The Chemistry of Life: The Human Body

From Live Science:

You are what you eat. But do you recall munching some molybdenum or snacking on selenium? Some 60 chemical elements are found in the body, but what all of them are doing there is still unknown.

Roughly 96 percent of the mass of the human body is made up of just four elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, with a lot of that in the form of water. The remaining 4 percent is a sparse sampling of the periodic table of elements.

Some of the more prominent representatives are called macro nutrients, whereas those appearing only at the level of parts per million or less are referred to as micronutrients.

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West Africa Faces 'megadroughts'

From The BBC:

Severe droughts lasting centuries have happened often in West Africa's recent history, and another one is almost inevitable, researchers say.

Analysis of sediments in a Ghanaian lake shows the last of these "megadroughts" ended 250 years ago.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers suggest man-made climate change may make the situation worse.

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Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

From Wired:

It's a Monday afternoon in November, and I'm driving down Ventura Boulevard with Jill Price, the woman who can't forget. Price, who is 43, has spent most of her life here in Los Angeles, and she remembers everything. In the space of two minutes, she tells me about the former motel lodge with a bear in front, the Courtyard hotel that used to be a Hilton, and a bowling alley—since replaced by a Marshalls—where a Nicolas Cage film was shot. All this comes pouring out so fast, I wonder aloud whether Price has had too much coffee. She laughs, says no, pulls slightly at her blond hair, and starts up again.

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Would Life Form Differently Around Cool Stars?

This artist's conception shows a young, hypothetical planet around a cool star. Credit: JPL

From Universe Today:

“Life as we know it” seems to be the common caveat in our search for other living things in the Universe. But there’s also the possibility of life “as we don’t know it.” A new study from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope hints that planets around stars cooler than our sun might possess a different mix of potentially life-forming, or “prebiotic,” chemicals. While life on Earth is thought to have arisen from a hot soup of different chemicals, would the same life-generating mix come together around other stars with different temperatures? (And should we call it ‘The Gazpacho Effect?’) “Prebiotic chemistry may unfold differently on planets around cool stars,” said Ilaria Pascucci, lead author of the new study.

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Do You Think Bandwidth Grows On Trees?

From Slate:

User-generated content may have changed the Internet, but sites like YouTube are suffocating under the costs of storing it.

Everyone knows that print newspapers are our generation's horse-and-buggy; in the most wired cities, they've been pummeled by competition from the Web. But it might surprise you to learn that one of the largest and most-celebrated new-media ventures is burning through cash at a rate that makes newspapers look like wise investments. It's called YouTube: According a recent report by analysts at the financial-services company Credit Suisse, Google will lose $470 million on the video-sharing site this year alone. To put it another way, the Boston Globe, which is on track to lose $85 million in 2009, is five times more profitable—or, rather, less unprofitable—than YouTube. All so you can watch this helium-voiced oddball whenever you want.

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Love Eternal? Egyptian Dig Hopes To Uncover Cleopatra And Mark Antony Side By Side

From The Daily Mail:

The burial place of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony has remained an enduring mystery, but new evidence suggests it could soon be laid to rest.

Archaeologists are to begin searching three new sites identified in a radar survey of a temple close to Alexandria for the tombs of the celebrated queen of Egypt and the Roman general.

Egypt's top archaeologist Zahi Hawass said the finds have raised hopes that the legendary couple will be found together in a system of tunnels beneath the temple of Tabusiris Magna.

The discovery would be even bigger than the uncovering of King Tutankhamun's tomb, which was found in 1922, according to Dr Hawass.

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Factors Other Than Genes Could Cause Obesity, Insulin Study Shows

Purdue researchers have uncovered new evidence that factors other than genes could cause obesity, finding that genetically identical cells store widely differing amounts of fat depending on subtle variations in how cells process insulin. Here, insulin (green) is present in cells with no fat storage and absent in cells with fat storage at two days after insulin addition. This observation indicates faster insulin processing rates in cells with fat storage. Fluorophore-labeled insulin (green) is visualized with fluorescence imaging, and fat is visualized with coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering - or CARS - imaging (red/white). (Credit: Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2009) — Researchers have uncovered new evidence suggesting factors other than genes could cause obesity, finding that genetically identical cells store widely differing amounts of fat depending on subtle variations in how cells process insulin.

Learning the precise mechanism responsible for fat storage in cells could lead to methods for controlling obesity.

"Insights from our study also will be important for understanding the precise roles of insulin in obesity or Type II diabetes, and to the design of effective intervention strategies," said Ji-Xin Cheng, an assistant professor in Purdue University's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry.

