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Mars Base

Growing bones with Lego - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...2012-03-bones-lego.html

scibyte40 bones lego

shared by Mars Base on 28 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • A video produced for Google Science Fair shows how researchers at Cambridge making synthetic bone have turned to legendary children’s toy Lego for a helping hand.
  • The video, which has already had over 100,000 views, goes behind the scenes at the lab to show how the team develop the bone samples.
  • Bone has excellent mechanical properties for its weight
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • synthetic bone has a range of revolutionary applications; from the obvious, such as medical implants, to the almost science fiction, such as a material in building construction
  • the process involved in producing samples of bone is tedious and time consuming.
  • To make the bone-like substance you take a sample, then you dip it into one beaker of calcium and protein, then rinse it in some water and dip in into another beaker of phosphate and protein – you have to do it over and over and over again to build up the compound
  • team started to think about ways of automating the arduous process – the ideal being a robot of some kind that they could set up and run in the background
  • One way would be to buy very expensive kit off the shelf
  • Lego just seemed like the simplest, and cheapest, way to go about things
  • researchers decided to build cranes from a Lego Mindstorms robotics kit
  • contains microprocessors, motors, and sensors that can be programmed to perform basic tasks on repeat
  • sample is tied to string at the end of the crane which then dips it in the different solutions
  • Research is a funny thing because you might think that we order everything up from scientific catalogues – but actually a lot of the things we use around the lab are household items, things that we picked up at the local home goods store – so our Lego robots just fit in with that mind-set
  • The team at Cambridge are working on hydroxyapatite–gelatin composites to create synthetic bone, and the work is generating considerable interest due to the low energy costs and improved similarity to the tissues they are intended to replace.
  • video was made in the lab at the Department of Engineering by Google to help promote their online Science Fair
  • international competition run by the company to encourage teenagers to engage with science
  • Anybody and everybody between 13 and 18 can enter
Mars Base

Dinosaur Bone Damaged in WWII Revealed with 3D Printing | LiveScience - 0 views

www.livescience.com/-dinosaur-bone-3d-printed.html

scibyte111 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • belongs to the Museum of National History in Berlin
  • During World War II, a bomb fell on the museum's east wing, collapsing the basement where dinosaur fossils were stored
  • Making matters worse, bones from two separate expeditions had been housed in the same area
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • One expedition, in Tanzania, ran from 1909 to 1913 and brought back 235 tons of fossils, labeled with letters based on their locations.
  • The other fossils came from a 1909 discovery in Halberstadt, Germany. Those bones also used a letter-based label system
  • individual animals
  • By comparing the scans to sketches of the long-ago digs, the researchers determined that the vertebra came from the Halberstadt dig in Germany
  • The scans showed a fractured bone. Some of the cracks were no doubt from fossilization
  • But one crunched-up corner was likely the result of the bombing
  • To recreate the bone as it was before the bombing, the researchers took data from the CT scan and built a blueprint to 3D print the fossil
  • When the process was done
  • The researchers were even able to print the bone chip from the bombing damage, which fit into the rest of the vertebra like a puzzle piece.
  • Mars Base on 02 Dec 13
     
    Dinosaur Bone Damaged in WWII Revealed with 3D Printing
Mars Base

Dinosaur Debate Gets Cooking - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...Dinosaur_debate_gets_cooking

