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Mars Colonization Reality Show Gets First Sponsors

(via Giant Freakin Robot)


http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/sci/mars-colonization-reality-show-sponsors.html


+


The Mars Underground [HD]

Suvi sneg (?) pada na Marsu.



NASA Observations Point to 'Dry Ice' Snowfall on Mars

(via JPL/NASA)

QuoteNASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data have given scientists the clearest evidence yet of carbon-dioxide snowfalls on Mars. This reveals the  only known example of carbon-dioxide snow falling anywhere in our solar system.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-286

Six astronauts are about to return from an usual mission after spending a week in a vast cave network on the island of Sardinia.

The European Space Agency sent the crew into the network because it is regarded as a useful astronaut training ground.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19583007

Many organisms have exoskeletons, including grasshoppers and crabs. Over the course of evolution, exoskeletons have proved themselves time and time again - for instance, insects have been around many millions of years and are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth. But how do exoskeletons compare to our bones?

Using a special computer-tomography machine, Professor David Taylor and Dr. Jan-Hennings Dirk took x-ray images of insect legs and compared them to data regarding human femurs and crab legs (focusing on diameter and thickness in particular). They found insect and crab "bones" have a much thinner wall in relation to radius. "This relation of wall-thickness to radius can tell us a lot about the mechanical stability of the structure," said Taylor. "Imagine the bones as simple tubes. Now, if you had a limited amount of material, what would you do? Would you make a thin solid rod or a hollow, thin walled tube? When compressed, the rod might easily bend like a straw, the hollow tube however might buckle like a beer-can."

Analysis revealed the crab leg to be an excellent compromise between the bending and compression forces that an underwater animal faces. Likewise, the locust leg was perfectly adapted to deal with the massive bending forces its jumps create. These facts are not shocking, as we'd expect animals to be adapted physiologically. What was fascinating was how the human thigh bone performed - it's not close to an optimal design. The femur may be the strongest bone in the human body, but the same materials in an exoskeleton would create a bone twice as strong as what we have evolved!

Photo credit: M. Plonsky.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120912084432.htm

http://www.naturenplanet.com/articles/2981/20120913/anthropods-stronger-leg-bones-humans.htm

 
Ortaka mi zanimalo šta se desi kada naučnici uoče buđ koja (sva sretna) raste na zidovima negdašnje nuklearne centrale u Černobilu? pa ga nije mrzelo da to sjuri. 



"Recent studies suggest that colonies of Cryptococcus neoformans and related fungi growing on the ruins of the melted down reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant may be able to use the energy of radiation (primary beta radiation) for "radiotrophic" growth."

(vidi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptococcus_neoformans)


... i nakon laboratorijskih istraživanja, dođu do ovakvih saznanja: http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000457


Eto novih ideja za preoblikovanje humanog melanina kako bi čovek mogao da se hrani radijacijom ili bar da bude oslobođen problema radijacije koju upijaju astronauti u svemiru
(iliti, eto rešenja za problem radijacije na Marsu - naravno, sve to bi bio rezultat izmene dela ljudskog genoma (ne bi li ovo bio divan početak razdvajanja ljudske rase na Mehaničare i Modelare?))

Genetically engineered crops have led to an increase in overall pesticide use, by 404 million pounds from the time they were introduced in 1996 through 2011.

This is according to the report by Charles Benbrook, a research professor  at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University.

  Of that total, herbicide use increased over the 16-year period by  527 million pounds while insecticide use decreased by 123 million  pounds.

  Benbrook's paper — published in the peer-reviewed journal  Environmental Sciences Europe over the weekend and announced on Monday — undermines the value of both herbicide-tolerant crops and insect-protected  crops, which were aimed at making it easier for farmers to kill weeds in their  fields and protect crops from harmful pests, said  Benbrook.

  Herbicide-tolerant crops were the first genetically modified crops  introduced to world, rolled out by Monsanto Co. in 1996, first in "Roundup  Ready" soybeans and then in corn, cotton and other crops. Roundup Ready crops  are engineered through transgenic modification to tolerate dousings of  Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.

  The crops were a hit with farmers who found they could easily kill  weed populations without damaging their crops. But in recent years, more than  two dozen weed species have become resistant to Roundup's chief ingredient  glyphosate, causing farmers to use increasing amounts both of glyphosate and  other weedkilling chemicals to try to control the  so-called "superweeds."

"Resistant weeds have become a major problem for many farmers  reliant on GE crops, and are now driving up the volume of herbicide needed each  year by about 25%," Benbrook said.

  Monsanto officials had no immediate  comment.

"We're looking at this. Our experts haven't been able to access the  supporting data as yet," said Monsanto spokesman Thomas  Helscher.

  Benbrook said the annual increase in the herbicides required to  deal with tougher-to-control weeds on cropland planted to genetically modified  crops has grown from 1,5 million pounds in 1999 to about 90 million pounds in  2011.

  Similarly, the introduction of "Bt" corn and cotton crops  engineered to be toxic to certain insects is triggering the rise of insects  resistant to the crop toxin, according to Benbrook.

  Insecticide use did drop substantially — 28% from 1996 to 2011 — but is now on the rise, he said.

"The relatively recent emergence and spread of insect populations  resistant to the Bt toxins expressed in Bt corn and cotton has started to  increase insecticide use, and will continue to do so," he  said.

  Herbicide-tolerant and Bt-transgenic crops now dominate  US agriculture, accounting for about one in every two acres of harvested  cropland, and around 95% of soybean and cotton acres, and over 85% of corn  acres.

