Flies Made to Live Longer

From Live Science:

Tweaking certain genes causes female flies to make more offspring and live longer. The implications for humans are not yet clear.

Scientists have long thought that "the more you reproduce, the shorter you're going to live," said John Tower, associate professor of biological sciences at University of Southern California. True, sometimes, Tower said today.

Tower and graduate student Yishi Li found genes that could make older flies lay more eggs. When older female flies were altered to over-express the genes, they produced more offspring and lived 5 to 30 percent longer.

Tower speculates the genes are boosting activity of stem cells in the flies' reproductive system. Otherwise, stem cell activity declines with age, and reproduction in older flies could not happen without a return of stem cells to peak form.

"This would appear to be stimulating the stem cells to divide more in the old fly and therefore produce more offspring," Tower said.

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Astronaut Invents Zero-G Coffee Cup

Endeavour shuttle astronaut Don Pettit sips coffee from a zero-g cup of his own invention during the STS-126 mission to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV

From Live Science:

NASA astronaut Don Pettit loves his coffee. So it comes as no surprise that he found a way to drink coffee from a cup, instead of the traditional straw, on his day off Sunday aboard the International Space Station.

Drinking any liquid in the weightless environment of space could be a messy affair. With hot coffee, it could be a potentially scalding affair. So astronauts use silver pouches and plastic straws to sip anything from water to orange juice to Pettit's beloved space java.

"We can suck our coffee from a bag, but to drink it from a cup is hard to do because you can't get the cup up to get the liquid out, and it's also easy to slosh," Pettit told Mission Control while sending a video of his new invention to Earth.

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Scientists Discover 21st Century Black Plague That Spreads From Rats To Humans

Black Death: A brown rat, common in the UK, has been found carrying a new strain of bacteria called Bartonella rochalimae, which is deadly to humans

From The Daily Mail:

A new plague which jumps from rats to humans has been discovered by scientists.

Fears are growing that increasing numbers of brown rats - the most common kind in Europe - are carrying a strain of bacteria that can cause serious illness in humans from heart disease to infection of the spleen and nervous system.

The new strain of bacteria called Bartonella rochalimae is spread between rats by fleas, Taiwanese researchers have said.

It was first discovered in an American woman with an enlarged spleen who had recently travelled to Peru.

'This event raised concern that it could be a newly emerged zoonotic pathogen,' said Professor Chao-Chin Chang from the National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan.

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New Longevity Drugs Poised to Tackle Diseases of Aging

From Wired News:

Cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, heart disease: All have stubbornly resisted billions of dollars of research conducted by the world's finest minds. But they all may finally be defied by a single new class of drugs, a virtual cure for the diseases of aging.

In labs across the country, researchers are developing several new drugs that target the cellular engines called mitochondria. The first, resveratrol, is already in clinical trials for diabetes. It could be on the market in four years and used off-label as an all-purpose longevity enhancer. Other drugs promise to be more potent and refined. They might even be cheap.

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An £800 Gadget That Makes Water Straight Out Of Thin Air 'Could Help Millions'

From The Daily Mail:

A gadget which makes water out of thin air could become the greatest household invention since the microwave.

Using the same technology as a de-humidifier, the Water Mill is able to create a ready supply of drinking water by capturing it from an unlimited source - the air.

The company behind the machine says not only does it offer an alternative to bottled water in developed countries, but it is a solution for the millions who face a daily water shortage.

The machine works by drawing in moist air through a filter and over a cooling element which condenses it into water droplets. It can produce up to 12 litres a day.

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The Physics Of Golf Balls

From E! Science News:

At the 61st Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics this week, a team of researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Maryland is reporting research that may soon give avid golfers another way to improve their game. Employing the same sort of scientific approach commonly used to improve the design of automobiles, aircraft, ships, trains, and other moving objects, the team has used a supercomputer to model how air flows around a ball in flight and to study how this flow is influenced by the ball's dimples. Their goal is to make a better golf ball by optimizing the size and pattern of these dimples and lowering the drag golf balls encounter as they fly through the air.

"For a golf ball, drag reduction means that the ball flies farther," says ASU's Clinton Smith, a Ph.D. student who is presenting a talk on the research on Sunday, November 23, 2008 in San Antonio. Smith and his advisor Kyle Squires conducted in collaboration with Nikolaos Beratlis and Elias Balaras at the University of Maryland and Masaya Tsunoda of Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd.

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Could Marijuana Substance Help Prevent Or Delay Memory Impairment In The Aging Brain?

