How Anesthesia Knocks You Out

From Live Science:

During surgery, anesthesia immobilizes a person while putting them in a sleep-like state where there is no awareness and no pain.

But after more than a century of "going under," we still do not fully understand how anesthesia works, said Anthony Hudetz in the Department of Anesthesiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

New research by Hudetz and his colleagues now suggests that anesthesia somehow disrupts information connections in the mind and perhaps inactivates two regions at the back of the brain.

Here's how it works: Think of each bit of information coming into the brain as the side of a die. Then, the first step in consciousness would be to identify which number or state turns up once you throw the die. But you can't identify that number without access to the other faces of the die. That's because every experience, every perception (or number in this example) is connected to all the others. When the faces of the die somehow become disconnected, a person would fall unconscious.

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Giant Simulation Could Solve Mystery Of 'Dark Matter'

A map of the dark matter in six halos similar to that of the Milky Way. The brighter colours correspond to regions of higher density and indicate where most of the gamma rays are expected to be produced. (Credit: Image courtesy of Durham University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 6, 2008) — The search for a mysterious substance which makes up most of the Universe could soon be at an end, according to new research.

Dark matter is believed to account for 85 per cent of the Universe's mass but has remained invisible to telescopes since scientists inferred its existence from its gravitational effects more than 75 years ago.

Now the international Virgo Consortium, a team of scientists including cosmologists at Durham University, has used a massive computer simulation showing the evolution of a galaxy like the Milky Way to "see" gamma-rays given off by dark matter.

They say their findings, published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature (Thursday, November 6), could help NASA's Fermi Telescope in its search for the dark matter and open a new chapter in our understanding of the Universe.

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Energy Agency Warns Of 6°C Rise In Temperatures

From New Scientist Environment:

Our voracious appetite for energy is potentially putting the planet on the path for a 6°C rise in temperatures – which is far more than what climate specialists say the environment can cope with.

In its 2008 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency says the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit will have to set ambitious carbon-limiting caps and that the energy sector must play a key role in making this possible.

European policy-makers have set themselves the goal of keeping temperature rises below 2°C relative to what they were before the industrial revolution. Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its forecasts of how rises between 1°C and 5°C would change the environment (see table in Climate hange is here now, says major report). A rise of 6°C was off the charts.

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How Disease Can Wipe Out An Entire Species

Photo by Patricia Wynne
This illustration shows the rat species Rattus nativitatis, which went extinct on Australia's Christmas Island by 1908. In a new study of museum DNA samples, researchers report that the likely cause of the animals' extinction was an introduced disease.

From The MSNBC:

Rat study presents first evidence for extinction due to ‘hyperdisease’.

Disease can wipe out an entire species, reveals a new study on rats native to Australia's Christmas Island that fell prey to "hyperdisease conditions" caused by a pathogen that led to the rodents' extinction.

The study, published in the latest issue of the journal PLoS One, presents the first evidence for extinction of an animal entirely because of disease.

The researchers say it's possible for any animal species, including humans, to die out in a similar fashion, although a complete eradication of Homo sapiens would be unlikely.

"I can certainly imagine local population or even citywide 'extinction,' or population crashes due to introduced pathogens under a condition where you have a pathogen that can spread like the flu and has the pathogenicity of the 1918 flu or Ebola viruses," co-author Alex Greenwood, assistant professor of biological sciences at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., told Discovery News.

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Fountain of Youth: Drug Restores Muscles

From Live Science:

A daily dose of an investigational medication has been found to restore muscle mass in the arms and legs of older adults and improve some of their biochemistry to levels found in healthy young adults, suggesting an anti-frailty drug has been found.

The drug, called MK-677, was evaluated for its safety and effectiveness in a study that showed the drug restored 20 percent of muscle mass loss associated with normal aging. In fact, levels of growth hormone (GH) and of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF- I) in healthy seniors who took the drug increased to the levels found in healthy young adults, said Michael O. Thorner, a professor of internal medicine and neurosurgery at the University of Virginia Health System.

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Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?

From The Smithsonian:

Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization.

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

"Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides.

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Want a Free Education? A Guide to Free Online Video Lectures

U Tube -- Boston.com

Want a free education? A brief guide to the burgeoning world of online video lectures.

RESERVE ANOTHER LAUREL for Edward O. Wilson, the Pellegrino University Professor emeritus at Harvard, serial Pulitzer winner, and prominent intellectual: online celebrity.

Forget Charlie Rose - Wilson has Google for a soapbox. Amid the amateur-hour piffle of YouTube "talent" and skateboarding dogs, the famed botanist stands in bold relief, with more than 500 Google video search results to his credit: Interviews ranging far afield of TV shows to a spate of appearances on several Web-only video platforms such as Meaningoflife.tv, Bigthink.com, Fora.tv, and the online home of the Technology Entertainment Design (TED) conference.

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Has New Physics Been Found At The Ageing Tevatron?

