A Russian Proton booster rocket blasts off from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (Photo: AP)

The Russian Prosecutor General’s office is pressing for disciplinary measures and fines after finding the state-run Roskosmos space agency to blame for two recent high-profile – and highly embarrassing – incidents.

One was the August crash of the Progress spacecraft, an unmanned cargo ship used to supply the International Space Station, while the second incident involved launching Russia’s biggest satellite, the Express-AM4 telecommunications satellite, into the wrong orbit.

The accidents forced Roskosmos to temporarily ground its Soyuz and Proton-M rockets, threatening the future of the International Space Station (ISS). Following the end of NASA’s space shuttle program, the Russian rockets are the only way to send supplies and ferry crew members back and forth from the space station.  As a result, NASA considered abandoning the space station for the first time in 10 years.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s office singled out the agency’s executive for separate blame for “a lack of proper control on the part of Roskosmos officials over the adoption of corresponding decisions.”

Acknowledging the criticism, Roskosmos said it is severely underfunded and unable to compete with firms from Western countries in recruiting and retaining talented employees.

On a postive note, Roskosmos did manage to successfully test launch a Soyuz model on Oct. 3 and is going forward with plans to send the next crew to the ISS on Nov. 14.

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Progress reported in the development of a malaria vaccine

A promising new malaria vaccine appears to reduce the risk of children contracting the disease by 56 percent.

The first results of the large-scale Phase III trial of the vaccine, RTS,S, were published in the online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The trial is being conducted at 11 sites in seven sub-Saharan Africa countries. So far, it  shows that three doses of RTS,S reduces the risk of children experiencing clinical malaria by 56 percent and severe malaria by 47 percent. These first Phase III results are in line with those from previous Phase II studies.

The World Health Organization has said it could recommend using the RTS,S malaria vaccine in 2015.  The recommendation would pave the way for African nations to implement the vaccine through large-scale basis national immunization programs.

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Climate change appears to cause Earth’s species to shrink

Has the lynx been shrinking in size? If so, is global climate change to blame? (Photo: dogrando via flickr)

Many of Earth’s species appear to be shrinking in size, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

But other experts are already expressing their doubts about that.

The study, which is based on a review of previous studies, found that 38 of 85 animal and plant species have shown a documented reduction in size over decades.

The species that are getting physically smaller, according to the study, include cotton, corn, strawberries, bay scallops, shrimp, crayfish, carp, Atlantic salmon, herring, frogs, toads, iguanas, hooded robins, red-billed gulls, California squirrels, lynx, wood rats and a type of Scottish sheep, which was found to be five percent smaller than in 1985.

Although the study’s authors think the shrinkage is probably due to global warming, other experts say that that conclusion goes too far in blaming climate change for what may be natural changes.

Study co-author Jennifer Sheridan, a biology researcher from the University of Alabama, says, “There is a trend in a number of organisms across the board, from plants to big vertebrates, getting smaller. The theory is, as things get warmer, they don’t need to grow as large.”

But Yoram Yom-Tov – a zoologist at Tel Aviv University who doesn’t think global warming is completely to blame – says there’s no need for alarm. “Changes in body size are a normal phenomenon.”

In the opinion of Terry Root, a biologist at Stanford and an expert in climate change, the study’s conclusions “seem kind of far-fetched.”

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IQ waxes and wanes during teen years

(Photo: Miguel Angel via Flickr)

In last week’s Science Scanner, we shared how lack of sleep during adolescence could have a lasting impact on how the brain is wired. Now we get word of a study that shows a person’s intelligence quotient (IQ) can significantly rise or fall during the teenage years.

It’s the first time research has shown that our IQ is not constant.

The study was conducted by the University College of London and the Centre for Educational Neuroscience.

Thirty-three healthy adolescents, between 12 and 16 years old, were tested by the research team in 2004. The teens were tested again four years later, when they were between 15 and 20 years old. Both times, researchers took structural brain scans of their subjects using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

They found significant changes in the IQ scores from 2004 and 2008. Some of the test subjects improved their performance by as much as 20 points on the standardized IQ scale. In other cases, however, performance fell by a similar amount.  The researchers analyzed the test subjects’ MRI scans to see if there were any correlating changes in the structure of their brains.

