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Saturday, November 2, 2013

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4D Printing May Bolster Arsenal of US Army

The 3D printing revolution shows no signs of letting up, and now has made its way on to the next dimension. The U.S. Army Research Office has awarded $855,000 to three universities to make advances in 4D printing, which is the ability to 3D-print objects that can change their shape or appearance over time (the fourth dimension), or in response to some condition. "Rather than construct a static material or one that simply changes its shape, we're proposing the development of adaptive, biomimetic composites that re-program their shape, properties or functionality on demand, based upon external stimuli," said Anna Balazs, a researcher at Harvard, in a statement. The U.S. Army awarded additional 4D-printing grants to scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Illinois.

Russian Fireball Explosion Shows Meteor Risk Greater Than Thought

DENVER – As researchers recover more leftover pieces from the space rock that detonated earlier this year near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, the event is helping to flag a worrisome finding: Scientists have misjudged the frequency of large airbursts. Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, broached the implications of the Chelyabinsk airburst event on Oct. 7 here at the American Astronomical Society's 2013 Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. According to Boslough, when you add the Chelyabinsk incident to the 1908 Tunguska explosion over Siberia — along with a 1963 bolide blast near the Prince Edward Islands off the coast of South Africa — the data suggest that the incoming rate of small space rocks is actually much higher than asteroid experts have assumed based on astronomical observations. "These three data points together suggest that maybe we have underestimated the population," of smaller sized objects that can create air bursts, Boslough said.

Spectacular 3D Mars Video Brings Red Planet to Life

A newly released video, created by stitching together images taken by a veteran Mars spacecraft, provides a richly detailed, three-dimensional view of the Red Planet. The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has orbited the Red Planet nearly 12,000 times, capturing images of Martian valleys, canyons and lava flows that have provided unprecedented views of planet's terrain. "For the first time, we can see Mars spatially — in three dimensions," Ralf Jaumann, project manager for the Mars Express mission at the German Aerospace Center, said in a statement. Mars Express has covered 37 million square miles (97 million square kilometers) of Mars' surface (out of 56 million square miles or 145 million square kilometers) in high resolution.

'Biohacker' Implants Chip in Arm

Tim Cannon is a software developer from Pittsburgh and one of the developers at Grindhouse Wetware, a firm dedicated to "augmenting humanity using safe, affordable, open source technology," according to the group's website. As they explain it, "Computers are hardware.

Female Dogs Are Better Navigators (Op-Ed)

They contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Dognition is a series of games owners play with their dogs to better understand how their dogs think.

Full Belly Fossil! 'Sea Monster' Had 3 Others in Its Gut

DENVER — The mosasaur, a fearsome marine reptile that stalked the Cretaceous seas, scavenged its own kin, a new fossil find reveals. A fossilized mosasaur found in Angola contains the partial remains of three other mosasaurs in its stomach, researchers reported here Tuesday (Oct. 29) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. "These are three different species of mosasaur inside the belly of a fourth species of mosasaur," said study researcher Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas. The find isn't the first example of mosasaurs digesting mosasaurs, but it illuminates an ancient ecosystem surprisingly similar to ones seen in parts of the ocean today.

For Mice, the Smell of Urine Is Sexy

There might be a link between fatherhood and urine spraying for mice.

5 Weird Effects of Daylight Saving Time

As daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. this coming Sunday morning (Nov. 3), most Americans will join snoozers across more than 60 other nations in savoring the gift of one extra hour of sleep. The researchers attribute the injuries to lack of sleep, which might explain why the same effect did not pop up in the fall when workers gained an hour of sleep.

Sunday Solar Eclipse: Skywatchers to Chase Moon's Shadow by Land, Sea & Air

The only total solar eclipse of 2013 will occur Sunday, but will be harder to see by eclipse-chasers because of its short duration and the remote path from which it will be visible. Observers in that portion of Earth's surface will see an annular eclipse, or a "ring of fire" solar eclipse, in which a thin or broken ring of sunlight remains visible around the moon's outline.

Landslides Scar Colorado After Major Flood

DENVER — The floods that struck northern Colorado in September left their mark in the form of landslides that scarred spots from the high mountains to the low foothills. Hundreds of landslides occurred during the storm that dropped record rains on the Boulder area, Jonathan Godt, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher with the Landslide Hazards Program, reported here Tuesday (Oct. 29) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. The damage occurred inside a triangle along Colorado's Front Range Mountains, spanning an area some 1,150 square miles (3,000 square kilometers). Several days of heavy, tropical-style rain fell in northern Colorado beginning Sept. 9 and intensifying Sept. 11 and 12, when floodwaters began to rise in Boulder (which saw more than 7 inches, or 18 centimeters, of rain in one day) and other foothill towns.

