Science and Exploration

[MysticOceansFL]

I usually watch the NASA channel or go to the web site they have, Its more updated than any other places!

[Corkey]

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...paign=fb-posts

First video of the dark side of the moon.

[Corkey]

http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/...f+new+zealand/

Makes me do this

[Hollylane]

That link, led me to read this story-->Canoeing legend Don Starkell, famous for journey to Amazon, dies at 79

[SoNotHer]

Alien Planet 'Super-Earth' Called Best Candidate To Support Life
By: Denise Chow



Published: 02/02/2012 10:16 AM EST on SPACE.com

A potentially habitable alien planet — one that scientists say is the best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on its surface — has been found around a nearby star. The planet is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the planet's surface. "It's the Holy Grail of exoplanet research to find a planet around a star orbiting at the right distance so it's not too close where it would lose all its water and boil away, and not too far where it would all freeze," Steven Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told SPACE.com. "It's right smack in the habitable zone — there's no question or discussion about it. It's not on the edge, it's right in there."

Vogt is one of the authors of the new study, which was led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution for Science, a private, nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. "This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it," Anglada-Escudé said in a statement.

An alien super-Earth

The researchers estimate that the planet, called GJ 667Cc, is at least 4.5 times as massive as Earth, which makes it a so-called super-Earth. It takes roughly 28 days to make one orbital lap around its parent star, which is located a mere 22 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Scorpius (the Scorpion).

"This is basically our next-door neighbor," Vogt said. "It's very nearby. There are only about 100 stars closer to us than this one." Interestingly enough, the host star, GJ 667C, is a member of a triple-star system. GJ 667C is an M-class dwarf star that is about a third of the mass of the sun, and while it is faint, it can be seen by ground-based telescopes, Vogt said. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets] "The planet is around one star in a triple-star system," Vogt explained. "The other stars are pretty far away, but they would look pretty nice in the sky."

The discovery of a planet around GJ 667C came as a surprise to the astronomers, because the entire star system has a different chemical makeup than our sun. The system has much lower abundances of heavy elements (elements heavier than hydrogen and helium), such as iron, carbon and silicon. "It's pretty deficient in metals," Vogt said. "These are the materials out of which planets form — the grains of stuff that coalesce to eventually make up planets — so we shouldn't have really expected this star to be a likely case for harboring planets." The fortuitous discovery could mean that potentially habitable alien worlds could exist in a greater variety of environments than was previously thought possible, the researchers said.

"Statistics tell us we shouldn't have found something this quickly this soon unless there's a lot of them out there," Vogt said. "This tells us there must be an awful lot of these planets out there. It was almost too easy to find, and it happened too quickly." The detailed findings of the study will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

An intriguing star system

Another super-Earth that orbits much closer to GJ 667C was previously detected in 2010, but the finding was never published, Vogt added. This planet, called GJ 667Cb, takes 7.2 days to circle the star but its location makes it far too hot to sustain liquid water on its surface.

"It's basically glowing cinders, or a well-lit charcoal," Vogt said. "We know about a lot of these, but they're thousands of degrees and not places where you could live." But, the newly detected GJ 667Cc planet is a much more intriguing candidate, he said. "When a planet gets bigger than about 10 times the size of the Earth, there's a runaway process that happens, where it begins to eat up all the gas and ice in the disk that it's forming out of and swells quickly into something like Uranus, Jupiter or Saturn," Vogt explained. "When you have a surface and the right temperature, if there's water around, there's a good chance that it could be in liquid form. This planet is right in that sweet spot in the habitable zone, so we've got the right temperature and the right mass range."

Preliminary observations also suggest that more planets could exist in this system, including a gas giant planet and another super-Earth that takes about 75 days to circle the star. More research will be needed to confirm these planetary candidates, as well as to glean additional details about the potentially habitable super-Earth, the scientists said.

Finding nearby alien planets

To make their discovery, the researchers used public data from the European Southern Observatory combined with observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the new Carnegie Planet Finder Spectrograph at the Magellan II Telescope in Chile. Follow-up analyses were also made using a planet-hunting technique that measures the small dips, or wobbles, in a star's motion caused by the gravitational tug of a planet.

