largest black holes discovered by scientists

Scientists have discovered the largest black holes yet, and they're far bigger than researchers expected based on the galaxies in which they were found.

An artist's rendition of a mammoth black hole, NASA

The discovery suggests we have much to learn about how monster black holes grow, scientists said.

All large galaxies are thought to harbor super-massive black holes at their hearts that contain millions to billions of times the mass of our sun. Until now, the largest black hole known was a mammoth dwelling in the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87. This black hole has a mass 6.3 billion times that of the sun.
Now research suggests black holes in two nearby galaxies are even bigger.

The scientists used the Gemini and Keck observatories in Hawaii and the McDonald Observatory in Texas to monitor the velocities of stars orbiting around the centers of a pair of galaxies. These velocities reveal the strength of the gravitational pull on those stars, which in turn is linked with the masses of the black holes lurking there.

The new findings suggest that one galaxy, known as NGC 3842, the brightest galaxy in the Leo cluster of galaxies nearly 320 million light years distant, has a central black hole 9.7 billion solar masses large. The other, named NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in the Coma cluster more than 335 million light years away, has a black hole of comparable or larger mass. Both encompass regions or "event horizons" about five times the distance from the sun to Pluto.

Astronomers had suspected that black holes more than 10 billion solar masses large exist, based on light from quasars, cosmic objects from the early universe that are no more than a light year or two across but are thousands of times brighter than our entire galaxy.

The light of quasars is thought to come from matter driven to incandescent brightness as it spirals at high speeds into supermassive black holes. This is the first time scientists have detected black holes approaching such theorized giants in size.

This pair of black holes is 1.6 to 4.6 times more massive than one would predict from their galaxies, based on details such as the brightness of the bulges at their centers. These findings suggest that black holes may grow differently in large galaxies than in small ones.

»»  read more

Planet similar to Earth discovered: NASA

This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's "habitable zone" -- the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist.

NASA announced the discovery of another planet close enough to the sun it orbits to potentially support life.
Called Kepler-22b, about 2.4 times the radius of Earth and about 600 light-years away. And it orbits in the "habitable zone," the region of space just far enough from a star that liquid water could exist on the planet's surface -- a discovery could have profound implications in the quest for alien life, said Alan Boss, an astrophysicist with Carnegie Melon University.
The host star lies about 600 light-years away from us (1 light year is about 6 trillion miles) toward the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus, the researchers said, and is about 25 percent less luminous than the Sun. Kepler-22b orbits the star every 290 days, as compared with 365 days for the Earth, at a distance about 15 percent closer to its star than the Earth from the Sun -- close enough to suggest a pleasing, balmy temperature on the surface.

The planet is  in the middle of what astronomers call the Goldilocks zone, that hard to find place that's not too hot, not too cold, where water, which is essential for life, doesn't freeze or boil and this new planet might well be not only habitable but perhaps even inhabited.
The discovery team, led by William Borucki of the NASA Ames Research Center, pored over photometric data from the NASA Kepler space telescope. They watched for tiny dimmings of star light -- dimmings that can only be measured by a highly specialized space telescope like Kepler -- which indicate that an Earth-size planet is transiting between us and a star.
So far the Kepler telescope has spotted 2,326 candidate planets outside our solar system with 139 of them potentially habitable ones. Even though the confirmed Kepler-22b is a bit big, it is still smaller than most of the other candidates. It is closest to Earth in size, temperature and star than either of the two previously announced planets in the zone.
Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates spotted in February 2011, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed.

»»  read more

World's Oldest Tiger Species Discovered

The extinct Longdan tiger (Panthera zdanskyi) was a jaguar-sized tiger that lived in what is now northwestern China more than 2 million years ago. Shown here, an artist's reconstruction of the tiger.
CREDIT: Velizar Simeonovski et al, PLoS ONE

The oldest extinct species of tiger known yet has been discovered in China, scientists say.

Although the skull of the more than 2-million-year-old fossil is smaller than most modern tigers, it appears very similar in shape, researchers added.

The tiger (Panthera tigris) is one of the largest living cats, a giant predator native to Asia reaching up to 13 feet (4 meters) in length, including its tail, and weighing up to 660 pounds (300 kilograms). The beast's origins are under intense debate, with suggestions it arose in north-central China, southern China or northern Siberia.

Now scientists have discovered a new skull and jaw from an extinct jaguar-sized tiger in northwestern China dating back 2.16 million to 2.55 million years, predating other known tiger fossils by up to a half-million years. This represents the oldest complete skull hitherto found of a pantherine cat — the lineage that includes tigers and all other living big cats.

"The discovery of the identity of this fossil is vitally important for providing a greater understanding of the fossil history of big cats and the relationships between them," said researcher Andrew Kitchener, principal curator of vertebrate biology at National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh.

The scientific name for this newfound species is Panthera zdanskyi, after the late Austrian paleontologist Otto Zdansky, who revealed much about ancient Chinese fossil carnivores. It was unearthed in 2004 on the eastern slope of Longdan, a village in Gansu, China, giving it the informal name of the Longdan tiger. The cat was only recently analyzed and described online Oct. 10 in the journal PLoS ONE.

The skull of this extinct cat had robust, well-developed upper canine fangs and a relatively long nose, details typical of tigers. Although the size of the skull is comparable with that of the smallest females of living tiger subspecies, its overall shape suggests it belonged to a male. Indeed, despite about 2 million years of separation, the skull of the Longdan tiger appears surprisingly similar to that of modern tigers.

"It seems likely that this tiger's diet would have been similar to that of today's and would have included ungulates such as deer and pigs,"Kitchener told LiveScience.

