A recent finding has been made at the Arizona State University, where Sandra Pizzarello and her team (geologist Lynda Williams, chemists Gregory Holland and Jeffery Yarger, and Jennifer Lehman of UC Santa Cruz) found very high concentrations of nitrogen-based compounds in meteorites found in Antarctica. Meteorites that contain high levels of organic materials are called carbonaceous chrondites. These bodies have been long striking the Earth’s surface ever since it was being formed and may provide evidence for the reason nitrogen-based prebiotic molecular life was able to form through formation of RNA, DNA, proteins and other polymers. Previously viewed meteors, like Renazzo-type (CR) meteorites, have contained small soluble molecules, such as glycine and alanine; two amino acids. A component of the CR2 GRA 95229 meteorite has shown more primitive types of insoluble based compounds.
Prebiotic theories have been struggling to keep afloat because of hypotheses that free ammonia could have entered the Earth in great abundance due to a reduced atmosphere. However, the early Earth atmosphere was quite neutral and was known to be destructive to ammonia photochemically. So meteorites, which were bombarding the Earth at such a time, could be great candidates for being our nitrogen feeders we require for such prebiotic theories to maintain their Urey-Miller-like evolution; which is the theory of the creation of life-originating molecules from basic compounds and early Earth conditions.
It just goes to show that there are always new things to be discovered to support the claims of early origins. It’s nice to think that we were all once flying through space, hit a big rock, and now have the privilege to inhabit it for a short period of time. Who knows what discoveries await us in the future.
Source(s): http://asunews.asu.edu/20110301_ammonia (Article)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/02/22/1014961108 (Journal)
http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/miller.html (Urey-Miller)
Paleontologists are always searching for answers in the dirt, sand, and rock to the history of species and providing more evidence for evolution. Another piece of that great tree has been placed; a piece placed roughly 230 million years ago. This new finding is indeed a dinosaur. 230 million years ago, in the late Triassic period, a dinosaur that stretches only ~1 metre in length and 10-15 pounds scoured the Earth looking for other organisms to feast on. That’s right. This little creature was a carnivore and the researchers, led by Paul Sereno, would like to think that this little guy eventually became the T-Rex; the king of the dinosaurs that we all know of.
The Andes, in ‘The Valley of the Moon’, was where the two specimen laid. A near-complete skeleton between the two of them was built. The Andes used to be part of the southwestern corner of Pangea. Volcanoes erupted and scattered ash over the valley and sediments covered the skeletons. ”With a hike across the valley, you literally walk over the graveyard of the earliest dinosaurs to a time when they ultimately dominate,” said Ricardo Martinez, lead author of the report. All the sediment and volcanic ash build up allowed the paleontologists to use (40)Ar/(39)Ar radioisotopic dating to give the 230 million year old date. Eodramaeus (dawn runner) lived with the previously founded Eoraptor, a similar sized herbivore. These two early dinosaurs would give rise to the giant, different looking animals we know of that time; Eoraptor giving rise to Apatosaurus, and Eodramaeus giving rise to the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Who knows what other great findings lie within the crust of the Earth?
Source(s): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110113141611.htm
2010 comes to a close, and the door opens to 2011. What has been done in 2010 for science? Here are the top Nature science stories in the last 12 months, and here is Nature’s best science images of the year.
Everyone have a good year and let’s welcome 2011: The International Year of Chemistry.
Scientist Jasper Kok at the National Centre of Atmospheric Research has reason to believe that climate researchers and meteorologists have been underestimating the number of large dust particles in the atmosphere. How did he come to the conclusion? By considering a normal drinking glass shattering on the kitchen floor.
Physicists have long known the shatter patterns of dust particles - among many other objects, including atomic nuclei. When you drop a glass on the floor, it shatters, atomically anyway, in a predictable fashion. The glass then launches many fine dust particles into the air which can stay airborne from anywhere between a few days to a week depending on their size. What does this have to do with climate and meteorology? Well, the same happens with dirt. When dirt gets bombarded by wind carrying sand, the dirt shatters and sends particles into the air called mineral dust. A large particle of mineral dust can be anywhere around 50 microns (micrometres, 5.0 x 10^-5 m), which is the size of a very thin strand of human hair, to 2 microns (2.0 x 10^-6 m), which is far beyond invisible to the human eye. These are referred to in geology and meteorology as silt and clay, respectively. When these particles float around in the air, they reflect sunlight and have a cooling effect on the planet. The larger the particle, the more sunlight it reflects, but the lesser time it spends in the atmosphere. Meteorologists have models that use these particles to forecast weather patterns, but Kok used formulae using particle fracture patterns to accurately estimate the ratio of silt to clay. This new finding can better the forecasting of drier, desert like regions ,such as Africa and the Southwestern United States. More research will have to be done to determine whether or not temperatures will increase or decrease in those regions.