scibyte53 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 28 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Annual growth lines etched in the femurs of 115 wild warm-blooded mammals such as giraffes, reindeer and gazelles are similar to those previously seen in the bones of reptiles and dinosaurs
  • People always said that mammals do not show these lines
  • like a myth that’s going around; you read it everywhere
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • people haven’t really studied mammals
  • In dinosaurs and reptiles, yearly cycles of growth and nutrition are stamped in the bones like the rings of a tree
  • months, animals pack on blood vessel-rich bone tissue
  • lean months they skimp, laying down only thin sheets
  • Under a microscope, the slender sheets of bone look like dark lines
  • “lines of arrested growth” or “rest lines” stripe the bones of both dinosaurs and reptiles, some scientists assumed that dinosaurs, like reptiles, were cold-bloode
  • new work shows that warm-blooded mammals have banded bones, too
  • Every mammal Köhler’s team examined showed cyclical growth
  • their specimens looked just like those seen in dinosaur fossils.
  • probably not going to close the debate whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or not
  • the argument that [rest lines] mean cold-blooded is certainly not valid any longer
  • analyzed bone slices — as thin as strands of human hair — from 41 species of ruminants — mammals with four-chambered stomachs
  • Institute of Zoology at the University of Hamburg donated most of the skeletal specimens from its Oboussier collection
  • vast bunch of now-endangered and protected African animals gathered in the 1950s through the 1970s
Mars Base

Preserved bone of Pterosaur found in stomach of Velociraptor - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ecialized-predators-didnt.html

scibyte37

shared by Mars Base on 07 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Scientists have discovered a bone from a pterosaur (giant flying reptile or 'pterodactyl') in the guts of the skeletal remains of a Velociraptor (small predatory theropod dinosaur) that lived in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia some 75 million years ago.
  • Preserved bone of Pterosaur found in stomach of Velociraptor
  • originally recovered from the Gobi Desert in 1994
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • difficult and probably even dangerous for the small theropod dinosaur to target a pterosaur with a wingspan of 2 metres or more, unless the pterosaur was already ill or injured
  • surface of the bone is smooth and in good condition, with no unusual traces of marks or deformation that could be attributed to digestive acids
  • Further analysis of the skeletal remains of the Velociraptor showed that it was carrying, or recovering from, an injury to its ribs when it died
  • So the pterosaur bone we've identified in the gut of the Velociraptor was most likely scavenged from a carcass
  • likely that the Velociraptor itself died not long after ingesting the bone
  • first time that bones from a pterosaur have been uncovered as gut contents from dinosaur remains
Mars Base

Sea Coral in Bone Grafting? How the Material is Made Compatible with Natural Bone - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...al-made-compatible-natural.htm

scibyte112 Biometerial

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • sea coral
  • scientists have now discovered a way to refine
  • properties that may make it more compatible with natural bone.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • When biomaterials do not biodegrade
  • may continuously cause problems
  • In extreme conditions, it is possible that the different mechanical properties of the artificial bone graft may cause a re-fracture or become a source for bacterium growth in infection
  • In order to get around this issue
  • researchers decided to study the calcium carbonate found in the exoskeleton of sea coral and convert it into coralline hydroxyapatite (CHA)
  • then refined the material to produce coralline hydroxyapatite/calcium carbonate (CHACC)
  • This CHACC composition contained 15 percent of CHA in a thin layer around the calcium carbonate and had a strong, porous structure that has made CHA commercially successful, but contained significantly improved biodegrading properties to support natural bone healing.
  • not to say that the material is ready to be used across the globe
  • There is a ways to go before the material can match the benefits of an autograft
  • and can be used by the several million people worldwide that undergo bone grafting procedures each year
  • the development of the CHACC material could provide an important step toward creating a biodegradable material that could help patients in the future
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

Japanese researchers build robot with most humanlike muscle-skeleton structure yet (w/ ... - 0 views

phys.org/...ike-muscle-skeleton-video.html

scibyte75 robot

shared by Mars Base on 12 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Called Kenshiro, the robot has been demonstrated at the recent Humanoids 2012 conference in Osaka, Japan
  • previous effort resulted in a robot they called Kojiro
  • Kenshiro was preceded by a robot concept the team called Kenzoh
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • the team found that simply adding artificial muscle and bones generally tended to create weight problems
  • upper body alone came to 45 kg
  • with the idea of mimicking human bone and muscle at the individual body part level, i.e. a backbone, calf, or knee joint
  • Each part was custom designed to fall within the weight parameters of actual human limbs and other parts of the body.
  • a robot sized to approximate the average 12 year old Japanese boy
  • bones made of aluminum
  • connected together
  • the way human bones are connected
  • artificial ligaments
  • and a collection of muscles that mimic very closely those in the human body
  • Kenshiro has 160 muscles that are constructed using a single actuator motor for individual muscle groups
  • appears to be a collection of parts cobbled together to form a single whole
  • The robot can walk, but just barely
  • can do deep knee bends, but the rest of the body seems out of sync
Mars Base

