Science Headlines for April 18, 2009

Alzheimer's Disease: New Small Molecule Approach To Treatment

Scientists have identified a protein known as serum amyloid P component as a possible therapeutic target in Alzheimer's disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

NASA Goddard To Purge Rocket-Bursting Bubbles On Ares-1

Of all the things that can bring down a rocket, bubbles seem the most unlikely. They are a threat to rockets that use very cold liquid fuels, like the upper stage of NASA's new Ares 1 rocket, which will carry astronauts to the space station and join up in orbit with spacecraft carried by the larger Ares 5 rocket for missions to the moon and beyond. Bubbles can form when frigid liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel are pumped into a rocket engine. The problem arises when they pop.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Review Identifies Dietary Factors Associated With Heart Disease Risk

A review of previously published studies suggests that vegetable and nut intake and a Mediterranean dietary pattern appear to be associated with a lower risk for heart disease, according to a report. However, intake of trans-fatty acids and foods with a high glycemic index may be harmful to heart health.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

When Cancer Cells Can't Let Go

Like a climber scaling a rock face, a migrating cancer cell has to keep a tight grip on the surface but also let go at the right moment to move ahead. Researchers reveal that the focal adhesion kinase coordinates these processes to permit forward movement.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Ocean Dead Zones Likely To Expand: Increasing Carbon Dioxide And Decreasing Oxygen Make It Harder For Deep-sea Animals To Breath

Low-oxygen "dead zones" in the ocean could expand significantly over the next century, according to marine chemists. These predictions are based on the fact that, as more and more carbon dioxide dissolves from the atmosphere into the ocean, marine animals will need more oxygen to survive.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Stroke Recovery: Research Reclaims The Power Of Speech

A new treatment for a speech disorder that commonly affects those who have suffered a stroke or brain injury has been developed.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm

Marijuana Smoking Increases Risk Of COPD For Tobacco Smokers

Smoking both tobacco and marijuana increases the risk of respiratory symptoms and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), found a new study. Smoking only marijuana, however, was not associated with increased risks.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Alligators Hint At What Life May Have Been Like For Dinosaurs

When dinosaurs evolved oxygen levels were much lower than they are now, so how did they cope? Curious to know what effects different oxygen levels would have on a modern dino relative, a team of US based scientists incubated alligator eggs at 12 percent, 21 percent and 30 percent oxygen. They found that the low oxygen conditions dramatically affected the embryo's development suggesting that dinosaurs' growth and metabolic patterns were drastically different from their modern relatives.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Autopsy Study Links Prostate Cancer To Single Rogue Cell

One cell ... one initial set of genetic changes -- that's all it takes to begin a series of events that lead to metastatic cancer. Now, experts have tracked how the cancer process began in 33 men with prostate cancer who died of the disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Biocompatible Materials For Rapid Prototyping

The implantation of integrated biomedical devices to the human body provides challenges to engineering materials science and biology. The demand for metallic and polymeric biomaterials is greatly increasing because of the rapid growth of the world’s population, the increasing proportion of older people and the high functional requirements of younger people.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Solar finds it hard to squeeze water from desert (AP)

AP - A westward dash to power electricity-hungry cities by cashing in on the desert's most abundant resource sunshine is clashing with efforts to protect the tiny pupfish and desert tortoise and stinginess over the region's rarest resource: water.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 11:45 am

Salazar reviews 'midnight' endangered species rule (AP)

AP - U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will make a decision in the coming weeks on whether to overturn a controversial Bush administration regulation that limits the reach of the Endangered Species Act.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 10:49 am

African aid 'needs science focus'

A leading physicist says aid to Africa needs to be focused on higher education, especially sciences.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Apr 2009 | 9:53 am

Key role of forests 'may be lost'

The ability of forests to act as massive carbon sinks is under threat as a result of climate change stress, scientists warn.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Apr 2009 | 9:52 am

Arctic diary

The 'woodpecker' works hard to get his ice data
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Apr 2009 | 7:22 am

US environment agency deems CO2 a health risk (AFP)

AFP - The US Environmental Protection Agency has shifted course by deeming carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases a health risk, in a landmark turnaround that could impact climate change regulation.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 5:31 am

NIH May Ease Some, But Not All, Stem Cell Restrictions (HealthDay)