Kok also theorizes that these particles provide the oceans and seas with rich iron contents which can help increase biological activity, in turn, assisting in photosynthetic carbon dioxide intake.
Source(s): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101227203436.htm (Article)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/12/23/1014798108.abstract (Abstract only, purchase required)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI6MTG-ApKY&feature=player_embedded (Kok talking about his study)
This question is a strange one for myself. Asking someone if they ‘believe’ in regrets is like asking do you ‘believe’ in happiness? I mean, regrets exist. Plenty of people have them. You don’t have to believe in them. They are all around. So, for simplicity’s sake, yes, I ‘believe’ in regrets. But even though one regrets something, that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn anything from it.
I do have one terrible regret. I once had a girlfriend that got me into a lot of trouble real fast and she was almost impossible to get away from after that, for she resorted to stalking and mind-games to try and get back with me. As much as I regret being with her, I am glad to have had the experience. Now, because of my naivety, I am now smarter and can better choose a girl based on similar interests and needs of the two of us. Granted, I’m still yet to find someone, I’m not really in a rush to find one. That’s really the only terrible regret I have.
An interesting study was done at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre, Harvard Medical School with placebos, with lead researcher Ted Kaptchuk. Kaptchuk was interested in the response to the body when under the placebo effect. Looking at a recent US national survey, 50% of physicians said they prescribe medications that they consider to be inert to the patients’ conditions. Knowing this information, Kaptchuk and his team set out to see if taking out this sense of deception would have a negative influence on the abilities of the placebo effect.
To start the study, Kaptchuk needed to choose a condition that wasn’t so serious that placebos wouldn’t have a positive effect. After much deliberation, he came to the conclusion to look at IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). IBS is a gastrointestinal disorder that causes abdominal pain because of altered bowel habits. These IBS patients were split into two groups; people that would not receive treatment (the control group) and the group that would receive the placebo. The second group were told the following: “placebo pills, something like sugar pills, have been shown in rigorous clinical testing to produce significant mind-body self-healing processes” and were required to take it twice a day. The placebo was a tablet of Avicel, a microcellulose compound used for binding tablets to increase tensile strength. (Since Avicel is cellulose, it could have the ability to slightly skew the results due to increasing fibre in the diet) The trial period lasted 3 weeks and consisted of three assessments; one at the beginning of the trial, half way through, and at the end of the trial. Kaptchuk measured the patients’ severity of abdominal pain, frequency, and interference of quality of life among other things to create five 100-point scales. It turns out that the people that were taking the inert placebo, approximately 59% of patients felt better compared to 35% of the non-treated patients.
Kaptchuk and his team stress that the study was very small and done under only one illness. However, Katpchuk and his team are hopeful that this study will open more doors into looking at the possibilities of the placebo actually being a method of medicine that must no longer be hidden from the patient. ”Nevertheless, these findings suggest that rather than mere positive thinking, there may be significant benefit to the very performance of medical ritual… Placebo may work even if patients knows it is a placebo,” says Kaptchuk.
It seems strange to think that we could go to a physician to have them tell us “Here, take these pills, but they’re not going to do anything directly”, doesn’t it?
Source(s): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101222173033.htm
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0015591
http://www.fmcbiopolymer.com/Pharmaceutical/Products/Avicelforsoliddoseforms.aspx (Avicel Information)
An interesting accomplishment has occurred in biology and medicine. Fully developed intestinal tissues have been grown and are going to be used to study various things. Dr. James Wells, from Cincinnati, the lead investigator into the study, used stem cells to create these out-of-body organs in the lab. Here’s the jist of how it was done. The team of scientists used two types of cells - human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells - to initiate the growth. Human embryonic stem cells are cells that are extracted from a human embryo. These cells are very important because they are totipotent; that is, can differentiate into all possible cells available in order to create a human being. Induced pluripotent stem cells are adult cells that had been ‘reprogrammed’ into creating cells that fall within a certain division of cells. For example, pluripotent circulatory cells cannot produce nervous system cells; they fall under different ‘classes’. In order for these cells to produce anything close to an intestine, or any cell structure for that matter, they must be in solution that provides building blocks. The stem cells were in solution with reagents, such as WNT3A protein and FGF4 (fibroblast growth factor 4), in order to be grown into the hindgut of the gastrointestinal system. Eventually, the gastrointestinal cells began to proliferate and started to produce flat sheets. Some cells produced small spheres and floated to the top. The flat sheets then curled and connected into a three dimensional tube structure equivalent to that of the fetus stage of human development which contained all parts, such as goblet, enterocytes, enteroendocrine cells, and Paneth cells. Wells and other researchers are excited about these findings because of the applications or growing intestines, or other organs, outside the body. Wells wants to see research applied to fields like drug absorption and efficiency or cancer research. This is a very promising finding and cannot wait to see what other things we can grow for studies.