The skull of this extinct cat had robust, well-developed upper canine fangs and a relatively long nose, details typical of tigers. CREDIT: J.H. Mazak et al, PLoS ONE

The researchers suggest this extinct cat was a sister species to the modern tiger. Their analysis argues that the tiger lineage developed features of its skull and upper teeth early on, while its lower jaw and teeth evolved at a different rate. A similar pattern of "mosaic evolution" is seen in the cheetah lineage, they noted. The evolutionary trend of increasing size in the tiger lineage is likely coupled its prey evolving larger body sizes, the researchers added.

"It will be interesting to see whether further fossil big cats are discovered in China and elsewhere, which expand our knowledge of the distribution of this species and fill in more gaps in the tiger's fossil history," Kitchenersaid. "Confirming a more precise dating of Panthera zdanskyi would also be invaluable for understanding its position in the tiger's evolutionary timescale."

--------------------------------
Via LiveScience

»»  read more

Oldest Hairy Microbe Fossils Discovered (weird science)

This microscopic fossil closely resembles a modern tintinnid, a single-celled organism that is a type of plankton. Fossil ciliates including this one were recently identified in a deposit in Mongolia, and they are more than 100 million years older than the previously known fossils of this type. Image credit: Tanja Bosak

This microscopic fossil closely resembles a modern tintinnid, a single-celled organism that is a type of plankton. Fossil ciliates including this one were recently identified in a deposit in Mongolia, and they are more than 100 million years older than the previously known fossils of this type.

Ancient rock deposits, laid down between two massive ice ages, reveal the oldest known fossils for two types of single-celled creatures: Tube-shelled foraminifera and hairy, vase-shape ciliates.

Both closely resemble microbes living today. But the climate they lived in may have been quite different. The fossils appear in limestone deposited on the ocean floor between 635 million and 715 million years ago. This period was marked by two "Snowball Earth" events, when ice may have covered the entire planet.

These fossils date back more than 100 million years earlier than the oldest foraminifera and ciliates previously known. Even so, scientists think these organisms were around much longer, based on changes accumulated in their DNA since they split from close relatives. Some believe these types of single-celled creatures have been around for considerably more than 1 billion years, said Tanja Bosak, a study researcher and assistant professor of geobiology at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.

"We can't claim we have seen something that is exactly like the modern species," Bosak said. "(But) here we have something that has looked very similar for 700 or more million years."

The fossils have evaded researchers not only because they are so tiny, but also because these deposits do not contain a type of rock that typically preserves fossils, particularly something this small and fragile, she said.

Fossils belonging to foraminifera were found in rocks from Namibia, while ciliates were found in rocks from Mongolia. Both types first appear in layers of rock called cap carbonates, laid down as the world was leaving the earlier snowball state, which occurred 716 million years ago.

Foraminifera, ancient and modern, build protective shells by picking up tiny grains of mineral that they stick to their exterior using a sugary compound. They aren't the only shelled organisms Bosak and her colleagues found. They also discovered amoebas that appeared to be building the same sort of shells.

While this wasn't the first fossil evidence for these amoebas, the nature of their resistant covering was ambiguous in the earlier fossils. The most recent fossils are the first amoebas to show evidence of primitive shell building, Bosak said.

Ciliates, meanwhile, are covered with tiny hairs called cilia. And the fossils found closely resemble modern, planktonic organisms called tintinnids.

Life at the time was quite simple, but it soon became more complex. For instance, the first animal embryos show up after the end of the latest Snowball Earth event, around 635 million years ago.

It's possible the arrival of abundant microbes, particularly the ciliates, may have had some hand in the change, by helping to bump up the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.

Even after free oxygen dramatically increased in the atmosphere, a change called the Great Oxidation Event, the oxygen level was much lower than it is today. The ciliates lived in the surface waters, then died and sank, taking organic carbon with them and tucking it away in sediments low in oxygen where the organisms would decompose only slowly. The burial of this carbon meant it could not be converted to carbon dioxide by respiration. As a result, oxygen produced by the photosynthesis of other microbes like algae would have built up.
The discovery of these organisms reveals a possible mechanism by which the oxygen levels in the atmosphere increased, allowing life to become more complex, she said.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The research has been published in articles published online in October and November in the journal Geology, and online in June in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

| via LiveScience

»»  read more

Water Doesn't Have to Freeze Until -55 F/ Study suggests

Regular ice crystals (red) are mixed with “intermediate ice” (green) near the end of the process of crystallizing from supercooled water. University of Utah chemists used computers to determine that water, which doesn’t necessarily become solid at its 32 degrees Fahrenheit freezing point, actually can get as cold as minus 55 F before it must freeze. (Credit: University of Utah)

University of Utah chemists may have solved one enigma by showing how cold water can get before it absolutely must freeze: 55 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
That's 87 degrees Fahrenheit colder than what most people consider the freezing point of water, namely, 32 F.
Supercooled liquid water must become ice at minus 55 F not just because of the extreme cold, but because the molecular structure of water changes physically to form tetrahedron shapes, with each water molecule loosely bonded to four others, according to the new study by chemists Valeria Molinero and Emily Moore.

The findings suggest this structural change from liquid to "intermediate ice" explains the mystery of "what determines the temperature at which water is going to freeze," says Molinero, an assistant professor at the University of Utah and senior author of the study, published in the Nov. 24 issue of the journal Nature.
"This intermediate ice has a structure between the full structure of ice and the structure of the liquid," she adds. "We're solving a very old puzzle of what is going on in deeply supercooled water."

However, in the strange and wacky world of water, tiny amounts of liquid water theoretically still might be present even as temperatures plunge below minus 55 F and almost all the water has turned solid -- either into crystalline ice or amorphous water "glass," Molinero says. But any remaining liquid water can survive only an incredibly short time -- too short for the liquid's properties to be detected or measured.

How and at what temperature water must freeze has more than just "gee-whiz" appeal. Atmospheric scientists studying global warming want to know at what temperatures and rates water freezes and crystallizes into ice.
"You need that to predict how much water in the atmosphere is in the liquid state or crystal state," which relates to how much solar radiation is absorbed by atmospheric water and ice, Molinero says. "This is important for predictions of global climate."

