on it.

"Using lasers we excited positronium to what is called a Rydberg state, which renders the atom very weakly bound, with the electron and positron being far away from each other," said Cassidy, an assistant project scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, who works in Mills's lab. "This stops them from destroying each other for a while, which means you can do experiments with them."

Rydberg atoms are highly excited atoms. They are interesting to physicists because many of the atoms' properties become exaggerated.

In the case of positronium, Cassidy and Mills, a professor of physics and astronomy, were interested in achieving a long lifetime for the atom in their experiment. At the Rydberg level, positronium's lifetime increases by a factor of 10 to 100. Keep on reading...

Raw video: Sheep's offspring born with extra limbs in European country

Six-legged lamb born in Georgia

Coming Soon: Fully Automated Killer Drones

(Chad Slattery, Northrop Grumman)

Are fully automated killer drones really cool or really scary?

The Navy's new drone being tested near Chesapeake Bay stretches the boundaries of technology: It's designed to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, one of aviation's most difficult maneuvers.

What's even more remarkable is that it will do that not only without a pilot in the cockpit, but without a pilot at all.

The X-47B marks a paradigm shift in warfare, one that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. With the drone's ability to be flown autonomously by onboard computers, it could usher in an era when death and destruction can be dealt by machines operating semi-independently.

Although humans would program an autonomous drone's flight plan and could override its decisions, the prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many.

"Lethal actions should have a clear chain of accountability," said Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist and robotics expert. "This is difficult with a robot weapon. The robot cannot be held accountable. So is it the commander who used it? The politician who authorized it? The military's acquisition process? The manufacturer, for faulty equipment?"

Sharkey and others believe that autonomous armed robots should force the kind of dialogue that followed the introduction of mustard gas in World War I and the development of atomic weapons in World War II. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the group tasked by the Geneva Conventions to protect victims in armed conflict, is already examining the issue.

U.S. Scientists Create 3-D Radar Cloak

A warplane that is invisible to radar in all directions is now possible.

PARIS — Scientists in the United States reported a further step towards a celebrated "invisibility cloak" by masking a large, free-standing object in three dimensions.

The lab work is the latest advance in a scientific frontier that uses novel materials to manipulate light, a trick that is of huge interest to the military in particular.

Reporting in the New Journal of Physics, researchers at the University of Texas in Austin cloaked an 18-centimetre (7.2-inch) cylindrical tube from light in the microwave part of the energy spectrum.

Those hoping for a Harry Potter-style touch of wizardry would be disappointed. To the human eye, which can only perceive light in higher frequencies, no invisibility would have been seen.

But, say the researchers, the experiment is important proof of a principle that so-called plasmonic meta-materials can achieve a cloaking effect.

A warplane cloaked with such materials could achieve "super-stealth" status by becoming invisible in all directions to radar microwaves, said co-lead investigator Andrea Alu.

Video: New Google data policy raising privacy concerns

Google announces big changes in the way they handle our private information. There is no opt-out.

Neanderthals and other hominids engineered standardized tools

Neanderthals and other hominids engineered standardized tools.

(PhysOrg.com) -- New published research from anthropologists at the University of Kent has scientifically supported for the first time the long held theory that early human ancestors across Africa, Western Asia and Europe engineered their stone tools.

For over a century, anthropologists have debated the significance of a group of stone age artifacts manufactured by at least three prehistoric hominin species, including the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis). These artifacts, collectively known as ‘Levallois’, were manufactured across Europe, Western Asia and Africa as early as 300,000 years ago.

Levallois artifacts are flaked stone tools described by archaeologists as ‘prepared cores’ i.e. the stone core is shaped in a deliberate manner such that only after such specialised preparation could a prehistoric flintknapper remove a distinctive ‘Levallois flake’. Levallois flakes have long been suspected by researchers to be intentionally sought by prehistoric hominins for supposedly unique, standardised size and shape properties. However, such propositions were regarded as controversial by some, and in recent decades some researchers questioned whether Levallois tool production involved conscious, structured planning that resulted in predetermined, engineered products.

Now, an experimental study – in which a modern-day flintknapper replicated hundreds of Levallois artifacts – supports the notion that Levallois flakes were indeed engineered by prehistoric hominins. By combining experimental archaeology with morphometrics (the study of form) and multivariate statistical analysis, the Kent researchers have proved for the first time that Levallois flakes removed from these types of prepared cores are significantly more standardised than the flakes produced incidentally during Levallois core shaping (called ‘debitage flakes’). Keep on reading...

We spend a billion a year restoring wetlands, but does it work?

Restored wetlands are not equal to the original thing.

Wetland restoration is a billion-dollar-a-year industry in the United States that aims to create ecosystems similar to those that disappeared over the past century. But a new analysis of restoration projects shows that restored wetlands seldom reach the quality of a natural wetland.

"Once you degrade a wetland, it doesn't recover its normal assemblage of plants or its rich stores of organic soil carbon, which both affect natural cycles of water and nutrients, for many years," said David Moreno-Mateos, a University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral fellow. "Even after 100 years, the restored wetland is still different from what was there before, and it may never recover."

Moreno-Mateos's analysis calls into question a common mitigation strategy exploited by land developers: create a new wetland to replace a wetland that will be destroyed and the land put to other uses. At a time of accelerated climate change caused by increased carbon entering the atmosphere, carbon storage in wetlands is increasingly important, he said.

