The Science News Digest 19th June 2009
In the science news this week;
The future of bio-electronics is unveiled, the missing link between birds and dinosaurs is discovered and Nasa plan to bomb the moon!
Mammoth Mistake!
A drawn-out argument among the scientific community could at last have been answered this week, through research that shows woolly mammoths became extinct due to climate change and not via being hunted by humans as previously thought.
Reported in the Guardian this week, the breakthrough comes from a team lead by Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum. Analysing mammoth remains found in Condover, Shropshire using new advanced techniques in radiocarbon dating, they discovered that the remains were only 14,000 years old, shattering estimates that mammoths died out 21,000 years ago.
By studying the timeline of the last ice age, it is believed that the mammoth did indeed become extinct in north-west Europe 21,000 years ago during the main ice advance, but these new findings show that the animals returned to the area once it warmed up again until it finally got too hot 14,000 years ago.
"Plant growth had started again and there was rich grassland and that's exactly what the mammoths liked," said Lister. "The mammoths had been hiding out in Siberia in relatively low numbers during the glaciation maximum. They came back into Europe for a few thousand years on this rich grassland until the forests arrived and it got really warm, and that's when they died out completely."
While humans have not been completely exonerated for the demise of the mammoth, Adrian Lister says that hunting would certainly not have been the only factor responsible.
-------------------------------
I Robot
Terminator Salvation may be set in 2018, but we are getting a lot closer to achieving the technology seen in the film than you think.
Scientists from the University of Oxford and the University of Massachusetts have revealed their developments in synthetic cells capable of interfacing living tissue with electronics.
Not only have the researchers reprogrammed living cells to make them produce drug compounds, they have also connected together artificial ‘protocells’ to work together and share electrical signals.
Described in New Scientist as being like ‘liquid lego’, the protocells’ membranes fuse on contact to create a double thickness boundary membrane. However, to turn them into electrical devices, the researchers used a bacterial toxin that punches holes in cell walls to create pores in the protocells. Once this was achieved, the pores allowed ions to flow from one protocell to another.
Furthermore, because the pores are only open when the current is flowing in one direction, the cells can be used like a diode to form electrical currents.
The future implications of this development allow the potential interfacing between electronic implants and living tissue. Such ‘biological composites’ could be used to guide the re-growth of complex organs or provide a low energy power source in situations where conventional wiring is not appropriate.
-------------------------------
Baccarat.
In a bid to further understand addictions in humans, researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and British Columbia have created a mini Las Vegas for rats.
The high rolling rodents were set tasks lasting 30 minutes, which required them to make a choice between four options of hole to ‘nose’ under to win sugar pellets. While some of the holes produced smaller rewards and incurred fewer penalties if they lost, others gave larger rewards but also larger penalties.
Eventually the rats developed an ‘optimal strategy’, causing them to select the lower risk options and eventually make gains over the period.
To take the study further, the team tested the effects that the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin would have on the rat’s performance, as both chemicals are said to have an effect on addiction.
Serotonin deficiency reduces the ability to make good decisions, while blocking the effects of dopamine would make the rats better gamblers. These results ring true with the side effects in humans for treatments of Parkinson’s disease. Said treatments increase the level of dopamine to aid movement in suffers of the disease, but it has also been seen to induce the side effect of pathological gambling.
Marc Potenza, a psychiatrist from Yale University who specialises in addiction and problem gambling said; "There are currently no approved treatments for pathological gambling or any of the other formal impulse control disorders. Having good animal models is vital in their development."
For more information visit the BBC.
-------------------------------
A New Birthday Suit
The 26th June 2009 marks the 100th anniversary of the independence of the Science Museum. To celebrate in style, its being given a very special birthday present- a £100 million redesign.
Like the V&A, the Science Museum used to be part of the South Kensington Museum, established using the proceeds from the Great Exhibition of 1851.
However, astronomer Norman Lockyer, chemist Henry Roscoe and the great educationist Sir Robert Morant decided that science was so important to Britain; it should have its own showcase.
Over the years, the museum has undergone many facelifts and additions, most notably The East Block, constructed between 1913 and 1928, the Centre Block, now home to the “Making the Modern World” gallery, in the 1960s; and the Wellcome Wing opened to house contemporary science in 2000
Now to top it all, in celebration of this special occasion, plans have been unveiled to create the ‘Museum of the Future’ by 2015. The development will see the museum get a new façade, described as ‘an explosion of glass and light’, a major rooftop extension, an orientation space and ground-breaking new galleries.