Muscle reconstruction reveals how dinosaurs stood - 0 views

phys.org/...n-reveals-dinosaurs-stood.html

scibyte52 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Much is known about the dinosaurs that walked on 4 legs like Stegosaurus and Triceratops, but their stance has been a topic of debate
  • reconstructed the muscles on dinosaur limb bones and combined this with what is already known about their skeletons to get a truer picture of how they stood.
  • team looked at the horned dinosaurs (ceratopsids), the armoured dinosaurs (stegosaurs), and the duck-billed dinosaurs (hadrosaurs), 3 groups of ornithischian dinosaurs.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • studied more than 200 dinosaur fossil bone specimens, looking at how muscles and soft tissue attach to forelimbs, hind limbs, hip bones and vertebrae
  • results suggest the front limbs of the ceratopsids and the stegosaurs had elbows that were bent and held slightly out from the sides of the body
  • hadrosaurs held their forelimbs quite close together.
  • 'If a muscle is present in birds, and it is also present in crocodiles, then we can be quite sure it was also present in the dinosaurs,' says Maidment. 'By looking at all of the limb muscles in crocodiles and birds through dissection, we can build up a picture of the limb muscles in the dinosaurs.'
  • scientists use data from the dinosaurs' closest living relatives, birds and crocodiles.
  • Although their skeletons were very similar, the team found that the muscles were different
  • more diverse methods of locomotion than previously thought.
  • the shape of the bones alone does not tell the full story
  • We've already begun doing this and are producing 3D computational models of the limbs to look at how the muscles worked as the animals moved
  • Mars Base on 21 Jun 12
     
    The results suggest the front limbs of the ceratopsids and the stegosaurs had elbows that were bent and held slightly out from the sides of the body (as though it was half-way through a press up). In comparison the hadrosaurs held their forelimbs quite close together. Until now, scientists have just used the fossil skeletons to reconstruct what a dinosaur looked like. However, the team says the skeleton alone isn't a good predictor of how the animal stood, and it is crucial to look at the soft tissue as well. This also has implications for scientists who study behaviour an
Mars Base

Cell therapy shows remarkable ability to eradicate cancer in clinical study - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...arkable-ability-eradicate.html

scibyte121 MedicalTreatment

shared by Mars Base on 20 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The largest clinical study ever conducted to date of patients with advanced leukemia found that 88 percent achieved complete remissions after being treated with genetically modified versions of their own immune cells.
  • Adult B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), a type of blood cancer that develops in B cells, is difficult to treat because the majority of patients relapse.
  • Patients with relapsed B-ALL have few treatment options; only 30 percent respond to salvage chemotherapy.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • In the current study, 16 patients with relapsed B-ALL were given an infusion of their own genetically modified immune cells, called T cells.
  • The cells were "reeducated" to recognize and destroy cancer cells that contain the protein CD19.
  • one of the first patients to receive this treatment more than two years ago. He was able to successfully undergo a bone marrow transplant and has been cancer-free and back at work teaching theology since 2011
  • Cell-based, targeted immunotherapy is a new approach to treating cancer that harnesses the body's own immune system to attack and kill cancerous cells.
  • Cell-Based Therapies
  • Unlike with a common virus such as the flu, our immune system does not recognize cancer cells as foreign and is therefore at a disadvantage in eradicating the disease.
  • researchers
  • have been exploring ways to reengineer the body's own T cells to recognize and attack cancer.
  • In March 2013, the same team of researchers first reported the results of five patients with advanced B-ALL who were treated with cell therapy. Remarkably, all five patients achieved complete remissions.
  • In 2003, they were the first to report that T cells engineered to recognize the protein CD19, which is found on B cells, could be used to treat B cell cancers in mice.
  • In the current study, seven of the 16 patients (44 percent) were able to successfully undergo bone marrow transplantation
  • the standard of care and the only curative option for B-ALL patients
  • following treatment.
  • Three patients were ineligible due to failure to achieve a complete remission
  • three were ineligible due to preexisting medical conditions
  • two declined
  • one is still being evaluated for a potential bone marrow transplant.
  • Historically, only 5 percent of patients with relapsed B-ALL have been able to transition to bone marrow transplantation.
  • The study also provides guidelines for managing side effects of cell therapy, which can include severe flu-like symptoms such as fever, muscle pain, low blood pressure, and difficulty breathing
  • The researchers developed diagnostic criteria and a laboratory test that can identify which patients are at greater risk for developing this syndrome.
  • Additional studies to determine whether cell therapy can be applied to other types of cancer are already underway
  • studies to test whether B-ALL patients would benefit from receiving targeted immunotherapy as frontline treatment are being planned.
Mars Base

