Glow-in-the-dark mushroom rediscovered after 170 years. It's something you would never expect to go missing, but one of the world's brightest glow-in-the-dark mushrooms has been rediscovered after an absence of more than 170 years, according to USA Today. The bioluminescent shrooms had become a Brazilian legend of sorts. They were first spied in 1840 by an English botanist named George Gardner, who was alarmed after he saw some boys playing with a glowing object in the streets of Vila de Natividad, a village in the Goiás state in central Brazil. After that, no more sightings of the brightly glowing fungus had ever been reported. The mushroom was nearly forgotten until 2002, when Brazilian chemist Cassius Stevani came across Gardner's early reports. Then, in 2005, a breakthrough occurred. Izar and Fragaszy scooped up specimens and contacted Stevani, who later confirmed that the mushrooms were indeed Gardner's long lost species.
One thing researchers are certain of, however, is that these mushrooms are poisonous. A Creepy Monster of the Forest: The Albino, Vampiric Redwood Tree. Organisms with albino mutations are pretty weird in general, but albino plants are extra weird. Ultra-rare albino redwood trees completely lack the green pigment chlorophyll, which they need to live (by photosynthesizing nutrients from light). These plants are literally vampires. They are pale (everwhite instead of evergreen), and they survive by sucking the life from other trees. These vampires remain attached to the roots of their healthy, normal, parent trees (coastal redwoods can reproduce asexually by sprouting new shoots from roots or stumps), and survive by sucking energy from them.
They can keep this up for a century. “Albinism is a genetic mutation that prevents cells from producing pigment. Only about 25 of these trees are known to exist around the world, eight of which are at Henry Cowell State Park in California, where rangers and researchers from Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz are studying them, as KQED explains: Their needles are limp and waxy. Scientists reverse Alzheimer's-like memory loss in animal models by blocking EGFR signaling. A team of neuroscientists and chemists from the U.S. and China September 24 publish research suggesting that a class of currently used anti-cancer drugs as well as several previously untested synthetic compounds show effectiveness in reversing memory loss in two animal models of Alzheimer's disease. CSHL Professor Yi Zhong, Ph.D., who led the research conducted in fruit flies and mice, says he and his colleagues were surprised with their results, which, he stressed, used two independent experimental approaches "the results of which clearly converged.
" Specifically, the research converged on what Zhong's team suggests is a "preferred target" for treating memory loss associated with the amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques seen in advanced Alzheimer's patients. That target is the epidermal growth factor receptor, often called by its acronym, EGFR. Overexpression of the EGFR is a characteristic feature of certain cancers, notably a subset of lung cancers. Siberian Discovery Could Bring Scientists Closer to Cloning Woolly Mammoth. The key to cloning a woolly mammoth may be locked into the Siberian permafrost. At least, that’s what scientists in the blustery Russian tundra are hoping. An international team from Russia’s North-Eastern Federal University recently found well-preserved remains, including some fur and bone marrow, during a paleontological research trip in the northeastern province of Yakutia.
(READ: The Woolly Mammoth’s Return? Scientists Plan to Clone Extinct Creature) Russian newspaper Vzglyad talked to expedition leader Semyon Grigoriev, a North-Eastern Federal University professor, who said that the remains may still contain living cells, which would be vital to any cloning attempt. Previously-found clumps of woolly mammoth hair have allowed scientists to determine much of the extinct species’ genetic code, but have fielded no living cells. (PHOTOS: The 15 cutest endangered animals in the world) MORE: Free Woolly: The Race to Bring Extinct Mammoths in out of the Cold. The Large Hadron Collider, the Higgs, and Hope.
“There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a ‘hottest part’ implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool.” -Richard Davisson The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, capable of accelerating protons absurdly close to the speed of light: 99.9999991% of the way there! Within a 26-kilometer-long ring, largest in the world, protons are accelerated both clockwise and counterclockwise up to these incredible speeds, and smashed head-on into one another. Image credit: CERN / Particle Physics for Scottish Schools. But these collisions don’t take place willy-nilly inside the ring. Image credit: the ATLAS experiment, shown here during construction in 2006. Image credit: Marco Cardaci, CERN, and CMS, taken in 2007. Image credit: CERN / ATLAS / LHC outreach.
Image credit: Resonaances blog. Ahh! Space-time-crystal-powered eternal clock could keep time after end of universe. The idea for an eternal clock that would continue to keep time even after the universe ceased to exist has intrigued physicists. However, no one has figured out how one might be built, until now. Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition Researchers have now proposed an experimental design for a "space-time crystal" that would be able to keep time forever. This four-dimensional crystal would be similar to conventional 3D crystals, which are structures, like snowflakes and diamonds, whose atoms are arranged in repeating patterns.
Whereas a diamond has a periodic structure in three dimensions, the space-time crystal would be periodic in time as well as space. The idea of a 4D space-time crystal was first proposed earlier this year by MIT physicist Frank Wilczek, though the concept was purely theoretical. Dipping into the Deep: Mission Investigates Tonga Trench. It's a familiar saying in the world of oceanography: Don't put anything over the side of the ship that you're not willing to lose. Jenan Kharbush, a marine chemistry graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, learned that the hard way on a recent expedition cruise to the Tonga Trench in the South Pacific when a camera and bottle collecting samples and pictures disappeared forever into the deep.
The Tonga Trench is the second-deepest trench in the world, reaching 35,700 feet (about 10,900 meters) at its deepest point. (The Mariana Trench off the coast of Guam is the deepest trench in the world, measured 35,756 feet (10,890 m) at its deepest point.) "It's hard to get your head around that depth — that's the same distance from sea level that planes fly," Kharbush told OurAmazingPlanet. "We understand very little about microbes' role in cycling nutrients and carbon in the ocean," Kharbush said. Data from the deep Not a day at the beach. Five millionth 'test tube baby' 1 July 2012Last updated at 21:22 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News, Istanbul Louise Brown, pictured with her son, was the world's first test tube baby Five million "test tube babies" have now been born around the world, according to research presented at a conference of fertility experts. Delegates hailed it as a "remarkable milestone" for fertility treatments.