HealthDay - FRIDAY, April 17 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists hoping to use U.S. funding for embryonic stem cell research must use cells from fertility clinic embryos that otherwise would be discarded, the National Institutes of Health announced Friday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 3:49 am

New limits to Antarctic tourism

Parties to the Antarctic Treaty adopt limits to tourism in the region, in a bid to protect the fragile ecosystem.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Apr 2009 | 3:45 am

Laughter Is Indeed Good Medicine (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Nobody can say if laughter is the best medicine, but it certainly seems to help. So suggests a new but very small study of diabetes patients who were given a good dose of humor for a year.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 3:41 am

Laughter Is Indeed Good Medicine

Nobody can say if laughter is the best medicine, but it certainly seems to help.
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Apr 2009 | 3:04 am

Step Made Toward Instant-on Computers

Ferroelectric material could lead to computer that turn on instantly.
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Apr 2009 | 2:06 am

"Silent" heart attacks more common than thought

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A study using new imaging technology found "silent" heart attacks may be far more common, and more deadly, than suspected, U.S. researchers said Friday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 18 Apr 2009 | 1:11 am

Hurricane-Killing, Space-Based Power Plant

How's this for crazy?: A company files a patent to destroy hurricanes as they form by beaming them with energy from a space-based solar plant.

Maybe it is crazy, but that same company, Solaren, took a first step in that direction this week when it inked a deal with the northern California utility, PG&E, to provide 200 megawatts of power capacity transmitted from orbit in 2016.

Apparently, sending up billions of dollars worth of solar collectors and using microwaves to send the energy onto two square miles of receivers in the desert is a little ho-hum to Solaren's wild minds.

"The present invention relates to space-based power systems and, more particularly, to altering weather elements, such as hurricanes or forming hurricanes, using energy generated by a space-based power system," Jim Rogers and Gary Spirnak write in their 2006 patent application.

By heating up the upper and middle levels of an infant hurricane, they say they could disrupt the flows of air that power the enormous storms. Air warmed by tropical waters flows up through a hurricane and is vented through the eye into the upper atmosphere. Theoretically, you could heat up the top of the storm and lower the pressure differential between layers, resulting in a weaker storm.

Attempts at weather modification have taken many forms over the decades from cloud seeding to the strange fans that vineyards use for hyperlocal weather modding. Some analysts have even speculated that geoengineering techniques could allow countries to weaponize the climate by subtly turning an enemy country's breadbasket into a desert, for example. Hurricanes have also been a target of dozens of plans to alter their courses or slow their winds.

In fact, there have been enough schemes that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a canned response to would-be hurricane modders:

"There have been numerous techniques that we have considered over the years to modify hurricanes: seeding clouds with dry ice or silver iodide, cooling the ocean with cryogenic material or icebergs, changing the radiational balance in the hurricane environment by absorption of sunlight with carbon black, exploding the hurricane apart with hydrogen bombs, and blowing the storm away from land with giant fans, etc. As carefully reasoned as some of these suggestions are, they all share the same shortcoming: They fail to appreciate the size and power of tropical cyclones."

But Solaren's patent-pending scheme is perhaps a hair more ambitious than dragging icebergs to the Caribbean or nuking a storm. They propose to launch a 1.5-gigawatt plant (more than seven times the proposed PG&E project) into space. The plant would assemble itself, and then a precision guidance system would direct all that energy onto a patch of the Earth between .6 and 6 miles across.

It's probably kind to call the project far fetched. Even Solaren's own CEO, Gary Sprinak, acknowledged this.

"Our thought was just to kind of cover our bases. I don't know if it will ever be built or not," Spirnak said. "The only ones who would really do this is the government. No public company could ever handle the liability, but we'd love to build one for them."

Not that any kind of space-based solar power system is likely to be charging up the grid any time soon either. Despite the PG&E agreement, Solaren's team has yet to raise the billions of dollars necessary to get their project into orbit. And that could be tough, given the dubious profitability of the technology, particularly in comparison to ground-based green tech. Energy analyst Chris Nelder calls the technology a "pure fantasy."

"Why would anyone be interested in space-based solar power when utility-scale solar technology on the ground today costs 0.3 percent of its price, with far less risk and far safer proven technology, and is just beginning to exploit its commercial potential?" Nelder asked in a recent analysis.

