Ava Wilson. Log In. House Science Committee: Remove Rep. Paul Broun. What the Doctor Ordered: Building New Body Parts. Spray-on skin, made-to-order muscle, and print-out kidneys aren't just science fiction anymore.
Dr. Anthony Atala and Dr. Stephen Badylak, two pioneers of regenerative medicine, talk about the latest methods for building new body parts, and the challenge of growing complex organs like the heart, liver or brain. Note: If you'd like to sign up for the Traumatic Limb Muscle Loss Clinical Trials, please contact Allyson LaCovey at 412-624-5308 or lacoveya2@upmc.edu. Hot Climate Could Shut Down Plate Tectonics. A new study of possible links between climate and geophysics on Earth and similar planets finds that prolonged heating of the atmosphere can shut down plate tectonics and cause a planet's crust to become locked in place.
"The heat required goes far beyond anything we expect from human-induced climate change, but things like volcanic activity and changes in the sun's luminosity could lead to this level of heating," said lead author Adrian Lenardic, associate professor of Earth science at Rice University. "Our goal was to establish an upper limit of naturally generated climate variation beyond which the entire solid planet would respond. " Science Vs. Religion explained. Gorillas Seen Using "Baby Talk" Gestures—A First. Lowland gorillas converse with each other primarily through nonvocal gestures.
While researching how captive gorillas communicate during play, study leader Eva Maria Luef noticed that animals older than three years had a special way of interacting with younger gorillas. (See lowland gorilla pictures .) Epigenomes of newborns and centenarians differ: New clues to increasing life span. An international study sheds important new light on how epigenetic marks degrade over time.
Black Holes are Everywhere. Holes are everywhere, if you look...
This post is the second in a series that accompanies the upcoming publication of my book ‘Gravity’s Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos’ (Scientific American/FSG). Black holes, even the really hugely massive ones, are tiny – positively microscopic pinpricks scattered throughout the vastness of spacetime. Even the largest, perhaps ten billion times the mass of our Sun, have event horizons (the surface from within which no light can ever emerge) that reach to only about the orbit of Neptune. That’s a mere 4.5 billion km (or 0.00047 light years), absolutely nothing compared to the scale of galaxies – whose stellar components may reach across more than 100,000 light years. And nothing that massive exists in the Milky Way, where the very largest black hole is only some 4 to 5 million solar masses, lurking close to the galactic center. The wages of pseudoscience.
I completely missed the disgraceful hokum the Animal Planet channel aired last week, Mermaids: The Body Found, a completely fictional pseudodocumentary dressed up as reality that claims mermaids exist.
You can watch it now, though, until Animal Planet takes it down. It’s genuinely awful. Total nonsense, gussied up with more nonsense: would you believe it justifies the story with the Aquatic Ape gobbledygook? Brian Switek has torn into it, and of course Deep Sea News is disgusted. Skin cells reprogrammed into brain cells. Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have for the first time transformed skin cells -- with a single genetic factor -- into cells that develop on their own into an interconnected, functional network of brain cells.
The research offers new hope in the fight against many neurological conditions because scientists expect that such a transformation -- or reprogramming -- of cells may lead to better models for testing drugs for devastating neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. This research comes at a time of renewed focus on Alzheimer's disease, which currently afflicts 5.4 million people in the United States alone -- a figure expected to nearly triple by 2050.
Science Magazine: Sign In. Tiny genetic variations led to big changes in the evolving human brain. Changes to just three genetic letters among billions contributed to the evolution and development of the mammalian motor sensory circuits and laid the groundwork for the defining characteristics of the human brain, Yale University researchers report.
In a study published in the May 31 issue of the journal Nature, Yale researchers found that a small, simple change in the mammalian genome was critical to the evolution of the corticospinal neural circuits. Radical Life Extension Is Already Here, But We're Doing it Wrong - Ross Andersen - Health. We've already tacked three decades onto the average lifespan of an American, so what's wrong with adding another few decades?
A centenarian riding his bike in Long Beach, California (Reuters). So far as we know, the last hundred years have been the most radical period of life extension in all of human history. At the turn of the twentieth century, life expectancy for Americans was just over 49 years; by 2010, that number had risen to 78.5 years, mostly on account of improved sanitation and basic medicine. But life extension doesn't always increase our well-being, especially when all that's being extended is decrepitude. At least double NASA’s annual budget to one penny for every government dollar spent. The Most Astounding Fact About The Universe.
Jem Melts Rock Using Sunshine - Bang Goes The Theory - Series 3, Episode 5 Preview - BBC One