"Wetlands accumulate a lot of carbon, so when you dry up a wetland for agricultural use or to build houses, you are just pouring this carbon into the atmosphere," he said. "If we keep degrading or destroying wetlands, for example through the use of mitigation banks, it is going to take centuries to recover the carbon we are losing."

The study showed that wetlands tend to recover most slowly if they are in cold regions, if they are small – less than 100 contiguous hectares, or 250 acres, in area – or if they are disconnected from the ebb and flood of tides or river flows.

Video Explaination of The Aurora Borealis

 A massive solar eruption is now impacting the planet Earth. A side effect is a spectacular Aurora Borealis, but what is the Aurora Borealis ?



Here is a video of the current spectacular show.

33,000-year-old Domesticated Dog Skull Found in Siberian Cave

Man's best friend has been around a long time.

ScienceDaily — A 33,000-year-old dog skull unearthed in a Siberian mountain cave presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with an equally ancient find in a cave in Belgium, indicates that modern dogs may be descended from multiple ancestors.

If you think a Chihuahua doesn't have much in common with a Rottweiler, you might be on to something.

An ancient dog skull, preserved in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia for 33,000 years, presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with equally ancient dog remains from a cave in Belgium, indicates that domestication of dogs may have occurred repeatedly in different geographic locations rather than with a single domestication event.

In other words, man's best friends may have originated from more than one ancient ancestor, contrary to what some DNA evidence previously has indicated.

"Both the Belgian find and the Siberian find are domesticated species based on morphological characteristics," said Greg Hodgins, a researcher at the University of Arizona's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory and co-author of the study that reports the find.

"Essentially, wolves have long thin snouts and their teeth are not crowded, and domestication results in this shortening of the snout and widening of the jaws and crowding of the teeth."

The Altai Mountain skull is extraordinarily well preserved, said Hodgins, enabling scientists to make multiple measurements of the skull, teeth and mandibles that might not be possible on less well-preserved remains. "The argument that it is domesticated is pretty solid," said Hodgins. "What's interesting is that it doesn't appear to be an ancestor of modern dogs."

A peak into future of space exploration (video)

NASA creates virtual mission to asteroid to test prototype

Narcissism may have a very negative effect on the health of men

President Obama is hardest hit by the news narcissism may have a very negative effect on the health of men.

The personality trait narcissism may have an especially negative effect on the health of men, according to a recent study published in PLoS ONE.

"Narcissistic men may be paying a high price in terms of their physical health, in addition to the psychological cost to their relationships," says Sara Konrath, a University of Michigan psychologist who co-authored the study.

Earlier studies by Konrath and others have shown that the level of narcissism is rising in American culture, and that narcissism tends to be more prevalent among males. The personality trait is characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, overestimations of uniqueness, and a sense of grandiosity.

For the new study, Konrath and colleagues David Reinhard of the University of Virginia, and William Lopez and Heather Cameron of the University of Michigan examined the role of narcissism and sex on cortisol levels in a sample of 106 undergraduate students. Cortisol, which can be measured through saliva samples, is a widely used marker of physiological stress.

The researchers measured cortisol levels at two points in time in order to assess baseline levels of the hormone, which signals the level of activation of the body's key stress response system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Participants were not asked to complete any tasks that would elevate their stress. Elevated levels of cortisol in a relatively stress-free situation would indicate chronic HPA activation, which has significant health implications, increasing the risk of cardiovascular problems.

To assess participants' narcissism, the researchers administered a 40-item narcissism questionnaire that measures five different components of the personality trait.

Star Trek 'tricorder' scanner may soon be real

New developments in electromagnetic Terahertz (THz) waves or T-rays offer the possibility a Star Trek 'tricorder' scanner can be developed.

ScienceDaily — Scientists have developed a new way to create Terahertz waves (T-rays) that may one day lead to biomedical detective devices similar to the 'tricorder' scanner used in Star Trek

Scientists have developed a new way to create electromagnetic Terahertz (THz) waves or T-rays -- the technology behind full-body security scanners. The researchers behind the study, published recently in the journal Nature Photonics, say their new stronger and more efficient continuous wave T-rays could be used to make better medical scanning gadgets and may one day lead to innovations similar to the 'tricorder' scanner used in Star Trek.

In the study, researchers from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, and Imperial College London in the UK have made T-rays into a much stronger directional beam than was previously thought possible, and have done so at room-temperature conditions. This is a breakthrough that should allow future T-ray systems to be smaller, more portable, easier to operate, and much cheaper than current devices.

The scientists say that the T-ray scanner and detector could provide part of the functionality of a Star Trek-like medical 'tricorder' -- a portable sensing, computing and data communications device -- since the waves are capable of detecting biological phenomena such as increased blood flow around tumorous growths. Future scanners could also perform fast wireless data communication to transfer a high volume of information on the measurements it makes.

Video: Pilots help whooping cranes fly south

Aircraft leads birds to FL in the winter.

Shocking: Small amounts of alcohol doubled the life of a tiny worm

Small amounts of alcohol doubled the life of a tiny worm called Caenorhabditis elegans.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Minuscule amounts of ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, can more than double the life span of a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans, which is used frequently as a model in aging studies, UCLA biochemists report. The scientists said they find their discovery difficult to explain.