But don't lose all hope for hurricane-scale weather modding. NOAA hasn't.

"Perhaps if the time comes when men and women can travel at nearly the speed of light to the stars, we will then have enough energy for brute-force intervention in hurricane dynamics," the agency's response concluded.

Space-based solar isn't quite a warp drive, but it's in the same league, or at least on the same TV show.

See Also:

Image: Solaren/U.S. Patent application number 11/359,852, 2006

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and project site, Inventing Green: the lost history of American clean tech; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 18 Apr 2009 | 12:04 am

US to fund research with some embryonic stem cells (AP)

AP - When President Barack Obama eased limits on taxpayer-funded embryonic stem cell research, the big question became how far scientists could go. Friday, the government answered: They must use cells culled from fertility clinic embryos that otherwise would be thrown away.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Apr 2009 | 11:53 pm

Appeals court cancels plans for offshore drilling (AP)

AP - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Bush administration did not properly study the environmental impact of expanding oil and gas drilling off the Alaska coast and canceled a program to find new reserves.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Apr 2009 | 11:33 pm

New Gene Switch Sows Epigenetic Doubts

Once upon a time, researchers knew that DNA contained four nucleotides: A, T, C and G. Then they found a fifth. And now they've found a sixth.

Called 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, it's a form of the fifth nucleotide, technically known as 5-methylcytosine. Like its forerunner, it helps turn genes on and off, but in ways that researchers didn't expect.

"I think this finding will electrify the field of epigenetics," said Nathaniel Heintz, a Rockefeller University molecular biologist, in a press release accompanying the findings, published Thursday in Science.

Epigenetics, or the study of gene activation, has blossomed since the Human Genome Project's completion in 2004. Controlled by a secondary layer of biochemical information — "epi" means "outside" — genes are turned on and off at different times and places in the body. That helps explain why, despite considerable genetic overlap, species take such different forms. (Humans and chimpanzees famously share 96 percent of their DNA.)

One powerful epigenetic mechanism is methylation, in which 5-methylcytosine replaces cytosine — the letter C — in a gene, telling the cellular machinery that turns genetic code into proteins to leave it unread. Heintz made his findings almost accidentally while developing new methods for studying methylation in mouse neurons.

According to Heintz, methylation performed by 5-hydroxymethylcytosine doesn't behave in the same way as that produced by old-fashioned 5-methylcytosine. And just to make the situation trickier, standard methods of methylation detection can't distinguish between the two forms.

Further research is needed to show if the new methylation method is present in humans, but it may be. An accompanying Science paper by researchers from Harvard University and the National Institutes of Health describes the detection in humans of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine-producing enzymes.

Time will tell whether Heintz' prediction was skewed by the giddiness of discovery, but the findings are intriguing. If 5-hydroxymethylcytosine is as unique and important as he says it is, new epigenetic measurement tools will need to be developed. The Human Epigenome Project may need to be recalibrated.

See Also:

Citations: "Conversion of 5-Methylcytosine to 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine in Mammalian DNA by the MLL Fusion Partner TET1." By Mamta Tahiliani, Kian Peng Koh, Yinghua Shen, William A. Pastor, Hozefa Bandukwala, Yevgeny Brudno, Suneet Agarwal, Lakshminarayan M. Iyer, David R. Liu, L. Aravind, Anjana Rao. Science, Vol. 324 Issue 5925, April 17, 2009.

"The Nuclear DNA Base 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine Is Present in the Brain and More Abundant in Purkinje Neurons." By Skirmantas Kriaucionis and Nathaniel Heintz. Science, Vol. 324 Issue 5925, April 17, 2009.

Image: Science

Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 17 Apr 2009 | 10:28 pm

Shuttle Dodges Space Junk Risk

Despite the recent rash of space-debris problems, the risk that the space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope will have a catastrophic collision with space junk and micrometeoroids won't exceed NASA guidelines.

NASA said Thursday the new orbital debris risk for STS-125 had fallen to 1 in 221. A couple of precautionary maneuvers -- in particular coming into a lower, less crowded orbit on the 10th day of the mission and using Hubble as a shield -- reduced the spaceship's chance of getting hit with a stray paint chip or metal bolt.