They did find some. They discovered that an increase in a subject’s verbal IQ score also resulted in an increase in the density of the nerve cells where processing takes place, an area of the left motor cortex of the brain which is activated when we talk.

An increase in the non-verbal IQ score showed a hike in the density of gray matter in the anterior cerebellum, which is associated with hand movement. However,  an increase in verbal IQ didn’t necessarily translate into an increase in non-verbal IQ, too.

According to the study’s authors, this indicates that an adolescent’s intelligence is still developing and that poor IQ test scores at an early stage of this development could be somewhat deceptive, since IQ could change significantly in the next few years.

>>> Read more…

 Scripps Oceanography scientists will use the surfboard-sized Wave Glider to relay real-time seismic data. (Photo: Liquid Robotics)

California scientists are developing a cutting-edge, deep-ocean seismic system which will give them more information about earthquakes and tsunamis across the globe.

The team from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography will develop a potentially transformative system for deploying seafloor seismometers, which will gather vital data – in real-time – for applications ranging from earthquake monitoring, Earth structure and dynamics to tsunami warning systems.

According to the team leader, geophysicist Jonathan Berger, there are no current deep ocean seismic systems capable of  sending crucial data back to shore in real time. Right now, the systems deployed to the bottom of the ocean record data for several months before being retrieved for analysis and study.

Data from ocean bottom seismometers, from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will be integrated into the Project IDA global seismographic network. (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego)

To determine the epicenter of an earthquake, its size and whether or not a tsunami is being generated, Berger says data must be available in real time to be useful.

“When you have a large earthquake, it’s important to quickly estimate the parameters of where it was and how big the seafloor displacement was,” says John Orcutt, one of the team’s co-principal investigators. “In order to do this, you need improved coverage in the ocean. During the recent devastating Japanese earthquake, there were lots of places where there was no coverage, so this effort improves upon that.”

A device called the Wave Glider is an example of the new cutting-edge technology being utilized. Developed by a company called Liquid Robotics, the Wave Glider is an eco-friendly, surfboard-sized, autonomous, unmanned vessel powered by the ocean’s wave energy and solar power.

Data transmission path for sending real-time seismic data from the seafloor to the ocean surface to shore via satellite. (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego)

It will tow an ocean bottom seismic device to a pre-determined location to be deployed,  free floating down to its operating location.

The Wave Glider will circle around above the seismic device on the ocean’s surface, receiving data transmitted via an acoustic modem. The Wave Glider will transmit the data is receives to a shore station via satellite.

The data will be integrated into the global seismographic network of broadband and very long period seismometers called “Project IDA” (International Deployment of Accelerometers).

The data coordinated through this system has helped scientists better understand earthquakes and Earth’s interior structure for decades.

Berger’s team expects to have the system developed, designed, tested and ready for replication and deployment in about two years.

Dr. Jonathan Berger joins us this weekend on the “Science World” radio program to talk more about how this new, cutting-edge technology will provide the latest, most accurate seismic data possible.

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Other stories we cover on the “Science World” radio program this week include:

• As global TB rates drop, scientists zero in on wiping disease out
• Japan still plagued by Fukushima nuclear plant radiation
• Chinese company makes solar power more affordable
• Vitamin E supplements linked to higher prostate cancer risk
• Top physicists agree Einstein’s theory of relativity isn’t moot yet
• China eyes North and South Poles
• Drill tests new Indian Ocean tsunami warning system

The Mt. St. Helens eruption of May 18, 1980, sent volcanic ash, steam, water, and debris to a height of 60,000 feet. About two-thirds of a cubic mile of material was ejected. In comparison, the Toba super eruption, one of the Earth's largest known eruptions, spewed 1,000 times more material. (Washington State Department of Natural Resources)

A volcanic super eruption, which occurs about every 100,000 years,  is a cataclysmic natural event, blowing out an incredible amount of debris and ash,  devastating the environment and disrupting the world’s climate for years, possibly causing mass extinctions.

While scientists continuously monitor several super volcanoes around the world, they don’t know what actually triggers these violent explosions. Now, a new model of volcanic super eruptions shows these massive eruptions could be caused by a combination of magma chamber geometry and temperature.