"This finding floored us — it's shocking," said Steven Clarke, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry and the senior author of the study, published Jan. 18 in the online journal PLoS ONE, a publication of the Public Library of Science.

In humans, alcohol consumption is generally harmful, Clarke said, and if the worms are given much higher concentrations of ethanol, they experience harmful neurological effects and die, other research has shown.

"We used far lower levels, where it may be beneficial," said Clarke, who studies the biochemistry of aging.

The worms, which grow from an egg to an adult in just a few days, are found throughout the world in soil, where they eat bacteria. Clarke's research team — Paola Castro, Shilpi Khare and Brian Young — studied thousands of these worms during the first hours of their lives, while they were still in a larval stage. The worms normally live for about 15 days and can survive with nothing to eat for roughly 10 to 12 days.

"Our finding is that tiny amounts of ethanol can make them survive 20 to 40 days," Clarke said.

Saturday Night Video: Stunning time-lapsed video of Yosemite National Park

Enjoy!

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Bizarre Ancient 'Tulip' Creature Discovered

Nature is full of surprises.

ScienceDaily — A bizarre creature that lived in the ocean more than 500-million years ago has emerged from the famous Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies.

Officially named Siphusauctum gregarium, fossils reveal a tulip-shaped creature that is about the length of a dinner knife (approximately 20 centimetres) and has a unique filter feeding system.

Siphusauctum has a long stem, with a calyx -- a bulbous cup-like structure -- near the top that encloses an unusual filter feeding system and a gut. The animal is thought to have fed by filtering particles from water actively pumped into its calyx through small holes. The stem ends with a small disc which anchored the animal to the seafloor. Siphusauctum lived in large clusters, as indicated by slabs containing over 65 individual specimens.

Cool Video: Storms across Africa seen from Space

Expedition 30 crew captures lightening flashes, Milky Way.

Megaupload struggles to come back

After changing his mind on SOPA and PIPA due to public pressure, Obama received a threat from Hollywood's top lobbyist former Senator Chris Dodd. Dodd threatened to cut off Obama's Hollywood campaign donations unless Obama supported anti-piracy legislation. Suddenly, the largest file upload site is taken down and criminal indictments are issued. The Obama administration took down the file sharing site Megaupload. Hmm...

Via ABC News:

It's like a high tech game of whack-a-mole.

In less than 24 hours the file sharing site Megaupload.com is attempting to stay alive on the Internet despite indictments from the Justice Department and court orders to seize the site and computer servers hosting the service and assets.

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment Thursday charging Megaupload's founder Kim Dotcom, a.k.a. Kim Schmitz, and six of his associates with participating in a conspiracy that involved racketeering, money laundering and copyright infringement.

There have been several websites claiming to be connected to Megaupload making use of the company's logos and graphics, but no content was posted. According to the website www.urlquery.net, the purported new Megaupload server is based in the Netherlands, but the website could not be verified.

Overnight supporters for the site hosted the remnants of Megaupload at www.Megavideo.bz indicating that content was being hosted in Belize.

Astronomy Pic of the Day: Helix Nebula in New Colors

VISTA’s look at the Helix Nebula

Credit: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit)

Feel Good Video: Wearable robot helps paralyzed firefighter walk again

Detroit man critically injured in fire takes first steps since accident.

Experimental drug offers hope for dogs with spinal cord injuries

Credit: UCSF

Experimental drug offers hope for dogs with spinal cord injuries.

ScienceDaily — Dogs with spinal cord injuries may soon benefit from an experimental drug being tested by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences -- work that they hope will one day help people with similar injuries.

Funded through a three-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, the drug to mitigate damage has already proven effective in mice at UCSF. Now the Texas team will test how it works in previously injured short-legged, long torso breeds of dog like dachshunds, beagles and corgis, who often suffer injuries when a disk in their back spontaneously ruptures, damaging the underlying spinal cord.

About 120 dogs a year that develop sudden onset hind limb paralysis after such injuries are brought to the Small Animal Hospital of Texas A&M University, where they receive surgical and medical treatment similar to that for human spinal cord injury. Now, researchers will test whether the new treatment works on some of these dogs, with their owners' consent.

"It would be phenomenal if it works," said Linda J. Noble-Haeusslein, PhD, a professor in the UCSF departments of Neurological Surgery and Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science who designed the intervention. "We are in a unique position of being able to treat a dog population where there are simply no current therapies that could effectively improve their hind limb function."

The new treatment does not seek to regrow injured pathways in the spinal cord. Instead, it aims to mitigate damage secondary to the spinal cord injury. Most spinal cord injuries trigger a cascade of chemical reactions in the spinal cord that collectively damage nearby cells and pathways, contributing to functional deficits including hind limb function.

Keep on reading...

Who is up for bubble-propelled “microrockets” in their stomach? (with video)

Now there is a "microrocket" that uses acid as a fuel.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Recently, researchers have been designing a wide variety of self-propelled micromotors, many of which operate using an oxygen-bubble propulsion mechanism that requires a high concentration of hydrogen peroxide fuel. Since hydrogen peroxide is hazardous at high concentrations, this requirement has hindered practical applications, especially biomedical uses. Now in a new study, scientists have designed and built a new type of micromotor that propels itself through acidic environments with hydrogen bubbles, and requires no additional fuels. At extremely low pH levels, the micromotors can travel at speeds of up to 100 body lengths per second, prompting the scientists to call them “microrockets.”