A Strange Substance
Liquid water is a network of water molecules (each with two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom) held loosely together by what is called hydrogen bonding, which is somewhat like static cling. Molinero says that depending on its temperature and pressure, water ice has 16 different crystalline forms in which water molecules cling to each other with hydrogen bonds.

Molinero says that "what makes water so strange is that the way liquid water behaves is completely different from other liquids. For example, ice floats on water while most solids sink into their liquid forms because they are denser than the liquids."

Water's density changes with temperature, and it is most dense at 39 F. That's why fish survive under ice covering a pond by swimming in the warmer, denser water at the bottom of the pond.
But the property of water that "is most fascinating is that you can cool it down well below 32 degrees Fahrenheit and it still remains a liquid," says Molinero.

Liquid water as cold as minus 40 F has been found in clouds. Scientists have done experiments showing liquid water can exist at least down to minus 42 F.

Why doesn't water necessarily freeze at 32 F like we were taught in school?
"If you have liquid water and you want to form ice, then you have to first form a small nucleus or seed of ice from the liquid. The liquid has to give birth to ice," says Molinero. "For rain, you have to make liquid from vapor. Here, you have to make crystal [ice] from liquid."
Yet in very pure water, "the only way you can form a nucleus is by spontaneously changing the structure of the liquid," she adds.
Molinero says key questions include, "under which conditions do the nuclei form and are large enough to grow?" and "what is the size of this critical nucleus?"

Computing What Cannot Be Measured
Molinero says that "when you cool down water, its structure becomes closer to the structure of ice, which is why the density goes down, and this should be reflected in an increased crystallization rate."
Supercooled water has been measured down to about minus 42 F, which is its "homogenous nucleation temperature" -- the lowest temperature at which the ice crystallization rate can be measured as water is freezing. Below this temperature, ice is crystallizing too fast for any property of the remaining liquid to be measured.

To get around the problem, Molinero and chemistry doctoral student Moore used computers at the University of Utah's Center for High Performance Computing. The behavior of supercooled water was simulated and also modeled using real data.
Computers provide "a microscopic view through simulation that experiments cannot yet provide," Molinero says.

Previous computer simulations and modeling were too slow and had to last long enough for the freezing process to occur. And it was necessary to simulate thousands of nucleation events to make valid conclusions.
Molinero and Moore devised a new computer model that is 200 times faster than its predecessors. The model simplified the number crunching by considering each three-atom water molecule to be a single particle similar to a silicon atom and capable of sticking together with hydrogen bonding.

Even so, it took thousands of hours of computer time to simulate the behavior of 32,768 water molecules (much smaller than a tiny drop of water) to determine how the heat capacity, density and compressibility of water changes as it is supercooled, and to simulate how fast ice crystallized within a batch of 4,000 water molecules.

The Birth of Ice
The computers helped Molinero and Moore determine how cold water can get before it reaches its theoretical maximum crystallization rate and must freeze. The answer: minus 55 F (or minus 48 degrees Celsius).

The computers also showed that as water approaches minus 55 F, there is a sharp increase in the proportion of water molecules attached to four others to form tetrahedrons.
"The water is transforming to something else, and this something else is very close to ice," says Molinero. She calls it intermediate ice.

If a microscopic droplet of water is cooled very fast, it forms what is called a glass -- low-density amorphous ice -- in which all the tetrahedrons of water molecules are not lined up to form perfect crystals. Instead, low-density ice is amorphous like window glass. The study found that as many as one-quarter of the molecules in the amorphous "water glass" are organized either as intermediate ice or as tiny ice crystals.
When water approaches minus 55 F, there is an unusual decrease in density and unusual increases in heat capacity (which goes up instead of down) and compressibility (water gets easier to compress as it gets colder, unlike most liquids). These unusual thermodynamics coincide with liquid water changing to the tetrahedral structure.

"The change in structure of water controls the rate at which ice forms," Molinero says. "We show both the thermodynamics of water and the crystallization rate are controlled by the change in structure of liquid water that approaches the structure of ice."

(Via Science Daily)

»»  read more

New method of nerve stimulation developed

Better Electrical Stimulation Could Help Damaged Nerves

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) was developed to help return lost function to patients with upper and lower extremity injuries and spinal cord injuries, among other applications. However, the devices, which work by stimulating neuronal activity in nerve-damaged patients, have a potential shortcoming in that the electrical currents needed for the treatment to work can also send errant signals to surrounding nerves, resulting in painful side effects.

Earlier this fall, a plastic surgery research team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and an engineering team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), described a new method of nerve stimulation that reduces the device’s electrical threshold by 40 percent, compared with traditional FES therapy. Reported in the October 23 Advance On-line issue of the journal Nature Materials, the findings could help researchers develop a safer, more efficient FES therapy with fewer side effects.

“This new device works by manipulating the concentration of charged ions surrounding the nerve,” explains co-senior author Samuel J. Lin, MD, a surgeon in BIDMC’s Divisions of Plastic Surgery and Otolaryngology and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. “This could potentially mean reduced risk to surrounding nerves because less electrical current is required to stimulate the affected nerve.” The researchers additionally discovered that they could use the device to block signals in nearby nerve fibers, which could help prevent unwanted muscle contractions.
The research team, led by Lin and MIT Associate Professor Jongyoon Han, PhD, determined that by altering calcium ion concentrations in the fluid surrounding the nerves they could adjust the electrical impulses.
“Nerve fibers fire their signals based on the message they receive from the interaction of ions, or charged particles,” explains coauthor Ahmed M.S. Ibrahim, MD, a Research Fellow in BIDMC’s Divisions of Plastic Surgery and Otolaryngology. “We wanted to achieve the lowest current possible that would still result in positive results.” After testing the manipulation of sodium and potassium ions, the researchers determined that consistent results could be achieved by removing positively charged calcium ions from the fluid surrounding the nerves.

