skip to main |
skip to sidebar
We could have alien origins, say scientists who sent fossilized microscopic life-forms into space and back inside an artificial meteorite. The researchers attached the baseball-size rock to the outside of the European Space Agency's Foton M3 spacecraft to test whether biological material could survive the round-trip journey. Sculpted from stone from the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland, the rock contained fossilized microbes and the molecular signatures of microbes. The unmanned spacecraft was launched by rocket from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying 43 experiments. The craft landed in Kazakhstan on September 26 after orbiting the planet for 12 days. "In the bit of rock we got back, some biological compounds have survived," said project leader John Parnell from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Preliminary findings suggest that it's possible simple organisms could arrive via meteorites, he said.
The research also suggests that living microbes would likely have survived in a slightly bigger rock, he added. "This study of organic material is completely new," he said. Previous artificial meteorite experiments have examined only the degree to which rocks melt upon entering the atmosphere.
View: Full Article | Source: National Geographic
A tiny western Atlantic fish does something never before seen: It makes like a bird, living in mangrove wood for months at a time. A team of U.S. and English scientists accidentally discovered the unique behavior, which they call "logpacking," during recent excursions to Belize and Florida. They were studying how the mangrove rivulus—an animal already infamous for its bizarre sexual behavior—survived the frequent dry spells that strike its swampy forest habitat. "One of us kicked at a log, which broke apart and out came the fish!" said team leader Scott Taylor of Brevard County, Florida's Environmentally Endangered Lands Program. Log-Dwelling Fish The mangrove rivulus, also known as the mangrove killifish, is native to the Americas and is about two inches (five centimeters) long. The fish has long been studied for its many unique features. It's the only vertebrate known to naturally self-fertilize, for example. In some populations, it can become a hermaphrodite, developing both male and female parts simultaneously, to produce clones of itself. (Related: "Sexual Orientation Is Genetic in Worms, Study Says" [October 25, 2007].) The animal can also live out of water for up to 66 days, Taylor said, and is one of very few fish species that spend their entire lives in mangrove swamps. Most fish move in and out of the areas as water sources dwindle.
Taylor and his team had previously found that when small pools of water dried up, the rivulus settled into crab burrows. But even those disappear during extreme dry spells. "Sometimes the pools have very heavy [rivulus] populations, and they have to go somewhere when they dry," he said. "We had seen them under logs and in piles of damp leaves, inside coconuts, even in beer cans—for real."
View: Full Article | Source: National Geographic
An Indonesian man whose body is covered with extraordinary tree-like growths has spoken of his hope that an American doctor will cure his unique condition and help him rebuild his family life. Dede, now 35, baffled medical experts when warty "roots" began growing out of his arms and feet after he cut his knee in a teenage accident. Sacked from his job and deserted by his wife, Dede has been unable to look after his two children Entang and Utis, who are now aged 16 and 18. They have been brought up apart from their farther by his extended family on the other side of their remote village south of the capital Jakarta. With Dede's condition considered life threatening, he had resigned himself to missing out on the remaining joys of fatherhood.But now a dermatology expert who flew out from the United States to examine his rare condition says that a course of synthetic Vitamin A should clear up most of the warts, and Dede is contemplating a transformed life. "I can't work, I can't provide money," Dede said. "I want to be able to take care of them [his children].
I hope to live long enough to see my grandchildren." After testing samples of the lesions and Dede's blood, Dr Gaspari of the University of Maryland concluded that his affliction is caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a fairly common infection that usually causes small warts to develop on sufferers.
View: Full Article | Source: The Telegraph
A researcher investigating underwater rock formations off the coast of Japan believes they are the remnants of an Asian equivalent of Atlantis -- an ancient civilization swallowed up by the ocean. Marine geologist Masaaki Kimura says he has identified the ruins of a city off the coast of Yonaguni Island on the southwestern tip of Japan.He has worked for decades to prove the rocks found by scuba diving tourists in 1985 are from an ancient city, which he says may have sparked the fable of Mu -- a Pacific equivalent of the tale of the lost city of Atlantis."Judging by the design and the disposition of the ruins, the city must have looked just like an ancient Roman city," said Kimura, a professor at Ryukyu University and the chairman of the non-profit Marine Science and Culture Heritage Research Association."I can envisage a triumphal arch-like statue stood on the left side of the Colosseum and a shrine over the hill," he told Reuters Television.
