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Category Archives: News
Epigenetic memory: Another path for genetic inheritance
As we have all been schooled, DNA determines what is inherited. If it isn’t encoded in the genes, it won’t be passed on. Except it is becoming ever more apparent this isn’t completely true. There is another way that characteristics can be passed to the next generations; it’s called epigenetic memory. Or at least it’s [...]
Posted in News: Epigenetics Tagged Dean, DNA, epigenetic memory, FLC, genetics, histones, Howard, inheritance, stress response 1 Comment
Epigenetics and methylation: New DNA bases linked to protein
Adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine: These are the nucleobases, or just plain bases of DNA that in pairs called nucleotides carry the genetic code of life. There are four of them, right? At least that’s what most everybody learns. Of course, there is another base, uracil, which is found in RNA where it replaces thymine. [...]
Posted in News: Epigenetics Tagged cytosine, DNA, epigenetics, methylation, new bases, nucleotide, RNA, Tet, Zhang Leave a comment
Toward a new DNA: thymine out, chlorouracil in
Scientists have been twiddling with DNA for some time. While DNA may be the blueprint of life, it is not immutable (of course) and that means the hand of man likes to poke around in the mix. One kind of poking has been to see if one of the bases – adenine (A), thymine (T), [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Tagged chemical evolution, chlorouracil, DNA, nucleic acids, RNA, synthetic biology, thymine, uracil, xenobiology 1 Comment
Salt water ocean on Enceladus
It could be called the briny deep, but that might be pushing it a little. Nevertheless, a new study confirming a salty ocean under the icy surface of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, is significant. Further analysis of data from the Cassini space probe led by researchers at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and the University of [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Tagged Cassini, Enceladus, exogenous life, Moon, ocean, salt water, Saturn Leave a comment
Fluorescence microscopy: Scoping out molecular immune mechanisms
Science and technology have long danced together. Until somebody built a telescope, the moons of most planets were invisible. The impact of the microscope was even more telling. This relationship continues and it’s useful to occasionally dip into the flow of scientific discovery to recognize just how much of it relies on advances in technology. [...]
Posted in News: Scientific Instruments Tagged fluorescence microscope, immune system, immunology, molecule, PALM, STORM, T-cells, UNSW, vesicles, Williamson Leave a comment
Supercomputer race: Japan’s Fujitsu takes the lead
The bragging rights for building the world’s fastest supercomputer pass to Japan and Fujitsu’s K-supercomputer. For most people this is a fleeting tidbit of technology news, but it is one kind of milestone marking the increasing power of computers. For the computer industries in the countries involved, it is a rather big deal. In this [...]
Posted in News: Computer Power Tagged China, Fujitsu, IBM, Japan, K-supercomputer, petaflop, supercomputer, Tianhe-1A 2 Comments
State of the oceans: Degrading faster
International Programme on the State of the Ocean expert panel…Credit: IPSO The ocean big and wide and mighty…is damaged, seriously damaged. How to get that message across in an era when so much propaganda is directed toward destroying the credibility of science? For years scientists have been warning that the oceans are degrading – acidification, [...]
Posted in News: Degrading Oceans Tagged acidification, climate change, degrading oceans, IPSO, IUCN, overfishing, pollution, State of the Ocean Leave a comment
BioBolt: A semi-invasive skull implant
BioBolt on a primate cranium….Credit: Euisik Yook, U. of Michigan The idea of a ‘brain implant’ bothers people. It even bothers scientists, since brain implants invade the tissue of the brain (always a delicate operation) and because to function properly the skull must remain open while the implants are in place. This makes it difficult [...]
Posted in News: Body Implant Tagged BioBolt, body implant, brain enhancement, epilepsy, skin transmission, skull, Yoon Leave a comment
Human genetics: The mysterious unequal mutation by sex
By the numbers, geneticists thought about mutations like this: There are six billion pieces (nucleotides) of genetic information in the genome. Three billion provided by the mother and three billion from the father. Based on evolutionary studies, previous estimates reckoned about 100-200 mutations would be passed on to each child. It was assumed that because [...]
Posted in News: DNA Decoding Tagged DNA, genetics, genome, heredity, mutation, sequencing 2 Comments
New elements: ununquadium (114) and ununhexium (116)
Since it doesn’t happen very often, it’s worth noting that two more basic elements of the universe were added to mankind’s chart of such things, the periodic table of the elements. Don’t be put off by the unun, that’s just a placeholder prefix for an element admitted to the periodic table of elements that doesn’t [...]
Posted in News: Nuclear Physics Tagged elements, island of stability, nuclear physics, periodic table, ununhexium, Ununquadium Leave a comment
Better communications: One laser – 26 Terabits per second, a new record
Imagine transmitting the content of the entire Library of Congress in ten seconds. Yes, that’s fast. That communication speed translates to 26 terabits per second, which is, for now, the fastest speed attained by a communication system using a single laser beam and optical fiber. Actually not so long ago people could barely imagine transmitting [...]