The newly designed method not only prevents electrical impulses from traveling along a nerve but also uses significantly less current required by existing FES therapy. “This could be of particular benefit for the treatment of patients with various forms of paralysis,” explains Lin. “The nerves that control movements and the sensory nerves that carry pain signals are extremely close together, so existing FES therapy has had limitations.”
The researchers conducted their study of this new electrochemical-stimulation method in the nerves of frogs and plan to later test it in mammalian nerves.

“This is an important step towards the design of a device to help patients suffering from nerve paralysis and chronic neurological conditions,” say Lin. “By bringing together biomedical and engineering research teams we have been able to successfully develop this new technique. Going forward, these types of collaborations will be absolutely crucial to creating new clinical treatments and enhancing patient care.”
In addition to Lin, Han and Ibrahim, study coauthors include Rohat Melik of MIT, Amr N. Rabie of BIDMC and Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt; David Moses of Rice University, Houston, TX; and Ara Tan of the University of Minnesota.
This study was supported, in part, by a Harvard Catalyst grant from the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center (National Institutes of Health) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

»»  read more

New Hydrogen Storage Material Based on Liquid Nitrogen developed

Hydrogen releases in the presence of iron chloride

In a research funded by the US Department of Energy, four scientists from the University of Oregon have developed a material to store hydrogen, using boron-nitrogen-based liquid-phase.This new material has displayed stability in both air and moisture. To be more specific, the research team developed a platform based on cyclic amine borane, which is also called BN-methylcyclopentane. Apart from being stable, the platform displayed the ability to retain hydrogen without changing phase. For the purpose of hydrogen desorption, the platform used iron chloride which enabled the conversion of the used fuel into the charged state.

This is a welcome change from the current storage materials which are solid, as liquid materials allow for a smooth transition from gasoline phase to hydrogen phase. During the course of the study, the researchers initially discovered six cyclic amine borane materials that were membered. On the release of hydrogen, these materials produced a large molecule. Although these materials were in their solid state, scientists altered the structure of the materials to convert them into liquid forms. The materials that were changed into liquid form in such a manner had low vapour pressure and retained their liquid form even upon the release of hydrogen.

Scientists believe that the new platform could be applicable in devices that use fuel cells. However, they also believe that the greatest hurdle in the commercial usage of such a platform would be the increase of hydrogen yield and the development of an effective mechanism to regenerate. The US Department of Energy is encouraging research to develop a solid or liquid hydrogen fuel carrier by 2017.

Source: http://www.uoregon.edu

__________________________________________________________________________

»»  read more

Study rejects "faster than light" particle finding

An international team of scientists in Italy studying the same neutrino particles colleagues say appear to have travelled faster than light rejected the startling finding this weekend, saying their tests had shown it must be wrong.

The September announcement of the finding, backed up last week after new studies, caused a furor in the scientific world as it seemed to suggest Albert Einstein's ideas on relativity, and much of modern physics, were based on a mistaken premise.

The first team, members of the OPERA experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory south of Rome, said they recorded neutrinos beamed to them from the CERN research center in Switzerland as arriving 60 nanoseconds before light would have done.

But ICARUS, another experiment at Gran Sasso -- which is deep under mountains and run by Italy's National Institute of National Physics -- now argues that their measurements of the neutrinos energy on arrival contradict that reading.

In a paper posted Saturday on the same website as the OPERA results, arxiv.org/abs/1110.3763v2, the ICARUS team says their findings "refute a superluminal (faster than light) interpretation of the OPERA result."

They argue, on the basis of recently published studies by two top U.S. physicists, that the neutrinos pumped down from CERN, near Geneva, should have lost most of their energy if they had travelled at even a tiny fraction faster than light.

But in fact, the ICARUS scientists say, the neutrino beam as tested in their equipment registered an energy spectrum fully corresponding with what it should be for particles traveling at the speed of light and no more.

Physicist Tomasso Dorigo, who works at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and the U.S. Fermilab near Chicago, said in a post on the website Scientific Blogging that the ICARUS paper was "very simple and definitive."

It says, he wrote, "that the difference between the speed of neutrinos and the speed of light cannot be as large as that seen by OPERA, and is certainly smaller than that by three orders of magnitude, and compatible with zero."

Under Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, nothing can travel faster than light. That idea lies at the heart of all current science of the cosmos and of how the vast variety of particles that make it up behave.

There was widespread skepticism when the OPERA findings were first revealed, and even the leaders of the experiment insisted that they were not announcing a discovery but simply recording measurements they had made and carefully checked.

However, last Friday they said a new experiment with shorter neutrino beams from CERN and much larger gaps between them had produced the same result. Independent scientists said however this was not conclusive.

Other experiments are being prepared -- at Fermilab and at the KEK laboratory in Japan -- to try to replicate OPERA's findings. Only confirmation from one of these would open the way for a full scientific discovery to be declared.

(Reuters)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

»»  read more

Bionic contact lens 'to project emails before eyes'

The vision is to stream real-time information in front of the eyes

A new generation of contact lenses that project images in front of the eyes is a step closer after successful animal trials, say scientists.

The technology could allow wearers to read floating texts and emails or augment their sight with computer-generated images, Terminator-syle.
Researchers at Washington University who are working on the device say early tests show it is safe and feasible.
But there are still wrinkles to iron out, like finding a good power source.
Currently, their crude prototype device can only work if it is within centimetres of the wireless battery.
And its microcircuitry is only enough for one light-emitting diode, reports the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.
But now that initial safety tests in rabbits have gone well, with no obvious adverse effects, the researchers have renewed faith about the device's possibilities.
They envisage hundreds more pixels could be embedded in the flexible lens to produce complex holographic images.

