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Last Updated
Tuesday August
08 08:00
Hrs.
IST
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Nasa cuts may hit station study
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Thousands
of microbes in one gulp
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Strange 'twin' new worlds found
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Shape-shifting lens mimics human eye
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Brain scans may provide clues to future
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AIDS virus may hide in the gut: study
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Scientists identify 2 ancient reptiles
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Energy from recycling Zero Point Energy Modules
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Smart biomaterials ? Collagen
Nasa cuts may hit station study
The US space agency, Nasa, is considering putting research onboard the space station on hold for at least a year to make up for a cash shortfall.
The space station research budget was cut to $200m (£107m) last year due to increased costs in the shuttle programme and Hurricane Katrina losses.
"Right now, we're quite a bit in the hole," Nasa Deputy Space Station Program Manager Kirk Shireman.
"We're looking at a number of options," He told a news conference.
Under the plan, Nasa would carry out no research on the evolving space platform in 2007, but would resume research activities a year or two later.
It follows a change in direction for the agency, with a drive towards lunar exploration and eventual missions to Mars.
Critics say the agency's decision to fund only research programmes that have a direct bearing on long-distance human spaceflight is short-sighted.
"Cutting science programs would suggest that it is merely a joy ride to the Moon," said Katie Boyd, spokeswoman for Alabama Republican senator Richard Shelby.
Future risks
Nasa's plans for implementing President George Bush's vision to explore the Moon, Mars and beyond were also criticised this month in a US government report.
The agency is currently working on plans for a replacement for the ageing shuttle fleet. The new launch system would include a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), which would carry astronauts to the space station and eventually the Moon.
But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) questioned Nasa's acquisition strategy for the CEV.
It said the decision to award a contract for the craft as early as September this year, before the full architecture and strategy was in place, put the project at risk of significant cost over-runs, delays and performance shortfall.
Thousands of microbes in one gulp
One litre of seawater can contain more than 20,000 different types of bacteria, scientists have found.
The extraordinary number has been established by an international project attempting to catalogue all ocean life.
It suggests microbial biodiversity is much greater than previously thought, say Mitchell Sogin and colleagues.
Their research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is part of the Census of Marine Life (CoML).
It was undertaken using a new technique that allows for the rapid identification of distinct organisms by probing just small snippets of DNA.
"Microbes constitute the vast majority of marine biomass and are the primary engines of the Earth's biosphere," said Dr Sogin, from the Marine Biological Laboratory's (MBL) Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative and Molecular Biology and Evolution, located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, US.
In the PNAS study, microbes were fished up from eight sites in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at depths of 550-4,100m (1,800-13,500ft).
The locations included extreme environments, both hot and cold, such as the North Atlantic and a hydrothermal vent located on an underwater Pacific volcano off the coast of Oregon.
The scientists expected to find about 2,000 species per litre of seawater. They were shocked to discover 10 times more biodiversity.
"These observations blow away all previous estimates of bacterial diversity in the ocean," said Dr Sogin. "The number of different kinds of bacteria in the oceans could eclipse five to 10 million."
He told the BBC News website: "It really points to our lack of knowledge and how much more there is to learn."
The powerful new identification technique used by the microbiologists is called "454 tag sequencing".
It enabled the team to identify thousands of unusual types of microbes, some of which were present only in small numbers. They could easily have been overlooked by previous studies.
'Rare biosphere'
"Peering through a laboratory microscope into a drop of seawater is like looking at the stars on a clear night," said Victor Gallardo, vice chair of the CoML.
"The 454 tag sequencing strategy increases resolution like the Hubble Telescope. We can see marine microbial diversity to which we were blind before." A "rare biosphere" is how the scientists described these low-abundance background populations.
The unusual microorganisms are thought to contribute to an enormous range of novel genetic diversity in the ocean.
The researchers believe that they might serve as a gene pool to preserve genetic innovations.
If environmental changes wiped out a dominant species, the low-abundance ones with a more suitable genetic makeup would be ready to take over.
"We know there will be major ecological changes on our planet. The microbial world has to survive the changes and one way is to have a lot of novelty in your genome so that you can cope with different environmental conditions," explained Dr
Sogin.