High-School Student Finds Bumpy-Headed Baby Dino | LiveScience - 0 views

www.livescience.com/2-baby-dinosaur-discovery.html

scibyte107 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 27 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • A dinosaur skeleton discovered by
  • d high-school student turns out to be the smallest, youngest and most complete duck-billed dinosaur of its kind ever found.
  • This Cretaceous-era herbivore, Parasaurolophus, walked the Earth some 75 million years ago.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • dinosaurs in this genus are best known for their impressive tube-shaped head crests, which may have been used for display or perhaps to amplify the animals' calls
  • specimen
  • was so young that its crest was a mere bump on its head.
  • Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, Calif
  • is affiliated with The Webb Schools, a private high-school campus outside of Los Angeles
  • The students at the schools participate in paleontology fieldwork as part of their coursework
  • in 2009
  • a group of students were prospecting for fossils in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, surveying ground
  • already covered
  • spotted a little sliver of bone sticking out from under a boulder and alerted
  • thought it looked like a piece of dinosaur rib — nice, but not really worth the trouble of excavating.
  • the other side of the boulder
  • what looked like a large cobblestone
  • . A dinosaur skull
  • The team had to line up permits to excavate on the public land
  • returned in 2010 to dig the bones from the ground
  • 800-pound (363 kilograms) armor of rock, the bones had to be airlifted out of the rugged backcountry by helicopter
  • After 1,300 painstaking hours of cleaning, chiseling and picking, technicians revealed the fossil buried in all that stone
  • paleontologists realized they had an amazing example of a baby Parasaurolophus
  • they were able to sample the baby's leg bone. As dinosaur bones grow, they develop ring patterns, much like trees
  • didn't have any rings at all
  • that this animal was under a year old when it died
  • The infant dinosaur was already 6 feet (1.8 meters) long
  • duck-billed dinos hatched at about the same size as a human infant
  • "Joe" was already sprouting a crest bump so young suggests that Parasaurolophus started growing its crest earlier than other duck-billed dinosaurs.
  • "Joe" will go on display at the Alf museum beginning
  • Oct. 22
  • A digital exploration of the skeleton will also be available at dinosaurjoe.com.
  • the student who found the little duck-bill,
  • now in college, studying geology
  • understand how Parasaurolophus evolved that big crest, just by shifting around events in its development
Mars Base

Scarred Duckbill Dinosaur Escaped T. Rex Attack - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...us-dinosaur-wound-scar-science