"Things are getting worse, fast," said Benbrook in an interview. "In order to deal with rapidly spreading resistant weeds, farmers are being  forced to expand use of older, higher-risk herbicides. To stop corn and cotton  insects from developing resistance to Bt, farmers planting Bt crops are being  asked to spray the insecticides that Bt corn and cotton were designed to  displace."

Kao što rekoh, sistem se raspada fraktalno 

A jel se ono pounds odnosi na novac ili na težinsku meru? Samo pitam. Pretpostavljam da je ovo drugo inače bi imalo znak £.

Imaš li link za ovaj tekst?

http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2012/10/02/pesticide-use-rises-as-genetically-modified-crops-backfire

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/craziest-moon-ideas/?pid=5016

 




This image from the right Mast Camera (Mastcam) of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows a scoop full of sand and dust lifted by the rover's first use of the scoop on its robotic arm. In the foreground, near the bottom of the image, a bright object is visible on the ground. The object might be a piece of rover hardware.
Image by: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
(... i ne moze se bez ljudske posade pa to ti je.  )

Malko RL reasesmenta na (ne bas straobalno postavljen) roman The Restoration Game, Ken MacLeoda. 

Physicists say there may be a way to prove that we live in a computer simulation






Back in 2003, Oxford professor Nick Bostrom suggested that we may be living in a computer simulation. In his paper, Bostrom offered very little science to support his hypothesis — though he did calculate the computational requirements needed to pull of such a feat. And indeed, a philosophical claim is one thing, actually proving it is quite another. But now, a team of physicists say proof might be possible, and that it's a matter of finding a cosmological signature that would serve as the proverbial Red Pill from the Matrix. And they think they know what it is.
  More »

I jos kapljica ulja:

7 Signs We Are Heading for a Mass Extinction


A mass extinction happens when over 75 percent of all species on the planet die in a period of less than two million years. That may sound long to you, but it's the blink of an eye in geologic time. There have been five mass extinctions on Earth over the past 540 million years, sometimes caused by catastrophic disasters, and sometimes by quiet, insidious events like invasive species taking over the planet. Today, many scientists believe we are on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction which could wipe out most life on Earth as we know it. Here are seven signs that they could be right.


More:

http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/news/ext-news-singleview/article/how-mirror-neurons-allow-us-to-learn-and-socialise-by-going-through-the-motions-in-the-head-558.html

How mirror neurons allow us to learn and socialise by going through the motions in the head

The old adage that we can only learn how to do something by trying it ourselves may have to be revised in the light of recent discoveries in neuroscience. It turns out that humans, primates, some birds, and possibly other higher animals have mirror neurons that fire in the same pattern whether performing or just observing a task. These mirror neurons clearly play an important role in learning motor tasks involving hand eye coordination, and possibly also acquisition of language skills, as well as being required for social skills, but the exact processes involved are only just being discovered. In particular the relationship between mirror neural networks and social cognitive tasks has been unclear, and greater knowledge of it could shed light on problems such as autism that may arise when this process goes wrong.

This emerging field of mirror neurons in social cognition was discussed at a recent workshop organized by the European Science Foundation (ESF), which laid the ground for the first common research network dedicated to this fast emerging field, within the EU's 7th Research Framework Programme running until 2013.

The role of mirror neurons at all levels of social interaction is even greater than had been realized, according to convenor of the ESF conference Riccardo Viale, president of Rosselli Foundation in Turin, Italy and professor of Cognitive Science (University of Milan). "Most of the speakers highlighted how the mirror mechanism is crucial for both more basic forms of emotional recognition and also higher aspects of empathy," said Viale. 

Just as the same mirror neurons fire when observing and doing certain tasks, so other mirror neurons may be triggered both when experiencing a particular emotion and when observing someone else with that emotion. At the ESF conference it emerged that mirror neurons involved in emotion resided in both the insula and cingulate cortexes, two regions of the brain known to play roles in emotions and feelings. However until recently the mechanisms of interaction between these two had been largely unknown. "In the case of emotions, we can say that there is a good deal of overlap between areas from the insula and cingulate cortexes," said Viale. "These areas become active both when individuals feel an emotion (e.g. disgust) and also when they watch someone else feeling that emotion."

Mirror neurons were discovered in the 1980s by an Italian group led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, which placed electrodes in the inferior frontal cortex of macaque monkeys' brains to study neurons dedicated to control of hand movement. This led to the surprising observation that some of the neurons responded in the same way when monkeys saw a person pick up a piece of food as when they were doing it themselves. This introduced the principle of the mirror neuron as a neuron capable of being triggered by imitation, as a mechanism both for learning and empathising in social situations.

While mirror neutrons cannot be observed directly in humans because electrodes cannot be inserted into their brains, the action has been inferred by imaging of the whole brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This showed patterns of brain activity consistent with the firing of motor neurons.

More recently motor neurons have also been discovered in birds. "This suggests that such a sensory-motor mechanism is not confined to primates, but is shared by different phyla," said Viale. However the mechanism is not thought to be present in more primitive animals, including the lower cold blooded vertebrates, that is fish, reptiles and amphibians.

The ESF workshop took the field forward by highlighting growing agreement over the role of mirror neurons in social cognition. "The main outcome of the workshop was substantial convergence on some key points concerning the basic mechanisms of social cognition," said Viale. "In particular, most of the invited speakers agreed on the relevance of mirror-based action and emotion understanding in the phylogeny and ontogeny of mind-reading abilities." There was also agreement on the need to develop a multidisciplinary approach to the different levels of social cognition. The ESF workshop, Mirror Neurons and Social Cognition, was held in Turin, Italy, in September 2008.