The census keeps a record of the distribution and numbers of the microbes. Scientists can then trace how the organisms adapt to changes and also, in the long run, understand what evolutionary driving forces might be at play.
"These rare, ancient organisms are likely to prove a key part of nature's history and strategy," explained Dr Gallardo.
Human beings are dependent on microbes for continued survival.
"The photosynthesis in the ocean is carried out by microbial life forms, and that is the major input in terms of capture of energy from the Sun," explained Dr Sogin. "The microbes are a significant input into climate parameters."
The project will scale up to 1,200 marine sites, including different conditions such as surface waters, waters near methane emissions from the sea floor, and deep-sea sediments.
The study forms part of the International Census of Marine Microbes (ICoMM), a component of the Census of Marine Life, a 10-year global initiative started in the year 2000.
The CoML now involves more than 1,700 researchers in over 70 countries in efforts to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans - past, present, and future.
Strange 'twin' new worlds found
A pair of strange new worlds that blur the boundaries between planets and stars have been discovered beyond our Solar System.
A few dozen such objects have been identified in recent years but this is the first set of "twins".
Dubbed "planemos", they circle each other rather than orbiting a star.
Their existence challenges current theories about the formation of planets and stars,
astronomers report in the journal Science.
"This is a truly remarkable pair of twins - each having only about 1% the mass of our Sun," said Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, co-author of the Science paper.
"Its mere existence is a surprise, and its origin and fate a bit of a mystery."
The pair belongs to what some astronomers believe is a new class of planet-like objects floating through space; so-called planetary mass objects, or "planemos", which are not bound to stars.
They appear to have been forged from a contracting gas cloud, in a similar way to stars, but are much too cool to be true stars.
And while they have similar masses to many of the giant planets discovered beyond our Solar System (the largest weighs in at 14 times the mass of Jupiter and the other is about seven times more massive), they are not thought to be true planets either.
"We are resisting the temptation to call it a 'double planet' because this pair probably didn't form the way that planets in our Solar System did," said co-researcher Valentin Ivanov of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Santiago, Chile.
The two objects have similar spectra and colours, suggesting that they formed at the same time about a million years ago.
They are separated by about six times the distance between the Sun and Pluto, and can be found in the Ophiuchus star-forming region some 400 light years away. They go under the official name Oph 162225-240515, or Oph 1622 for short.
"Recent discoveries have revealed an amazing diversity of worlds out there," said Dr Jayawardhana. "Still, the Oph 1622 pair stands out as one of the most intriguing, if not peculiar."
His colleague, Dr Ivanov, said they were curious to find out whether such pairs are common or rare.
"The answer could shed light on how free-floating planetary-mass objects form," he added.
Oph 1622 was discovered using the ESO's New Technology Telescope at La Silla, Chile. Follow-up studies were conducted with the ESO's Very Large Telescope.
Shape-shifting lens mimics human eye
SOMETIMES all it takes is a quick hug, and everything looks different.
Now a shape-shifting lens has been developed that alters its focal length when squeezed by an artificial muscle, rather like the lens in a human eye. The muscle, a ring of polymer gel, expands and contracts in response to environmental changes, eliminating the need for electronics to power or control the devices.
"The lenses harness the energy around them to control themselves," says lead researcher Hongrui Jiang at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, where the device has been developed (Nature, vol 442, p 551). "This would be useful for environments where it's not easy to use electronics and conditions are not constant." The devices could simplify medical imaging equipment and biosensors, he says.
The lenses themselves, which are around 4 millimetres in diameter, use a glass-oil-water interface (see Diagram). The artificial muscle encloses the watery side of the lens. The gel expands or contracts in response to environmental changes such as a rise in temperature, forcing the water to bulge into the film of oil. This changes the lens's shape and thus its focal length.
Different polymer gels can be used to create a lens that responds to changes in acidity, temperature, light, electric fields or even certain proteins. In tests of one temperature-responsive lens, the device was able to focus on objects around 20 millimetres away at 50 �C, and on objects 50 millimetres away when the temperature changed to 35 �C.
