A method that can generate human embryonic stem cells without harming embryos? In August biotechnology firm Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass., claimed it had developed just such a procedure. The company touted it as a way around the firestorm of controversy surrounding the conventional technique for growing these cells, which destroys human embryos. Most researchers find the method intriguing, because it might lead to new and maybe better stem cell lines....
Neuroscience: A Historical Introduction by Mitchell Glickstein MIT Press, 2014 ($50) Neuroscientists sometimes say, with a mix of awe and whimsy, that the brain is the most complex machine in the universe. Because the topic is such a weighty one, some of the books that introduce this discipline arrive with more heft than a 1988 laptop. Glickstein, a professor emeritus of neuroscience at University College London, takes a less daunting approach by conveying the stories of the scientific discoveries that have given us an understanding of the basics of vision, reflexes, learning and memory....
When a boy and his grandfather were bitten by a rabid dog several years ago in one of China’s poorest provinces, the family had to make a tough choice. Without treatment, the disease kills nearly everyone it infects in a horrific progression: from fever and itching to hallucinations and seizures to paralysis, ending in an agonizing death. “The price was too expensive, and only the grandson got the vaccine,” says Xianfu Wu of the U....
The genomes of plants and animals are littered with the remains of viruses that integrated themselves into their DNA hundreds of millions of years ago. Most of these viral remnants are inactive, but the latest research suggests that some evolved into genes that let cells communicate. A pair of papers published in Cell on January 11 suggest that the protein encoded by one such gene uses its virus-like structure to shuttle information between cells: a new form of cellular communication that may be key to long-term memory formation and other neurological functions....
When Glenn King milks centipedes, he is not going after nutrition. He is milking their poison, and it is no simple task. “We tie them down with elastic bands, bring a pair of electrical forceps up to their pincers, apply a voltage, and they expel the venom,” says King, a biochemist at the University of Queensland in Australia. The microliters of fluid could hold the keys to a new set of pain-relieving drugs....
Holding back catastrophic climate change is still possible—but just barely, and doing so will require a tremendous technological effort, according to a sweeping new report that analyzes what it would take to de-carbonize the world’s top economies. Led by Columbia University’s Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs, the study builds on research showing the world is badly off-track to meet its international pledge of limiting the mean global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius by 2050....
Jonathan Schaeffer’s quest for the perfect game of checkers has ended. The 50-year-old computer scientist from the University of Alberta in Edmonton left human players in the dust more than a decade ago after a trial by fire against the greatest checkers champion in history. And now, after putting dozens of computers to work night and day for 18 years—jump, jump, jump—he says he has solved the game—king me!. “The starting position, assuming no side makes a mistake, is a draw,” he says....
New research could let scientists co-opt biology’s basic building block—the cell—to construct materials and structures within organisms. A study, published in March in Science and led by Stanford University psychiatrist and bioengineer Karl Deisseroth, shows how to make specific cells produce electricity-carrying (or blocking) polymers on their surfaces. The work could someday allow researchers to build large-scale structures within the body or improve brain interfaces for prosthetic limbs. In the medium term, the technique may be useful in bioelectric medicine, which involves delivering therapeutic electrical pulses....
Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that global warming is causing our crops to be less nutritious? — William Persson, Glendale, OH It is difficult to say whether or not the climate change we are now experiencing is negatively impacting the nutritional quality of our food, researchers warn that it may be only a matter of time. “Humanity is conducting a global experiment by rapidly altering the environmental conditions on the only habitable planet we know,” reports Samuel Myers, a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health....
Earth’s magnetic field, which protects the planet from huge blasts of deadly solar radiation, has been weakening over the past six months, according to data collected by a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite array called Swarm. The biggest weak spots in the magnetic field — which extends 370,000 miles (600,000 kilometers) above the planet’s surface — have sprung up over the Western Hemisphere, while the field has strengthened over areas like the southern Indian Ocean, according to the magnetometers onboard the Swarm satellites — three separate satellites floating in tandem....