Recent research on rats indicates that at least three receptors in the brain are activated by the synthetic drug, which is similar to marijuana. These receptors are proteins within the brain's endocannabinoid system. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2008) — Ohio State University scientists are finding that specific elements of marijuana can be good for the aging brain by reducing inflammation there and possibly even stimulating the formation of new brain cells.

Their research suggests that the development of a legal drug that contains certain properties similar to those in marijuana might help prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Though the exact cause of Alzheimer’s remains unknown, chronic inflammation in the brain is believed to contribute to memory impairment.

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How Warfare Shaped Human Evolution

Iran - Iraq War

From The New Scientist:

IT'S a question at the heart of what it is to be human: why do we go to war? The cost to human society is enormous, yet for all our intellectual development, we continue to wage war well into the 21st century.

Now a new theory is emerging that challenges the prevailing view that warfare is a product of human culture and thus a relatively recent phenomenon. For the first time, anthropologists, archaeologists, primatologists, psychologists and political scientists are approaching a consensus. Not only is war as ancient as humankind, they say, but it has played an integral role in our evolution.

The theory helps explain the evolution of familiar aspects of warlike behaviour such as gang warfare. And even suggests the cooperative skills we've had to develop to be effective warriors have turned into the modern ability to work towards a common goal.

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Stem Cells Are More Flexible Than Previously Thought, Research Suggests

Human embryonic stem cell growing on a layer of supporting cells (fibroblasts). Micrograph by Annie Cavanagh and Dave McCarthy. (Photo From UCSC)

From The Telegraph:

Thousands of patients could benefit from a new discovery that could widen the use of stem cells in groundbreaking medical treatments.

Research by British scientists has shown the body is more flexible in its production of stem cells than previously thought.

The discovery widens the possibilities for the use of such cells in surgical procedures for treating damaged tissue and organs.

Last week surgeons in Spain created the world's first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant using a windpipe made with the patient's own stem cells. The patient, 30-year-old mother-of-two Claudia Castillo, needed the transplant to save a lung after contracting tuberculosis. Scientists from Bristol had helped to grow the cells.

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"Screaming Mummy" Is Murderous Son of Ramses III?

An Egyptian mummy preserved with a pained facial expression (above) could be Prince Pentewere, suspected of plotting the murder of his father, Pharaoh Ramses III, according to a new analysis.Recent examinations of the mummy, found in 1886 and now located in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, have helped archaeologists piece together a story of attempted murder, suicide, and conspiracy. Photograph by Alex Turner/Atlantic Productions

From National Geographic:

An Egyptian mummy who died wearing a pained facial expression could be Prince Pentewere, suspected of plotting the murder of his father, Pharaoh Ramses III, according to a new analysis.

Recent examinations of the mummy, found in 1886 and now located in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, have helped archaeologists piece together a story of attempted murder, suicide, and conspiracy.

"Two forces were acting upon this mummy: one to get rid of him and the other to try to preserve him," said Bob Brier, an archaeologist at the University of Long Island in New York who examined the body this year.

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Forgotten But Not Gone: How The Brain Re-learns

Store room for future learning: nerve cells retain many of their newly created connections and if necessary, inactivate only transmission of the information. This makes relearning easier. (Credit: Image: Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology / Hofer)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 22, 2008) — Thanks to our ability to learn and to remember, we can perform tasks that other living things can not even dream of. However, we are only just beginning to get the gist of what really goes on in the brain when it learns or forgets something. What we do know is that changes in the contacts between nerve cells play an important role. But can these structural changes account for that well-known phenomenon that it is much easier to re-learn something that was forgotten than to learn something completely new?

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The Reality of Mysterious Medical Maladies

From Live Science:

A recent governmental panel composed of scientists and veterans concluded that Gulf War Syndrome is real, the symptoms likely caused by neurotoxins that veterans were exposed to during the war.

About 60,000 of the nearly 700,000 Gulf War veterans began reporting health problems in the months and years following their military service. Complaints include insomnia, irritability, hair loss, chronic fatigue, muscle spasms, skin rashes, memory loss, diarrhea, headaches, and unexplained aches and pains. Some veterans believe that the disease is also responsible for birth defects and cancer.

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Material Slicker Than Teflon Discovered By Accident

A piece of steel (left) coated with a thin layer of the super-slippery material just 2 to 3 micrometers thick - such coatings provide a kind of eternal lubrication to reduce friction and save energy
(Image: US DoE Ames Lab)

From The New Scietist:

A superhard substance that is more slippery than Teflon could protect mechanical parts from wear and tear, and boost energy efficiency by reducing friction.

The "ceramic alloy" is created by combining a metal alloy of boron, aluminium and magnesium (AlMgB14) with titanium boride (TiB2). It is the hardest material after diamond and cubic boron nitride.