scibyte85 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • A scar on the face of a duckbill dinosaur received after a close encounter with a Tyrannosaurus rex is the first clear case of a healed dinosaur wound, scientists say.
  • A teardrop-shaped patch of fossilized skin about 5 by 5 inches (12 by 14 centimeters) that was discovered with the creature's bones and is thought to have come from above its right eye
  • The lucky dinosaur was an adult Edmontosaurus annectens, a species of duckbill dinosaur that lived
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • about 65 to 67 million years ago
  • The skull
  • also showed signs of trauma
  • from the size and shape of the marks on the bone
  • paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History
  • speculate the creature was attacked by a T. rex
  • , though still unproven, that both the skin wound and the skull injury were sustained during the same attack,
  • . The wound "was large enough to have been a claw or a tooth,"
  • also compared the dinosaur wound to healed wounds on modern reptiles, including iguanas, and found the scar patterns to be nearly identical.
  • Phil Bell, a paleontologist with the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative in Canada
  • not convinced, however, that it was caused by a predator attack
  • The size of the scar is relatively small
  • , and would also be consistent with the skin being pierced in some other accident such as a fall.
  • certainly the marks that you see on the skull, those are [more consistent] with Tyrannosaur-bitten bones,"
  • Prior to the discovery, scientists knew of one other case of a dinosaur wound.
  • But in that instance, it was an unhealed wound that scientists think was inflicted by scavengers after the creature was already dead
  • It's very likely that this particular
  • wasn't the only dinosaur to sport scars, whether from battle wounds or accidents
  • Just how Edmontosaurus survived a T. rex attack is still unclear
  • . "Escape from a T. rex is something that we wouldn't think would happen,"
  • Duckbill dinosaurs
  • were not without defenses.
  • , for example, grew up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length, and could swipe its hefty tail or kick its legs to fell predators.
  • Furthermore, they were fast
  • had very powerful [running] muscles, which would have made them difficult to catch once they'd taken flight,"
  • Duckbills were also herd animals, so maybe this one escaped with help from neighbors
  • Figuring out the details of the story is part of what makes paleontology exciting
Mars Base

Study of friction reveals clues about arthritis - 0 views

phys.org/...n-reveals-clues-arthritis.html

scibyte80 arthritis

shared by Mars Base on 30 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • A new, noninvasive, and low-cost method for the early detection and monitoring of osteoarthritis (arthritis caused by wear and tear) may be on its way
  • By studying patterns of friction between cartilage pads, the researchers discovered a different type of friction that is more likely to cause wear and damage
  • work suggests ways to detect this friction, and points to new research directions for getting to the root cause of arthritis
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • Imagine going to the doctor for your aching knees
  • what if your doctor could actually listen to your body, monitoring the way your knees sound as they bend and flex
  • an instrument called a Surface Forces Apparatus (SFA), a device that measures the adhesion and friction forces between surfaces—in this case cartilage, the pad of tissue that covers the ends of bones at a joint.
  • degeneration of cartilage is the most common cause of osteoarthritis: The pads wear away, leaving bone grinding against bone
  • researchers found is that it isn't just any kind of friction that leads to the irreversible wear and tear on the material
  • currently believed that a high-friction force, or 'coefficient of friction,' is the primary factor in surface wear and damage
  • found is that this is not the case
  • The critical feature is not a high-friction force, but what is known as "stick-slip" friction, or, sometimes, "stiction."
  • Both are characterized by surfaces that initially stick together, and then accelerate away quickly once the static friction force is overcome
  • With stick-slip friction, the surfaces eventually pull slightly apart and slide across each other, stick again, and pull apart, causing jerky movements.
  • That's when things get damaged microscopically
  • Stick-slip is a common phenomenon. It is responsible for everything from computer hard drive crashes and automobile failures, to squeaking doors and music
  • same thing happens with a violin string
  • Even if you're pulling the bow steadily, it's moving in hundreds or thousands of little jerks per second, which determine the sound you hear
  • Each little jerk, no matter how submicroscopic, is an impact, and over time the accumulation of these impacts can deform surfaces, causing irreparable damage—first microscopically, then growing to macroscopic
  • it's not easy to tell the difference between types of friction at the microscopic level
  • Smooth-sliding joints might feel the same as those undergoing stiction, or the even more harmful stick-slip, especially in the early stages of arthritis
  • when measured with an ultra-sensitive and high-resolution instrument like the SFA, each type of friction revealed its own characteristic profile
  • Smooth-sliding joints yielded an almost smooth constant line (friction force or friction trace
  • with stiction showed up as a peak, as the "sticking" was being overcome, followed by a relatively smooth line
  • stick-slip shows the jagged saw-tooth profile of two surfaces repeatedly pulling apart, sticking, and pulling apart again
  • these measurements could be recorded by placing an acoustic or electric sensing device around joints, giving a signal similar to an EKG.
  • this could be a good way to measure and diagnose damage to the cartilage
  • to measure the progression, or even the early detection of symptoms related to arthritis
  • Early detection of conditions like arthritis has been a priority for many years
  • the functioning of joints is more complicated
  • scientists will continue their work by studying synovial fluid—the lubricating fluid between two cartilage surfaces in joints
  • plays a major role in whether or not the surfaces wear and tear, and the synergistic roles of the different molecules (proteins, lipids, and polymers
  • all involved in lubricating and preventing damage to our joints.
  • a number of directions to take, both fundamental and practical
  • it looks as if we need to focus our research on finding ways to prevent stick-slip motion, rather than lowering the friction force
Mars Base