The researchers, Wei Gao, Aysegul Uygun, and Joseph Wang from the University of California, San Diego, have published their study on the hydrogen-bubble-propelled microrockets in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“This is the first reported example of chemically-powered microrockets that can be self-propelled without an external fuel (such as the common hydrogen peroxide),” Wang told PhysOrg.com. “Such acid-powered microrockets could greatly expand the scope of applications of nano-/microscale motors toward new extreme environments (e.g., the human stomach or silicon wet-etching baths) and could thus lead to diverse new biomedical or industrial applications ranging from targeted drug delivery or nanoimaging to the monitoring of industrial processes.”

Video: The Science Behind Bursting Water Balloons

The Science Behind Bursting Water Balloons 

 

 

A Piece of Mars Fell to Earth in Africa Last Year

Scientists have confirmed that 15 pounds (7 kilograms) of meteorite recently collected in Morocco came from Mars.

(FOX News)- Scientists are confirming a recent and rare invasion from Mars: meteorite chunks from the red planet that fell in Morocco last July.

This is only the fifth time scientists have confirmed chemically Martian meteorites that people witnessed as they fell. The fireball was spotted in the sky six months ago, but the rocks were not discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December.

This is an important and unique opportunity for scientists trying to learn about Mars' potential for life. So far, no NASA or Russian spacecraft has returned bits of Mars, so the only Martian samples scientists can examine are those that come here in meteorite showers.

Scientists and collectors of meteorites are ecstatic, and already the rocks are fetching big money because they are among the rarest things on Earth, rarer even than gold.

A special committee of meteorite experts, including some NASA scientists, confirmed the test results Tuesday. They certified that 15 pounds (7 kilograms) of meteorite recently collected came from Mars. The biggest rock weighs more than 2 pounds (1 kilogram).

Orangutan tech: There's an ape for that (Video)

 iPad helps bridge gap in communication between humans and primates.

Wikipedia to be blacked out Wednesday in protest of anti-piracy bill

Wikipedia to be blacked out Wednesday in protest of anti-piracy bill (SOPA.

Wikipedia will black out the English language version of its website Wednesday to protest anti-piracy legislation under consideration in Congress, the foundation behind the popular community-based online encyclopedia said in a statement Monday night.

The website will go dark for 24 hours in an unprecedented move that brings added muscle to a growing base of critics of the legislation. Wikipedia is considered one of the Internet's most popular websites, with millions of visitors daily.

"If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States," the Wikimedia foundation said.
The Stop Online Piracy Act in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate are designed to crack down on sales of pirated U.S. products overseas.

Some thing the SOPA bill is dead, but that isn't true.

Via Bluegrass Pundit:

SOPA is "shelved" for now, but Harry Reid is still pushing the Senate version and the White House still wants to do something.

Via Forbes:

- In that same statement, the White House also said “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response…” followed later by ““That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders.” They still want to pass anti-piracy legislation this year.

- SOPA is not dead, it’s been “shelved” and won’t return “until a consensus is reached.”

- Protect IP (PIPA), the Senate version of the House bill, is still very much alive, and has not even been shelved, much less killed. It is equally as bad of an idea as SOPA, even if most protests are being directed at SOPA recently. Read more here...

Video: Comet baffles NASA scientists

Comet survives brush with sun's atmosphere.

 

Astronomers catch star-forming turning into 'red and dead' elliptical galaxies

Credit: Wolfgang Steffen, Cosmovision; Marscher et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF

Astronomers catch star-forming turning into 'red and dead' elliptical galaxies.

ScienceDaily  — Astronomers using the partially completed ALMA observatory have found compelling evidence for how star-forming galaxies evolve into 'red and dead' elliptical galaxies, catching a large group of galaxies right in the middle of this change.

For years, astronomers have been developing a picture of galaxy evolution in which mergers between spiral galaxies could explain why nearby large elliptical galaxies have so few young stars. The theoretical picture is chaotic and violent: The merging galaxies knock gas and dust into clumps of rapid star formation, called starbursts, and down into the maws of the supermassive black hole growing in the merger's core. As more and more matter heaves onto the black hole, powerful jets erupt, and the region around the black hole glows brilliantly as a quasar. The jets blowing out of the merger eventually plow out the galaxy's potential star-forming gas, ending the starbursts.

Until now, astronomers had never spotted enough mergers at this critical, jet-plowing stage to definitively link jet-driven outflows to the cessation of starburst activity. During its Early Science observations in late 2011, however, ALMA became the first telescope to confirm nearly two dozen galaxies in this brief stage of galaxy evolution.

What did ALMA actually see? "Despite ALMA's great sensitiviy to detecting starbursts, we saw nothing, or next to nothing -- which is exactly what we hoped it would see," said lead investigator Dr. Carol Lonsdale of the North American ALMA Science Center at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Lonsdale presented the findings at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Austin, Texas on behalf of an international team of astronomers.

U.S. Meteorologists think they know what's causing this warm, dry winter

An atmospheric pressure pattern called the Arctic Oscillation, which circles the high Northern Hemisphere, may be responsible for this historic warm and dry winter.