Adaptable liquid lenses are already used in devices such as cellphones, but these are controlled by an electric current, requiring the use of bulky and power-hungry electronics. "The lenses would be useful for medical imaging because in the right environment they could scan different depths autonomously," says Jiang. For example, a lens designed to respond to a particular protein could be implanted into the body. As levels of the protein fluctuated throughout the day, the lens would change its focus, giving doctors a changing view of the area under observation.
The lens could also be combined with a light source and simple light detector to build a sensor. Changes in the way the lens focused light in response to, say, acidity, would then be picked up by the detector.
"The technology could be very useful for temperature sensing in systems of biosensors," says Tracy Melvin, who works on biophotonics at the University of Southampton, UK. "The lenses are currently a bit big for a micro-device, but they would be easy to make smaller."
If they can be reduced in size, the lenses could dramatically simplify micro-sensors, she says, but adds that making micro-lenses out of responsive polymer gels might be simpler still. Polymer gel contact lenses that darken when the wearer's glucose levels fall have already been developed, but no one has yet built them at the micro-scale.
Brain scans may provide clues to future
British scientists say measuring the brain development of premature babies in their first weeks of life can identify those who need extra help.
The Imperial College study, published in the Public Library of Science Medicine, says babies with less brain surface development had poorer mental skills at the age of 2.
The researchers used MRI scanning to measure brain growth of 113 babies born prematurely between 22 and 29 weeks gestation.
The study found that the slower the rate of growth of brain surface area and the smoother it was compared to brain volume, the more likely it was for a child's development to be delayed.
The BBC said past research has found that half of all babies who survive after being born very early go on to develop a disability or learning difficulty.
AIDS virus may hide in the gut: study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The AIDS virus hides out inside people's intestines, researchers said on Saturday in a report that offers new understanding of the incurable infection.
The virus replicates in the lining of the gut and does much of its damage to the immune system there, Satya Dandekar, chairwoman of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California Davis Health System, and colleagues reported.
Writing in the Journal of Virology, Dandekar said the study was the first to explain why the drug cocktails taken by HIV patients so often fail to work completely.
"The real battle between the virus and exposed individuals is happening in the gut immediately after viral infection," she said in a statement.
"We need to be focusing our efforts on improving treatment of gut mucosa, where massive destruction of immune cells is occurring. Gut-associated lymphoid tissue accounts for 70 percent of the body's immune system. Restoring its function is crucial to ridding the body of the virus."
HIV cannot be cured but the drugs, known as highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, can keep the virus under control.
At first, doctors had hoped that years of treatment might eventually eradicate the virus, but, 25 years into the epidemic of AIDS, it is clear that cannot happen. That is because the virus can hide out quietly in reservoirs, which include certain immune cells.
The gut is clearly important, too, Dandekar's team said.
"We found a substantial delay in the time that it takes to restore the gut mucosal immune system in those with chronic infections," Dandekar said. "In these patients the gut is acting as a viral reservoir that keeps us from ridding patients of the virus."
The mucosa are the wet tissues that line the nose and throat, the genitals and the inside of the gut. HIV often infects people via the mucosa.
Dandekar's team has been studying HIV-infected patients who, even without treatment, have survived more than 10 years with healthy immune systems, including the T-cells that are attacked by the virus.
"We looked at their gut lymphoid tissue and did not see loss of T-cells there. This correlated with better clinical outcomes," Dandekar said.
So they started the current study, following 10 patients being treated with HAART, taking blood and gut samples before and after three years of treatment.
They found evidence of inflammation, which disrupts tissue function, promotes cell death and upsets the normal balance of gut bacteria.
Dandekar said these findings suggest anti-inflammatory drugs may help HAART work better.
Scientists identify 2 ancient reptiles
BANGKOK, Thailand - Scientists have identified two ancient reptiles that swam in icy waters off Australia 115 million years ago, researchers said Friday. They are among the first of their kind to be found from the period soon after the Jurassic era.
The discoveries — dubbed Umoonasaurus and Opallionectes — belonged to a group of animals called plesiosaurs, long-necked marine reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs.
Researchers, led by paleontologist Benjamin Kear and a team from the University of Australia and South Australian Museum, identified the new species after piecing together fossils from 30 individuals collected from an opal mine in the past 30 years.