Planet with four suns discovered by volunteers



Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type.

The distant world orbits one pair of stars and has a second stellar pair revolving around it.

The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes; follow-up observations were made with the Keck Observatory.
Binary stars - systems with pairs of stars - are not uncommon. But only a handful of known exoplanets (planets that circle other stars) have been found to orbit such binaries. And none of these are known to have another pair of stars circling them.
Continue reading the main story 

Our solar system is shaped like a thin-crust pizza, with most of the planets traveling around the sun close to the same plane, and it's apparently not alone. A new study suggests the majority of alien planetary systems are much like ours, "flatter than pancakes," scientists say.

UCLA astronomers looked at data from NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope and found that more than 85 percent of alien planets have inclinations of less than 3 degrees. This means they orbit around a star near the same axis as other planets in their system.


"The best mental image for the geometry of planetary systems is somewhere between a crepe and a pancake," UCLA professor Jean-Luc Margot explained in a statement today (Oct. 15).


http://www.livescience.com/24002-alien-solar-systems-flatter-than-pancakes.html

European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1241/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1TVZIBj7UA&feature=player_embedded

 

Large Hadron Collider Won't Destroy Earth With Planet-Eating Black Hole, Court Says



By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 10/19/2012 03:48 PM EDT on LiveScience
  A woman concerned that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will create black holes and destroy the Earth lost a court appeal to shut the atom smasher down on Tuesday.


According to Phys Org, a higher administrative court in Muenster, Germany, rejected the German citizen's claims that the LHC, as it is known, will destroy the planet. The woman's attempts have also been rejected by a court in Switzerland.


"In view of the CERN safety reports for the years 2003 and 2008, a hazard of the proton accelerator LHC according to the state of science is impossible," writes the Justice Ministry of north Rine-Westphalia, translated from German by Google. (The LHC is located at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/19/large-hadron-collider-court_n_1989630.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Carl Sagan's Cosmos: 'The Meat Planet'

In this "lost" episode of Cosmos, Carl Sagan describes the wonders of the Meat Planet.

In this never before seen episode of Cosmos, Carl Sagan takes us on a journey to the often misunderstood Meat Planet, examining it's origins, geological activity and atmosphere among many other unsettling details.

More information on The Meat Planet:  http://www.spellingmistakescostlives.com/meatplanet/origins.htm

It remains in the realm of science fiction for now but the discovery of a new planet just four light years away will reignite a race to find a twin of planet Earth that may host extraterrestrial life.


The step change comes as the most powerful telescopes ever built are about to enter into service and as ideas about where life could exist are being turned on their head. At the same time, scientific discussion about the possible existence of alien life is becoming more mainstream.
"I think scientists are very happy having a rational conversation about the likelihood of life out there," said Bob Nichol, an astronomer at Portsmouth University in Britain.
Nichol said this was partly driven by the discovery of new planets such as one identified this week in the Alpha Centauri star system, the closest yet outside our solar system.
Over 800 of these so-called exoplanets have been discovered since the early 1990s.
"An explosion in the number of planets makes it so much more likely," said Nichol, adding that the many formats in which life appears on Earth is indirect evidence, though not proof, that life is out there.

http://www.space.com/18166-black-hole-revealed-rare-star-explosion.html

Astronomers have spotted a rare X-ray star explosion near the center of our Milky Way galaxy, revealing a previously unknown black hole munching on gas from a neighboring sun-like star.
NASA's Swift satellite made the cosmic find last month when it detected a new and rapidly brightening X-ray source a few degrees from the galactic center of the Milky Way. Astronomers identified the outburst as a short-lived bright X-ray nova, which is produced when a stream of gas rushes toward either a neutron star or a black hole. Unlike a supernova, which is the explosive death of a star, novas are smaller explosions that do not completely destroy a star.
The black hole is thought to be 20,000 to 30,000 light-years away in the galaxy's inner region. Astronomers, who named the bright X-ray nova Swift J1745-26 after its coordinates in space, said witnessing such an event is rare.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2012/10/live-wires-newly-discovered-seafloor-bacteria-conduct-electricity/

Live Wires: Newly Discovered Seafloor Bacteria Conduct Electricity

Two years ago, microbiologist Lars Peter Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark was studying the mud on the seafloor of the city's port when he discovered something unexpected: The mud was coursing with detectable levels of electricity. At the time, he and his colleagues suspected that the electric currents might be attributable to some sort of external transport network between individual bacteria or other microscopic organisms.

The truth, described in a paper published yesterday in Nature, is even more surprising. "Our experiments showed that the electric connections in the seabed must be solid structures built by bacteria," PhD student Christian Pfeffer, the lead author of the paper, said in a press release. His team, working with researchers from the University of Southern California, found a new type of multicellular bacteria that behave like electrical cables, capable of conducting electricity over a distance of several centimeters, a far greater span than scientists had previously imagined.

The group discovered the bacteria, which belong to the Desulfobulbaceae family, by examining seafloor mud under a microscope. Because the bacteria are so small and fragile—one hundred times thinner than a human hair—there is no way to directly measure the electric current they carry, but the researchers found several types of indirect evidence that they do conduct electricity.

The bacteria are aligned vertically in the sediment, and when non-conducting tungsten strands were pulled horizontally across the bacteria, the bacteria short-circuited and the electric current was disrupted (like an excavator cutting through buried cables). Additionally, when filters were put in place to block the bacteria from growing, the electric current was shut down, unless the filter's pores were large enough for the bacteria to grow through.