First, a few records: The initial week of January was the driest in history. And more than 95 percent of the U.S. had below-average snow cover—the greatest such percentage ever recorded—according to some intriguing data maps generated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. During December, approximately half of the U.S. had temperatures at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit above average, and more than 1,500 daily record highs were set from January 2 to 8. Europe has seen similar extremes.

The chief suspect behind the mysterious weather is. Its lower edge is known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Together, the related features influence the path and strength of the jet stream. The jet itself is an air current that flows west to east across the northern latitudes of the U.S., Europe and Asia, altering temperature and precipitation as portions of it dip southward or crest northward. A strong jet stream that flows in a somewhat straight line from west to east, with few southward dips, prevents cold arctic air from drifting south. "The cause of this warm first half of winter is the most extreme configuration of the jet stream ever recorded," according to Jeffrey Masters, a meteorologist who runs the Weather Underground, a Web site that analyzes severe weather data.

By "extreme," Masters means that the jet stream was far north and fairly straight, and stayed that way for an unusually long time. That position allowed warm southern air to prevail over the entire U.S., and prevented cold fronts from descending from the north and clashing with warm fronts, creating large snow- and rainstorms. The jet stream has been locked in that position by the NAO for most of the winter, and Masters says it has sustained the largest pressure gradient since tracking began in 1865. Keep on reading...

Image of the Day: Nacreous cloud show at the Arctic Circle

More Nacreous cloud images are here.

New Maps of Dark Side of the Moon

NASA's LAMP Project produces new maps of dark side of the Moon.

ScienceDaily — New maps produced by the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal features at the Moon's northern and southern poles in regions that lie in perpetual darkness. LAMP, developed by Southwest Research Institute^® (SwRI^®), uses a novel method to peer into these so-called permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), making visible the invisible. LAMP's principal investigator is Dr. Alan Stern, associate vice president of the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division.

Out Of Sight - From Quarks To Molecules (Video)

Out Of Sight - From Quarks To Molecules 

 

Watch out for falling Russian spacecraft this weekend

The failed Russian Phobos-Grunt should reenter Earth's atmosphere and crash this weekend.

A coordinated global campaign is monitoring a wayward Russian Mars probe that's slated to crash to Earth in the next few days, the European Space Agency has announced.

The doomed Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which Russian officials estimate will re-enter Earth's atmosphere between Saturday and Monday (Jan. 14-16), is now officially a target for the 12-member Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, or IADC for short.

"An IADC re-entry prediction campaign is ongoing since January 2. Phobos-Grunt was identified to be no high-risk object," said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the space debris office at the European Space Agency's (ESA) European Space Operations Centerin Darmstadt, Germany. "Hence, this will be adopted as our annual 'test campaign' for 2012," he told SPACE.com.

The determination that Phobos-Grunt is not a high-risk piece of space junk  is due to the relatively low dry mass of the errant spacecraft — just 2.5 tons. There is about 11 tons of toxic propellant onboard, adding up to the probe’s total mass of 13.5 tons.

According to ESA, studies by the Russian space agency (known as Roscosmos) and NASA indicate that Phobos-Grunt's fuel tanks should burst high above the Earth, releasing a load of propellant that will subsequently dissipate.

The Navy Has a Secret Weapon to Keep the Strait of Hormuz Open: Dolphins

Iran's main hope to close the Strait of Hormuz is mines. This could be countered with Navy dolphins.

If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Navy has a backup plan to save one-fifth of the world's daily oil trade: send in the dolphins.

The threat of Iran closing the strait has reached a fever pitch, reports today's New York Times, with U.S. officials warning Iran's supreme leader that such moves would cross a "red line" provoking a U.S. response. Iran could block the strait with any assortment of mines, armed speed boats or anti-ship cruise missiles but according to Michael Connell at the Center for Naval Analysis, “The immediate issue [for the U.S. military] is to get the mines.” To solve that problem, the Navy has a solution that isn't heavily-advertised but has a time-tested success rate: mine-detecting dolphins.

"We've got dolphins," said retired Adm. Tim Keating in a Wednesday interview with NPR. Keating commanded the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain during the run-up to the Iraq war. He sounded uncomfortable with elaborating on the Navy's use of the lovable mammals but said in a situation like the standoff in Hormuz, Navy-trained dolphins would come in handy:...

The invasion of Iraq was the last time the minesweeping capability of dolphins was widely-touted. "Dolphins - - which possess sonar so keen they can discern a quarter from a dime when blindfolded and spot a 3-inch metal sphere from 370 feet away -- are invaluable minesweepers," reported The San Francisco Chronicle. In 2010, the Seattle Times reported that the Navy has 80 bottlenose dolphins in the San Diego Bay alone. They are taught to hunt for mines and drop acoustic transponders nearby. ...

Keep on reading...

Astronomy Pic of the Day: Saturn's Iapetus: Painted Moon

Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

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World's smallest vertebrate animal found

The world's smallest vertebrate animal is discovered in New Guinea.

Paedophryne amauensis, a frog that can perch on the tip of your pinkie, has been officially named the world's smallest animal with a spine. But the males of a species of deep-sea anglerfish, who don't have stomachs, are about 2 mm smaller, said University of Washington ichthyologist Theodore Pietsch, who described them in 2006.