Researchers at Oregon State University say the creation of a halo of flexible rock, which forms around the magma chamber, allows the pressure – built up over tens of thousands of years – to raise the roof above the magma chamber.  Eventually faults from above trigger the collapse of the caldera, which leads to its subsequent eruption.

“You can compare it to cracks forming on the top of baking bread as it expands, as the magma chamber pressurizes at depth, cracks form at the surface to accommodate the doming and expansion,” says lead author Patricia Gregg, a post-doctoral researcher. “Eventually, the cracks grow in size and propagate downward toward the magma chamber.”

Findings of this research were presented at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis, Minn.

>>> Read more…

Einstein’s theory of relativity isn’t moot yet

Albert Einstein circa 1921 (wikipedia)

Officials from three of the world’s major physics labs express doubt about recent findings by European scientists who claim to have recorded subatomic particles moving faster than the speed of light.

Back in September, scientists used a particle accelerator – provided by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) – to fire a neutrino beam from a lab near Geneva to another in Italy. They say it traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. If true, that would disprove Einstein’s theory of relativity, which suggests nothing travels faster than light.

The three officials – Rolf Heuer of CERN, Pier Oddone of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab in the U.S.) and Atsuto Suzuki of High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Japan – also said they share a growing conviction that the Higgs boson, a particle which explains why matter has mass, will be found or ruled out within 12 months.

>>> Read more…

Sleep critical to adolescent’s developing brain

 (Photos.com (C) 2007 Jupiterimages)

Lack of sleep during adolescence could lead to more than slow-moving, sleepy teens, it could also have a lasting  impact on how the brain is wired.

We already know that adolescence is a crucial and sensitive period of development when the brain changes dramatically. During a person’s early teen years, the brain undergoes a massive rewiring of nerve circuits.

Experimenting with adolescent mice, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that short-term sleep restriction in their test subjects prevented the balanced growth and depletion of brain synapses, which are the connections between nerve cells where communication occurs.

The researchers are now looking into what happens to the young brain when there is a chronic sleep restriction, a condition many adolescents often experience.

Study leader Dr. Chiara Cirelli says she can’t predict the outcome of the studies which are already under way. “It could be that the changes are benign, temporary and reversible. Or there could be lasting consequences for brain maturation and functioning.”

>>> Read more…

Mooning over asteroids

Artist rendition of Minvera (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

Most of us know that a number of planets have one or more moons orbiting them, but it might surprise you to learn that some asteroids have them, too. In fact, Joshua Emery at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville says about 20 percent of asteroids do.

Emery, a member of an international team planetary astronomers, focused his research on the triple asteroid Minerva, located in the main-asteroid-belt, which contains most of our solar system’s asteroids. Minverva is known to possess two moons.

“Minerva was thought to be a pretty typical, unremarkable asteroid until we discovered its two moons,” Emery says. “Now, interest in this system has grown. And through a lot of new observations, from both ground-based and space-based telescopes, we have developed a much more detailed understanding of Minerva and its moons.”

Emery and his team believe the discovery of moons around asteroids is important because it can provide clues to the asteroid’s formation.

“All other large main-belt asteroids with one or more moons are very porous,” says Emery. “Such high porosity strongly suggests that they are piles of rubble held together by gravity rather than solid rocks.”

The results of the group’s findings were released at the EPSC-DPS meeting in Nantes, France.

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The leaner mouse with functional brown fat (left) dissipates considerable amounts of energy as heat. The orexin-deficient mouse (right) stores energy as fat instead of burning it. (Image by Peter Allen, UCSB)

An injection of a hormone produced naturally in the brain might help a person lose weight, without having to cut down on what they eat.

That’s the finding of U.S. researchers at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in Florida.

The discovery could provide a new way to treat obesity and other metabolic disorders.

The hormone – orexin – appears to trigger so-called “good” fat to battle “bad” fat.

The fat we typically think of as body fat is called white fat. But we also have another form of fat known as brown fat and, unlike white fat, brown fat does more than just store fat.  According to researchers, it actually burns fat.

Brown fat is full of blood vessels and mitochondria, which is why it’s brown. This fat tissue is apparently very good at turning our calories into energy.

The researchers discovered that orexin activates calorie-burning brown fat in mice and that a deficiency of this hormone could be associated with obesity.