Remarkably, under a microscope, the bacteria look a bit like the cables used in electrical devices. Inside each bacterium, 15 to 17 distinct fibers run lengthwise, each capable of conducting electricity. The long fibers are made up of many connected cells, each only a micrometer long.

A cross section of the bacteria reveals the individual conducting fibers that run along their length, contained within each cell. Image by Karen E. Thomsen

A natural question to ask is why bacteria would go to the trouble of evolving the unusual capability to conduct electricity. The answer might be as fascinating as the bacteria themselves. It turns out that just a few centimeters below the seafloor is a rich, largely untapped energy source: negatively charged sulfur atoms called sulfides.

The reason that most organisms are unable to harvest the energy from these chemicals is that the surrounding mud is largely devoid of oxygen. An energy-rich, electron donor food source is present, but organisms need oxygen to accept the spare electrons as part of the energy-harvesting equation known as respiration. It's analogous to our need to both eat food (the sulfides) and breathe air (the oxygen) in order to survive.

The bacteria solve this problem by traversing the distance between their food and their oxygen source with a circuit capable of carrying electrons. At the bottom end, the organism harvests energy from the sulfides, then sends the electrons upward. At the top, near the oxygen-rich seawater, it is able to use the abundant oxygen available to conduct respiration.

The bacteria conduct electrons vertically, bringing together an energy resevoir and an oxygen source. Image via Nature

As a result, the bacteria have only been found so far in anaerobic seafloor sediments—but in these environments, the research team found a staggering amount of them. On average, in each cubic centimeter of the sediment tested, they found 40 million cells of this type of bacteria, an amount they calculate could form 117 meters of the superthin conducting cable.

Although the organisms have tentatively been taxonomically placed in an existing bacteria family, the researchers say they are radically different from any other bacteria we've found so far. "They're so different that they should probably be considered a new genus," Nielsen told Ed Yong at Discover's Not Exactly Rocket Science, noting that they only share 92 percent of their DNA with any other species in the family.

In the same piece, Nielsen also mused about the possibility that the heretofore undiscovered species might be much more ubiquitous than now known. "They seem to be the optimal organism in any place where you become short of oxygen. Why are they not everywhere?" Nielsen asked. "Or are they everywhere?"

jeste, ima o tome i ovde:


Filamentous bacteria transport electrons over centimetre distances

Oxygen consumption in marine sediments is often coupled to the oxidation of sulphide generated by degradation of organic matter in deeper, oxygen-free layers. Geochemical observations have shown that this coupling can be mediated by electric currents carried by unidentified electron transporters across centimetre-wide zones. Here we present evidence that the native conductors are long, filamentous bacteria. They abounded in sediment zones with electric currents and along their length they contained strings with distinct properties in accordance with a function as electron transporters. Living, electrical cables add a new dimension to the understanding of interactions in nature and may find use in technology development.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11586.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/09/05/bacteria-use-electric-wires-to-shock-uranium-out-of-groundwater/

Bacteria use electric wires to shock uranium out of groundwater

Even today, the legacy of the Cold War leaches into the waters of Colorado. Uranium, freed from the earth and destined for nuclear weapons, now contaminates the groundwater beneath several Colorado mines. But at some of these mines, a most unusual clean-up crew is at work. Lashing about with long electric cables connected to their own bodies, they remove dissolved uranium from the water. Each one of these janitors is just a thousandth of a millimetre across. They're called Geobacter. They're bacteria.

The handful of Geobacter species are recent discoveries. The first one, G.metallireducens, was discovered in the Potomac River in 1987. Another, G.sulfurreducens, was later found in oil-soaked Oklahoman soils. The group has the remarkable and useful ability to break down a range of contaminating chemicals, such as petroleum compounds. While humans use oxygen to rend carbon compounds into carbon dioxide and water, Geobacter can use iron oxides and other metals for the same purpose. Roughly speaking, it breathes metal and rock.

This ability has made Geobacter into an obvious candidate for cleaning up environmental mess – a process known as bioremediation. For the last decade, for example, scientists have been using G.sulfurreducens to clean up uranium-contaminated groundwater in Colorado mines. The bacteria add electrons to uranium ions, converting them from a form that easily dissolves in water into one that doesn't. The uranium drops out of the water, and it can be more easily removed.

This has been a case of technology running ahead of the science. We knew a fair bit about what the bacteria were doing, but less about how they do it. But that gap is being filled. Earlier this year, Derek Lolvey from the University of Massachussetts found that G.sulfurreducens channels electrons along its own home-grown electric wires. It literally plugs itself into its environment.

These wires, known as pili, are just a few nanometres wide, but can be much longer than the bacteria themselves. Although they are made of protein, they can conduct electricity as well as materials used in the electronics industry. Different species can use their pili to wire up to one another, and scientists can even harvest electricity from the bacteria (albeit inefficiently) by growing them on electrodes.

Now, Dena Cologgi from Michigan State University has found that the pili are essential for Geobacter's uranium-removing abilities. Geobacter uses the pili to offload electrons onto uranium particles, covering a far greater area than it could otherwise reach. Cologgi found that pili-wielding Geobacter removed substantially more uranium from contaminated water than strains that lacked the gene responsible for creating these wires.