Astronomers discovery of two new transiting “circumbinary” planet systems

“Circumbinary” planet systems have planets that orbit two stars.

(PHYSORG)- Using data from NASA’s Kepler Mission, astronomers announced the  discovery of two new transiting “circumbinary” planet systems --  planets that orbit two stars. This work establishes that such “two sun”  planets are not rare exceptions, but are in fact common with many  millions existing in our Galaxy. The work is published today in the  journal Nature and presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, TX.

Using data from NASA's Kepler mission, a team that includes a University of Florida astronomer has discovered two new planets orbiting double star systems, something that had never been seen until last September.

The newly confirmed planets, called Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b, will be announced in Wednesday's online edition of the journal Nature, said Eric B. Ford, UF associate professor of astronomy. William F. Welsh, associate professor at San Diego State University, is the lead author on the paper.

Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b both orbit a "binary star." They are actually a pair of gravitationally bound stars that orbit each other. While the existence of such bodies, called "circumbinary planets," had long been predicted, they remained just a theory until the team discovered Kepler-16b in September 2011. They dubbed Kepler-16b "Tatooine" because of its resemblance to the two-sun world depicted in the "Star Wars" film series.

Video: 'Sensitive' Military Equipment MIA

'Sensitive' Military Equipment MIA

Astronomy Pic of the Day: Space Nursery

The Cygnus-X star-forming region. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Hora (CfA))

Extinct giant tortoise crawls back into existence

After 150 years, the giant Chelonoidis elephantopus tortoise has been found alive and well on on Isabela Island.

(ABC News)- A type of giant tortoise, observed in the Galapagos Islands in 1853 by Charles Darwin but thought to have been extinct for 150 years, is apparently alive and well. This news, from a team of biologists at Yale University, would be welcomed by conservationists, and it adds an ironic twist to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

The tortoise, known as Chelonoidis elephantopus, originally lived on Floreana, one of the islands in the Galapagos chain. Biologists believed that by the mid-1800s, they had been wiped out by whalers, who hunted them for food.

But Gisella Caccone and Ryan Garrick of Yale organized a team that took DNA samples from the blood of 1,600 tortoises on Isabela Island, 200 miles away — and the genetic makeup of at least 84 of them was such that they had to have at least one parent who was a member of C. elephantopus. Their genes were significantly different from what was found in other tortoises on the island. From that the scientists could extrapolate, and estimate that at least 38 tortoises would turn out to be purebred members of the species. It’s complicated, but the bottom line, they said, is that an extinct species…isn’t.

“At first, we didn’t know where these tortoises had come from. We called them aliens,” said Caccone in a telephone interview. They compared the DNA to samples from the 19th century in American museums. “When we did the analysis, we said, uh, oh, those ‘aliens’ were from what we thought was the extinct population.”

Now you can see quantum mechanics with the naked eye

Credit: Meeblax from Flickr


Scientists have created a semiconductor chip that converts electrons into a quantum state that emits light.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A Cambridge team have built a semiconductor chip that converts electrons into a quantum state that emits light but is large enough to see by eye. Because their quantum superfluid is simply set up by shining laser beams on the device, it can lead to practical ultrasensitive detectors.  Their research is published today, 08 January in Nature Physics.

Quantum mechanics normally shows its influence only for tiny particles at ultralow temperatures, but the team mixed electrons with light to synthesise supersized quantum particles the thickness of a human hair, that behave like superconductors.

Building microscopic cavities which tightly trap light into the vicinity of electrons within the chip, they produced new particles called ‘polaritons’ which weigh very little, encouraging them to roam widely.

Dr. Gab Christmann working with Professor Jeremy Baumberg and Dr. Natalia Berloff of the University of Cambridge, together with a team in Crete, produced the special new samples needed which allow the polaritons to flow around at will without getting stuck.

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Scientists recreate ancient genes to study evolution

Scientists us a 'molecular time travel' strategy to unlock the secrets of evolution.

(PHYSORG)- Much of what living cells do is carried out by "molecular machines" – physical complexes of specialized proteins working together to carry out some biological function. How the minute steps of evolution produced these constructions has long puzzled scientists, and provided a favorite target for creationists.

n a study published early online on January 8, in Nature, a team of scientists from the University of Chicago and the University of Oregon demonstrate how just a few small, high-probability mutations increased the complexity of a molecular machine more than 800 million years ago. By biochemically resurrecting ancient genes and testing their functions in modern organisms, the researchers showed that a new component was incorporated into the machine due to selective losses of function rather than the sudden appearance of new capabilities.

"Our strategy was to use 'molecular time travel' to reconstruct and experimentally characterize all the proteins in this molecular machine just before and after it increased in complexity," said the study's senior author Joe Thornton, PhD, professor of human genetics and evolution & ecology at the University of Chicago, professor of biology at the University of Oregon, and an Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

"By reconstructing the machine's components as they existed in the deep past," Thornton said, "we were able to establish exactly how each protein's function changed over time and identify the specific genetic mutations that caused the machine to become more elaborate."

The study – a collaboration of Thornton's molecular evolution laboratory with the biochemistry research group of the UO's Tom Stevens, professor of chemistry and member of the Institute of Molecular Biology – focused on a molecular complex called the V-ATPase proton pump, which helps maintain the proper acidity of compartments within the cell. Keep on reading...