"With the advent of a new generation of instruments, researchers will be able to survey many M dwarf stars for similar planets and eventually look for spectroscopic signatures of life in one of these worlds," Anglada-Escudé said in a statement. Anglada-Escudé was with the Carnegie Institution for Science when he conducted the research, but has since moved on to the University of Gottingen in Germany. With the GJ 667C system being relatively nearby, it also opens exciting possibilities for probing potentially habitable alien worlds in the future, Vogt said, which can't easily be done with the planets that are being found by NASA's prolific Kepler spacecraft.

"The planets coming out of Kepler are typically thousands of light-years away and we could never send a space probe out there," Vogt said. "We've been explicitly focusing on very nearby stars, because with today's technology, we could send a robotic probe out there, and within a few hundred years, it could be sending back picture postcards."

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/namibia-sponge...203340973.html

Namibia sponge fossils worlds first animals.

[Corkey]

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...ars-away-.html

Missing matter of the Universe found.

[SoNotHer]

Oh, thank all imaginable deities. Now I can sleep at night. ;-)

Originally Posted by Corkey

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...ars-away-.html

Missing matter of the Universe found.

[SoNotHer]

[Softhearted]

Communication during sex among female bonobos: effects of dominance, solicitation and audience

"Bonobo females frequently form close bonds, which give them social power over other group members. One potential mechanism to facilitate female bonding is the performance of sexual interactions. Using naturalistic observations and experiments, we found various patterns that determined female-female sexual interactions. First, while low-ranked females interacted with all females, sexual interactions between high-ranked females were rare. Second, during genital contacts, females sometimes produced ‘copulation calls’, which were significantly affected by the rank of the caller and partner, as well as the solicitation direction. Third, there was a significant effect of the alpha female as a bystander, while variables relating to physical experience had no effects. Overall, results highlight the importance of sexual interactions for bonobo female social relations. Copulation calls are an important tool during this process, suggesting that they have become ritualised, beyond their reproductive function, to serve as broader social signals in flexible and potentially strategic ways."

sources:
Clay, Z. and Zuberbühler, K. (2012). Communication during sex among female bonobos: effects of dominance, solicitation and audience. Scientific Reports, 2:291.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/1203...srep00291.html

[SoNotHer]

How can I resist the opportunity to once again post a video that includes the term "aurora mass ejections"? And now I know what other career tract I want to pursue - "astrophotographer."

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/ethiopias-magn...140401541.html

Magnetic strips hold clues to oceans formation.

[Softhearted]

"Space flight linked to eye, brain problems
CBC News



Space travel hurts eyes, brain


Astronauts who have spent prolonged periods in the zero gravity of space tend to show eye abnormalities linked to pressure around the brain, another study has confirmed.

The new study, which involved magnetic resonance imaging of the eyes and brains of 27 astronauts – a larger sample than previous studies — also found abnormalities in the pituitary gland and its connection to the brain in three cases. The gland, found at the base of the brain, secretes and stores a number of important hormones that regulate growth, metabolism and reproduction.

The findings, published online in the journal Radiology on Tuesday, may point to a "hypothetical risk factor and potential limitation to long-duration space travel," said study co-author Dr. Larry Kramer, a professor of diagnostic and interventional imaging at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, in a statement. That means they could pose a problem on future missions to places such as Mars.

An earlier study on eye problems in astronauts suggested that the issues might be caused by fluid shifting toward the head during extended periods of time in microgravity.

William J. Tarver, chief of the flight medicine clinic at NASA's Johnson Space Center, said in a statement that the U.S. space agency has "placed this problem high on its list of human risks, has initiated a comprehensive program to study its mechanisms and implications, and will continue to closely monitor the situation."

Astronauts have complained for decades about vision problems such as blurriness following trips into space. A recent NASA survey of 300 astronauts found correctible near and distance vision problems in 48 per cent of astronauts who had been on extended missions and 23 per cent of those who had been on brief missions. In some cases, they lasted for years after the astronauts returned to Earth.

Fluid shifting toward head causes problems

In the new study, the astronauts had spent an average of 108 days in space. Their eye abnormalities were similar to those seen in patients on Earth with idiopathic intracranial hypertension. Patients with the condition have increased pressure around their brains for no apparent reason.