For example, drivers could wear them to see journey directions or their vehicle's speed projected onto the windscreen.
Similarly, the lenses could take the virtual world of video gaming to a new level.
They could also provide up-to-date medical information like blood sugar levels by linking to biosensors in the wearer's body.
Delicate materials
Lead researcher Professor Babak Praviz said: "Our next goal is to incorporate some predetermined text in the contact lens."
He said his team had already overcome a major hurdle to this, which is getting the human eye to focus on an image generated on its surface.

Normally, we can only see objects clearly if they are held several centimetres away from the eye.
The scientists, working with colleagues at Aalto University in Finland, have now adapted the lenses to shorten the focal distance.
Building the end product was a challenge because materials used to make conventional contact lenses are delicate.
Manufacturing electrical circuits, however, involves inorganic materials, scorching temperatures and toxic chemicals. Researchers built the circuits from layers of metal only a few nanometres thick, about one thousandth the width of a human hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes measuring one third of a millimetre across
Dr Praviz and his team are not the only scientists working on this type of technology.
A Swiss company called Sensimed has already brought to market a smart contact lens that uses inbuilt computer technology to monitor pressure inside the eye to keep tabs on the eye condition glaucoma.

BBC News

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

»»  read more

Study shows left side of brain more active in immoral thinking

Because the brain is so complex, researchers are forced to devise all manner of different types of tests in trying to understand not just how it works, but which parts of it do what. To that end, a diverse group of scientists from several universities across the U.S. got together to work on the problem of which parts of the brain, if any specifically, are involved in analyzing and making moral judgments. To find out, or at least learn more, they devised three experiments meant to test the busyness of the brain, measured by blood flow, to certain regions, when presented with immoral situations. They have published the results of what they found in the journal Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience.
The idea behind all three experiments was to present volunteers with material that is generally believed to be immoral while watching blood flow patterns in their brains using fMRI, as compared to what happens when moral or neutral material is viewed.

In the first study, volunteers were told that they would be engaging in a memory test. They were then shown a series of statements, followed by another series of statements after that. During the second series they were asked to press a button to indicate if the statement they were being shown had been among those shown in the first series. The statements shown were divided into four classes: pathogen related (non-sexually gross stuff), incestuous acts, nonsexual immoral acts and neutral acts.
In the second study, volunteers were shown three types of statements in random order: 50 examples describing acts that most people think of as immoral, 50 statements that most think of as pro-moral (morally good) and 50 statements that most people think of as neutral.
And finally, in the third study, volunteers were shown three types of pictures in random order: immoral, non-moral (negative without morality), and neutral.

After analyzing and normalizing the data, the researchers found that the left hemisphere of the brain showed increased blood flow in response to immoral stimuli throughout all three studies, while the right did not. No such pattern was found for the neutral or pro-moral tests. They also found that while each of the three tests tended to light up specific areas of the left hemisphere in the scanned images, there was also quite a bit of overlap between those participating in the three different studies.
The research team isn’t making any declarations regarding their results other than suggesting that it appears the left side of the brain appears to be more involved in immoral processing than the right. They also suggest the brain might have evolved to work this way to avoid duplication in processing and to increase efficiency.
© 2011 Medical Xpress

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

»»  read more

Life-Bearing Lake discovered on Icy Jupiter Moon Europa

    A large lake discovered just below Europa's icy shell may provide a habitat for life.

As this Galileo probe image shows, Europa's icy surface is cracked and jumbled -- an indication of a sub-surface heat source. Click to enlarge this image. NASA

New research shows the jumbled ice blocks crowning the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa are signs of a large liquid lake the volume of the North American Great Lakes just below the surface, a key finding in the search for places where life might exist beyond Earth.
Drawing from studies of underground volcanoes in Iceland and Antarctica, scientists ran computer models to see if the chaotic formations on Europa's surface could be explained by the same geologic processes seen on Earth.
"We looked at melt underneath the ice and the fracture and collapse of ice shelves," Britney Schmidt, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics, told Discovery News.
"We come with these large pockets of water that form lakes. As they melt they actually break up the ice above it, like what you see on Earth," she said.
"This is certainly the best model so far," Paul Schenk, a staff scientist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, wrote in an email to Discovery News. "If we go back with penetrating radar instruments we should be able to see into the ice shell, determine the stratigraphy of the layers in the shell and verify which models works best."
Europa, which is slightly smaller than Earth's moon, is believed to have a large ocean of salty water deep beneath its frozen crust. These recently discovered lakes appear to be embedded closer to the surface.
"Europa has more water than all of Earth's oceans," planetary scientist Simon Kattenhorn, with the University of Idaho, exclaimed.
While the ocean itself is of interest to scientists searching for life beyond Earth, a mechanism to churn the surface ice and subsurface water makes Europa an even more compelling target.
The vigorous mixing of ice and water provides one mechanism for nutrients and energy to get from the frozen surface to the ocean below.
"It's exciting for biology," Schmidt said.
A mission to Europa is second on planetary scientists' wish list after a sample return mission from Mars.
"Europa is likely to have a deep ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust, making it an object of enormous interest as a possible abode for life," planetary scientist Steve Squyres, with Cornell University, testified at a Congressional hearing this week.
Schmidt's research will be published in a future issue of Nature and appears on the publication's website Wednesday.

© Discovery News
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

»»  read more

'Extinct' frog hops back into northern Israel

In this photo made available by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011, a Hula Painted Frog, a species believed to be extinct is seen in a nature reserve in northern Israel. Omri Gal of Israel's Nature and Parks Authority said Thursday that the Hula Painted Frog was seen for the first time in 50 years this week. In the 1940s, a specimen ate a second frog, leading to speculation the species is cannabilistic.(AP Photo/Dror Galili)

A frog species believed to be extinct has hopped back into sight in northern Israel.
Omri Gal of Israel's Nature and Parks Authority said Thursday the Hula Painted Frog was seen for the first time in 50 years this week. He said it was declared extinct.
Gal said, "It's an amazing find, now we have a second chance to preserve the species."