Geobacter also uses its pili to protect itself, by breaking down uranium at a distance. Dense deposits of uranium built up around the wires and far away from the bacterium itself. However, the pili-less mutants accumulated uranium in their own membranes and were the worse for it. Their vital functions slowed, they grew less quickly, and they took more time to recover from uranium exposure. Geobacter clearly benefits from keeping its reactions at wire's length.

Cologgi hopes that her study, by showing how Geobacter acts upon uranium, will help scientists to design better ways of using the bacterium to clean up our messes. It might also apply to other species. Another uranium-removing bacterium called Sheanella oneidensis also has conductive wires. There could be an entire network of conducting bacteria waiting to be tapped into.

Reference: Cologgi, Pastirk, Speers, Kelly & Reguera. 2011. Extracellular reduction of uranium via Geobacter conductive pili as a protective cellular mechanism. PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1108616108

Hubble Sees Stars and a Stripe in Celestial Fireworks


ABOUT THIS IMAGE:A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A  jet from a black-hole? Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is  a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred  more than 1,000 years ago.
On or around May 1, 1006 A.D., observers from Africa to Europe to the Far East  witnessed and recorded the arrival of light from what is now called SN 1006, a  tremendous supernova explosion caused by the final death throes of a white dwarf star  nearly 7,000 light-years away. The supernova was probably the brightest star ever seen  by humans, and surpassed Venus as the brightest object in the night time sky, only to be  surpassed by the moon. It was visible even during the day for weeks, and remained  visible to the naked eye for at least two and a half years before fading away.
It wasn't until the mid-1960s that radio astronomers first detected a nearly circular ring of  material at the recorded position of the supernova. The ring was almost 30 arcminutes  across, the same angular diameter as the full moon. The size of the remnant implied that  the blast wave from the supernova had expanded at nearly 20 million miles per hour over  the nearly 1,000 years since the explosion occurred.
In 1976, the first detection of exceedingly faint optical emission of the supernova  remnant was reported, but only for a filament located on the northwest edge of the radio  ring. A tiny portion of this filament is revealed in detail by the Hubble observation. The  twisting ribbon of light seen by Hubble corresponds to locations where the expanding  blast wave from the supernova is now sweeping into very tenuous surrounding gas.
The hydrogen gas heated by this fast shock wave emits radiation in visible light. Hence,  the optical emission provides astronomers with a detailed "snapshot" of the actual  position and geometry of the shock front at any given time. Bright edges within the ribbon correspond to   places where the shock wave is seen exactly edge on to our line of sight.
Today we know that SN 1006 has a diameter of nearly 60 light-years, and it is still  expanding at roughly 6 million miles per hour. Even at this tremendous speed, however,  it takes observations typically separated by years to see significant outward motion of the  shock wave against the grid of background stars. In the Hubble image as displayed, the  supernova would have occurred far off the lower right corner of the image, and the  motion would be toward the upper left.
SN 1006 resides within our Milky Way Galaxy. Located more than 14 degrees off the  plane of the galaxy's disk, there is relatively little confusion with other foreground and  background objects in the field when trying to study this object. In the Hubble image,  many background galaxies (orange extended objects) far off in the distant universe can be  seen dotting the image. Most of the white dots are foreground or background stars in our  Milky Way galaxy.
This image is a composite of hydrogen-light observations taken with Hubble's Advanced  Camera for Surveys in February 2006 and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations  in blue, yellow-green, and near-infrared light taken in April 2008. The supernova  remnant, visible only in the hydrogen-light filter was assigned a red hue in the Heritage  color image.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/22/image/a/

Incredibly Small: Best Microscope Photos of the Year

Every year for nearly four decades, Nikon has received hundreds of entries in its Small World microscope photography contest. Every year, the images are more amazing, and this year's winners -- selected from nearly 2,000 submissions -- are undoubtedly the best yet.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/nikon-small-world-winners/?pid=5122&viewall=true

 




Earlier this year, the CTX camera team saw a crater containing a dark spot on the dusty slopes of the Pavonis Mons volcano. We took a closer look at this feature with HiRISE and found this unusual geologic feature.


The dark spot turned out to be a "skylight," an opening to an underground cavern, that is 35 meters (115 feet) across. Caves often form in volcanic regions like this when lava flows solidify on top, but keep flowing underneath their solid crust. These, now underground, rivers of lava can then drain away leaving the tube they flowed through empty. We can use the shadow cast on the floor of the pit to calculate that it is about 20 meters (65 feet) deep.


The origin of the larger hole that this pit is within is still obscure. You can see areas where material on the walls has slid into the pit.  How much of the missing material has disappeared via the pit into the underground cavern?


Later this year, HiRISE will acquire a second image to create a stereo pair.  Seeing this feature in stereo will help us unravel the mystery of its formation.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_023531_1840

First ever family tree for all living birds reveals evolution and diversification
The world's first family tree linking all living bids and revealing when and where they evolved and diversified since dinosaurs walked the earth has been created by scientists from the University of Sheffield.

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/family-tree-birds-evolution-sheffield-university-1.220940?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social%2Bmedia&utm_content=famiy-tree-birds&utm_campaign=generic

 





A landmark project that has sequenced 1,092 human genomes from individuals around the world will help researchers to interpret the genetic changes in people with disease.

This first study to break the "1000 genomes barrier" will enable scientists to begin to examine genetic variations at the scale of the populations of individual countries, as well as guiding them in their search for the rare genetic variations related to many diseases.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/1000-genomes-barrier-broken

Možda je vreme da se ovaj topik preimenuje...