To investigate further, they acquired mice which were genetically engineered to lack orexin.  These mice weighed more than their non-engineered friends even though they actually ate less, which suggests overconsumption was not the cause their obesity.

The researchers found that these orexin-deficient mice, when fed a high-fat diet, were unable to properly convert the extra calories into heat the way normal mice do.  Instead, that energy wound up being stored as fat.

Probing further into the mice’s brown fat, the team discovered that brown fat in the orexin-free mice didn’t develop properly at the embryonic stage, and that this shortage had lasting effects on the creatures’ energy expenditure and weight, even in adulthood.

Furthermore, once the genetically-engineered mice were given some orexin, their offspring’s brown fat developed properly before birth and continued to be active into adulthood.

The team also found that adding orexin to stem cells in a laboratory dish caused them to specialize into brown fat cells, which created even more of a fat-burning engine.

“Without orexin, the mice are permanently programmed to be obese,” says Dr. Devanjan Sikder, senior study author. “With it, brown fat is activated and they burn more calories.”

Further study on mice shows that diet dependent obesity – the most common form of obesity – can be resolved by an injection of orexin, without having to reduce calorie intake.

While most current weight loss products tend to be aimed at reducing a person’s appetite, the researchers believe a therapy based on orexin could launch a new class of fat-fighting drugs.

“This is very exciting and illustrates a shift in paradigm of anti-obesity therapeutics,” says Sikder.

Encouraged by the findings, the researchers look forward to their next step – clinical trials.

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Other stories we cover on the “Science World” radio program this week include:

• Steve Jobs led a high-tech revolution with an Apple
• 2011 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Physics and Physiology or Medicine announced
• NexTech showcases the latest technology at the Johnson Space Center
• Africa’s problem with E-Waste
• Popular birth control device could increase risk of HIV infections
• While malaria vaccine development disappoints, scientists go after the mosquitoes

The winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry was announced this morning in Stockholm.

Daniel Shechtman of Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, Israel, won for his 1982 discovery of quasicrystals.

Quasicrystals are unusual materials which have some of the properties of a regular crystal, but have a more elaborate and complex structure at the atomic level. This unique material does not conduct heat or electricity well and, because of this, the quasicrystals can be used in thermoelectric materials, which converts heat into electricity and vice versa.

The Nobel prizes for physics and physiology or medicine were also announced earlier this week.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in physics went to three people;  Saul Perlmutter from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California; Brian P. Schmidt of the Australian National University; and Adam G. Riess from Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

By studying distant supernovae, or exploding stars, the three physicists discovered that our universe continues to expand at an accelerating rate, even after more than 14 billion years since the Big Bang.

This year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to the late Ralph M. Steinman for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity; and to scientists Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity.

Sadly, Ralph Steinman died from pancreatic cancer just three days before the announcement was made.

The Nobel Prizes for these science-based categories will be awarded in a ceremony to be held Dec. 10 in Stockholm, Sweden.

>>> Read more…

Arctic ice continues to decline

NASA satellite data reveals how this year's minimum sea ice extent, reached on Sept. 9 as depicted here, declined to a level far smaller than the 30-year average (in yellow), opening up Northwest Passage shipping lanes (in red). (Graphic: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio)

Arctic sea ice continues to decline; the summertime sea ice cover narrowly avoided a new record low, which was set back in 2007.

That’s according to satellite data from NASA and from the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months, then shrinks each summer as the sun rises higher in the northern sky. The Arctic sea ice reaches its annual minimum extent each year in September.

NASA monitors and studies the changing sea ice conditions in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions with a variety of spaceborne and airborne research capabilities.

Joey Comiso, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., says that not only is the sea ice declining, but the pace of the decline is also much more drastic.

Climate models constructed by researchers suggest the Arctic could lose almost all of its summer ice cover by 2100. However, they also found that that the ice extent has declined faster in recent years than their models had predicted.

>>> Read more…

Green tea may slow weight gain

A cup of green tea

Green tea has become a popular beverage in recent years, most likely because of its many health benefits.  Now food scientists at Penn State University in State College, Penn., have found another reason to drink the brew;  it may slow down weight gain and serve as another tool in the fight against obesity.