On a cool September morning in 2010 my crew and I began our daily descent from camp back into deep time, walking single file down a steep, knife-edge ridge of sandstone and mudstone in southern Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Each of us carried water, a field notebook, lunch, a rock hammer and other hand tools. Heavier tools and materials—rock saws, picks, shovels, bags of plaster and swaths of burlap—awaited us half a mile away at the dig site....
Processor chips are the brains of today’s consumer digital devices, but memory is actually at their heart, with flash memory being the favored approach for cards that plug into mobile phones, cameras and PCs. Whereas hard drives store large amounts of long-term data, RAM—also called “solid state” memory—retains information outside the hard drive, where it can be accessed quickly and repeatedly. Flash memory, the cheapest RAM variety at only about $1....
The summer of 2014 was a strange one in the Chukchi Sea. The Arctic waters, historically icebound much of the year, were oddly free of ice. There was so little ice that 35,000 walruses had beached themselves on a northwest Alaska shoreline after failing to find floes to feed from. One morning in September, oceanographer Jim Thomson was on a research trip onboard the vessel Norseman II, hundreds of miles from land, when he noticed something else that was strange: some of his shipmates were seasick....
The biggest news in physics this year—actually, this decade—was the discovery in March of what looked like gravitational waves from shortly after the big bang. Soon after the announcement, critics argued that the signal might instead be caused by contaminating dust in our galaxy, and physicists have been awaiting further data to help settle the debate. Now, newly released dust measurements from the Planck satellite appear discouraging for the gravitational-wave believers....
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.— A crowd of thousands on Florida’s Space Coast watched the world’s largest rocket launch the new Orion capsule on its first trip to space. NASA’s replacement for the space shuttle, Orion could one day carry people to an asteroid and even to Mars. Today, however, it flew without a crew on a trial run that should send it around Earth twice, reaching a peak altitude of 5,800 kilometers (15 times higher than the International Space Station)—farther than any human-rated spacecraft has gone in 40 years....
For the past two decades, promises of crop improvement have been the domain of genetically modified plants: mostly, crops supplemented with bacterial genes to resist pests or weedkillers like Roundup. More than 85 percent of U.S. corn, soy or cotton grown contains such genes. But there is more than one way to transform a plant. Using advanced biotechnology, long hidden in the background and only now starting to pay dividends, scientists are changing crops without tapping foreign genes – and often without the regulatory oversight that is given to GM crops....
By Cecile Lefort SYDNEY (Reuters) - Chikungunya, a debilitating mosquito-borne viral disease, has taken hold in French Polynesia, spreading rapidly and threatening neighboring Pacific nations, regional health authorities said on Wednesday. The disease, typically found in low levels in Africa and Asia, this year has infected almost a million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the World Health Organization. French Polynesia, with a population of more than 268,000, said four people had died and more than 18,000 people had sought treatment for the disease since October, the first outbreak in the archipelago....
Kids exposed to a commonplace chemical early in life are more likely to have asthma, according to a study published today. The study, which tested 568 children and their mothers in New York City, is the first to link early childhood exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) with asthma. Studies with lab mice, however, have found a similar link. A Columbia University research team reported that children with higher levels of BPA at ages 3, 5 and 7 had increased odds of developing the respiratory disease when they were between 5 and 12....
Peru crater came from outer space A crater that mysteriously appeared near Lake Titicaca in Peru last week was probably caused by a meteor, researchers say. The Associated Press reports that a Peruvian astrophysicist discovered a chunk of iron in the crater—an element common in meteorites; that piece of evidence, combined with reports of a hail of pebbles and a violent roaring sound point to a meteorite as the potential source....
The Trump administration’s plan to weaken federal rules on vehicle emissions could lead to the Supreme Court re-examining a major climate case that defined carbon dioxide as an air pollutant. EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are expected to launch a rewrite of the tailpipe rules as soon as this week. It’s expected to freeze fuel economy targets at 2020 levels through 2026, allowing automakers to build cars that travel about 30 miles per gallon of gas rather than 36 miles....