Among the astronauts in the study:
33 per cent had expansion of the space filled with cerebral spinal fluid that surrounds the optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain.
22 per cent had flattening of the rear of the eyeball.
15 per cent had bulging of the optic nerve.
11 per cent had changes in the pituitary gland and its connection to the brain.

An earlier NASA-sponsored study of seven astronauts, published last November in the journal Ophthalmology, found similar abnormalities and also noted that they were similar to those experienced by patients on Earth suffering from pressure in the head. But it noted that astronauts did not experience symptoms usually associated with that problem on Earth, such as chronic headache, double vision or ringing in the ears.

The earlier study suggested that the problems might be caused by fluid shifting toward the head during extended periods of time in microgravity. This could result in abnormal flow of spinal fluid around the optic nerve, changes in blood flow in the vessels at the back of the eye, or chronic low pressure within the eye, the researchers said."

Source: www.cbc.ca
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/st...-problems.html

[Softhearted]

In french, when we want to show skepticism or that we do not believe that an event will occur, we use the expression: "quand les poules auront des dents". It translates to: when hens will have teeth. It is the equivalent of the english expression of "When pigs fly". But behold...



Atavism: Embryology, Development and Evolution
By: Jill U. Adams, Ph.D. & Kenna M. Shaw, Ph.D. (Nature Education) © 2008

Humans do not have tails, but do we have “what it takes” for a tail? Hens don’t have teeth, but they have the genes for it. With atavism, it is as if our genomes serve as archives of our evolutionary past.


Hens do not have teeth, and humans do not have tails. Research suggests we have "what it takes" for a tail, and hens, indeed, have the genes that encode for a toothy grin; however, only in very rare situations do these traits manifest themselves as a phenotype. This phenomenon is called atavism—the reappearance of a trait that had been lost during evolution. Our genes do not determine who we are, but with atavism, they can sometimes serve as reminders of our evolutionary past.


Traits that appear or disappear over time are not the result of newly mutated genes encoding defective versions of the proteins associated with teeth or tails, nor are they caused by a loss of existing genes. Instead, a growing body of experimental evidence has shown such traits reflect changes in how, where, and when these genes are expressed.


Examples of "Teeth" in Chicken

Hen's teeth: As rare as we thought?

© 2006 Nature Publishing Group Bajaj, Arveen. Hen's teeth. British Dental Journal 200, 187. All rights reserved.


Even though birds lost teeth as physical structures between 60 and 80 million years ago, several studies have shown that those tissues within birds that would normally produce teeth still retain the potential to do so. For example, in 1821, Geoffrey St. Hilaire was the first scientist to publish the observation that some bird embryos exhibited evidence of tooth formation, but his contemporaries considered his work flawed. Since then, however, many investigators have unearthed molecular evidence that the genes involved in odontogenesis (tooth development) are indeed retained in chickens.


A primary step in reaching this conclusion occurred when researchers exposed chick jaws to certain proteins known to cue tooth development. As a result, toothlike structures grew, and other tooth markers were expressed (Chen et al., 2000). These findings were artificial in the sense that the prompting signal was experimentally administered; nonetheless, they were significant in showing that a chicken's jaw could produce teeth if specific conditions were present.


Despite this discovery, no one had yet demonstrated that chickens could develop teeth without external cues. This situation soon changed, however, when researchers Matthew Harris (a graduate student at the time) and John Fallon launched a study involving chickens with a particular kind of autosomal recessive mutation (Harris et al., 2006). These chickens, designated by the abbreviation ta2, displayed signs reminiscent of early tooth development.


The researchers needed a positive control with which to compare their hens' teeth-that is, a closely related animal in which teeth occur. Typically, the nonmutant or "wild-type" phenotype serves as a control in gene mutation experiments, but this was an exceptional case in that the wild-type chicken doesn't have teeth. Harris and Fallon specifically needed to compare the structures they believed to be teeth in their ta2 mutant chickens with the next best thing—the closest ancestor to the chicken that still has teeth—which in this case was the archosaur, otherwise known as the common crocodile. Therefore, the researchers examined the expression of several biomarkers in wild-type chicken embryos, ta2 mutant embryos, and crocodile embryos. They found that the ta2 mutant oral cavities appeared developmentally closer to those of the crocodiles than to those of their wild-type siblings. These results thus demonstrated that all the genetic pieces to the tooth-building puzzle exist in chickens, but the directions have evolved to tell those pieces to do something different over the last 80 million years.