Phenomena Science video: The Cartesian Ketchup

What will happen when the bottle is squeezed?

Oxytocin makes monkeys be nice

Love hormone improves monkey behavior.

ScienceDaily — Oxytocin, the "love hormone" that builds mother-baby bonds and may help us feel more connected toward one another, can also make surly monkeys treat each other a little more kindly.

Administering the hormone nasally through a kid-sized nebulizer, like a gas mask, a Duke University research team has shown that it can make rhesus macaques pay more attention to each other and make choices that give another monkey a squirt of fruit juice, even when they don't get one themselves.

Two macaques were seated next to each other and trained to select symbols from a screen that represented giving a rewarding squirt of juice to one's self, giving juice to the neighbor, or not handing out any juice at all. In repeated trials, they were faced with a choice between just two of these options at a time: reward to self vs. no reward; reward to self vs. reward to other; and reward to other vs. no reward.

"The inhaled oxytocin enhanced 'prosocial' choices by the monkeys, perhaps by making them pay more attention to the other individual," said neuroscientist Michael Platt, who headed the study and is director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. "If that's true, it's really cool, because it suggests that oxytocin breaks down normal social barriers."

Video: Alien Spaceship Caught on NASA Tape?

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Great News: That Annual Prostrate Exam May Not Be Necessary!

Best news this year! That annual prostrate exam may not be necessary! A new study has found prostrate screening does not reduce deaths.

There's new evidence that annual prostate cancer screening does not reduce deaths from the disease, even among men in their 50s and 60s and those with underlying health conditions, according to new research led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

A longer follow-up of more than 76,000 men in a major U.S. study shows that six years of aggressive, annual screening for prostate cancer led to more diagnoses of tumors but not to fewer deaths from the disease.

The updated results of the Prostate, Lung, Cancer, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial will be published online Jan. 6 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"The data confirm that for most men, it is not necessary to be screened annually for prostate cancer," says the study's lead author and principal investigator Gerald Andriole, MD, chief urologic surgeon at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine. "A large majority of the cancers we found are slow-growing tumors that are unlikely to be deadly."

The PLCO study involved men ages 55 to 74, who were randomly assigned to receive either annual PSA tests for six years and digital rectal exams for four years or "routine care," meaning they had the screening tests only if their physicians recommended them.

Cool Video: Mimic Octopus and Jawfish

Cool Video: Mimic Octopus and Jawfish

ScienceDaily — Nature's game of intimidation and imitation comes full circle in the waters of Indonesia, where scientists have recorded for the first time an association between the black-marble jawfish (Stalix cf. histrio) and the mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus).

Undescribed by scientists until 1998, the talented mimic octopus is known to impersonate toxic flatfish, lionfish, and even sea snakes by creatively configuring its limbs, adopting characteristic undulating movements, and displaying bold brown-and-white color patterns. Thanks to these brazen habits, it can swim in the open with relatively little fear of predators.

The jawfish, on the other hand, is a small and timid fish. It spends most of its adult life close to a sand burrow, where it will quickly retreat upon sighting a predator.

During a diving trip in Indonesia in July 2011, Godehard Kopp of the University of Gottingen, Germany, filmed an unexpected pairing between the two animals. Like a lackey clinging on to the big man on campus, the black-marble jawfish was seen closely following a mimic octopus as it moved across the sandy bottom. The jawfish had brown-and-white markings similar to the octopus, and was difficult to spot among the many arms. The octopus, for its part, did not seem to notice or care.

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War Games: 'Cyborg Beetle Mini Drones'

Anti-alcohol herbal drug discovered

Does the Asian tree Hovenia dulcis offer a hangover cure?

(Medical Xpress) -- Alcohol consumption can lead to those dreaded hangovers and even alcohol dependence. However, a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience has found a natural ingredient in the Asian tree Hovenia dulcis that seems to produce anti-alcohol effects.

Led by Jing Liang from the University of California, researchers began looking at different herbs that have natural anti-alcohol properties. They found descriptions of anti-alcohol properties of the Asian tree Hovenia dulcis that dated back to 659. These descriptions listed it as a prime hangover remedy.

The main ingredient in Hovenia dulcis is known as dihydromyricetin, or DHM. The team of researchers used rats to test out the effects. Rats react similar to humans when it comes to the effects of alcohol so they are a perfect candidate.

The rats were given the human equivalent of 15-20 beers in a time frame of under two hours. As expected, the rats passed out drunk and lost the ability to flip themselves over when placed on their back. Within an hour, the effects of the alcohol started to wear off and they were able to again control their bodies.

When the rats were given the same alcohol with a shot of the DHM, they still eventually lost the ability to flip over but it took a longer time period and they were able to recover from the effects in about 15 minutes.

Astronomy Pic: Smoky Pink Core of Omega Nebula

Credit: ESO

Meet the most lethal sniper In U.S. military history

 The greatest American Sniper has over 150 kills.

Pentagon-supported physicists have developed time cloak

A time cloak doesn't make objects invisible. It makes them impossible to see.

(PHYSORG)_ Pentagon-supported physicists on Wednesday said they had devised a "time cloak" that briefly makes an event undetectable.

It's one thing to make an object invisible, like Harry Potter's mythical cloak. But scientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker.

