After Years Of Search, Breakthrough Discoveries Of Alzheimer's Genes

Karen Kasmauski / Science Faction / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Fifteen years since the last discovery of its kind, scientists have finally identified a new set of genes that may contribute to Alzheimer's disease.

The three new genes, known as clusterin, complement receptor 1 (CR1) and PICALM, were uncovered by two separate research groups, one in Wales and one in France, who linked the genes to the most common form of the memory disorder, late-onset Alzheimer's — the type that affects patients in their 60s or later and accounts for about 90% of all Alzheimer's cases. The only other gene connected with the condition, apolipoprotein E (ApoE), was identified in 1993; since, researchers have tirelessly hunted for other key genes, knowing that 60% to 80% of the progressive, incurable disease is genetically based.

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Researchers Identify Critical Gene For Brain Development, Mental Retardation

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 6, 2009) — In laying down the neural circuitry of the developing brain, billions of neurons must first migrate to their correct destinations and then form complex synaptic connections with their new neighbors.

When the process goes awry, neurodevelopmental disorders such as mental retardation, dyslexia or autism may result. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have now discovered that establishing the neural wiring necessary to function normally depends on the ability of neurons to make finger-like projections of their membrane called filopodia.

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5 Future Robotic Expeditions and What They Could Reveal

Image: ESA/AOES Medialab

From Scientific American:

Some are already on their way and some are still in the works, but here is what we may see from unmanned exploration of space in the coming years.

Fifty years ago this month, the Soviet Union scored a coup in the space race with a probe called Luna 2. The spacecraft, which resembled a squat, souped-up version of its cousin Sputnik, was launched on September 12, 1959, and two days later reached the lunar surface. By impacting the moon, Luna 2 became the first man-made object to land on a celestial body other than Earth.

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Lasers Turn Light Into Sound

From Live Science:

A new laser technology has made it possible to turn light into sound.

Developed by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory, the technology has the potential to expand and improve both Naval and commercial underwater acoustic applications, including undersea communications, navigation and acoustic imaging.

This process is made possible by the compression of laser pulses. Various colors of a laser travel at different speeds in water. These colors can be arranged so that the laser pulse compresses in time as it moves through water, which concentrates the light.

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Glitch Sends NASA's Mars Orbiter Into Safe Mode

This image is an artist's concept of a view looking down
on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA.gov

From FOX News:

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be kept in its safe mode — suspending its science observations of the red planet for several weeks — while engineers try to investigate what is plaguing the spacecraft.

The 4-year-old orbiter has mysteriously rebooted its main computer three times this year, most recently on Aug. 26. It also inexplicably switched to a backup computer last month in a different malfunction.

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Ares May Look Dead But Keeps Kicking

From Orlando Sentinel:

Critics of NASA's Ares 1 rocket have all but declared the program dead. But Ares 1 contractors are fighting back with a campaign to convince the White House that their plan to replace the space shuttle should continue.

A blue-ribbon panel headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine will present President Barack Obama with options for the future of NASA's human space exploration plans as early as Tuesday. The Ares I rocket will be on the list — but not as a top choice.

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Cape Cod Bans Swimming After Scientists Spot, Tag Great White Sharks

Great white shark swimming in the waters near Cape Cod Mass. in Oct. 2004. Massachusetts officials are using high-tech tags to track the movements of two great white sharks near Cape Cod _ the first time the fearsome fish have ever been tagged in the Atlantic Ocean. The sharks were spotted Saturday Sept. 5, 2009 by scientists investigating sightings off Monomoy Island in Chatham. Sharks are common in Cape waters during summer, though great white sharks are relatively rare around New England. Collapse (Massachusets State Division of Marine Fisheries/AP Photo)

From ABC News:

Four Great White Sharks Spotted Off Massachusetts Coast.

The weather might feel right for a taking a dip, but for those on the coast of Chatham, Mass., now's not a good time for one last summer swim.

Recent sightings of four great white sharks have prompted a swimming ban for the rest of the Labor Day weekend at some of the area's oceanside beaches, including North Beach, Lighthouse Beach, South Beach and Hardings Beach and Nauset Beach.

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Adding Trust to Wikipedia, And Beyond

Color me trustworthy: WikiTrust codes Wikipedia pages according to contributors' reputations and how the content has changed over time. Credit: University of California, Santa Cruz

From Technology Review:

Tracing information back to its source could help prove trustworthiness.

The official motto of the Internet could be "don't believe everything you read," but moves are afoot to help users know better what to be skeptical about and what to trust.

A tool called WikiTrust, which helps users evaluate information on Wikipedia by automatically assigning a reliability color-coding to text, came into the spotlight this week with news that it could be added as an option for general users of Wikipedia. Also, last week the Wikimedia Foundation announced that changes made to pages about living people will soon need to be vetted by an established editor. These moves reflect a broader drive to make online information more accountable. And this week the World Wide Web Consortium published a framework that could help any Web site make verifiable claims about authorship and reliability of content.

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New Earthquake-Resistant Design Pulls Buildings Upright After Violent Quakes

Photo: Keeping Buildings Upright During Quakes: A new structural system dissipates energy to replaceable fuses and pulls buildings back upright after violent earthquakes. Xiang Ma, Stanford University

From Popular Science:

How exactly does one build an earthquake-proof building? If you answered "make sure the structure rocks completely off its foundation," you're actually in good company. A research team led by Stanford and the University of Illinois successfully tested a structural system that holds a building together through a magnitude-seven earthquake, and even pulls it back upright on its foundation when the quaking stops. The key: embracing the shaking, by limiting the damage to a few flexible, replaceable areas within the building's frame.