Očigledno, slanje ekspedicija danas nije isto kao pre 500 godina. Pa ni kao pre 60 godina 
Samo pustiš virusa i on ti završi poso 

 

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/quantum-scientists-offer-proof-soul-exists/story-fneszs56-1226507452687#ixzz2B5hDRWHA

Scientists offer quantum theory of soul's existence

A PAIR of world-renowned quantum scientists say they can prove the existence of the soul.

American Dr Stuart Hameroff and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose developed a quantum theory of consciousness asserting that our souls are contained inside structures called microtubules which live within our brain cells.

Their idea stems from the notion of the brain as a biological computer, "with 100 billion neurons and their axonal firings and synaptic connections acting as information networks".

Dr Hameroff, Professor Emeritus at the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology and Director of the Centre of Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, and Sir Roger have been working on the theory since 1996.

They argue that our experience of consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects inside these microtubules - a process they call orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR).

In a near-death experience the microtubules lose their quantum state, but the information within them is not destroyed. Or in layman's terms, the soul does not die but returns to the universe.

Dr Hameroff explained the theory at length in the Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary Through the Wormhole, which was recently aired in the US by the Science Channel.

The quantum soul theory is now trending worldwide, thanks to stories published this week by The Huffington Post and the Daily Mail, which have generated thousands of readers comments and social media shares.

"Let's say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state," Dr Hameroff said.

"The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can't be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large.

'If the patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says "I had a near death experience".'

In the event of the patient's death, it was "possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body indefinitely - as a soul".

Dr Hameroff believes new findings about the role quantum physics plays in biological processes, such as the navigation of birds, adds weight to the theory.

Ovo postaje zastrašujuće

http://www.livescience.com/2333-earth-clouds-alive-bacteria.html


Article:
Earth's Clouds Alive With Bacteria

Clouds are alive with tiny bacteria that grab up water vapor in the atmosphere to make cloud droplets, especially at warmer temperatures, a new study shows.

The water droplets and ice crystals that make up clouds don't usually form spontaneously in the atmosphere — they need a solid or liquid surface to collect on. Tiny particles of dust, soot and airplane exhaust — and even bacteria — are known to provide these surfaces, becoming what atmospheric scientists call cloud condensation nuclei (CCN).

"Nucleation events and this ice formation is widely recognized as a process that is important to the initiation of precipitation, whether it be snowfall or rain," said lead author of the new study, Brent C. Christner of Louisiana State University.

Biological nuceli

Bacteria and other particles of biological origin are actually pretty good at collecting water vapor to form cloud droplets.

"Biological particles such as bacteria are the most active ice nuclei in nature," Christner told LiveScience. "In other words, they have the ability to catalyze ice formation at temperatures warmer than a particle of abiotic origin."

Whereas abiotic (or non-biological) particles such as dust are good at collecting water at temperatures below about 14 degrees F (-10 degrees C), biological particles seem to be the main active nuclei above that temperature, according to Christner's findings. This talent of bacteria could have implications for understanding cloud formation at warmer temperatures.

Atmospheric bacteria

To see how widespread biological nuclei were in the atmosphere, Christner and his team took samples of freshly fallen snow from sites all over the world.

Antarctic snowfall had the lowest concentrations of biological nuclei, while sites in Montana and France had the highest. Christner said this finding was expected because Antarctica is isolated geographically and far from the suspected source of most of the biological nuclei, plants.

"But the concentrations weren't zero; you could still measure some level of them," Christner said. "And that implies that these particles travel large distances in the atmosphere and retain their ice nucleating" properties.

Most of the biological nuclei identified in the study, detailed in the Feb. 29 issue of the journal Science, were plant pathogens. These microbes could be carried into the atmosphere from an infected plant by winds, strong updrafts or the dust clouds that follow tractors harvesting a field. Christner and others suspect that becoming cloud nuclei is a strategy for the pathogen to get from plant to plant, since it can be carried for long distances in the atmosphere and come down with a cloud's rain.

The next step in determining how big a role biological particles play in cloud droplet formation is to directly sample the clouds themselves, Christner says.

A da pokreneš religiju Bogteriju?

Mi služimo Bakteriji 

Nebuloza.

Google has now updated their Mars coverage by including large swaths from the Context Camera (CTX) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. CTX offers great details with around 20 feet per pixel. Each of the gray bands in the picture above represents one of CTX's imaged areas, showing the extent of the coverage. To really appreciate the difference, here's a random location zoomed in with the CTX layer turned off (left) and then turned on (right).



http://www.google.com/mars/

State of the Species

THE PROBLEM WITH environmentalists, Lynn Margulis used to say, is that they think conservation has something to do with biological reality. A researcher who specialized in cells and microorganisms, Margulis was one of the most important biologists in the last half century—she literally helped to reorder the tree of life, convincing her colleagues that it did not consist of two kingdoms (plants and animals), but five or even six (plants, animals, fungi, protists, and two types of bacteria).

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7146

OF LICE AND MEN

Why and how did humankind become "unusually successful"? And what, to an evolutionary biologist, does "success" mean, if self-destruction is part of the definition? Does that self-destruction include the rest of the biosphere? What are human beings in the grand scheme of things anyway, and where are we headed? What is human nature, if there is such a thing, and how did we acquire it? What does that nature portend for our interactions with the environment? With 7 billion of us crowding the planet, it's hard to imagine more vital questions.