New, more precise observations of the orbital debris encircling Earth also showed the amount of junk was slightly lower than had previously been calculated. The new information means the shuttle mission to the Hubble can fly without any safety reservations.

"It's an improvement," said Steve Stich, the head of the orbiter project office at Johnson Space Center.

An initial risk assessment in October calculated a 1 in 185 risk that a piece of space debris or a micrometeorite would hit the shuttle and cause a catastrophic loss of the crew and vehicle. Only the Hubble service mission STS-61 in December 1993 faced a higher calculated risk of a catastrophic hit by space junk, at 1 in 150. Risk higher than 1 in 200 requires a special waiver to fly. The absolute cut-off for a shuttle mission is 1 in 60.

The Hubble is located in a debris-ridden area that's three times riskier than the orbit the International Space Station flies in. Given the difficult environment, it seemed the final Hubble service mission would be the first in 58 shuttle launches to exceed the 1 in 200 risk threshold.

Then, in February, an American communications satellite collided with a Russian Kosmos satellite, spreading debris around the Earth and prompting fears that the risk to the Hubble service mission would would be even higher. Orbital debris specialist Mark Matney of Johnson Space Center told Nature the mission was "uncomfortably close to unacceptable levels" and that the satellite collision was "only going to add on to that."

But NASA officials have managed to re-engineer the flight plan to not just keep the risk level from rising, but to reduce it. They came up with ways to carry out the mission's important scientific mission while protecting the vulnerable areas on the spacecraft, namely the nose cap and the leading edge of the wings. And, in what has become standard procedure, the astronauts will give the Shuttle a thorough inspection on the next-to-last day of the mission before attempting to re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

Despite the good news for this mission, the overall orbital debris trend remains disturbing. The satellite collision alone increased the risk to the shuttle mission by 8 percent. The risk of a micrometeroid or orbital debris (MMOD) hit is, in fact, very real.

"MMOD is the highest risk for the shuttle program," Stich said. "That's why we take such extra special precautions."

If during inspections, the astronauts find that their shuttle has been hit, they'll have options to save themselves.

"We have a couple mitigations there. One is that we could effect a repair using a material called NOAX," Stich said, alluding to a putty-like material akin to space-strength Bondo. Astronauts would spacewalk out to the problem and patch up the craft.

In the case of a more severe hit, NASA would fly the shuttle Endeavor up to the crew. Because they won't be able to wait in the International Space Station, which would be normal protocol for a shuttle docked there, they've brought extra food and water. Stich said they'd have 18 days to retrieve the crew from a damaged vehicle.

Impacts occur regularly on shuttle flights. Wired Science obtained the Hypervelocity Impact Database, which revealed that in the 54 missions from STS-50 through STS-114, space junk and meteoroids hit shuttle windows 1,634 times necessitating 92 window replacements. In addition, the shuttle's radiator was hit 317 times, actually causing holes in the radiator's facesheet 53 times.

None of those impacts, apparently, were severe enough to endanger the crew or vehicles involved (the Columbia disaster was attributed to damage that occurred during liftoff). It could, however, just be a matter of time before NASA can't outmaneuver the space-debris risk, particularly in the most satellite-crowded orbit, which is several hundred miles above Hubble.

"That region of space is already supercritical. Given the amount of debris that was up there, the debris would double in 50 years, even if you didn't launch anything up there." said David Wright, a space security specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "What that says is that debris mitigation isn't enough. We're at the point where we have to do debris remediation and we don't know how to do that."

But at lower orbits, where Hubble and the space station are, we will be able to continue the cat-and-mouse game with tiny pieces of debris, at least for a while.

"You certainly can't say that anytime soon, the debris consequences are going to be so high that it's going to keep us out of space," Wright said.

See Also:

Image: NASA

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and project site, Inventing Green: the lost history of American clean tech; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 17 Apr 2009 | 10:04 pm

U.S. stem cell proposals forbid funds for cloning

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New stem cell guidelines released on Friday by the U.S. National Institutes of Health would limit federal funding of the research to embryos left over at fertility clinics and prohibit federal funding of embryos made by cloning or certain other methods.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 17 Apr 2009 | 10:00 pm

Disclaimer | About

Blogs : Humor pages | Norkay's Blog | Kids Stories | Indian Recipes | Database Tech Blog

Sundries : World Video Clips | Songs Clips | Indian Video Clips |