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Do High-fat Diets Make Us Stupid And Lazy? Physical And Memory Abilities Of Rats Affected After 9 Days

A new study shows that rats, when switched to a high-fat diet from their standard low-fat feed, show a surprisingly quick reduction in their physical performance. (Credit: iStockphoto/Leigh Schindler)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2009) — Rats fed a high-fat diet show a stark reduction in their physical endurance and a decline in their cognitive ability after just nine days, a study by Oxford University researchers has shown.

The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the FASEB Journal, may have implications not only for those eating lots of high-fat foods, but also athletes looking for the optimal diet for training and patients with metabolic disorders.

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What Really Happens When Your Blood Boils?

From Live Science:

Probably. Blood pressure tends to spike when you are excited by an emotion such as anger or fear. But high blood pressure — known as "hypertension" — is very sneaky. It's called the "silent killer," because it usually has no symptoms.

Doctors say you have high blood pressure if you have a reading of 140/90 or higher. A blood pressure reading of 120/80 or lower is considered normal. "Prehypertension" is blood pressure between 120 and 139 for the top number, or between 80 and 89 for the bottom number.

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Britain’s Oldest Working Computer Roars to Life

From Gadget Lab/Wired:

The oldest original working computer in the U.K., which has been in storage for nearly 30 years, is getting restored to its former glory.

The Harwell computer, also known as WITCH, is getting a second lease on life at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. The machine is the oldest surviving computer whose programs, as well as data, are stored electronically, according to the museum.

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Fairy Tales Have Ancient Origin

Photo: Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Popular fairy tales and folk stories are more ancient than was previously thought, according research by biologists.

They have been told as bedtime stories by generations of parents, but fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood may be even older than was previously thought.

A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world.

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Hospitals Open The Door To Sci-Fi's Medical Robots

From The Independent:

Exhibition reveals huge advances that are turning futuristic fantasies into surgical reality.

From the tiny submarine injected into the human body in the film Fantastic Voyage in 1966, to the hologram Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager in 1995, medical robots have long fuelled the imaginations of science fiction writers.

Now many of those fantasies are coming true and on Tuesday the Royal College of Surgeons will exhibit some of the advances that in just five years could see tiny robots going to work inside patients.

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Universal Translator For Web Browsers

From New Scientist:

EVER wondered what the Arabic or Chinese press are saying about the issues of the day? Finding out just got a lot easier, at least for those using the Firefox web browser.

A new plug-in identifies the language used on a web page and automatically provides a translation, leaving the layout of the page unchanged.

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Researchers Seek Funds To Study Cell Phone Safety

From CNET:

Are cell phones safe? For years, studies have provided conflicting conclusions. Today, there is still no clear answer. But experts agree on one thing: more research is needed to find out the answer.

In an effort to raise awareness among consumers and to urge government leaders to allocate more funding for research, an international group of researchers is gathering in Washington, D.C. later this month to present study findings and to lobby government officials.

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As Google Books Battle Draws On, Amazon Makes Its Case

Exterior view of Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., is seen in this Oct. 19, 2006 file photo. Online bookseller Amazon.com Inc. is warning a federal judge that Internet search leader Google Inc. will be able to gouge consumers and stifle competition if it wins court approval to add millions more titles to its already vast digital library. (Paul Sakuma/AP/File)

From Christian Science Monitor:

The harsh critique of Google’s 10-month-old settlement with U.S. authors and publishers emerged this week in a 41-page brief that Amazon filed.

Online bookseller Amazon.com Inc. is warning a federal judge that Internet search leader Google Inc. will be able to gouge consumers and stifle competition if it wins court approval to add millions more titles to its already vast digital library.

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Astronauts Make Final Spacewalk

From The BBC:

Astronauts from the US space shuttle Discovery have made their third and final spacewalk, installing equipment on the International Space Station.

However, Nasa officials said one job had to be left undone after cables failed to connect.

Nasa flight director Heather Rarick said repairs to the connector would be attempted on a future mission, possibly Atlantis's flight in November.

The shuttle is due to leave on Tuesday and land back in Florida on Thursday.

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Europe's First Farmers Were Immigrants: Replaced Their Stone Age Hunter-Gatherer Forerunners

DNA-analysis in the laboratories of Mainz University. (Credit: Image copyright Joachim Burger)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2009) — Analysis of ancient DNA from skeletons suggests that Europe's first farmers were not the descendants of the people who settled the area after the retreat of the ice sheets. Instead, the early farmers probably migrated into major areas of central and eastern Europe about 7,500 years ago, bringing domesticated plants and animals with them, says Barbara Bramanti from Mainz University in Germany and colleagues.

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Engineering Students Build Underwater 'Bot

Three Long Beach City College ROV Team members transport their vehicle from the pool. On the left is Ricardo Casaine, in the middle is Nathan Grefe, and on the right is Baxter Hutchinson. Credit: Steve Van Meter/VideoRay

From Live Science:

Remotely-operated vehicles, or ROVs, are underwater robots that can go where the environment is too deep or difficult for human divers. I learned how to design and build ROVs as a student in the electrical department at Long Beach City College (LBCC), where every year, students enrolled in the department's robotics class form a team that competes in the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center's International Student ROV Competition.

The MATE competition is a pool-based competition that uses props to simulate realistic underwater workplaces. The MATE Center is one of eleven Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Centers established with funding from the National Science Foundation's ATE Program.

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