The Collider Detector at Fermilab has found hints of new physics
(Image: Fermilab)

From The New Scientist Space:

While engineers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) race to fix its teething problems and start looking for new particles, its ageing predecessor is refusing go silently into the night.

Last week, physicists announced that the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, has produced particles that they are unable to explain. Could it be a sign of new physics?

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) monitors the particles that spew from collisions between protons and anti-protons, which are accelerated and smashed head-on by the Tevatron. The collision occurs inside the 1.5-centimetre-wide "beam pipe" that confines the protons and anti-protons, and the particles created are tracked by surrounding layers of electronics.

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World’s Largest Concentrated Solar Project in Spain

From Clean Technica:

Earlier today, concentrated solar company SolFocus announced that it has signed a deal to install over 10 MW of its systems in Spain for EMPE Solar. Upon its completion in 2010, the $103 million, multi-site project will be the largest concentrated solar deployment in the world. SolFocus estimates that the project will be able to meet the domestic energy requirements of 40,000 homes.

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Japanese Clone Mouse From Frozen Cell, Aim For Mammoths

This handout picture, released by Japan natural science research center shows a cloned mouse (left) created with a new technology by using a frozen dead cell of a mouse. (AFP/Teruhiko Wakayama)

From Breitbart/AFP:

Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had created a mouse from a dead cell frozen for 16 years, taking a step in the long impossible dream of bringing back extinct animals such as mammoths.

Scientists at the government-backed research institute Riken used the dead cell of a mouse that had been preserved at minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a temperature similar to frozen ground.

The scientists hope that the first-of-a-kind research will pave the way to restore extinct animals such as the mammoth.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.

The scientists extracted a cell nucleus from an organ of the dead mouse and planted it into an egg of another mouse which was alive, leading to the birth of the cloned mouse, the researchers said.

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Massive Waves A Mystery At Maine Harbor

Owen Johnson (left) and his father, Peter, repaired damage yesterday done by waves in Boothbay Harbor. (Joel Page for The Boston Globe)

From Boston.com:

Dockworker Marcy Ingall saw a giant wave in the distance last Tuesday afternoon and stopped in her tracks. It was an hour before low tide in Maine's Boothbay Harbor, yet without warning, the muddy harbor floor suddenly filled with rushing, swirling water.

In 15 minutes, the water rose 12 feet, then receded. And then it happened again. It occurred three times, she said, each time ripping apart docks and splitting wooden pilings.

"It was bizarre," said Ingall, a lifelong resident of the area. "Everybody was like, 'Oh my God, is this the end?' " It was not the apocalypse, but it was a rare phenomenon, one that has baffled researchers. The National Weather Service said ocean levels rapidly rose in Boothbay, Southport, and Bristol in a matter of minutes around 3 p.m. on Oct. 28 to the surprise of ocean watchers. Exactly what caused the rogue waves remains unknown.

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James Bond Gadgets

Photos: Top 15 James Bond Gadgets
-- Computer Weekly

There is a definite bond between secret agents and gadgets. From the Geiger counter in Dr No, James Bond has been bedecked with hardware that has ranged from the plausible to the fantastical. The current Bond (Daniel Craig, starring in The Quantum of Solace) is a relative technophobe, which is a pity because the Bond devices have always stirred the imagination. Here are our top fifteen gadgets that are either real or have perhaps inspired technological innovation.

What do you think? E-mail us your favourite Bond gadget or even let us know if we've missed any. Send your comments to computerweekly.com with 'Bond gadgets' in the headline.

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How Geoengineering Works: 5 Big Plans to Stop Global Warming

(Photograph by Tarko Sudiarno/AFP/Getty Images)

From Popular Science:

At first blush, geoengineering sounds like outrageous junk science. Surely there's an easier solution to the problem of global warming than technologically altering Earth's atmosphere, its cloud formations and even outer space. But when compared with the alternative—drastically reducing the amount of carbon dioxide blanketing the planet by changing the behavior of billions of people and thousands of industries, not to mention slow-moving governments—some scientists are beginning to take the seemingly outrageous schemes a lot more seriously. Here are the mechanics behind five plans to jury-rig the Earth.

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The First Few Minutes After Death

EEG During Cardiac Arrest (Image From Popsci)

From Popsci:

A three-year study will explore the nature of death and consciousness

After countless accounts of near-death experiences, dating as far back as ancient Greece, science is now taking serious steps forward to explore the nature of the phenomenon. A new project aims to determine whether the experience is a physiological event or evidence that the human consciousness is far more complicated than we ever believed.

The Human Consciousness Project sets out to explore the nature of human consciousness and the brain. The first step of the project is the "Awareness During Resuscitation" study, a collaboration among more than 25 medical centers throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

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Grapes Slow Development Of High Blood Pressure In Rats

From Future Pundit:

The researchers studied the effect of regular table grapes (a blend of green, red, and black grapes) that were mixed into the rat diet in a powdered form, as part of either a high- or low-salt diet. They performed many comparisons between the rats consuming the test diet and the control rats receiving no grape powder — including some that received a mild dose of a common blood-pressure drug. All the rats were from a research breed that develops high blood pressure when fed a salty diet.