Eggs of enigmatic dinosaur discovered - 0 views

phys.org/...4-eggs-enigmatic-dinosaur.html

scibyte42 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 11 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • reported a 70 million years old pocket of fossilized bones and unique eggs of an enigmatic birdlike dinosaur in Patagonia.
  • unique are the two eggs preserved near articulated bones of its hindlimb. This is the first time the eggs are found in a close proximity to skeletal remains of an alvarezsaurid dinosaur
  • The dinosaur represents the latest survivor of its kind from Gondwana, the southern landmass in the Mesozoic Era
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • belongs to one of the most mysterious groups of dinosaurs, the Alvarezsauridae, and it is one of the largest members, 2.6 m, of the family
  • The two eggs found together with the bones during the expedition might have been inside the oviducts of the Bonapartenykus female when the animal perished
  • numerous eggshell fragments later found show considerable calcite resorption of the inner eggshell layer
  • suggest that at least some of the eggs were incubated and contained embryos at an advanced stage of their development.
  • analyzed the eggshells and found that it did not belong to any known category of the eggshell microstructure-based taxonomy
  • a new egg-family, the Arraigadoolithidae
  • using the electron scanning microscopy I observed unusual fossilized objects inside of the pneumatic canal of the eggshells
  • the first evidence of fungal contamination of dinosaur eggs
Mars Base

NASA's Nodosaur Track | Dinosaur Tracking - 0 views

blogs.smithsonianmag.com/...nasas-nodosaur-track

scibyte60 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 24 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Last fall, fossil tracker Ray Stanford and paleontologists David Weishampel and Valerie Deleon announced something wonderful–a rare impression of a baby ankylosaur
  • the fossil is even more spectacular given the rarity of dinosaur bones found in the area
  • Paleontologists have discovered teeth and bone fragments over the years–including bones from “Capitalsaurus” in Washington, D.C.–but even partially complete skeletons remain elusive
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Dinosaur tracks are far more common
  • Stanford may have discovered a footprint of an adult ankylosaur in an unexpected place.
  • the print sits on the property of a NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
  • Stanford stumbled across the lone track earlier this summer and recently led NASA scientists out to the site to show them the fossil depression
  • the track has started to erode, and may have been damaged by a lawnmower, the roughly 112-million-year-old track still shows four toe imprints
  • member of the heavily-armored ankylosaur subgroup that lacked tail clubs but often sported prominent spikes along their sides
  • Officials
  • are already moving to protect the fossil, and they plan to bring in paleontologists to look for other dinosaur tracks
  • it seems that there is more than just a lone track at the spaceflight facility. When Stanford took the NASA scientists out to the site, he and other researchers found several more possible dinosaur tracks. The high-tech NASA facility may have been founded on a Cretaceous dinosaur stomping ground.
Mars Base