Atavism and Human Tails

True examples of atavism, like the ta2 chicken, are data points indicative of common ancestry between species. In the case of human beings, the presence of a tail is a striking example of such ancestry. Many cases of people born with "tails" exist in the medical literature, but it is not always clear whether these appendages are "true" tails or not. In some instances, they are actually "pseudotails," or malformations that just happen to be located near a person's tailbone. True tails, however, result from a particular type of error during fetal development.



source: http://www.nature.com/scitable/topic...-evolution-843

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/mysterious-chi...150805074.html

New human species fossils found in cave in China.

[Softhearted]

Neutrinos not faster than light

"ICARUS experiment contradicts controversial claim.
Geoff Brumfiel

16 March 2012

The ICARUS detector in Gran Sasso, Italy, has confirmed that neutrinos travel no faster than the speed of light.

INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratory


Neutrinos obey nature's speed limit, according to new results from an Italian experiment. The finding, posted to the preprint server arXiv.org, contradicts a rival claim that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light.

Neutrinos are tiny, electrically neutral particles produced in nuclear reactions. Last September, an experiment called OPERA turned up evidence that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light (see 'Particles break light speed limit'). Located beneath the Gran Sasso mountain in central Italy, OPERA detected neutrinos sent from CERN, Europe's premier particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. According to the group's findings, neutrinos made the 731-kilometre journey 60 nanoseconds faster than predicted if they had travelled at light speed.

The announcement made international headlines, but physicists were deeply sceptical. The axiom that nothing travels faster than light was first formulated by Albert Einstein and is a cornerstone of modern physics. OPERA defended its announcement, saying that it could find no flaw in its measurement.

Now another experiment located just a few metres from OPERA has clocked neutrinos travelling at roughly the speed of light, and no faster. Known as ICARUS, the rival monitored a beam of neutrinos sent from CERN in late October and early November of last year. The neutrinos were packed into pulses just 4 nanoseconds long. That meant that the timing could be measured far more accurately than the original OPERA measurement, which used 10-microsecond pulses.

"Our results are in agreement with what Einstein would like to have," says Carlo Rubbia, the spokesperson for ICARUS and a Nobel prizewinning physicist at CERN. Neutrinos measured by the experiment arrived within just 4 nanoseconds of the time that light travelling through a vacuum would take to cover the distance, well within the experimental margin of error.

Because the pulses from CERN were so short, ICARUS only measured seven neutrinos during the late autumn run, but Rubbia says that the relatively low number does not matter. "How many times do you have to say 'zero' to make sure it's zero?" he asks.

The findings are yet another blow to OPERA, which was already under intense scrutiny from the wider experimental community. Almost as soon as the announcement was made, physicists began trying to poke holes in the OPERA analysis, and on 23 February researchers from within the OPERA team announced that they had uncovered possible timing problems with their original measurements (see 'Timing glitches dog neutrino claim'). Those problems could have led to the 60-nanosecond discrepancy.

Dario Autiero, a physicist at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Lyons, France, and physics coordinator for OPERA, welcomes the latest result. He notes that OPERA continued to detect faster-than-light neutrinos in October and November, when the shorter pulses were used. The team continues to search for possible sources of error, he says.

For some, the new measurements settle the matter once and for all. "The OPERA case is now conclusively closed," says Adam Falkowski, a theoretical physicist at the University of Paris-South in Orsay, France. But Rubbia says that he is still awaiting further measurements set to be made later in the spring by OPERA, ICARUS and two other experiments inside Gran Sasso.

"Had we found 60 nanoseconds, I would have sent a bottle of champagne to OPERA," Rubbia says. But as it stands, he suspects he will be toasting Einstein. "It's quite a relief, because I'm a conservative character," he says."

source: http://www.nature.com/news/neutrinos...-light-1.10249

[Corkey]

http://www.lifewithdogs.tv/2012/03/a...with-his-bone/

Good dog

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/4-000-old-ston...135405443.html

4,000 y/o monolithic stone

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/hot-humans-use...191003221.html

Humans using fire 1 million years ago.

[Corkey]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/sc...&smid=fb-share

Dino's n feathers.