Source(s): http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101212/full/news.2010.668.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101212145229.htm Articles on the findings
http://www.rndsystems.com/molecule_detail.aspx?m=2261 (complex) definition of WNT3A protien
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7035/images/nature03319-f2.0.jpg diagram of intestinal cells (sorry for the poor image)
narfette asked: heya, me again.
Here in the UK, you have to be 18 years old before you can get either - which i think is correct. i tried several times to get stars tattooed up my arms when i was 15/16 - luckily, all the parlours i tried were responsible enough to ask for ID.
It was all completely down to teenage hormones gone mad... had i managed to get around the law somehow.. i think ultimately i would have regretted it horribly.
i think 18, although still pretty young, is an age when you start to sit comfortably in your skin a bit more - hence can make better decisions.
One thing that horrifies me at the moment are parents that pierce their toddlers ears... that is SO wrong.. granted you can just take them out if you want.. but i dont think you should do anything to someone, unless they have the choice!
sorry that wasnt really a question... i will add one on here.. so you dont have a minimum age for tattoos / piercings there?
I’ve just been informed by one of my friends who has tattoos tell me that the age limit is 16 for piercings and 18 for tattoos. So for not getting around to it for so long.
Keep Reading,
SatF
Everyone knows that plants gather energy from the Sun to make energy in a simple chemical reaction. Water vapour + carbon dioxide + Sun —> oxygen + sugar. How does the plant gather this solar energy, though? Well, everyone has likely heard of a green chemical called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll resides in these sacks in a plant called chloroplasts. These chloroplasts take in the Sun’s emitted photons and transports electrons through a system to be used in the chemical reaction. What has been discovered is exactly that; except humans made it in a lab.
Michael Strano, an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, has replicated the components inside these chloroplasts. It has been known in plant biology that the proteins in a leaf are broken down and rebuilt roughly every 45 minutes. This keeps the leaf in prime condition for absorbing sunlight and prevents degradation in the long term. Afterall, if the components inside the leaf started degrading, the plant wouldn’t have a very good chance of surviving. This fixes one of many issues with current solar energy capturing. Many solar panels degrade after a few years and the best of them only output a maximum of 25% efficiency. That’s quite a bit of wasted power. By adding or removing a solution in his mix, Strano has made the self-repairing components in chloroplasts. When light energy is taken in by the chemicals, a reaction occurs that transmits electrons (makes electricity) and breaks down the compound. A different solution then reacts with the decomposed compound and repairs it, allowing it to absorb yet more energy. Current tests of his contraption show promising results. His self-repairing battery can yield an output of 40% efficiency; far greater than that of current solar technology. His tests have only been done on the small scale, though. He is working on a way to maximize the surface area of the compounds in a large test system to maximize total transmitted energy. Strano says “[t]heoretically, the structures could be close to 100%” but the low concentrations in the small tests kept that from happening. ”We’re basically imitating tricks that nature has discovered over millions of years”; and a good trick at that.
Source(s): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100905161908.htm
As a matter of fact, I do. But let’s all get on the same page here. I don’t believe in the cliched, upside down tear dropped headed, pointy fingered aliens. When I refer to an alien, I mean it in the sense of extraterrestrial life. This covers the broad spectrum of single celled microbes - or their systematic counterpart in their world - to, hopefully, fully fledged intelligent beings like ourselves. These organisms could be very different to us based on their environment and chemical make-ups upon evolving. The television special Alien Planet (based off the book Expedition) always comes to my mind when I think about life on other worlds; mockumentary about sending robotic probes to Darwin IV (a fictional planet) where life has risen. Beings, intelligent and unintelligent, are nothing like us, but have adapted to their surroundings for survival.
Will we find them? Will they find us? No one knows. But the Drake Equation gives a rough estimate of the probability of finding intelligent life in the Universe. After all, if it happened to us, it was bound to happen somewhere else. I don’t think we’ll find life any time soon, though. I think it may take us another 500 to 1000 years, when we start traveling to other solar systems, when we start finding traces of life.
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