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A Big Magnet in a Small Fish - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...ig-magnet-in-a-small-fish.html

scibyte54 Fish

shared by Mars Base on 12 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • After spending 3 years at sea and traveling up to 300 kilometers away from home, a rainbow trout can swim straight back to its original hatching ground, following freshwater streams inland and rarely heading in the wrong direction
  • likely relies on many senses; the fish have superb eyesight and smell
  • trout also seem to rely on Earth's magnetic fields, which point them in the right direction
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • the first time in any animal, scientists have isolated magnetic cells in the fish that respond to these fields
  • may help researchers get to the root of magnetic sensing in a variety of creatures, including birds.
  • Previous research has shown that many species of fish, as well as migratory birds, have the ability to detect differences in magnetic field strengths, which vary around the
  • magnetism in each cell was tens to hundreds of times stronger than researchers had hypothesized
  • suggests that the fish may be able to detect not only the direction of North based on magnetism, but small differences in magnetic field strength that can give them more detailed information about their precise latitude and longitude
  • between one and four cells that rotated in turn with the rotating magnetic field. The team transferred the rotating cells to individual glass slides to study them further under the microscope.
Mars Base

Soyuz Spacecraft Docks at Space Station with New US-Russian Crew | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/space-station-docking-day.html

scibyte69 iss

shared by Mars Base on 26 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • 25 October 2012
  • Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft docked at the space station's rooftop Poisk module at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT)
  • two-day orbital chase
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • American astronaut Kevin Ford of NASA
  • Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy
  • Evgeny Tarelkin
  • stay until March
  • launched into space on Tuesday (Oct. 23
  • second half of the space station's six-person Expedition 33 crew
  • bringing some fishy friends to the space station
  • ferrying 32 small medaka fish to the space station so they can be placed inside a tank, called the Aquatic Habitat, for an experiment to study how fish adapt to weightlessness.
  • robotic Dragon space capsule
  • depart the space station on Sunday (Oct. 28)
  • will return nearly 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms) of science experiment hardware and other gear back to Earth.
  • Wednesday (Oct. 31), an unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft will launch toward the space station and arrive six hours later to make a Halloween delivery of food, equipment and other Halloween treats.
Mars Base

Scientists find possible cause of movement defects in spinal muscular atrophy - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...t-defects-spinal-muscular.html

scibyte42 medical SpinalMuscularAtrophy

shared by Mars Base on 11 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • abnormally low level of a protein in certain nerve cells is linked to movement problems that characterize the deadly childhood disorder spinal muscular atrophy, new research in animals suggests
  • previous research has established the disease’s genetic link to SMN in motor neurons, scientists haven’t yet uncovered how this lack of SMN does so much damage
  • showed in zebrafish that when SMN is missing – in cells throughout the body as well as in motor neurons specifically – levels of a protein called plastin 3 also decrease
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • When the researchers added plastin 3 back to motor neurons in zebrafish that were genetically altered so they couldn’t produce SMN, the zebrafish regained most of their swimming abilities movement that had been severely limited by their reduced SMN. These findings tied the presence of plastin 3 – alone, without SMN – to the recovery of lost movement
  • without SMN in their cells still eventually died, so the addition of plastin 3 alone is not a therapeutic option
  • using animal studies to pinpoint the role of plastin 3 in this disease
  • In zebrafish genetically altered so they don’t produce SMN, plastin 3 levels remained low, as well.
  • lowering plastin 3 first in the fish – SMN was unaffected. This showed that the plastin 3 decrease occurred only when SMN was lowered first
  • SMN production was stimulated in zebrafish initially lacking the protein, plastin 3 levels were restored as well
  • researchers determined that decreased SMN influences plastin 3 production at a late point in the process called translation, when amino acids are strung together to form the protein’s initial shape
  • lack of SMN creates conditions in which too little plastin 3 is made to complete the protein’s normal functions – in these animals, the reduction was about four-fold
  • maybe SMN is affecting translation of other proteins that could be contributing to spinal muscular atrophy
  • That hasn’t been shown before
  • examination of zebrafish motor neurons suggested that decreased plastin 3 affects these cells in at least two ways
  • damaging axons, branch-like extensions that allow for communication among nerve cells
  • destabilizing synapses, structures through which those signals pass
  • result of the added plastin 3, the fish recovered their ability to turn and swim, movements they were previously unable to make.
  • rescued axons, synaptic proteins and behavior all by putting plastin 3 back in motor neurons,” she said. “That’s very encouraging.”
Mars Base

Google Lat Long: Dive into the Great Barrier Reef with the first underwater imagery in ... - 0 views

google-latlong.blogspot.in/...t-barrier-reef-with-first.html

scibyte65 GoogleMap

shared by Mars Base on 27 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • experience six of the ocean’s most incredible living coral reefs
  • sea turtle swimming among a school of fish
  • follow a manta ray
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • experience the reef at sunset
  • see an ancient boulder coral, which may be several hundred years old
  • drift over the vast coral reef at Maui's Molokini crater
Mars Base