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Strange 1761 Atmospheric Phenomenon Explained

From Live Science:

Unusual atmospheric phenomena were recorded worldwide in 1761, unexplained at the time.

Now independent astronomer Kevin D. Pang of La Cañada Flintridge, California, says he's figured out the cause — and he credits Benjamin Franklin with a conceptual assist.

While serving as American ambassador in Paris, Franklin first made the connection between a "dry fog" that had obscured the Sun for months in 1784, the extremely cold weather in Europe and North America that same year, and the 1783 eruption of Iceland's Laki volcano. The fog was, we now know, droplets of sulfuric acid, called vog (volcanic fog).

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Why Some People Sneeze When The Sun Comes Out

Every time some people go out into the sun, they sneeze: why does it happen?
(Image: RESO / Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

Are you a photic sneezer? Take the questionnaire and find out

I WAS rounding the corner to the bus stop when it hit me - a bright shaft of sunlight smack between the eyes. My reaction was immediate: an unpleasant prickling in my nose, a quickening of my breath, an uncontrollable watering of my eyes. Then, almost as quickly as the sensation came, relief, blessed relief. Aaaaa-tisshoo! A sneeze.

It wasn't the first time. In fact, the same thing happens every time I go into the sun. For a long time, I thought it was a quirk all of my own. Then a friend mentioned she was similarly afflicted. Next my mother came out of the closet. With a bit of digging around I came to a startling realisation: not only am I not alone, but the "photic sneeze reflex" is actually common. Quite how common, no one knows exactly - but anything between 1 in 10 and 1 in 3 of us might be affected.

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PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail Of Bank Card Security

From Wired/Threat Level:

Hackers have crossed into new frontiers by devising sophisticated ways to steal large amounts of personal identification numbers, or PINs, protecting credit and debit cards, says an investigator. The attacks involve both unencrypted PINs and encrypted PINs that attackers have found a way to crack, according to an investigator behind a new report looking at the data breaches.

The attacks, says Bryan Sartin, director of investigative response for Verizon Business, are behind some of the millions of dollars in fraudulent ATM withdrawals that have occurred around the United States.

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Why Teenagers Are Moody, Scientists Find The Answer

From The Telegraph:

Teenagers are selfish, reckless and irritable because their brains develop slower than their bodies, scientists have claimed.

Psychologists used to blame the unpleasant characteristics of adolescence on hormones.

However, new brain imaging scans have revealed a high number of structural changes in teenagers and those in their early 20s.

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Technology Opens Promise, Perils Of Ocean Mining

This 1997 photo released by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows the robotic arm of an unmanned aquatic vehicle reaching toward a hydrothermal vent in the east Pacific Ocean far off the coast of Chile. New technology and worldwide demand for metals have combined to make feasible deep ocean mining of the mineral-laden liquid spewed from these vents. By Pat Hickey, AP

From USA Today:

BOSTON — There's gold in that thar sea floor. Silver, copper, zinc and lead, too. The problem is, it's a mile or two underwater and encased in massive mineral deposits that layer a dark, mysterious world. But new technology and worldwide demand have combined to make mining for these metals economically feasible for the first time.

A breakthrough project is moving forward in New Guinea, and new rules to govern deep ocean mining will be set by an international authority this spring.

On Thursday, scientists, businessmen and policymakers from 20 countries meet on Cape Cod for a public forum on how to best extract these riches while protecting hidden worlds in the earth's oceans. Strange animals, from six-foot tubeworms to "blind" shrimp, thrive in water as acidic as battery acid, near "hydrothermal vents" that spew out mineral-laden liquid as hot as 750 degrees.

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The Next Phage

Inphasion: Phages [in orange] prey on a lone bacterium, using prong-like proteins to anchor themselves to the cell before they inject their genes into it Lee D. Simon/Photo Researchers

From Popsci.com:

How to heal an infection that defies antibiotics? Another infection. Doctors in Eastern Europe have used lab-grown viruses to safely cure millions of wounds. So why can't we do the same here?

It seemed like nothing at first. The red patch that appeared on Roy Brillon's thigh could have been a spider bite. But as the weeks passed, it grew and grew. By December 2004, the innocuous-looking bump had become an open wound the size of the palm of his hand. Brillon's doctor, Randy Wolcott, prescribed just about every antibiotic he could think of to cure the infection, but the lesion just got worse. "It was really bad," says Brillon, a 62-year-old retired housepainter from Lubbock, Texas. "I had to give up work because I couldn't climb ladders anymore."