Posted in News: Communications Tagged communications, FFT, frequency comb, Karlsruhe, laser, Leuthold, optics, photonics, Terabit Leave a comment
Synthetic biology: Improve photosynthesis
Eighteen blue-ribbon scientists from all over the world agree: We need to improve on Mother Nature. Oh? Well, yes. Nature only extracts energy from the Sun in a couple of band gaps (otherwise known as colors), mostly green, some blue. We can do better than that. We can engineer plants to absorb photons from the [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Tagged algae, alternative energy, band gap, biomass, color, photosynthesis, photovoltaic, solar energy, synthetic biology Leave a comment
World population estimate for 2100 revised – up
Ask around about the ‘overpopulation issue.’ The reply is likely to be: What overpopulation issue? For anyone cognitively aware before 1990, that was one of the biggest issues of the era, right up there with the means of reducing the surplus population, which was called global thermonuclear war. For recent generations, it is hardly a [...]
Posted in News: Overpopulation Tagged 2100, Central Africa, Malawi, Nigeria, overpopulation, population report, U.N., world population 2 Comments
New solar heat technology: Make electricity and hot water
Solar panels that directly capture energy from the sun and convert it into electrical energy are well known and recognized as a major source of alternative energy. Solar panels that make hot water are popular in some parts of the world (China, Europe, Brazil, India) and the technology is well known. Solar panels that use [...]
Posted in News: Alternative Energy Tagged alternative energy, Chen, flat-panel, MIT, Seebeck, solar energy, solar panel, thermoelectric, water heater 5 Comments
Graphene transistor: Two layers may be better than one
One of the characteristics of clever science is to look at a new material from every which way. So it is with graphene. Graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms, in a layer one atom thick, arranged in the pattern of a honeycomb. It sounds simple, and is anything but. Its super-thinness in this precise [...]
Posted in News: Nanotechnology Tagged band gap, bandgap, bilayer, electronics, graphene, graphene transistor, NIST, semiconductor, silicon Leave a comment
Laser sparkplugs: off the drawing board
In the never ending search to squeeze energy savings out of old technology, in this case the internal combustion engine, researchers working with Takunori Taira at the Japanese National Institute of Natural Sciences have developed what appears to be a production capable laser sparkplug. Let’s unpack the last four words: Sparkplug – those are the [...]
New technology: An optical microscope without lenses
Say ‘microscope’ and most people think of the models they had in school. Those microscopes had lenses and used visible light (either natural light or a bulb of some kind). Generically they’re called optical microscopes. So what’s a microscope called if it doesn’t have any lenses? Try lens-free optical tomographic microscope. And this means what? [...]
Posted in News: Scientific Instruments Tagged AFM, digital, holograph, lab on a chip, lens-free, microscope, optical microscope, Ozcan, STM, tomography Leave a comment
Graphene gets spintronics
The basis of microelectronics is the manipulation of charged electrons. The basis of spintronics is the conversion of electricity to magnetism and vice versa in order to manipulate the spin of electrons. Both approaches can produce transistors and other elements used in electronics (computers et al), but spintronics has advantages: Unlike the charge of electrons, [...]
Posted in News: Nanotechnology Tagged carbon, Dirac point, Geim, graphene, magnetic, Novoselov, spintronics Leave a comment
No WIMPS in the Xenon
It is a strange headline – No WIMPS in the Xenon, but then Dark Matter is strange. It supposedly must exist, in fact, it makes up 25% of the material in the universe. However, it has never been seen. Not seen even by the latest super high sensitivity detector project called XENON100. Located at the [...]
Posted in News: Nuclear Physics Tagged cosmology, dark energy, dark matter, Gran Sasso, Large Hadron Collider, LHC, nuclear physics, supersymmetry, SUSY, WIMP, xenon, XENON100, XENON1T Leave a comment
Stem cell research: Synthetic retina tissue
This is a ‘Don’t jump to conclusions story.’ Scientists working with the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (Kobe, Japan) and published in the journal Nature, 6 April 2011, Paywall [Self-organizing optic-cup morphogenesis in three-dimensional culture] have announced that mouse embryonic stem cells have been induced to grow a retina-like structure. Let’s parse that last statement: [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Tagged embryonic stem cells, eye, morphogenesis, optic cup, retina, RIKEN, synthetic biology Leave a comment
NEWS: Short List
Restraining and studying molecules, two at a time – Photonics | The usual way of studying how molecules react to a catalyst is to put them into a solution and observe – typically huge numbers of reactions. This works to a point, the point being the amount of detail that can be surmised from so [...]
Posted in News: Tagged Agol, Bada, exogenous life, life origin, Miller, nanomedicine, photonics Leave a comment
Connecting to neurons with semiconductor nanotubes
“Patching into the brain” is a staple of science fiction and you hear about it fairly often in neuroscience; connecting ‘wires’ into the brain somehow seems routine. It’s not. Scientists and sometimes doctors do lots of things with reading or probing the brain with external (on the skin) sensors. They also occasionally do neural implants [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Tagged brain implant, Justin Williams, nanotechnology, nanotubes, neuron connection, neuroscience, prosthetic connection Leave a comment
NEWS: Short List
Targeting cancer with magnetic microcarrier – Nanomedicine | As a rule chemotherapy is like using a blunderbuss against cancer. ‘Chemo’ is administered through the bloodstream, which of course goes everywhere in the body. While the anti-cancer chemistry can be targeted to a certain extent, it almost always has toxic side effects with other organs and [...]
Posted in News: Tagged computer power, H1N1, microcarrier, nanomedicine, Nanotiles, pandemics, photonics, processor, quantum switch, swine flu, synthetic biology, synthetic urethra, W.H.O. Leave a comment
Guanfacine: A possible drug to improve memory in old age