BAM, as the material is called, was discovered at the US Department of Energy Ames Laboratory in Iowa in 199, during attempts to develop a substance to generate electricity when heated.

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My Comment: The article does not examine the military applications, but its applications from enhancing protective vests to protecting machinery and vehicles from explosives is obvious. this .... if it works out .... has applications that will significantly protect the soldier when in the battlefield.

Extraordinary Speaker Addresses High School Students

When you want to complain, watch this video

The Physics Of Teardrops

Teardrop physics involve viscosity, surface tension and gravity. Now researchers have learned that tear fluid can move across the center of the eye, which was not thought possible. Credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

A lot can change in the blink of an eye. In fact, the entire surface layer of your eye changes every time you blink.

In about a quarter of a second, fluid pours into the eye, it is swept over the surface to leave a new, thin coating, and the excess is drained. Though the system may sound simple, the physics gets quite complicated. Scientists now are using mathematical computer models to try to understand how the fluid travels through the eye and leaves as teardrops.

"The reason why we're interested in studying this is because it's a highly dynamical system," said Kara Maki, a mathematics grad student at the University of Delaware. "If we can try to understand and gain insight into tear film dynamics, we can aim at trying to find better treatments for dry eye."

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Mysterious Fireball Lights Up Western Canadian Sky

CTV Edmonton security cameras caught the meteor approach and then create a massive flash in the skyline on Thursday evening, Nov. 20, 2008.

From CTV News:

A mysterious fireball has lit up the sky in western Canada and may have been a meteorite which slammed into central Alberta, according to local reports.

While it's still unknown what caused the bright light, residents from northern Saskatchewan to southern Alberta have reported seeing it, the RCMP said.

MyNews user Dan Charrois, who lives about 50 kilometres north of Edmonton, said security cameras set up at his home managed to capture some grainy footage showing a big flare in the night sky.

"It happened so fast I don't think anyone would have had the reaction time to get it," he told CTV.ca, adding that his computer software business has written programs which track meteors.

Though Charrois didn't see the fireball himself, he decided to check the security tapes after his friends and neighbours called him to find out where the light may have came from.

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New Strain Of Deadly Ebola Virus Discovered

A Medecins Sans Frontieres team takes a blood sample from a man suspected of carrying the Ebola virus in Bundibugyo following an Ebola outbreak in Uganda in 2007. Scientists said Friday an outbreak of Ebola that killed 37 people in Uganda last year was sparked by a hitherto unknown species of one of the world's most notorious viruses. (AFP/Medecins Sans Frontieres /File/Claude Mahoudeau)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

PARIS (AFP) – Scientists said Friday an outbreak of Ebola that killed 37 people in Uganda last year was sparked by a hitherto unknown species of one of the world's most notorious viruses.

The strain -- provisionally named Bundibugyo ebolavirus after the district where the outbreak occurred -- joins four other known species of the pathogen, they said.

More than one in three of patients infected with Bundibugyo died, according to their study, appearing in the US journal PLoS Pathogens, published online by the open-access Public Library of Science (PLoS).

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Regenerating A Mammoth For $10 Million

An intact skeleton of a woolly mammoth that is on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. S. C. Schuster

From The New York Times:

Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million.

The same technology could be applied to any other extinct species from which one can obtain hair, horn, hooves, fur or feathers, and which went extinct within the last 60,000 years, the effective age limit for DNA.

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How To Save And Purify The World's Water Supply: Experts Weigh In

From Popular Mechanics:

Clean water is one thing that most Americans take for granted. But with aging infrastructure, climate change and an accelerating world population, keeping clean water running from our taps is a growing challenge, both physically and politically. While pumping and purification systems try to keep up, neighboring farms, cities, states and even countries are on the verge of even more contentious battles over water rights. Four water experts came to the Hearst Tower in New York City yesterday, for a panel moderated by PM science editor Jennifer Bogo, to discuss how the country can deal with the water crisis, why global warming will exacerbate the problem and what will happen if we do nothing.

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Scientists Take A Step Closer To An Elixir Of Youth

From the Anti-Aging Blog

From The Telegraph:

A naturally occuring substance that can create "immortal cells" could be the key to finding a real elixir of youth, scientists claim.

Researchers believe boosting the amount of a naturally forming enzyme in the body could prevent cells dying and so lead to extended, healthier, lifespans..

The protein telomerase helps maintain the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes which act like the ends of shoelaces and stop them unravelling.

As we age, and our cells divide, these caps become frayed and shorter and eventually are so damaged that the cell dies. Scientists believe boosting our natural levels of telomerase could rejuvenate them.

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