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PG&E Makes Deal For Space Solar Power

From MSNBC:

Utility to buy orbit-generated electricity from Solaren in 2016, at no risk.

California's biggest energy utility announced a deal Monday to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from a startup company that plans to beam the power down to Earth from outer space, beginning in 2016.

San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric said it was seeking approval from state regulators for an agreement to purchase power over a 15-year period from Solaren Corp., an 8-year-old company based in Manhattan Beach, Calif. The agreement was first reported in a posting to Next100, a Weblog produced by PG&E.

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Cure For Honey Bee Colony Collapse?

Beekeeper with honeycomb. (Credit: iStockphoto/Kamilla Mathisen)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2009) — For the first time, scientists have isolated the parasite Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia) from professional apiaries suffering from honey bee colony depopulation syndrome. They then went on to treat the infection with complete success.

In a study published in the new journal from the Society for Applied Microbiology: Environmental Microbiology Reports, scientists from Spain analysed two apiaries and found evidence of honey bee colony depopulation syndrome (also known as colony collapse disorder in the USA). They found no evidence of any other cause of the disease (such as the Varroa destructor, IAPV or pesticides), other than infection with Nosema ceranae. The researchers then treated the infected surviving under-populated colonies with the antibiotic drug, flumagillin and demonstrated complete recovery of all infected colonies.

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Three Subgroups of Neanderthals Identified

A Neanderthal Family. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

From Live Science:

We tend to think of Neanderthals as one species of cavemen-like creatures, but now scientists say there were actually at least three different subgroups of Neanderthals.

Using computer simulations to analyze DNA sequence fragments from 12 Neanderthal fossils, researchers found that the species can be separated into three, or maybe four, distinct genetic groups.

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Egypt Discovers Dozens Of Well-Preserved Mummies In 4,000-Year-Old Necropolis In Fayoum

Ancient beauty: A wooden coffin containing a linen-wrapped mummy covered in cartonnage found by the Egyptian archaeological mission

From The Daily Mail:

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered an ancient necropolis containing dozens of beautifully preserved mummies dating back as far as 4,000 years.

Excavations sponsored by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities revealed 53 tombs cut into rock south east of the Illahun pyramids in the oasis of Fayoum.

Antiquities chief Zahi Hawass described four of the mummies, dating to the 22nd Dynasty (931-725 BC), as among the most beautiful ever discovered.

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Da Vinci Portrait Found In Cathedral Window

This stained-glass scene by the French artist Guillaume de Pierre di Marcillat (above) depicts an aging Leonardo da Vinci, argues Italian scholar Alezzandro Vezzosi. When compared with a scene from Leonardo's masterpiece "The Last Supper" (below), "the figure next to the old bearded man" in the stained-glass work "strongly recalls the profile of the apostle Matthew in Leonardo's masterpiece," said Vezzosi.

From Discovery:

A new, vividly colored portrait of Leonardo da Vinci has emerged from the windows of Arezzo's Cathedral in Tuscany, Italy, claims an Italian scholar who has published the finding in a new book, "The Portraits of Leonardo."

Depicting an amiable, bearded old man wearing a red hat, the portrait is one of many figures appearing in the stained glass on the cathedral's right wall.

The scene, which shows the biblical story known as the Raising of Lazarus, is part of a renowned portfolio of stained-glass work by the undisputed master of the time, the French artist Guillaume de Pierre di Marcillat (1475-1529).

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Just Say No To Aging?

From Newsweek:

A provocative new book from a Harvard psychologist suggests that changing how we think about our age and health can have dramatic physical benefits.

Imagine that you could rewind the clock 20 years. It's 1989. Madonna is topping the pop charts, and TV sets are tuned to "Cheers" and "Murphy Brown." Widespread Internet use is just a pipe dream, and Sugar Ray Leonard and Joe Montana are on recent covers of Sports Illustrated.

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Hand Of God: Scientists Reveal Amazing X-ray Image Of A Supernova In Deep Space

The Hand of God: A small, dense object only 12 miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years

From The Daily Mail:

We've already seen pictures of his eye... now we have the first image of the hand of God.

The ghostly blue cloud seems to form an outstretched thumb and fingers grasping a burning lump of coal.

This astonishing image was taken by Nasa's Chandra X-ray observatory, which is orbiting 360 miles above the Earth's surface.

It recalls those of the Helix planetary nebula, whose blue centre surrounded by white clouds earned it the nickname 'the eye of God'.

The hand was created when a star exploded in a supernova, creating a rapidly-spinning 12-mile-wide star called a pulsar, which is deep inside the white blob at the hand's wrist.

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