NASA's Space Launch System Using Futuristic Technology to Build the Next Generation of Rockets

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/selective_melting.html



First test piece produced on the M2 Cusing Machine at the Marshall Center. (NASA/MSFC/Andy Hardin)
View large image

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. is using a method called selective laser melting, or SLM, to create intricate metal parts for America's next heavy-lift rocket. Using this state-of-the-art technique will benefit the agency by saving millions in manufacturing costs.

NASA is building the Space Launch System or SLS -- a rocket managed at the Marshall Center and designed to take humans, equipment and experiments beyond low Earth orbit to nearby asteroids and eventually to Mars.


SLM is similar to 3-D printing and is the future of manufacturing.


"Basically, this machine takes metal powder and uses a high-energy laser to melt it in a designed pattern," says Ken Cooper, advanced manufacturing team lead at the Marshall Center. "The laser will layer the melted dust to fuse whatever part we need from the ground up, creating intricate designs. The process produces parts with complex geometries and precise mechanical properties from a three-dimensional computer-aided design."


There are two major benefits to this process, which are major considerations for the Space Launch System Program: savings and safety.

"This process significantly reduces the manufacturing time required to produce parts from months to weeks or even days in some cases," said Andy Hardin, the integration hardware lead for the Engines Office in SLS. "It's a significant improvement in affordability, saving both time and money. Also, since we're not welding parts together, the parts are structurally stronger and more reliable, which creates an overall safer vehicle."


The emerging technology will build parts for America's next flagship rocket more affordably and efficiently, while increasing the safety of astronauts and the workforce. Some of the "printed" engine parts will be structurally tested and used in hot-fire tests of a J-2X engine later this year. The J-2X will be used as the upper stage engine for the SLS.


The goal is to use selective laser melting to manufacture parts on the first SLS test flight in 2017.


The agency procured the M2 Cusing machine, built by Concept Laser -- a division of Hoffman Innovation Group of Lichtenfels, Germany to perform the selective-laser-manufacturing.
 

Watch video of the SLM machine and see it in action:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=154931531

Još malo pa replikator...

Još o baktarenima 

http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/15/12/1468.full

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/neurophilosophy/2012/aug/19/microbes-manipulate-your-mind

Mind controlled android robot - CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory and the CNRS-LIRMM Interactive Digital Human group


Mind controlled android robot - Researchers working towards robotic re-embodiment #DigInfo

Šta ja znam, bemliga, možda je to samo poetska intuicija 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100204144420.htm

Prion Leaves Lasting Mark On Memory

ScienceDaily (Feb. 5, 2010) — Prions are a special class of proteins best known as the source for mad cow and other neurodegenerative diseases. Despite this negative reputation, according to a new report in the February 5th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, a prion may also have important and very positive roles in brain function. The researchers suggest that a prion-like protein may participate in memory in higher eukaryotes, from sea slugs on up.

"The persistence of memory is a fundamental problem," said Kausik Si of Stowers Institute for Medical Research. "Experiences are temporal; they happen once, but somehow must lead to changes [in the brain] that are somewhat permanent."

Those changes must be mediated by molecules, including proteins. "The question is: how can you maintain a stable state with unstable biological molecules," Si said.

And now, research conducted by Si in collaboration with Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, suggests that prions may be one solution to that problem. Prions are distinguished by their ability to assume at least two distinct conformational states, one of which is dominant and self-perpetuating. That means that once a protein switches to its "prion state" it has the ability to convert other "non-prion" proteins to that state as well. Therefore, once engaged, the "prion state" is self-renewing and stable.

The findings suggest that memory traces may depend on a fairly unique mechanism involving a prion-like protein known as CPEB, Si said, adding to a growing body of evidence that proteins with the characteristics ascribed to disease-causing prions may have a broader role in biology.

Scientists have known for some time that plenty of prion-like proteins are found in relatively simple organisms such as yeast, some of which have known functions. A report by another group in Cell last year suggested that prions in yeast may serve as an important source of variation in nature.

Si's team made its discovery in studies of the sea slug Aplysia, which has served as an elemental model for learning and memory for decades. When you touch the animals' gills, they withdraw. When the slugs are trained by touching their gill and delivering a shock, that withdrawal reaction becomes stronger for up to a month.

Scientists long ago traced that simple learned behavior to a specific set of sensory and motor neurons, which are stimulated by the nerve messenger serotonin. But Si wanted to better understand the underlying molecular details. In a survey of proteins made at the synapse when serotonin is applied, he turned up CPEB. Upon closer examination of the protein's sequence, Si had what he calls his "aha moment." He realized CPEB looked a lot like the prions others had found in yeast.

He earlier reported evidence that the slug protein does display prion-like properties when inserted into yeast. They now provide evidence that those characteristics hold when the protein is expressed in its usual spot -- Aplysia sensory neurons. The proteins switch to their prion state and clump together (as prions typically do) in the presence of serotonin. An antibody that targets the clumped prion protein blocks the persistence of neural connections that are the cellular basis for learning and memory.

"These results are consistent with the idea that ApCPEB can act as a self-sustaining prion-like protein in the nervous system and thereby might allow the activity-dependent change in synaptic efficacy to persist for long periods of time," the researchers conclude. Si cautions, however, that they haven't yet proven that blocking CPEB's ability to self-perpetuate also blocks memory. For that, he says they would need to see whether a slug with a mutant version of the protein would learn but then quickly forget.

"Persistence of memory is a difficult problem," Si said. The new evidence offers "at least an idea" for how this may happen and he suspects the prion-like protein's apparent role in memory may turn out to be a more general phenomenon. His group is following up on their findings by investigating the role of the fly version of CPEB, and Si notes that humans do have a similar protein.