Researchers fed obese mice Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), a compound found in green tea, along with a high-fat diet. They found that the mice gained weight at a significantly slower rate than the control group mice, which didn’t get the green tea supplement

In addition to gaining weight at a slower rate, says Joshua Lambert, an assistant professor of food science in agricultural sciences at Penn State, the mice fed the green tea supplement showed a nearly 30 percent increase in fecal lipids, which suggests that the EGCG was also limiting fat absorption.

The researchers released their findings in the current online edition of the journal “Obesity.”

>>> Read more…

Fish behavior could determine its fate

A bluegill fish (Photo: Tom Tetzner - U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Northeast Region

A fish’s personality could determine how likely it is to be caught or captured, according to Canadian researchers.

The Queen’s University in Ontario found that anglers who fished near rocky outcrops or in areas of water with submerged vegetation seemed more likely to catch timid fish who prefer safe, hidden habitats, while those fishing in open water were more likely to reel in bolder fish.

The researchers examined the personalities of bluegill sunfish which were caught  using two different capture techniques; angling, which is the traditional hook attached to a fishing line; and a method called beach seining, which involves dragging a long net through water to surround and ensnare fish.

Fish caught with the angling technique appeared to be more timid than fish captured by the beach seining method.

According to the research team, the differences they found in personalities of fish could have significant evolutionary and ecological consequences for affected fish populations, as well as for the quality of fisheries.

>>> Read more…

(Photo: photos.com)

According to an old proverb,  the eyes are the windows of the soul.  They’re also  one of the most important accomplishments of evolution, nature’s perfect camera providing us with a vivid visual sense of the world around us.

However, did you ever wonder how the eye came to be? What caused the eye to be formed to begin with?  How did it evolve and develop to fit the specific needs for all current and past species on Earth?

Thanks to the curiosity of an ophthalmology professor at the University of California, Davis, we can read all about it in a new book called “Evolution’s Witness: How Eyes Evolved”.

Dr. Ivan Schwab wanted to find out how animals were able to see. As he got further into his research, he realized he also wanted to learn about the origins of the eye itself and how it developed through years of evolution.

So how did it begin?  What was the stimulating factor that set off what would become the eye?  Dr. Schwab simply points to the sun and the energy its produces.

“The eye didn’t start as an eye as we know it, for sight,” he says.

Indeed, what would become the eye first started as the means for transferring the sun’s energy into energy for the cells.

“This was done by a variety of molecules… the best one is related to Vitamin A, the same vitamin you get from carrots or mangoes,” according to Dr. Schwab. “That particular chemical will transform the light rays of the sun into energy for the cell so that it can perform its internal mechanics.”

When the first eye, as we know it, appeared is kind of a guessing game, says Dr. Schwab, since the eye doesn’t fossilize most of the time due to its soft parts. The eye gradually evolved into an organ capable of seeing light and dark and perhaps some form.

Dr. Schwab imagines that the first real eye saw very poorly, registering blurry images and used, perhaps, to find where to capture energy or locate enemies.

Once eyes appeared, they evolved in different ways, developing into at least 10 to 12 varied forms. Each species’ eyes are developed into one that fits its specific niche.

One example is the the marine crustacean, the stomatopods, or mantis shrimp. Dr. Schwab says, since this creature tends to live near coral reefs, it has eyes with more color receptors than we have. As a result, they can see more colors than we can – 16 pigments compared to the three pigments humans can detect.

The human eye is referred to as camera-style eye since its mechanics resemble those of a film-loaded camera.

Dr. Schwab describes them as a sphere with a front element called the cornea. Another element is the lens, which does the focusing. The back of the eye, or retina, creates the visual image that is delivered to the brain.

Another type of eye style is the telescopic eye.

As an example, Dr. Schwab cites the “jumping spider.” Jumping spiders have excellent vision, with one of the highest acuities among invertebrates.  Its eyes are small and compact, utilizing telephoto-type optics to maximize its vision.

Since this spider can’t move its eyes externally, like we can, it must do so internally.

“It’s like a raster scan on your TV,” says Dr. Schwab. “It lays out a line of dots,  another line, another line, until it’s formed a whole image, but, of course, it does so rapidly.”

Dr. Schwab says that, although eyes will continue to evolve, the eyes of many species are already at a mature level so they’re not going to evolve much further in terms of the optics themselves.  So where our eyes or vision will improve, speculates Dr. Schwab, is probably in the interpretation of the visual signals the eye produces.