Google Maps climbs Everest - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...oogle-Maps-climbs-Everest.html

scibyte87 GoogleMap

shared by Mars Base on 22 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Google did not get to Everest's peak, which is at an altitude of 29,035 feet, or 8,850 meters, but the maps now include 360-degree views of four of the seven summits
  • highest peaks on all seven continents
  • lightweight camera and tripod with a fish-eye lens and in 2011, the spent 12 days
Mars Base

First drug to improve heart failure mortality in over a decade - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...-failure-mortality-decade.html

scibyte96 scibyte97 heart

shared by Mars Base on 01 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Coenzyme Q10 decreases all cause mortality by half
  • results of a multicentre randomised double blind trial
  • It is the first drug to improve heart failure mortality in over a decade
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) occurs naturally in the body and is essential to survival
  • CoQ10 works as an electron carrier in the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cells, to produce energy and is also a powerful antioxidant
  • CoQ10 levels are decreased in the heart muscle of patients with heart failure, with the deficiency becoming more pronounced as heart failure severity worsens
  • Double blind controlled trials have shown that CoQ10 improves symptoms, functional capacity and quality of life in patients with heart failure with no side effects
  • until now, no trials have been statistically powered to address effects on survival
  • study randomised 420 patients with severe heart failure
  • to CoQ10 or placebo and followed them for 2 years
  • primary endpoint was time to first major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE)
  • unplanned hospitalisation due to worsening of heart failure, cardiovascular death, urgent cardiac transplantation and mechanical circulatory support
  • CoQ10 halved the risk of MACE
  • 29 (14%) patients in the CoQ10 group reaching the primary endpoint compared to 55 (25%) patients in the placebo group
  • CoQ10 also halved the risk of dying from all causes, which occurred in 18 (9%) patients in the CoQ10 group compared to 36 (17%) patients in the placebo group
  • CoQ10 treated patients had significantly lower cardiovascular mortality
  • and lower occurrence of hospitalisations for heart failure
  • There were fewer adverse events in the CoQ10 group compared to the placebo group
  • CoQ10 is the first medication to improve survival in chronic heart failure since ACE inhibitors and beta blockers more than a decade ago
  • Other heart failure medications block rather than enhance cellular processes and may have side effects
  • CoQ10
  • is a natural and safe substance, corrects a deficiency in the body and blocks the vicious metabolic cycle in chronic heart failure called the energy starved heart
  • CoQ10 is present in food, including red meat, plants and fish, but levels are insufficient to impact on heart failure
  • CoQ10 is also sold over the counter as a food supplement but
  • Food supplements can influence the effect of other medications including anticoagulants and patients should seek advice from their doctor before taking them
Mars Base

Mussel Glue Could Help Repair Birth Defects - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...glue-could-help-repair-bi.html

scibyte83 BirthDefects

shared by Mars Base on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • researcher said he has used the mollusk’s tricks to develop medical applications
  • include a biocompatible glue that could one day seal fetal membranes, allowing prenatal surgeons to repair birth defects without triggering dangerous premature labor
  • mussels secrete liquid proteins that harden into a solid, water-resistant glue
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Not even Super Glue will stick in a fish aquarium because a layer of water forms that keeps the two surfaces from bonding
  • mussels somehow elbow the water aside and bind themselves to rocks anyway
  • Over 30 years, Waite’s team has uncovered the basis of this remarkable ability
  • parts of the proteins that face out toward the hard surface. It enables liquid holdfast proteins to solidify rapidly and stick flawlessly to wet and salty surfaces
  • If I were to list the desired properties for medical adhesives, they would look exactly the same
  • colleagues have created a synthetic, thread-like polymer called polyethylene glycol that mimics the mussel protein
  • To see if the compound worked in live animals, a veterinary surgeon collaborating with Messersmith's team made a 2.5-centimeter incision in the carotid artery of a dog and placed four stitches along the length of that incision to hold it in place
  • With the stitches alone, the incision bled when the surgeon pressed it.
  • just 20 seconds after the mussel-based glue was applied, the artery was sealed and didn’t bleed.
  • recently
  • team began testing its glue on fetal membranes
  • For the past few decades, surgeons have begun surgically repairing birth defects like spina bifida while a fetus is still in utero
  • the process is risky because the surgery risks rupturing the fetal membrane prematurely, sending the mother into premature labor.
  • There are no good adhesives on the market for surgeons to repair such fetal-membrane tears
  • in recent, unpublished experiments in rabbits, Messersmith and colleagues found that after a veterinary surgeon poked a 3.5-mm hole in the animal’s fetal membrane, the new, mussel-inspired glue readily sealed up the puncture
  • without the glue, only 40% of the fetal rabbits survived the surgery, but with the glue, 60% did.
  • In another recent result
  • researchers chemically altered the polyethylene glycol polymer so that the glue would shrink when it hardened
  • This could counter tissue swelling during surgery,
  • fetal surgeons working with Messersmith are testing whether the glue can help reseal the tissue surrounding the spinal cord to repair a serious birth defect known spinal bifida in rabbits
Mars Base