Think of it as an art heist that takes place before your eyes and surveillance cameras. You don't see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It's not just that the thief is invisible - his whole activity is.

What scientists at Cornell University did was on a much smaller scale, both in terms of events and time. It happened so quickly that it's not even a blink of an eye. Their time cloak lasts an incredibly tiny fraction of a fraction of a second. They hid an event for 40 picoseconds (trillionths of a second), according to a study appearing in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

We see events happening as light from them reaches our eyes. Usually it's a continuous flow of light. In the new research, however, scientists were able to interrupt that flow for just an instant.

Other newly created invisibility cloaks fashioned by scientists move the light beams away in the traditional three dimensions. The Cornell team alters not where the light flows but how fast it moves, changing in the dimension of time, not space.

They tinkered with the speed of beams of light in a way that would make it appear to surveillance cameras or laser security beams that an event, such as an art heist, isn't happening.

Another way to think of it is as if scientists edited or erased a split second of history. It's as if you are watching a movie with a scene inserted that you don't see or notice. It's there in the movie, but it's not something you saw, said study co-author Moti Fridman, a physics researcher at Cornell.

The scientists created a lens of not just light, but time. Their method splits light, speeding up one part of light and slowing down another. It creates a gap and that gap is where an event is masked.

"You kind of create a hole in time where an event takes place," said study co-author Alexander Gaeta, director of Cornell's School of Applied and Engineering Physics. "You just don't know that anything ever happened." Keep on reading...

Amazing Video: QBO Robot Learns to Recognize Itself

 Amazing Video: QBO Robot Learns to Recognize Itself

Milky Way Eating Neighboring Dwarf Galaxies

Credit: University of Cambridge

The Milky Way galaxy is devouring its small neighboring dwarf galaxies

ScienceDaily — The Milky Way galaxy continues to devour its small neighbouring dwarf galaxies and the evidence is spread out across the sky.

A team of astronomers led by Sergey Koposov and Vasily Belokurov of Cambridge University recently discovered two streams of stars in the Southern Galactic hemisphere that were torn off the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. This discovery came from analysing data from the latest Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) and was announced in a recent paper that connects these new streams with two previously known streams in the Northern Galactic hemisphere.

"We have long known that when small dwarf galaxies fall into bigger galaxies, elongated streams, or tails, of stars are pulled out of the dwarf by the enormous tidal field," said Sergey Koposov.

The Sagittarius dwarf galaxy used to be one of the brightest of the Milky Way satellites. Its disrupted remnant now lies on the other side of the Galaxy, breaking up as it is crushed and stretched by huge tidal forces. It is so small that it has lost half of its stars and all its gas over the last billion years.

Before SDSS-III, Sagittarius was known to have two tails, one in front of and one behind the remnant. Previous SDSS imaging had already found the Sagittarius tidal tail in the Northern Galactic sky in 2006 and revealed that one of the tails was forked into two.

"That was an amazing discovery," said Vasily Belokurov, from the University's Institute of Astronomy, "but the remaining piece of the puzzle, the structure in the South, was missing until now."

Video: China Unveils 5-Year Plan for Space Exploration

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Coming soon: A Hacker Owned Satellite Network?

Coming soon: A Hacker Owned Satellite Network? Is this a good idea or bad idea?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Hackers at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, which wrapped up over the weekend, are toasting the New Year with a newly announced plan for a hacker-owned satellite communications network. The anti-censorship allies want to counter the spate of legislative and government efforts that seek to interfere with Internet freedoms.

The new plan calls for sending up home-made satellites into space as part of a Hackerspace Global Grid. The project includes low-cost ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites.

Anti-censorship activist Nick Farr, bothered by the world’s threats in blocking the free flow of information, started campaigning for contributions to the Grid earlier this year.

Launching communications satellites has been attempted in the past by some amateur groups but low-budget projects have not easily managed the task of tracking the devices.

According to reports, a few small satellites have gone into orbit but usually for brief periods only. Initiatives like space missions have required the big pockets of large public agencies and private companies, but Farr hopes his plan can work.

Monday Educational Video: CERN: The Standard Model Of Particle Physics

CERN: The Standard Model Of Particle Physics

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Scientists mine magnetotactic bacteria in Nevada

Wikimedia Commons

Magnetotactic bacteria from the lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere offer medical uses.

ScienceDaily — Nevada, the "Silver State," is well-known for mining precious metals. But scientists Dennis Bazylinski and colleagues at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) do a different type of mining.

They sluice through every water body they can find, looking for new forms of microbial magnetism.

In a basin named Badwater on the edge of Death Valley National Park, Bazylinski and researcher Christopher Lefèvre hit pay dirt.

Lefèvre is with the French National Center of Scientific Research and University of Aix-Marseille II.

In a recent issue of the journal Science, Bazylinski, Lefèvre and others report that they identified, isolated and grew a new type of magnetic bacteria that could lead to novel biotech and nanotech uses.

Magnetotactic bacteria are simple, single-celled organisms that are found in almost all bodies of water.

As their name suggests, they orient and navigate along magnetic fields like miniature swimming compass needles.

This is due to the nano-sized crystals of the minerals magnetite or greigite they produce.

The presence of these magnetic crystals makes the bacteria and their internal crystals--called magnetosomes--useful in drug delivery and medical imaging.