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- Prions: Not alive but they can evolve
- Oil production from living bacteria
- Government Internet censorship on the rise
- Enhancer RNA (eRNA): More powerful than previously thought
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Category Archives: News
microDNA: A new piece of genetics puzzle
In the beginning the big discovery was the existence of DNA and RNA. Eventually more refined experiments and better equipment revealed that RNA in particular came in many forms and functions, for example, micro RNA (miRNA) for DNA regulation or piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) for transposon defense. So far there are 25-27 types of RNA. However, [...]
Posted in News: DNA Decoding Tagged DNA, eccDNA, extra-chromosomal, genome, microdeletion, microDNA, RNA, Shibata Leave a comment
Coming soon: Google’s Augmented Reality glasses
Slick, stylish and they might even be useful: Google glasses….Credit: Google Google calls it Project Glass. You may call it futuristic, fantastic or just let’s wait and see. These highly sophisticated computerized specs are intended to receive and process information from the Web and display it to one eye. It’s called augmented reality. For example, [...]
Posted in News: Virtual/Augmented Reality Tagged AR, augmented reality, glasses, Google, Google X, Project Glass Leave a comment
Personal genome disease risk analysis: New study finds important limits
As the cost of sequencing a person’s genome has sharply declined, the enthusiasm for using that genomic knowledge to predict susceptibility to gene-based illness has grown. In fact, it’s been one of the most common topics of medicine in the public media for more than a year. This includes intense debates about whether it is [...]
Posted in News: DNA Decoding Tagged disease prediction, DNA, genome, genome sequencing, Johns Hopkins, personal genome, twins study, Vogelstein Leave a comment
Energy density: Improving the lithium-ion battery
The cost and weight of batteries is the Achilles heel for electric vehicles. Today’s lithium-ion batteries used in cars such as the GM Volt are serviceable but expensive, up to 60% of the cost of the car. This has provided a major incentive for science and industry to chase large-scale battery improvement for decades. The [...]
Posted in News: Energy Storage Tagged anode, battery, carbon threads, cathode, electric car, energy density, Envia, GM, GM Volt, lithium-ion, manganese, silicon, U.S. DOE Leave a comment
Recognizing one face in a crowd of 36 million
A new camera surveillance system in preparation for the market by Hitachi Kokusai Electric (Japan) claims the ability to recognize a face from a database of 36 million in less than a second. It does this by not creating a stored image and then analyzing it, but by immediately analyzing the incoming visual stream (containing [...]
Posted in News: Sensor Technology Tagged CCTV, face recognition, Hitachi, law enforcement, sensor technology, surveillance system Leave a comment
The Planet Under Pressure conference
There’s this from the co-chair of the Planet Under Pressure conference, Dr. Lidia Brito: If you like, our presenters today are akin to doctors saying, “Look, you may not feel too sick at the moment but you’ve got high blood pressure, your cholesterol is going up, and your lifestyle is not conducive to good health.” [...]
Posted in News: Climate Change Tagged AGW, CO2 emission, global warming, greenhouse gas, permafrost, Planet Under Pressure, tipping points, UNESCO Leave a comment
Wi-fi and TV: Corkscrew signals for solving the world’s bandwidth problem
As the mega-money auctions for broadcast bandwidth demonstrate, there are a finite number of frequencies and they are almost all allocated. Put another way, the world is running out of broadcast frequencies. That also amounts to a challenge for the world’s physicists and radio engineers – How to get more signal (information) onto existing bandwidths? [...]
Posted in News: Communications Tagged 3-D, bandwidth, orbital angular momentum, polarization, Tamburini, Thidé, twisting radio waves, vorticity, Wi-Fi Leave a comment
Key ocean currents warming at accelerated rate
The signs of climate change appear like pieces of a mosaic, a patchwork of scientific data and observation. Most individual signs don’t carry great significance, but here’s one that does – the persistent rise of the temperature of the oceans over the past 100 years. The research comes from an international team (China, Japan, Australia, [...]
Posted in News: Climate Change Tagged anthropogenic, climate change, climatology, currents, global warming, Gulf Stream, Kuroshio current, oceans 1 Comment
Stem cell injection improves aging cells in mice
“The provocative findings urge further research,” said Dr. Niedernhofer, one of the senior investigators on a University of Pittsburgh (USA) stem cell project. The context is injecting stem cells from young mice into very old mice and mice with progeria, a disease that causes rapid aging. As described in Nature Communications [03 January 2012, Open [...]
Posted in News: Stem Cells Tagged aging, Niedernhofer, progenitor cells, progeria, stem cells 1 Comment
Zircons provide new reading on the atmosphere for origin of life
How can you tell what the atmosphere of Earth was like four billion years ago? The answer is simple, although technically difficult to do – read the rocks. Geologists and now astrogeologists and astrobiologists go back to the question of what the atmosphere was like during the early history of Earth because it is one [...]