For more information visit the Telegraph
-------------------------------
The Early Bird-
Birds are today widely accepted as the closest living relatives of dinosaurs; however, the evolution of the claw into the modern wing has always been somewhat of a conundrum for scientists.
Luckily, some fossils 155 million years old have been discovered in the ‘dino death pit’ in China that has thrown an interesting new light on the situation.
A new dinosaur called Limusaurus inextricabilis meaning “mire lizard who could not escape” is thought to be the missing link between birds and dinosaurs.
The Limusaurus has the features of both modern birds and dinosaurs; a fully developed beak and sharp claws on its feet, but a small pair of ‘hands’ instead of wings.
Previously it was thought that that the three digits on the claws of dinosaurs correspond to the thumb, index and middle finger on human hands. However, the tiny fingers inside a bird’s wing correspond more closely to the second, third and fourth digits.
According to the Times ‘The Limusaurus hand falls somewhere between the two, as it has second, third and fourth digits like a bird “hand”, along with a much smaller first digit, providing a snapshot of how hand-to-wing evolution might have happened.’.
-------------------------------
And Finally; Lunar-tics!
And Finally, it may sound like the storyline from a Bruce Willis movie, but Nasa are preparing to bomb the moon!
Fear not though, it’s most definitely in the name of science as the mission attempts to discover if there are any traces of water hidden beneath the surface of the moon.
Following a launch from Cape Canaveral, the unmanned ‘Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite’ (LCROSS) will fire a centaur rocket into the surface of the moon. The impact is expected to blast out a six mile high cloud of dust, gas and vapourised water as reported in the Telegraph.
The point of the exercise is to clarify if there are vital supplies needed to establish a moon base. For a year after the explosion, an accompanying spacecraft will produce the most detailed map of the moon ever seen and simultaneously search for a lunar landing site for astronauts.
There is already hope for the discovery of water on the moon, following two American spacecraft detecting the presence of hydrogen and oxygen frozen deep in the craters on the lunar poles.
The future of bio-electronics is unveiled, the missing link between birds and dinosaurs is discovered and Nasa plan to bomb the moon!
Mammoth Mistake!
A drawn-out argument among the scientific community could at last have been answered this week, through research that shows woolly mammoths became extinct due to climate change and not via being hunted by humans as previously thought.
Reported in the Guardian this week, the breakthrough comes from a team lead by Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum. Analysing mammoth remains found in Condover, Shropshire using new advanced techniques in radiocarbon dating, they discovered that the remains were only 14,000 years old, shattering estimates that mammoths died out 21,000 years ago.
By studying the timeline of the last ice age, it is believed that the mammoth did indeed become extinct in north-west Europe 21,000 years ago during the main ice advance, but these new findings show that the animals returned to the area once it warmed up again until it finally got too hot 14,000 years ago.
"Plant growth had started again and there was rich grassland and that's exactly what the mammoths liked," said Lister. "The mammoths had been hiding out in Siberia in relatively low numbers during the glaciation maximum. They came back into Europe for a few thousand years on this rich grassland until the forests arrived and it got really warm, and that's when they died out completely."
While humans have not been completely exonerated for the demise of the mammoth, Adrian Lister says that hunting would certainly not have been the only factor responsible.
-------------------------------
I Robot
Terminator Salvation may be set in 2018, but we are getting a lot closer to achieving the technology seen in the film than you think.
Scientists from the University of Oxford and the University of Massachusetts have revealed their developments in synthetic cells capable of interfacing living tissue with electronics.
Not only have the researchers reprogrammed living cells to make them produce drug compounds, they have also connected together artificial ‘protocells’ to work together and share electrical signals.
Described in New Scientist as being like ‘liquid lego’, the protocells’ membranes fuse on contact to create a double thickness boundary membrane. However, to turn them into electrical devices, the researchers used a bacterial toxin that punches holes in cell walls to create pores in the protocells. Once this was achieved, the pores allowed ions to flow from one protocell to another.
Furthermore, because the pores are only open when the current is flowing in one direction, the cells can be used like a diode to form electrical currents.