A Hula painted frog is seen at a protective facility in the Hula Valley Nature Reserve in northern Israel November 17, 2011.  REUTERS/Nir Elias

The frog is native to the Hula Valley, a swamp drained in the 1950s to stop malaria.
Aquatic ecologist Dana Milstein says the frog was rare even before, and little is known about it. In the 1940s, a specimen ate a second frog, leading to speculation the species is cannibalistic.
She credited rehydration of the area for the frog sighting and said more are likely in the reserve.
© The Associated Press, 2011

_________________________________________________________________________

»»  read more

Mystery of China's White Desert Lines Solved?

A space researcher has offered what he believes is the correct solution to a mystery that's been flying around cyberspace for the past week: A strange tangle of white lines in China's Gobi desert discovered in Google Map images. Military pundits, armchair investigators, and conspiracy theorists have had a field day with the strange set of lines.

• It's a UFO landing strip!
• It's a mockup of the streets of Washington, D.C., constructed for nefarious military purposes!
• It's a top-secret military installation doing experiments in controlling the weather!
• It's a nuclear testing range!
• It's a hoax: the Google Map images themselves are fakes, and the lines are not actually there!

A previous Discovery News piece concluded that it probably had some military connection (such as target practice range, based in part on the fact that other similar sites in the area had airplanes sitting in them), and now a NASA scientist thinks he’s got it figured out.
According to a story on Fox News the latest (and most plausible) theory is that “they are almost definitely used to calibrate China’s spy satellites. So says Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA’s Mars missions.”
The satellite calibration target solution seems as good an answer as any, and better than most. China, like many countries including the United States, is known to have spy satellites in orbit.
There's been no official explanation from the Chinese government—which is not surprising, since China doesn't need to "explain" some white lines in its desert to anyone, including NASA and President Obama. Of course even if Hu Jintao, the President of China, publicly offered a clear and complete explanation of the mysterious lines, conspiracy-minded folks wouldn’t believe him anyway.

Photo Credit: Google Maps/Story Credit: Discovery News

»»  read more

High-Resolution Topographical Map of Moon released

Astronomers at Arizona State University have used NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to build this jaw-dropping map of the Moon. It’s the highest-resolution, near-global topographic image of our lunar neighbour yet.

The map reveals the Moon’s surface shape, and uses different colours to represent the elevations of the craters, miniature mountains and ridges that dot the surface. White parts are highest, down through red, orange, green, blue and violet, which represents the deepest pits.
The entire map in all of its glory, which is dubbed the the Global Lunar DTM 100 m topographic model (GLD100), shows almost the entire moon with a scale close to 100 meters per pixel.
The map was created with the orbiting probe’s Wide Angle Camera (WAC), a tiny photographic device that can fit in the palm of your hand. But despite its petite body, it can capture a high resolution shot of the Moon with a 70km swath. Because the equatorial distance between orbits is about 30km, the WAC can build a new picture of the Moon every month.
That might sound like overkill, but because the Moon’s lighting changes every month the WAC can build a record of how different rocks reflect and shade the light, to build this 3D topographic atlas.
The little camera can’t quite do it all by itself. The poles of the Moon are in almost perpetual darkness, so the WAC can’t complete the map at the highest latitudes. But never fear, because the LRO’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) excels at scanning the topography of the poles, it can fill in the gaps.
“Our new topographic view of the moon provides the dataset that lunar scientists have waited for since the Apollo era,” said Mark Robinson, Principal Investigator of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) from Arizona State University, in a press release.
“We can now determine slopes of all major geologic terrains on the moon at 100 meter scale. Determine how the crust has deformed, better understand impact crater mechanics, investigate the nature of volcanic features, and better plan future robotic and human missions to the moon.”
The WAC was built by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. A very similar camera from the same firm, called the the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Mars Color Imager (MARCI), is currently orbiting Mars.

Source: Wired UK/Image: NASA

»»  read more

Sweet Spot for Life's Chemistry Discovered

Astronomers home in on places ripe for formation of complex organic molecules.

Some young stars have been found to be cranking out the production of methanol, an chemical that could support life's chemistry. NASA

When scientists realized early Earth didn't have the right ingredients for life on its own, they started looking in space for the complex organic molecules needed to get things going.

Of particular interest is methanol, which can trigger the more complex chemistry that leads to amino acids, the building blocks for proteins and life.

"Methanol is the most complex molecule you can form at the really low temperatures in interstellar space," astronomer Douglas Whittet, with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, told Discovery News. "When you put methanol into a newly forming star system, you have some heat from a proto-sun and that's when methanol really takes off. It's the springboard for more exciting chemistry that follows."

In other words, find the methanol and scientists believe you find the chemical pathways to life.

"Searching for methanol in various regions in space will tell researchers where to look for other complex organic molecules, which will eventually lead to the formation of life," astronomer Sachindev Shenoy, with NASA's Ames Research Center in California, told Discovery News.

But where to look?
A new analysis by Whittet and colleagues shows there is a "sweet spot" around a few young stars where methanol production is cranking. What seems to be key is how fast molecules can reach dust grains, which serve as a scaffolding of sorts for chemical reactions.

"The rate of molecule accumulation on the particles can result in an organic boom or a literal dead end," Whittet said.

Not all young stars are suited for organic chemistry. Whittet's team found a range of methanol concentrations in clouds from practically zero to about 30 percent.

If molecules build up too quickly on the surfaces of dust grains, there's not enough time for chemical reactions to occur before they are buried by other molecules. If the buildup is too slow, there are fewer chances for chemical reactions.

The research has implications for understanding where to look for life and suggests it may be more plentiful, from a chemistry point of view, than previously thought.

"The clouds we're observing appear to harbor more favorable conditions for life than the pre-solar cloud from which our solar system formed. And there is life in our solar system," Amanda Cook, a post-doctoral research fellow at NASA Ames, told Discovery News. "The implication is that life may have an even easier time taking root, so to speak, in other parts of the galaxy."
The research will be published Sunday in The Astrophysical Journal.