Posted in News: Origin of Life Tagged atmosphere, cerium, Hadean, life origin, NASA, oxygen atmosphere, Tailby, Trail, Watson, zircon Leave a comment
New water for life: Lakes on Jupiter’s moon Europa
Europa lake formation between surface and ocean….Credit: Britney Schmidt, U.of Texas, Austin This story begins with chaotic terrain on a moon of Jupiter, Europa. Ever since the space probe Galileo zipped by this part of the solar system and recorded the most detailed pictures of the surface of Europa, astroscientists have pretty much come to [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Tagged chaotic terrain, Europa, Europa lakes, Galileo, Jupiter, Moon, oceans, thick ice, thin ice, water Leave a comment
Synthetic biology: Pituitary glands from stem cells
Research into the uses stem cells is at that stage where almost every month a new application is announced, typically in the replacement of damaged cells or tissues. The most recent application is the creation of pituitary gland tissue from the embryonic stem cells of mice. Researchers at the Japanese RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Tagged embryonic stem cells, pituitary gland, RIKEN, Sasai, stem cells, synthetic biology, synthetic organs 2 Comments
Asteroid 2005 YU55: No impact on the neighborhood
Asteroid 2005 YU55 photographed in passing…Credit: NASA November 9, 2011: It was a reminder for the neighborhood (Earth and Moon) that strangers pass in the night. Night being metaphorical in this case because the asteroid 2005 YU55 actually took about three days to orbit through the vicinity of the Earth and Moon. As asteroids go, [...]
Posted in News: Impact Event Tagged 2005 YU55, asteroid, NASA, NEA, Near Earth Asteroid, NEO Leave a comment
DNA computing: Genetic expression used for computer logic
Over the last few years it’s been shown theoretically and with some prototype devices that a biological computer is possible. That is, a digital computer where the components are built not of silicon or metal but with organic material. The question has become not can a biological computer be developed, but how – or more [...]
Posted in News: Computer Power Tagged biological computer, DNA computing, E. coli, Kitney, logic gate, Wang Leave a comment
The mystery of dark matter in small galaxies
Considering that dark matter is supposed to make up about 23% of all mass-energy density in the universe, it’s surprisingly difficult to pin down. It can’t be seen or measured directly, that much is known. Its existence is inferred from gravitational effects on things that instruments can see and from gravitational lensing (the bending of [...]
Posted in News: Dark Matters Tagged astrophysics, dark energy, dark matter, Fornax, Penarrubia, Sculptor, small galaxies, Walker 1 Comment
DNA nanosensors
Not all sensors are electronic, or at least if you expand the scope of sensor technology, measurement techniques (which is what sensor technology is about) can also be chemical or physical, among other things. In this case, the sensor is built from DNA and it’s called a DNA nanosensor. The idea behind this particular nanosensor [...]
Posted in News: Sensor Technology Tagged assay, cell programming, DNA, nanosensor, protein, RNA, sensor technology, signaling pathway, transcription factor 1 Comment
HARPS finds a batch of 50+ new exoplanets
Punch up the numbers, add more than fifty planets to the count of those that potentially could harbor life, bringing the total almost to 700. These new exoplanets were discovered by the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The announcement, at the Extreme Solar System conference in [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Tagged Doppler effect, exoplanet, Goldilocks Planet, HARPS, La Silla, radial velocity, solar system, super-Earth 1 Comment
Plasmonic nanostructures make graphene viable for super-fast communications
On the one hand graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb pattern, can move electrons (electricity) very fast and efficiently. On the other hand graphene is lousy at absorbing energy, specifically from sunlight; only about 3% is absorbed. Sounds like graphene, a wonder material in many accounts, isn’t cut out for solar [...]
Posted in News: Photonics Tagged Geim, graphene, nanowire, Novoselov, optoelectronics, photonics, plasmonic nanostructure Leave a comment
lincRNA: A recently discovered RNA organizes stem cell differentiation
What makes a scientist’s heart go pitter-patter? Something like this: When the Broad team discovered more than 3,500 unique lincRNAs in the human and mouse genomes in 2009, “the potential was enormous, and we wanted to know what they could be doing.” [Source: Technology Review] Here’s the scenario: A team of researchers at the Broad [...]
Posted in News: Proteomics Tagged Broad Institute, cell development, DNA, genetics, Guttmann, lincRNA, pluripotent, proteomics, RNA, stem cells 1 Comment
Micromold technology: New technique for fabricating cells and tissues
As they say, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Perhaps they should also say, there’s more than one way to make a cat skin. One of the key objectives of synthetic biology is to create materials that can imitate the functions of cells and tissues, like creating the building blocks of biological [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Tagged drug-delivery, hydrogel, Khademhosseini, micromolds, microparticles, MIT, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, Tekin Leave a comment
New evidence for liquid water on Mars
The possible seasonal rills of running water on Mars……Credit: NASA, JPL Earth has lots of liquid water, like oceans of it – though salty. Why would people be excited by briny water on Mars? However, for those intrepid, dreaming human beings who think of traveling to Mars and one day pitching camp there, the news [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Tagged brine, carbon dioxide, CRISM, exogenous life, liquid water, Mars, Mars colonies, MRO, NASA, spectrograph Leave a comment
The Big Splat: New two moon hypothesis
It doesn’t sound very scientific, but some scientists are calling it the “Big Splat.” That refers to the results of a new computer model showing the early Earth having two moons that collided. Planetary scientists Martin Jutzi and Erik Asphaug at the University of Southern California, Santa Cruz (USA) and publishing in the journal Nature [...]
New sequencing technique opens doors for epigenetics