The first test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in the UK in July 1978. However, delegates at the conference in Turkey warned couples not to use fertility treatment as an "insurance policy" if they delayed parenthood. The International Committee for Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Icmart) presented its latest data on children born to infertile parents at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference. It said official figures up to 2008, plus three years of estimates, put the total number of test tube babies born at five million. Milestone. Home : Scientific Reports.
Do Humans Matter? Hunter-gatherers cared for first known ancient invalid - life - 11 October 2010. He was too old to hunt, a hunchback probably needing a cane for support, and suffered terrible lower back pain. But a member of the human family who lived 500,000 years ago is the most elderly ancient human ever found. The individual of the species Homo heidelbergensis has been named "Elvis" after his pelvis and lower backbone were uncovered in Atapuerca, northern Spain. The hunter-gatherer was about 45 years old when he died. "His spine was bent forward so, to keep an upright posture, he possibly used a cane, just like elderly people today," says Alejandro Bonmatí of the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. The fact that Elvis was so infirm suggests he was looked after by his contemporaries, which Bonmatí's team say is good evidence that hunter-gatherers didn't abandon the weak.
He could not have been an active hunter, nor could he carry heavy loads. "For food he would have depended on sharing what members of the group had caught," says Bonmatí. Bad back More From New Scientist. - StumbleUpon. Strange cosmic ray hotspots stalk southern skies - space - 03 May 2011. The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.
Imagine a circle that contains all of human knowledge: By the time you finish elementary school, you know a little: By the time you finish high school, you know a bit more: With a bachelor's degree, you gain a specialty: A master's degree deepens that specialty: Reading research papers takes you to the edge of human knowledge: Once you're at the boundary, you focus: You push at the boundary for a few years: Until one day, the boundary gives way: And, that dent you've made is called a Ph.D Of course, the world looks different to you now: So, don't forget the bigger picture: Keep pushing.
There's a bit more below, but I also wrote a follow-up 5 years after the illustrated guide which may be of interest -- HOWTO: Get tenure. Related posts If you like these posts, then I recommend the book A PhD Is Not Enough Get it in print; fund students; save lives By request, a print version of The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. is on sale. Click here to preview or buy it. Why biology? License: Creative Commons Resources. Dark alien planet discovered by NASA.
An alien world blacker than coal, the darkest planet known, has been discovered in the galaxy. The world in question is a giant the size of Jupiter known as TrES-2b. NASA's Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 lightyears away in the direction of the constellation Draco. The researchers found this gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen up to now. [The Strangest Alien Planets] "It's just ridiculous how dark this planet is, how alien it is compared to anything we have in our solar system," study lead-author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com.
"It's darker than the blackest lump of coal, than dark acrylic paint you might paint with. It's bizarre how this huge planet became so absorbent of all the light that hits it. " "It's a mystery as to what's causing it to be so dark," Kipping said. Chemists merge experimentation with theory in understanding of water molecule. Water is the most abundant and one of the most frequently studied substances on Earth, yet its geometry at the molecular level -- the simple two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and how they interact with other molecules, including other water -- has remained somewhat of a mystery to chemists.
Most understanding at that level is theoretical, requiring the use of supercomputers to make innumerable calculations over periods of weeks to make educated guesses as to the arrangements and structure of water clusters before they form into liquid water or ice. But a new study, using experimentation with a highly advanced spectrometer for molecular rotational spectroscopy, has removed some of the mystery and validates some very complex theory involving the way water molecules bond. It is published in the May 18 issue of the journal Science. "We found that the bonding strengths of liquid water actually begin to emerge even in a tiny cluster," Pate said. Antibiotic Overuse May Increase Superbug Evolution Rate. Multiple drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria seen under an electron microscope. Photo: CDC By flooding our environment with antibiotics, people may alter a little-appreciated but profound aspect of bacterial evolution: the very pace at which it occurs.
Bacteria may evolve more rapidly and more radically than just a few decades ago. This proposition is still a hypothesis, but it’s an intriguing one. “Human activities might be altering the fundamental tempo of bacterial evolution,” write geneticists Michael Gillings of Australia’s Macquarie University and Hatch Stokes of the University of Technology in a June Trends in Ecology and Evolution paper. Gillings and Stokes start by describing what’s widely known: The world is inundated by antibiotics. 'Baseline bacterial evolution is a bell-shaped curve, and we are pushing that curve.' That much is obvious. “Rates of evolution are themselves selected for higher evolvability,” said Gillings. Not everyone is convinced. Youtube Documentaries - Mobile. Clostridium Infections Increasing Among Children Outside Hospitals : Shots - Health Blog. Hide captionColonies of Clostridium difficile look awfully nice, but they're definitely something you'd be advised to keep at a safe distance.
Infections with the bacterium Clostridium difficile hit record numbers in recent years. Now there's evidence the hard-to-treat infections are becoming a problem for children. The infections often strike the elderly, especially those who've been taking antibiotics that clear out competing bacteria in people's intestines. People sickened by the bug have persistent diarrhea that can, in severe cases, lead to dehydration. C. diff, as it's known, is resistant to common broad-spectrum drugs and used to lurk mainly in hospitals. But as NPR's Rob Stein reported in March, more and more people are contracting C. diff elsewhere. Mayo Clinic researcher Sahil Khanna and his colleagues have found that children are contracting the disease at ever-higher rates, too.
What they found, Khanna says, is a huge increase in infection rates.