DISCOVERY NEWS

»»  read more

Failed Russian Mars Probe Could Crash to Earth in January

An artist's impression of Phobos-Grunt in Mars orbit.

Russia's failed Mars probe could come crashing down to Earth in January unless scientists can find a way to blast it out of low-Earth orbit, the head of the Roscosmos space agency said Monday.
The unmanned Phobos-Grunt spacecraft blasted off toward the Red Planet last Wednesday where it was hoped to bring back rock and soil samples from the moon Phobos.
But its engines failed to put in the correct course, and the craft only managed to reach an orbit about 125 miles from Earth. Scientists were still trying to regain communication with spacecraft.
"We estimate that the Phobos-Grunt will fly until January, and to make it perform its mission, we still have time until the beginning of December," Roscosmos general director Vladimir Popovkin was quoted as saying by the Ria Novosti news agency.
Popovkin said there was little chance that the probe would hit a populated area when it crashed down.
"There are 7.5 metric tons of fuel in the aluminum tanks on board. We have no doubts that they will explode [and destroy the probe] upon re-entry," Popovkin said. "It is highly unlikely that its parts would reach Earth."

| NewsCore

_________________________________________________________________________

»»  read more

E. coli could convert sugar to biodiesel

Xingye Yu, a graduate student in chemical engineering, and Professor Chaitan Khosla examine a culture of e. coli bacteria.

When it comes to making biodiesel cheaply and efficiently enough to be commercially feasible, E. coli may prove to be "the little bacterial engine that could," say Stanford researchers.
Biodiesel can be made from plant oil or animal fat – usually the former. Used cooking oil from restaurants is common, but for biodiesel to contribute significantly to reducing fossil fuel use, there needs to be a way to mass produce it from plant-derived raw materials. The problem is that synthesizing biodiesel is complicated. That is where E. coli comes in.
The bacteria, often discussed in terms of the human digestive tract, also act as a catalyst in generating biodiesel by converting inexpensive sugars into fatty acid derivatives that are chemically similar to gasoline.
But E. coli's natural conversion capability is not up to snuff, commercially speaking, and researchers tinkering with its internal machinery have yet to boost its capability enough to cross the commercial threshold.
So Chaitan Khosla, a Stanford professor of chemistry and of chemical engineering, decided to investigate whether there might be a natural limit that holds back E. coli's conversion capabilities. In other words, does the basic catalytic engine in E. coli have enough horsepower to do the job at the needed scale?
A powerful engine
"The good news is that the engine that makes fatty acids in E. coli is incredibly powerful," Khosla said. "It is inherently capable of converting sugar into fuel-like substances at an extraordinary rate. The bad news is this engine is subject to some very tight controls by the cell."
It turns out that like any high performance engine, the catalytic process in E. coli can only attain peak efficiency when all the controls are tuned just right. The research is described in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Khosla is a coauthor of the paper, which is available online.
Scientists don't yet understand how all the cellular controls operate. It will require a deeper understanding of the biochemistry of E. coli than they have now to figure that out, Khosla said. But his research team is making progress homing in on the most promising part of the conversion process, thanks in part to a new approach they employed in their analysis.
The researchers managed to isolate all the enzymes and other molecular participants involved in the process that produces fatty acids in E. coli and assemble them in a test tube for study.
"We wanted to understand what limits the ability of E. coli to process sugar into oil. The question we were asking is analogous to asking what limits the speed of my Honda to 150 miles an hour and no faster?" Khosla said. "The most direct and powerful way to figure it out is to pull the biosynthetic engine out of the cell and put it through its paces in a test tube."
By doing so, the team was able to study how the enzymes involved in fatty acid biosynthesis performed when they were free from other cellular influences. That was critical to their analysis, because the products in question, fatty acids, are essentially soap, Khosla said, and too much of them would hurt the bacteria. That is why E. coli has developed some very elaborate and effective ways to contain the amount of fatty acid biosynthesis inside the cell.

Precursor to biodiesel

The fatty acids can't be pumped directly into your gas tank – cars and trucks won't run on soap, after all – but they are an excellent precursor to biodiesel.
Biodiesel has so far lagged behind ethanol as a means of cutting fossil fuel use in vehicles because ethanol is easier and cheaper to make. But biodiesel has a higher energy density and lower water solubility than ethanol, which offer significant advantages.
"It is closer in chemical properties to a barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia than any other biologically derived fuel," Khosla said. Thus it could easily be blended into diesel and gasoline, or used alone as a bona fide transportation fuel.
If researchers can figure out how to manipulate the cellular means of production in E. coli, biodiesel could be made cheaply enough that the little engine of E. coli could end up powering a lot of larger engines at far less cost to the environment than with fossil fuels.
Xingye Yu, graduate student in chemical engineering, and Tiangang Liu, postdoctoral scholar in chemistry, contributed equally to the research and are coauthors of the paper.

(PhysOrg.com)

»»  read more

Google Earth spots huge, unidentified structures in Gobi desert

Vast, unidentified, structures have been spotted by satellites in the barren Gobi desert, raising questions about what China might be building in a region it uses for its military, space and nuclear programmes.
All of the sites are on the borders of Gansu province and Xinjiang... Photo: GOOGLE EARTH

The two reflective rectangles lie 70 miles from the nearest main road and there is no sign of any surrounding activity. However, Ding Xin military airbase, where China carries out its secret aircraft testing programme, is relatively nearby, at a distance of some 400 miles.
400 miles in the other direction is Lop Nur, the salt lakes where China tested 45 nuclear bombs between 1967 and 1995.
The purpose of the structures is unknown, but some experts suggested that they might be optical test ranges for Chinese missiles, to simulate the street grids of cities.
Tim Ripley, a defence expert from Jane's Defence Weekly, compared the structures to similar grids in Area 51, the secret United States military test base in Nevada. "The picture of the circle looks very like a missile test range, with target and instrumentation set out to record weapon effects. The Americans have lots of these in Nevada – Area 51!" he said.
Conspiracy theorists believe that Area 51 is home to the remains of an alien spacecraft found at Roswell, and there was no shortage on Monday of similar hypotheses about the Chinese sites.
"It looks like our own Area 51," said one commenter on Baidu, a Chinese website. "Can it be an alien base," asked another. "It looks like solar energy facilities, with a walkway along the side," said a third.