The future implications of this development allow the potential interfacing between electronic implants and living tissue. Such ‘biological composites’ could be used to guide the re-growth of complex organs or provide a low energy power source in situations where conventional wiring is not appropriate.
-------------------------------
Baccarat.
In a bid to further understand addictions in humans, researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and British Columbia have created a mini Las Vegas for rats.
The high rolling rodents were set tasks lasting 30 minutes, which required them to make a choice between four options of hole to ‘nose’ under to win sugar pellets. While some of the holes produced smaller rewards and incurred fewer penalties if they lost, others gave larger rewards but also larger penalties.
Eventually the rats developed an ‘optimal strategy’, causing them to select the lower risk options and eventually make gains over the period.
To take the study further, the team tested the effects that the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin would have on the rat’s performance, as both chemicals are said to have an effect on addiction.
Serotonin deficiency reduces the ability to make good decisions, while blocking the effects of dopamine would make the rats better gamblers. These results ring true with the side effects in humans for treatments of Parkinson’s disease. Said treatments increase the level of dopamine to aid movement in suffers of the disease, but it has also been seen to induce the side effect of pathological gambling.
Marc Potenza, a psychiatrist from Yale University who specialises in addiction and problem gambling said; "There are currently no approved treatments for pathological gambling or any of the other formal impulse control disorders. Having good animal models is vital in their development."
For more information visit the BBC.
-------------------------------
A New Birthday Suit
The 26th June 2009 marks the 100th anniversary of the independence of the Science Museum. To celebrate in style, its being given a very special birthday present- a £100 million redesign.
Like the V&A, the Science Museum used to be part of the South Kensington Museum, established using the proceeds from the Great Exhibition of 1851.
However, astronomer Norman Lockyer, chemist Henry Roscoe and the great educationist Sir Robert Morant decided that science was so important to Britain; it should have its own showcase.
Over the years, the museum has undergone many facelifts and additions, most notably The East Block, constructed between 1913 and 1928, the Centre Block, now home to the “Making the Modern World” gallery, in the 1960s; and the Wellcome Wing opened to house contemporary science in 2000
Now to top it all, in celebration of this special occasion, plans have been unveiled to create the ‘Museum of the Future’ by 2015. The development will see the museum get a new façade, described as ‘an explosion of glass and light’, a major rooftop extension, an orientation space and ground-breaking new galleries.
For more information visit the Telegraph
-------------------------------
The Early Bird-
Birds are today widely accepted as the closest living relatives of dinosaurs; however, the evolution of the claw into the modern wing has always been somewhat of a conundrum for scientists.
Luckily, some fossils 155 million years old have been discovered in the ‘dino death pit’ in China that has thrown an interesting new light on the situation.
A new dinosaur called Limusaurus inextricabilis meaning “mire lizard who could not escape” is thought to be the missing link between birds and dinosaurs.
The Limusaurus has the features of both modern birds and dinosaurs; a fully developed beak and sharp claws on its feet, but a small pair of ‘hands’ instead of wings.
Previously it was thought that that the three digits on the claws of dinosaurs correspond to the thumb, index and middle finger on human hands. However, the tiny fingers inside a bird’s wing correspond more closely to the second, third and fourth digits.
According to the Times ‘The Limusaurus hand falls somewhere between the two, as it has second, third and fourth digits like a bird “hand”, along with a much smaller first digit, providing a snapshot of how hand-to-wing evolution might have happened.’.
-------------------------------
And Finally; Lunar-tics!
And Finally, it may sound like the storyline from a Bruce Willis movie, but Nasa are preparing to bomb the moon!
Fear not though, it’s most definitely in the name of science as the mission attempts to discover if there are any traces of water hidden beneath the surface of the moon.
Following a launch from Cape Canaveral, the unmanned ‘Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite’ (LCROSS) will fire a centaur rocket into the surface of the moon. The impact is expected to blast out a six mile high cloud of dust, gas and vapourised water as reported in the Telegraph.
The point of the exercise is to clarify if there are vital supplies needed to establish a moon base. For a year after the explosion, an accompanying spacecraft will produce the most detailed map of the moon ever seen and simultaneously search for a lunar landing site for astronauts.
There is already hope for the discovery of water on the moon, following two American spacecraft detecting the presence of hydrogen and oxygen frozen deep in the craters on the lunar poles.
search this section