In all, after 18 weeks, the rats that received the grape-enriched diet powder had lower blood pressure, better heart function, reduced inflammation throughout their bodies, and fewer signs of heart muscle damage than the rats that ate the same salty diet but didn't receive grapes. The rats that received the blood-pressure medicine, hydrazine, along with a salty diet also had lower blood pressure, but their hearts were not protected from damage as they were in the grape-fed group.

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Bacteria On The Move, Eating Their Fill

The rippling pattern of a swarm of M. xanthus moving over their prey. John R. Kirby/University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine

From The New York Times:

Bacteria move in mysterious ways. Myxococcus xanthus, for example, a harmless soil microbe, forms rippling swarms by the millions as it devours other microbes as prey.

This organized back-and-forth behavior “was thought to occur particularly in response to starvation,” said John R. Kirby, a microbiologist at the University of Iowa. But Dr. Kirby, James E. Berleman and others at Iowa report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that M. xanthus acts this way in response to food, and uses chemical sensing and signaling pathways to do so.

Directed bacterial movement that is controlled in this way is known as chemotaxis, and has been observed in individual microbes as well as in colonies that organize into biofilms or other structures. Because M. xanthus uses chemotaxis-like pathways to move over its prey, the researchers call this behavior predataxis. (A video is at nytimes.com/science.)

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DARPA Developing A Device That Stops Internal Bleeding Using Ultrasounds

(Image from Device Daily)

From Device Daily:

When I hear about an interesting technology project, I’m always thinking that DARPA is involved as there guys always come up with the best of things which is absolutely normal due to the enormous funding coming from tax payers. DARPA’s latest project is called DBAC, or Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation, and it consists of a device which stops internal bleeding almost instantaneously.

Internal bleeding is very dangerous and it’s very important to cure soldiers wounded in battle, but also for people who suffer car or other accidents. Irreversible hemorrhagic shock can be caused by internal bleeding which can kill soldiers, and now DARPA is trying to develop a portable device that will detect and stop the bleeding using ultrasounds.

DARPA has contracted the University of Washington’s Centre for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound and Texas A&M to develop the DBAC cuff which should be semi-automatic and any soldier with minimal training will be able to operate it.

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My Comment: This is going to save a lot of lives. The focus of this tech is on soldiers, but its applications can be used everywhere.

Commercial Production of Chickens Takes Toll on Genetic Diversity

From New York Times:

To the connoisseur of fine food, chicken may seem depressingly monotonous no matter how it’s prepared. But scientists worry about a more basic degree of sameness — a lack of genetic diversity in the birds that are raised for meat and eggs.

An analysis of commercial chicken populations around the world by William M. Muir of Purdue University and colleagues has revealed the extent of the problem. Fifty percent or more of the diversity of ancestral breeds has been lost, they report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That could make chicken production more susceptible to disease outbreaks for which resistant genes have disappeared.

Sampling about 2,500 birds, the researchers looked at several thousand instances of genetic variation and used that to estimate what a hypothetical ancestral population looked like genetically. “Then we were able to say what is missing” in commercial birds, Dr. Muir said.

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15 New Technologies That Will Change Everything

From MSNBC:

The Next Big Thing? The memristor, a microscopic component that can "remember" electrical states even when turned off. It's expected to be far cheaper and faster than flash storage. A theoretical concept since 1971, it has now been built in labs and is already starting to revolutionize everything we know about computing, possibly making flash memory, RAM, and even hard drives obsolete within a decade.

The memristor is just one of the incredible technological advances sending shock waves through the world of computing. Other innovations in the works are more down-to-earth, but they also carry watershed significance. From the technologies that finally make paperless offices a reality to those that deliver wireless power, these advances should make your humble PC a far different beast come the turn of the decade.

In the following sections, we outline the basics of 15 upcoming technologies, with predictions on what may come of them. Some are breathing down our necks; some advances are still just out of reach. And all have to be reckoned with.

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Mexico City's 'Water Monster' Nears Extinction

Sep. 27: An Axolotl salamander, or Ambystoma mexicanum, swims in a tank
at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City.

From FOX News:

MEXICO CITY — Beneath the tourist gondolas in the remains of a great Aztec lake lives a creature that resembles a monster — and a Muppet — with its slimy tail, plumage-like gills and mouth that curls into an odd smile.

The axolotl, also known as the "water monster" and the "Mexican walking fish," was a key part of Aztec legend and diet. Against all odds, it survived until now amid Mexico City's urban sprawl in the polluted canals of Lake Xochimilco, now a Venice-style destination for revelers poled along by Mexican gondoliers, or trajineros, in brightly painted party boats.

But scientists are racing to save the foot-long salamander from extinction, a victim of the draining of its lake habitat and deteriorating water quality. In what may be the final blow, nonnative fish introduced into the canals are eating its lunch — and its babies.

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