Some of the initial divers notices the rocks were unnaturally smooth and formed a sort of staircase near the island's shores. Subsequent dives by Kimura revealed irregular rock outcrops over 1 square km (0.4 square mile) and mounds of rubble.Kimura says he believes the city had a castle, a shrine, an arch, statues and a colosseum."In my estimation, the castle was situated right in the middle of the city. And though not as big as the castle, a lot of ruins of shrine-like structures too have been discovered," he said at his research room.Kimura believes the city was sunk in an earthquake 3,000 years ago.
View: Full Article | Source: Reuters
In the good old days, it would take weeks -- or even months -- to hear about a tsunami washing a dead mermaid ashore. Now we have the photos in our computer's inbox in mere hours. Yes, it's a whole new world for urban legends. Before there was an Internet, or even paper and pen, there were legends and myths. They served as campfire entertainment, passing between friends and generations without much thought as to whether they were true. Sometimes there was a lesson; sometimes it was just a good yarn. But there was always a big, unexplainable mystery, and the fun and wonder of telling an age-old story. Now, in an instantaneous society, everything has changed. Click and it's gone Modern technology can debunk stories that used to be able to travel around the world via word-of-mouth for years. Now, flying saucers become balloons. Bigfoot becomes a superimposed gorilla. Mermaids become papier-mache collections of animal parts. The flip side of that is the Internet is becoming a light-speed-traveling conduit for any crazy tale someone wants to make up.
Technology allows us to make the balloon back into a UFO. As one urban legend gets quashed, several new ones pop up. "The speed by which these legends are transported is ridiculously fast," says April Masini, the author of Web site AskApril.com, an advice and information site that deals with everything from urban legends to relationship advice. "This means more legends, more often. It also means that legends get quashed more easily and more quickly; in fact, there are even Web sites set up to let people know what myths are circulating and what truths are legend."
View: Full Article Source: Contra Costa Times
The basic process for developing fingers and toes in land animals may have existed for more than 500 million years in shark genes, according to a new study. Researchers identified genetic activity in spotted catsharks embryos that signal the creation of digits. The discovery pushes back the date of the evolutionary "fin to limb" advance by some 135 million years. When a gene—essentially a set of instructions—is translated into a trait, such as red hair or an arm, it is said to be expressed. Scientists have long believed that the gene for digit development was first expressed some 365 million years ago in the earliest tetrapodsthe first vertebrates to walk on land. But the new study suggests the finger-and-toe gene was first expressed much earlier, in fish—though not to such an extent that it yielded actual digits. "We've uncovered a surprising degree of genetic complexity in place at an early point in the evolution of appendages," study leader Martin Cohn of the University of Florida said in a statement.
The findings appear this week in the journal PLos ONE. Limb development, which happens in the fetal stage of all limbed animals, is driven by the so-called Hox gene. The early stage of the Hox gene expression regulates the development of limbs down to the forearm and shin. The later phase is responsible for forming fingers and toes. "It has long been thought that fish fins exhibit only the early wave of Hox expression..." Cohn told National Geographic News.
View: Full Article Source: National Geographic
T. rex may have struggled to chase down speeding vehicles as the movie Jurassic Park would have us believe but the world's most fearsome carnivore was certainly no slouch, new research out suggests. The University of Manchester study used a powerful supercomputer to calculate the running speeds of five meat-eating dinosaurs that varied in size from a 3kg Compsognathus to a six-tonne Tyrannosaurus.The study -- believed to be the most accurate ever produced -- puts the T. rex at speeds of up to 18mph, fractionally quicker than a sportsman such as a professional soccer player.The bipedal Compsognathus, by comparison, could reach speeds of almost 40mph -- that's 5mph faster than the computer's estimate for the fastest living animal on two legs, the ostrich.The team -- headed by biomechanics expert Bill Sellers and palaeontologist Phil Manning -- say the accuracy of their results is due to the computer's ability to use data relating directly to each dinosaur.
"Previous research has relied on data from extant bipedal models to provide clues as to how fast dinosaurs could run," said Dr Sellers, who is based in Manchester's Faculty of Life Sciences. "Such calculations can accurately predict the top speed of a six-tonne chicken but dinosaurs are not built like chickens and nor do they run like them."Our research involved feeding information about the skeletal and muscular structure of the dinosaurs directly into the supercomputer so it could work out how the animals were best able to move."Despite its powerful memory and 256 processors the computer still took up to a week to learn the biomechanics of each animal -- starting with the first clumsy steps and developing into a top running speed based on the optimum gait and posture.The first data to be fed into the computer were those of a 70kg human with the muscle and bone structure of a professional sportsman. The computer accurately predicted a top running speed of just under the 8 metres per second of T. rex.
View: Full Article Source: Science Daily