Dr. Schwab, joins us this weekend on the “Science World” radio program to talk about his new book, the eye’s first appearance and its subsequent evolution and development.

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Other stories we cover on the “Science World” radio program this week include:

• Warning sounded on dangers of arsenic in India’s groundwater
• Study: Female coffee drinkers are less depressed
• China launches first module of future space station
• South Korean weather forecasters tell you when you’ll catch a cold
• Reducing an invasive species while fighting hunger at the same time
• Whew! NASA finds fewer ‘planet-buster’ asteroids than predicted

This picture of the nebula around  IRAS 17163-3907. The star and its shells resemble an egg white around a yolky center, leading astronomers to nickname it the Fried Egg Nebula. (Photo: ESO/E. Lagadec)

Astronomers have found nebulae that resemble a horse’s head, a check  mark, a crab, an owl and a fried egg.

New pictures of a hyper-giant star, formally known  as IRAS 17163-3907, show it’s surrounded by a huge double shell. The star and its shells resemble an egg white around a yolky center, so University of Manchester scientists – along with others involved in the research – have nicknamed it the Fried Egg Nebula.

The star is about 13,000 light-years from Earth, making it the closest known yellow hypergiant to our planet. Its 1,000 times bigger and 500,000 times brighter than the sun.

To put the star’s size into perspective, scientists say if you placed it in the center of our Solar System, the Earth would lie deep within the star itself and the planet Jupiter would be orbiting just above its surface.

Add in surrounding nebula and it would then engulf all of the Solar System’s planets, dwarf planets and even some of the comets that orbit far beyond the orbit of Neptune.  The outer shell has a radius of 10,000 times the distance from the Earth to the  Sun.

>>> Read more…

Learning While You Sleep

Talk about multitasking.

You might be learning while you sleep, according to a new study out of the Michigan State University.

(Photo: photos.com)

The study authors say evidence shows your brain processes information while you sleep, without your  being aware that it is doing so. This ability may also contribute to your memory while awake.

The scientists believe this is a new, previously-undefined form of memory, which is separate and quite distinct from our traditional memory systems.

It also appears that the sleep memory ability varies from person to person.

The researchers say their study reinforces the need for a good night’s sleep, which could improve your work or school performance even more than previously thought.

>> Read more…

If You Give a Fish a Hammer

We’re often amazed to see animals use tools to accomplish a task, but a fish? Yep!

Giacomo Bernardi,  professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz has published video of tool use by a fish.

The 2009 video, shot by Bernardi in the island nation of Palau, shows an orange-dotted tuskfish dig a clam out of the sand and then swim over to a rock, where it repeatedly slams the clam against the rock in order to crush it.

Tool use was once thought to be a strictly human trait. Then, in the 1960′s, Jane Goodall stunned the scientific community when she reported tool use by chimpanzees. In the years since, many other animals – various primates, several kinds of birds, dolphins, elephants and others – have been observed using tools, too.

Bernardi says his movie shows fish are capable of forward thinking, such as taking a number of steps to reach a goal like getting dinner.

“For a fish”, Bernardi says, “it’s a pretty big deal.”

>>> Read more…

On the Path to New Anti-malarial Drugs

Scientists may be one step closer to developing new treatments to fight malaria caused by drug resistant parasites.

A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Monash University and Virginia Tech have examined and analyzed the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, to learn how it uses enzymes to devour human hemoglobin – the protein that delivers oxygen throughout the body – as a food source.

Following a bite from an infected mosquito, the parasite that causes malaria makes itself at home in the human host’s red blood cells and begins to feed on the blood’s hemoglobin.

The scientists found that two enzymes, called aminopeptidases, may be playing an active part in the parasite’s feeding process by releasing single amino acids from proteins, or peptides.

When the scientists inhibited one of the parasite’s enzymes called called PfA-M1, they found it blocked the breakdown of the hemoglobin, virtually starving the parasite to death.

The second enzyme, known as leucyl aminopeptidase, is an important element in this feeding process too, but earlier in the parasite’s life cycle within the host’s red blood cell.

These findings have allowed the team to validate that the two enzymes are potential anti-malarial drug targets that can be used in the future to develop new malaria treatments.