»»  read more

Mars explorers will include women

Men walked on the Moon, but women will be among the pioneering explorers who someday step foot on Mars, said a gathering of top female space experts this week.

Sandy Coleman

Plenty has changed since Neil Armstrong and 11 male successors left their footprints on the Moon from 1969 to 1972, but lingering stereotypes still harm young girls and not enough women reach the upper levels of planetary science, they said.

Some of the leading women at NASA, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and other organizations came together for a two-day meeting in the nation’s capital to discuss their work, how they made it and how the next generation can, too.

“We should tell more girls that this is not a male world,” said organizer Artemis Westenberg, president of the education and lobbying group Explore Mars.

Of the 350 women in the United States with doctorates in planetary science, only 39 are employed at NASA, according to Susan Niebur, a US space agency mission consultant and founder of Women in Planetary Science.

“I wonder, where are the other women and what amazing science explorations might they have proposed?” she said. “We are still losing a lot of women in the pipeline.”

Some women have made it onto the management teams of recent Mars projects, but in small numbers, according to an analysis presented by Linda Billings, a research professor at George Washington University.

For instance, the management of the 1997 Mars Pathfinder project had seven men and one woman; the 2004 Mars Exploration Rover project had two women and eight men; and two women are among 13 male “key team members” of the Mars Science Laboratory set to launch later this month.

Those who have made it have faced obstacles, ranging from trying to maneuver in spacesuits designed for men who are six feet (1.8 meter) tall to facing blunt cultural biases about the role of women.

Astronaut Cady Coleman, a veteran of two shuttle missions who has lived aboard the International Space Station with male colleagues for six months, shared her frustration at constantly being asked, by media and others, if she missed her family back on Earth.

“People would say ‘How does it feel to be away from your son during all this time?’ And part of me wants to say, ‘Do you ask the guys these questions?’ Because they actually don’t, and it is wrong for two reasons:

“One, the guys miss their kids and their spouses just as much; and two, we are doing this because we think the work that we do is important.”

When a male guest in the audience rose to ask her how female astronauts managed their menstrual periods in space, Coleman did not flinch, explaining that she had had surgery and was past those days.

“But it is actually a valid question for just different cultural things,” she said.

“The Russians are convinced that women on their cycle are going to ruin the toilet,” she said. “We have the exact same toilet on the US side (of the space station). Turns out, we can use it,” she said with a laugh.

Following their passions, learning to ignore biases and keeping focused on studying are key parts of their journey to top posts at NASA and beyond, the speakers said.

“We have to encourage our girls to work really hard. This is hard stuff and you have got to be prepared,” said Sandy Coleman, director NASA exploration programs.

Women who are already working on the next Mars missions shared their research, from designing the spacecraft to devising science experiments to studying how to protect astronauts’ health from bone loss and radiation during long-distance missions.

“It is not a question of who is better, faster, smarter,” said Saralyn Mark, NASA chief health and medical officer. “What we have learned over the years is how to do specific countermeasures to protect the health of both men and women.”

Mark also lamented the absence of women in a 520-day Mars simulation experiment that ended earlier this month and included six men — one Chinese, one Italian, one Frenchman and three Russians — camped in a Moscow parking lot.

“To some of our Russian colleagues, I think it was a fascinating experiment but it would have been more valuable to have both men and women. That is something that needs to be seriously considered.”

Since Mars is 150 times further away from the Earth than the Moon, any trip there and back is likely to take a full year and a half.

The first human exploration mission, perhaps to one of Mars’ two moons, may happen by 2033, said Linda Karanian, Lockheed Martin director of human space flight operations, though the crew is far from being selected yet.

“Eleven- and twelve-year-olds are probably where you want to start capturing the interest and the enthusiasm,” said Karanian. “There is going to be a select few.”

Despite challenges that may remain, the days when women were excluded from space exploration are over, said Colleen Hartman, NASA assistant associate administrator, science mission directorate.

“Men went to the Moon but everyone will be going to Mars.”

By Agence France-Presse

_______________________________________________________________________

»»  read more

Farmer Finds Rare Meteorite

It wasn't a goose that laid a golden egg for one Missouri farmer -- it was an asteroid.

(Washington University in St. Louis geochemist Randy Korotev with the Conception Junction meteorite. His lab analyzed the olivine crystals in the rock. Credit: Dave Gheesling/WUSTL)

Scientists are analyzing an extremely rare meteorite found by a farmer in a tiny Missouri town called Conception Junction (population 202), reports Washington University in St. Louis, which helped identify the rock.
An unnamed farmer had found the unusually heavy stone buried in the side of a hill. He sawed off the end of the stone and realized he had something that didn't come from Earth.
The metal rock is studded on the inside with green olivine crystals. It is one of only 20 so-called pallasitemeteorites that have been found in the United States.
These types of meteorites are believed to be fragments of large asteroids that had enough internal heat to begin melting, which allowed heavy metals to sink and form a core, while lighter elements became part of the rocky surface.
Pallasites are believed to come from the area where an asteroid's metal core transitions to olivine in its lower mantle.
Scientists believe the Conception Junction meteorite was once part of an asteroid that flew in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, until it was nudged toward the inner solar system by Jupiter's gravity field.
Sliced and polished, the stone, which is now in the hands of private collectors, is worth about $200 a gram.

»»  read more