Ancient sea reptile with gammy jaw suggests dinosaurs got arthritis too - 0 views

phys.org/...ent-sea-reptile-gammy-jaw.html

scibyte47 dinosaur arthritis

shared by Mars Base on 16 May 12 - No Cached
  • scientists at the University of Bristol has found signs of a degenerative condition similar to human arthritis in the jaw of a pliosaur, an ancient sea reptile that lived 150 million years ago
  • Such a disease has never been described before in fossilized Jurassic reptiles.
  • has been kept since its discovery in the collections of the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • 8 metre long pliosaur was a
  • crocodile-like head, a short neck, whale-like body and four powerful flippers to propel it through water in pursuit of prey.
  • huge jaws and 20 cm long teeth
  • this particular individual was the unfortunate victim of an arthritis-like disease.
  • eroded its left jaw joint, displacing the lower jaw to one side
  • evidently lived with a crooked jaw for many years, because there are marks on the bone of the lower jaw where the teeth from the upper jaw impacted on the bone during feeding
  • the animal was still able to hunt in spite of its unfortunate condition.
  • signs on the skeleton to suggest that the animal could have been an old female who had developed the condition as part of the aging process
  • large size, and the fused skull bones
  • possibly female because its skull crest is quite low – presumed males had a higher crest.
  • In the same way that aging humans develop arthritic hips, this old lady developed an arthritic jaw, and survived with her disability for some time
  • unhealed fracture on the jaw indicates that at some time the jaw weakened and eventually broke
  • With a broken jaw, the pliosaur would not have been able to feed
  • They were at the top of their food chains, so there would not have been any predators to take advantage of an aging, disabled pliosaur – except for another pliosaur.
  • You can see these kinds of deformities in living animals, such as crocodiles or sperm whales and these animals can survive for years as long as they are still able to feed
Mars Base

ESA's Solar Probe to be Protected Using Prehistoric Cave Pigment - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...g-prehistoric-cave-pigment.htm

scibyte120 ESA ESA-SolarOrbiter

shared by Mars Base on 14 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • European Space Agency's engineers will use burnt bone charcoal to protect its solar probe from the harsh glare of the Sun.
  • Burnt bone charcoal, also used in prehistoric cave paintings, will be used by scientists in the titanium heatshield of ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft.
  • will help in protecting the Orbiter from the strong glare of the Sun
  • ...15 more annotations...
  •  Solar Orbiter, due to launch in 2017, will carry a range of instruments in order to conduct high-resolution imaging of the Sun
  • The main body of the spacecraft takes cover behind a
  • heatshield
  • . slightly more than a quarter of the distance to Earth. The temperatures will be as high as 520 degree C
  • "To go on absorbing sunlight, then convert it into infrared to radiate back out to space, its surface material needs to maintain constant 'thermo-optical properties' - keep the same colour despite years of exposure to extreme ultraviolet radiation
  • , the shield cannot shed material or outgas vapour, because of the risk of contaminating Solar Orbiter's highly sensitive instruments
  • has to avoid any build-up of static charge in the solar wind because that might threaten a disruptive or even destructive discharge,"
  • Andrew Norman, a materials technology specialist
  • The engineers ruled out carbon fiber fabric, their first choice, as it is a light polymer.
  • s company makes titanium medical implants. They use the CoBlast technique that is best suited for reactive metals like titanium, aluminium and stainless steel, basically metals that have a surface of oxide layer.
  • also include a second 'dopant' material possessing whatever characteristics are needed
  • spray the metal surface with abrasive material to grit-blast this layer of
  • simultaneously takes the place of the oxide layer being stripped out,
  • the new layer gets bonded and effectively becomes a part of the metal. The company will apply 'Solar Black', to the outer titanium sheet of the probe's multi layered heatshield
  • Solar Black is a type of black calcium phosphate that is developed from burnt bone charcoal.
Mars Base