A Peek Inside the Manta Ray Womb - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...inside-the-manta-ray-womb.html

scibyte50 MantaRay ultrasound

shared by Mars Base on 06 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • In November 2008, a female manta ray got stuck in a fishing net off the coast of Okinawa, Japan
  • fishermen called up the local aquarium, where scientists were studying how the creatures reproduce
  • The ray was pregnant
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • manta rays give birth to live young, but they don't have an umbilical cord or a placenta to deliver oxygen
  • researchers have figured out how manta ray embryos get oxygen without a mammal's life-support equipment
  • uterus is closed off from the outside seawater, so the embryo has to be getting oxygen somehow, but nobody knew how
  • checked to see if she was pregnant using an ultrasound machine that had been modified to keep water away from the electronics
Mars Base

January 26 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on January 26th, died, and events - 0 views

www.todayinsci.com/...1_26.htm

scibyte116 LookingBack

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Canadian earthquake   In 1700, an earthquake, the most intense Canada has ever seen, hit the sea floor off the British Columbia coast. Long before Europeans first landed on Vancouver Island, native legend tells of a great disaster. The sea rose in a heaving wave, and landslides buried a sleeping village. Myth was resolved with science in 2003 by government research. Earthquakes of that intensity cause tidal waves, and Japanese written history tells of a massive tsunami striking fishing villages the next day along the coast of Honshu, killing hundreds. Coupled with geological evidence of the level 9 quake, the connection was clear. Mythology and seismology came together to validate history.
Mars Base

Missing Piece of Long-Neck Dinosaur Finally Discovered: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte110 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 14 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The enamel is too thin and th
  • are way too long and skinny
  • The fossil teeth were embedded in a loose boulder that had eroded out of the hillside
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • evidence that passersby were chipping away at the exposed dinosaur bones in the rock, taking souvenirs.
  • Morrison sandstone surrounding the fragile fossils was so hard that Mossbrucker and his colleagues were afraid that trying to remove the rock would irreparably damage the bone.
  • in 2011, the museum acquired some state-of-the-art pneumatic tools that can remove hard rock without transmitting damaging vibrations to fossils embedded insid
  • cheeckbone nestles against the Apatosaurus maxilla and premaxillae, the bones of the snout, and tiny specks of fish bone surround the larger assemblage
  • snout is highlighting unknown anatomical features
  • including a large
  • hollow space in the skull, which would have influenced the tone of the Apatosaur's calls
  • Other long-necks had this space
  • but A. ajax's was particularly large
  • The discovery also reveals that Lakes' long-ago excavations were close to discovering yet another Apatosaur
  • Teeth found
  • were declared by Marsh in 1884 to belong to Diplodocus lacustris, another long-neck species
  • But those teeth, now held in Yale's collections, look just like Kevin's
  • , Diplodocus lacustris didn't exist — instead, Lakes found part of Kevin and missed the rest.
  • a slew of museum volunteers are still working to coax more of Kevin from its boulder
  • The specimen got its name simply because museum staff and guests found it amusing
  • The current plan is to cleave the block in half so that the pieces can be scanned with micro-CT (computed tomography
  • s technology would allow paleontologists to see inside the block and even to 3D-print a perfect copy of the bones inside without having to remove them physically
  • don't have to put the specimen at any more risk
  • and we still get the data we need
  • The process is slow going, however, in part because the team keeps finding bones in what they expected to be just rock
  • expects to publish his findings in about a year
Mars Base

Regrowing human body parts: The dream comes within reach - NBC News.com - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...s-just-over-horizon-6C10984423

scibyte108 ViewerFeedback

shared by Mars Base on 05 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Sometime in the next few decades, humans may be able to regrow a finger here, a toe there – and maybe even fresh patches of beating heart tissue
  • Human hearts are among the most promising targets
  • A decade ago
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • demonstrated that zebrafish had the ability to repair a badly damaged heart, thanks to a particular protein that regulates the regenerative process
  • That trick could work for humans as well as fish
  • this month, researchers from the Gladstone Institutes showed that they could turn human scar tissue into electrically conductive tissue in a lab dish by fiddling with just a few key genes
  • Among the hurdles that lie ahead: taking that technique out of the lab and applying it to living human hearts
  • humans already have demonstrated some ability to regenerate body parts
  • very young children can fill out the tips of chopped off fingers and toes
  • the salamander, which can regrow a whole arm below the joint
  • Young mice are able to regenerate toes, too
  • been studying mouse toes to understand how a similar regrowth mechanism can be reactivated or imitated in adult humans
  • In 2010, his lab showed it was possible to enhance the regenerative response in adult mice
  • researchers are cautious about predicting how studies of animal regeneration will be applied to humans
  • it's dangerous to say, 'Yes, we expect to regenerate a limb
  • the field is reaching a turning point
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