The team's findings were recently published in both the international journal Paleontology and the online edition of Biology Letters, a periodical published by the prestigious Royal Society of London.
Umoonasaurus was a rhomaleosaurid, a kind of plesiosaur that was the "killer whale equivalent of the Jurassic" period, Kear said. It was distinguished by its relatively small size of less than 8 feet long and three crest-like ridges on its skull.
"Imagine a compact body with four flippers, a reasonably long neck, small head and short tail much like a reptilian seal," Kear said.
Opallionectes was also a plesiosaur, but much larger — about 19 feet long with masses of fine, needle-like teeth for trapping small fish and squid. Its name means "the opal swimmer from Andamooka."
"It's a missing link between older forms of the Jurassic period found in England about 170 million years ago and the much younger ones found in Antarctica and Patagonia which are about 65 million years old," Kear said.
Both creatures lived in a freezing polar sea that covered what is now Australia 115 million years ago, when the continent was located much closer to Antarctica. Kear said he expected more discoveries, which together could open a window on a period that he said had been largely unexplored in Australia.
"We're just scratching the surface and recognizing these new species are here," Kear said. "These species fill a time frame not represented in the world. There are older (fossils) from Europe and younger (fossils) in North America and not much in between. We have the missing pieces in the puzzle."
Colin McHenry, paleontologist at the University of Newcastle, said the discovery "was not a revolutionary find that overturns our ideas of what's gong on" but would help scientists better understand the period from 90 million to 140 million years ago.
"These animals represent another chapter in the story we are trying tell of how the marine ecosystems evolved during the age of the dinosaurs," McHenry said.
"A lot of the focus is on the land-based systems where dinosaurs lived," he said. "But what people don't realize is that there were a lot of interesting animals that were living in the sea."
Energy from recycling Zero Point Energy Modules
Energy from recycling Zero Point Energy Modules (life) vibrate through gravity waves creating ripple in space and time
Gravity waves are akin to sound waves. Einstein predicted that just as air can vibrate, so can space and time. In fact, Einstein said that every time anything moved -- from the moon orbiting the Earth to one car bumping into another -- the fabric of space-time vibrates, sending out gravitational
waves. In our physical universe, the gravity waves are just echoes. It really exists in higher
imension. That is why the gravity waves are so weak and is difficult to detect. The problem is that it's so hard to detect it that we have to go find something really incredibly
violent to have a hope of detecting it. One such event might be the
collision of black holes. But even then, the resulting space quake would typically be so slight as to
cause the distance between Earth and the nearest star to shiver by about the width of
a hair. That's why no one has yet detected a gravity wave. Scientists are now getting early clues to
something that can fascinate every human being on the earth.
Energy from recycling Zero Point Energy Modules (life) vibrate through gravity waves creating ripple in space and time. In other words, its gravity vibrations in higher dimensionsharacterize the life or the
ZPE. The life forms recycle but it can change the vibration of space and time over time.
Smart biomaterials ? Collagen
The Central Leather Research Institute (LRI) Chennai has made headway in creating a collagen-based biomaterial which has remarkable potential in areas as important and wide as ophthalmology, wound healing, burn dressing, tissue-engineered devises for cardiovascular function, in managing diabetic foot, and smart-shoes that can alter shape with foot volume fluctuations.
Collagen is the main structural material in animal connective tissues such as skin, cartilage, teeth, and bones. (It is therefore a bye-product of the leather-industry wastes and hence the interest of CLRI, the world?s largest leather research body.) When the body needs to build any new cellular structure as in the healing process, for example, collagen and/or collagen fragments are known to play a central role. Though the role of collagen as scaffolding has been known for some time, it is only now that we are clear about how collagen controls cell shape and differentiation, migration, and the synthesis of a number of proteins. We know this is why broken bones regenerate and wounds heal and why blood vessels grow to feed healing areas.
Collagen?s great potential in medical field comes from the fact that it can act as a protein as well as a cross-linking and stabilizing agent in tissue and organ repair functions. Since it is a natural material with very low immunogenosity (immune response leading to rejection and such complications) in human body it passes of as a normal constituent and hence immensely suitable for biomedical engineering jobs.
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