New dinosaur found in Portugal, largest terrestrial predator from Europe -- ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...140305191427.htm

scibyte123 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 06 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • new dinosaur species found in Portugal may be the largest land predator discovered in Europe, as well as one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs from the Jurassic
  • Scientists discovered bones belonging to this dinosaur north of Lisbon
  • They were originally believed to be
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • a dinosaur species from North America
  • Closer comparison of the shin bone, upper jawbone, teeth, and partial tail vertebrae suggest
  • a new species name
  • had blade-shaped teeth up to 10 cm long, which indicates it may have been at the top of the food chain in the Iberian Peninsula roughly 150 million years ago
  • scientists estimate that the dinosaur could reach 10 meters long and weigh around 4 to 5 tons
  • The number of teeth, as well as size and shape of the mouth, may differentiate the European and the American
  • the mouth bones have a different shape and structure
  • is not the largest predatory dinosaur we know
  • With a skull of 115 cm, Torvosaurus gurneyi was however one of the largest terrestrial carnivores at this epoch
  • an active predator that hunted other large dinosaurs, as evidenced by blade shape teeth up to 10 cm
  • evidences of closely related dinosaurs suggest that this large predator may have already been covered with proto-feathers
Mars Base

Researchers describe first 'functional HIV cure' in an infant - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...-03-functional-hiv-infant.html

scibyte84 HIVTreatment

shared by Mars Base on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins Children's Center
  • describe the first case of a so-called "functional cure" in an HIV-infected infant
  • The infant described in the report underwent remission of HIV infection after receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) within 30 hours of birth
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • investigators
  • investigators say the prompt administration of antiviral treatment likely led to this infant's cure by halting the formation of hard-to-treat viral reservoirs
  • Prompt antiviral therapy in newborns that begins within days of exposure may help infants clear the virus and achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment by preventing such viral hideouts from forming in the first place
  • dormant cells responsible for reigniting the infection in most HIV patients within weeks of stopping therapy
  • researchers say they believe this is precisely what happened in the child described in the report
  • "functionally cured," a condition that occurs when a patient achieves and maintains long-term viral remission without lifelong treatment and standard clinical tests fail to detect HIV replication in the blood
  • a sterilizing cure—a complete eradication of all viral traces from the body
  • a functional cure occurs when viral presence is so minimal, it remains undetectable by standard clinical tests, yet discernible by ultrasensitive methods
  • The child described
  • was born to an HIV-infected mother and received combination antiretroviral treatment beginning 30 hours after birth.
  • A series of tests showed progressively diminishing viral presence in the infant's blood, until it reached undetectable levels 29 days after birth
  • The infant remained on antivirals until 18 months of age, at which point the child was lost to follow-up for a while
  • Ten months after discontinuation of treatment, the child underwent repeated standard blood tests, none of which detected HIV presence in the blood
  • Test for HIV-specific antibodies—the standard clinical indicator of HIV infection—also remained negative
  • Currently, high-risk newborns—those born to mothers with poorly controlled infections or whose mothers' HIV status is discovered around the time of delivery—receive a combination of antivirals at prophylactic doses to prevent infection for six weeks and start therapeutic doses if and once infection is diagnosed
  • this particular case
  • may change the current practice because it highlights the curative potential of very early ART
  • natural viral suppression without treatment is an exceedingly rare phenomenon observed in less than half a percent of HIV-infected adults
  • HIV experts have long sought a way to help all HIV patients achieve elite-controller status
  • "elite controllers," whose immune systems are able to rein in viral replication and keep the virus at clinically undetectable levels
  • investigators caution they don't have enough data to recommend change right now to the current practice of treating high-risk infants
  • but the infant's case provides the rationale to start proof-of-principle studies in all high-risk newborns
  • next step is to find out if this is a highly unusual response to very early antiretroviral therapy or something we can actually replicate in other high-risk newborns
  • A single case of sterilizing cure has been reported so far
  • in an HIV-positive man treated with a bone marrow transplant for leukemia. The bone marrow cells came from a donor with a rare genetic mutation of the white blood cells that renders some people resistant to HIV
  • Such a complex treatment approach, however, HIV experts agree, is neither feasible nor practical for the 33 million people worldwide infected with HIV
  • researchers say preventing mother-to-child transmission remains the primary goal
  • Prevention really is the best cure, and we already have proven strategies that can prevent 98 percent of newborn infections by identifying and treating HIV-positive pregnant women
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