The researchers include Kausik Si, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS; Yun-Beom Choi, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY; New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY; Erica White-Grindley, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO; Amitabha Majumdar, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO; and Eric R. Kandel, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY.

A ovo je malo svežiji članak o prionima i memoriji

http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2012/10/19/a-prion-like-protein-protein-kinase-mzeta-and-memory-maintenance/

A Prion Like-Protein, Protein Kinase Mzeta and Memory Maintenance


« New England Compounding Center: A Family Business
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A Prion Like-Protein, Protein Kinase Mzeta and Memory Maintenance

October 19, 2012 by larryhbern






1 Vote


English: diagram based on Squire and Zola (199...

English: diagram based on Squire and Zola (1996) about decalarative and non-declarative memory (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Reporter

An interesting paper recently published.

I only show abstract and part of introduction.

Available online http://www.interesjournals.org/JMMS

Copyright © 2012 International Research Journals
Review

Martin Ezeani, Maxwell Omabe, J.C. Onyeanusi, I.N. Nnatuanya, Elom S.O.
*1Department of Neurosciences, University of Sussex UK
*2Molecular Pathology Division, Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ebonyi State
University.
*3Department of Medical Biochemistry, Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences, Ebonyi State University.

ABSTRACT
Molecular studies of both declarative and non-declarative memory in Aplysia californica, lymaea stagnalis and hippocampal slices implicate experience-dependent changes of synaptic structure and strength as the fundamental basis of memory storage and maintenance. The essential outcome of these changes in synaptic structure and strength is our ability to remember what we are thought.
Remembrance is of critical importance. In disease conditions like Alzheimer's there is lack of the ability to recreate the past. From this perspective, memory literally is the glue that binds our mental life, the scaffolding that holds our personal history and that makes it possible to change throughout life. What causes memory persistence after labile phase of memory is not yet fully known.

Elegant discoveries have explained why labile memory phase could persist over time into long term memory phase. Synaptic connections are not fixed but become modified by learning. These modifications in synaptic structure and strength persist and become the fundamental component of memory storage
after learning. Learning-induced changes in behavioural performance are the result of a fundamental physiological phenomenon.

The fundamental physiological phenomenon is neuronal plasticity. In the
process of neuronal plasticity, we review only the emerging aspect of the roles of prion like-protein, neuronal astrocyte and protein kinase Mzeta (PKMζ) in memory maintenance.
Keywords: Memory Maintenance, NMDARs and AMPARs, CPEB, Neuronal Lacate and Protein Kinase Mzeta.

INTRODUCTION
Memory defines the ability to retain, store and recall events. Memory maintenance is the process of keeping optimally these events. For instance, the beautiful nature of Sussex genomic center and its Medical School are
examples of explicit or declarative memory. Memories such as these are stored very well in the brain for recall of details later in life. Apart from these explicit or
declarative memories another type of memory is implicit or non-declarative memory. In this latter type of memory, motor skills and other type of tasks are done through performance with no conscious recall of past experience.
For instance riding a bicycle and driving a car.

Studies suggest that experience-dependent changes of synaptic strength, growth, structure and fundamental mechanism are ways of which these memories are encoded, processed and stored within the brain (Hawkins et al.,
2006; Bailey et al., 2004; and Beckinschtein et al., 2010). In these processes of initial memory formation and consolidation, memory basically exists in forms. These forms may include; short term memory (STM), intermediate memory (IM) and Long term memory (LTM) (Beckinschtein et al., 2010). There is also early and late LTM. Memories are maintained because, if all these memories are formed by similar molecular process, then what accounts for these types of basic memory?

Alien Worlds: Exoplanets in Pictures



Astronomers have discovered hundreds of planets orbiting other stars, but only a few have been seen in photographs:

Departing Space Station Commander Provides Tour of Orbital Laboratory

The Sound of Saturn: The Winds of Titan, from the Huygens Probe





titan landing huygens color

CASSINI SPOTS MINI NILE RIVER ON SATURN MOON
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini_spots_mini_Nile_River_on_Saturn_moon






The international Cassini mission has spotted what appears to be a miniature extraterrestrial version of the Nile River: a river valley on Saturn's moon Titan that stretches more than 400 km from its 'headwaters' to a large sea.
It is the first time images have revealed a river system this vast and in such high resolution anywhere beyond Earth.
Scientists deduce that the river is filled with liquid because it appears dark along its entire extent in the high-resolution radar image, indicating a smooth surface.
"Though there are some short, local meanders, the relative straightness of the river valley suggests it follows the trace of at least one fault, similar to other large rivers running into the southern margin of this same Titan sea," says Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University, USA.
"Such faults – fractures in Titan's bedrock – may not imply plate tectonics, like on Earth, but still lead to the opening of basins and perhaps to the formation of the giant seas themselves."
Titan is the only other world we know of that has stable liquid on its surface. While Earth's hydrologic cycle relies on water, Titan's equivalent cycle involves hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane.
Images from Cassini's visible-light cameras in late 2010 revealed regions that darkened after recent rainfall.
Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer confirmed liquid ethane at a lake in Titan's southern hemisphere known as Ontario Lacus in 2008.
"This radar-imaged river by Cassini provides another fantastic snapshot of a world in motion, which was first hinted at from the images of channels and gullies seen by ESA's Huygens probe as it descended to the moon's surface in 2005," says Nicolas Altobelli, ESA's Cassini Project Scientist.
The Cassini–Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and ASI, working with team members from the US and several European countries.