>>> Read more…

An illustration of how Acherontisuchus guajiraensis, a 60-million-year-old ancestor of crocodiles, would have looked in its natural setting.  You can also see titanoboa (world's largest snake) in the upper left side of image. (Danielle Byerley, Florida Museum of Natural History)

The fossilized remains of a 60-million-year-old, long-extinct, freshwater relative to the modern crocodile have been found by University of Florida researchers.

The 20-foot-long, fish-eating ancient crocodile is believed to be the first known land animal from the Paleocene New World tropics. It was discovered in the same northeastern Colombian coal mine as titanoboa, the world’s largest snake.

While these two creatures probably competed for the same food, researchers believe the huge super-snake, which had a more generalized diet than the crocodile, could easily have feasted on the croc’s young, too.

This photograph shows the size difference in the jawbones of two 60-million-year-old crocodile ancestors found in northeastern Colombia - (Photo by Kristen Grace/ Florida Museum of Natural History)

By the way, the titanoboa’s remains were found in 2009. They measured up to 15 meters in length and weighed about 1,135 kilograms.

This new species – called Acherontisuchus guajiraensis – is from the dyrosaurid family of extinct neosuchian crocodyliforms.

It was named for the river Acheron (“the river of woe”) from Greek mythology, since the animal lived in a wide river that emptied into the Caribbean.

Alex Hastings, who led the study, displays a pelvic bone of  a 60-million-year-old ancestor of the modern crocodile. (Photo by Kristen Grace/Florida Museum of Natural History)

The newly-discovered fossils of a partial skeleton of this species reveal that the dyrosaurids were quite important and influential in northeastern Colombia.

Paleontologists also believe diversity within this reptilian family evolved along with a number of environmental changes, such as an asteroid impact or the appearance of competitors from other groups.

The discovery of the ancient crocodile species is discussed in a new study in the journal “Paleontology.”

The study’s authors say this discovery should give scientists a better understanding of the diversity of animals that inhabited the oldest known rainforest ecosystem, which was much hotter than the rainforests of today. It could also prove useful in helping us better understand the impact of a warmer climate in the future.

The ancient crocodile had a long, narrow snout  full of pointed teeth.  According to scientists, these physical characteristics allowed the new species to specialize in hunting lungfish and relatives of bonefish, which inhabited the water of their habitat.

Albert Einstein (circa 1921) (Photo: wikipedia)

Unthinkable?

If a finding released Thursday by scientists in Geneva proves to be true, the world’s most famous equation – Albert Einstein‘s E=MC2 – could be moot, undoing our current understanding of the physical world.

Einstein revealed that equation in his special theory of relativity released in 1905. It asserted that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, and helped shape our understanding of the physical world.

The scientists in Geneva fired a beam of neutrinos – elementary particles which don’t hold an electrical charge and pass through ordinary matter with virtually no interaction – from CERN‘S particle accelerator to a lab in Italy about 730 kilometers away.

The speed of light is 299,792.458 kilometers per second. The Geneva scientists found their sub-atomic particles traveled to Italy 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light – or 300,006 kilometers per second.

That appears to break the limit set by Einstein.

An illuminated globe at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, outside Geneva, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

In fact, CERN’s announcement was greeted with more skepticism than usual by the physics community, with many calling for independent verification of the findings.

However, the CERN scientists, many of whom remain skeptical themselves, expected the uproar.  They carefully examined their results and recalculated their findings for nearly six months before publicly announcing them. They’re even asking colleagues everywhere to double check the findings and calculations.

The inevitable verification process will take place in two steps. The first would be to evaluate the results and supporting data, which are available on Cornell University’s physics website.  The second step, which could take place in a couple of months, will require the duplication of the CERN neutrino experiment in another laboratory.

In the meantime, you can bet physicists everywhere will scour CERN’s data for even the tiniest glitch, miscalculation or other anomaly which will debunk the findings and restore Einstein’s calculations that nothing is faster than the speed of light.

Other stories we cover on the “Science World” radio program this week include:

• Nuclear power use grows despite Japanese accident
• Nigeria moves ahead with its nuclear power plans
• Have scientists a way to disarm the AIDS virus?
• Earthquakes are still too tough to predict
• Ancient relative of the crocodile found