Weird Forests Once Sprouted in Antarctica

DENVER — Strange forests with some features of today's tropical trees once grew in Antarctica, new research finds. Forests carpeted a non-icy Antarctic. The question, said Patricia Ryberg, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, is how plants coped with photosynthesizing constantly for part of the year and then not at all when the winter sun set. "The trees are the best way to figure this out, because trees record physiological responses" in their rings, Ryberg told LiveScience.

Antarctic Hills Haven't Seen Water in 14 Million Years

Water has not flowed across Antarctica's Friis Hills for 14 million years, researchers reported Tuesday (Oct. 29) at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Denver. The Friis Hills rise 2,000 feet (600 meters) above Antarctica's Taylor Valley, one of the "Dry Valleys" west of McMurdo Sound. Fossils show tundra mosses and a lake once covered the flat-topped hills, when Earth's climate was warmer more than 14 million years ago. To gauge ancient rainfall amounts, Rachel Valletta, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, looked for traces of a radioactive isotope called beryllium-10 in lake sediments on the Friis Hills.

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FeedaMail: TRENDS IN NEUROSCIENCES

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Editorial Board

Cytoplasmic dynein heavy chain: the servant of many masters

Giampietro Schiavo, Linda Greensmith, Majid Hafezparast, Elizabeth M.C. Fisher.

• The cytoplasmic dynein complex is the main retrograde motor in all eukaryotic cells.
• This complex is built around a dimer of cytoplasmic dynein heavy chains (DYNC....

Central regulation of body-fluid homeostasis

Masaharu Noda, Hiraki Sakuta.

• We review recent progress in the identification of brain sensors to monitor body-fluid conditions.
• The Na-level sensor, Na_x, is expressed in glial cell....

Rhodopsin homeostasis and retinal degeneration: lessons from the fly

Bo Xiong, Hugo J. Bellen.

• Rhodopsin are universal light sensors and are very abundant in photoreceptors.
• Disruption of rhodopsin homeostasis causes retinal degeneration in flies and humans....

Perinatal programming of adult hippocampal structure and function; emerging roles of stress, nutrition and epigenetics

Paul J. Lucassen, Eva F.G. Naninck, Johannes B. van Goudoever, Carlos Fitzsimons, Marian Joels, Aniko Korosi. Early-life stress lastingly affects adult cognition and increases vulnerability to psychopathology, but the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. In this Opinion article, we propose that early nut....

Towards a 'systems'-level understanding of the nervous system and its disorders

Irfan A. Qureshi, Mark F. Mehler.

• Unanticipated interconnections exist between the nervous system and the immune system, energy homeostasis, and the gut microbiome.
• Crosstalk between these systems....

NMNATs, evolutionarily conserved neuronal maintenance factors

Yousuf O. Ali, David Li-Kroeger, Hugo J. Bellen, R. Grace Zhai, Hui-Chen Lu.

• Neurons require a 'maintenance plan' that enables them to endure daily wear and tear.
• NMNATs function as NAD synthesizing enzymes and chaperones.
• Loss of NM....

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Friday, November 1, 2013

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Viking Graves Yield Grisly Find: Sacrificed Slaves

Viking graves in Norway contain a grisly tribute: slaves who were beheaded and buried along with their masters, new research suggests. In Flakstad, Norway, remains from 10 ancient people were buried in multiple graves, with two to three bodies in some graves and some bodies decapitated. "We propose that the people buried in double and triple burials might have come from very different strata of society, and that slaves could have been offered as grave gifts in these burials," study co-author Elise Naumann, an archaeologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, wrote in an email. Though some thralls were treated well, many were forced to endure backbreaking physical labor, Naumann said.

Kraken Rises: New Fossil Evidence Revives Sea Monster Debate

DENVER — Did a giant kraken troll the Triassic seas, crushing ichthyosaurs and arranging their bones into pleasing patterns? "This was extremely good luck," said Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts who presented his findings here Wednesday (Oct. 30) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA). "A kraken isn't really necessary," said David Fastovsky, a paleontologist at the University of Rhode Island who attended McMenamin's GSA presentation and penned a response to the evidence for the Paleontological Society. The bones of one of these ichthyosaurs were found in a strange linear pattern.

Wanted: Volunteers for Yearlong Mock Mars Mission in Canadian Arctic

If you're ready to take a timeout from your life and spend a year living in the Arctic on a simulated Mars mission, the Mars Society wants to hear from you. The non-profit group, which advocates for manned exploration of the Red Planet, has released its requirements for the six volunteers who will be expected to spend 12 months at the society's Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Canada's Devon Island, which is about 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) from the North Pole, beginning in July 2014. "Dedication to the cause of human Mars exploration is an absolute must, as conditions are likely to be very difficult and the job will be very trying," Mars Society officials said in a description of the simulated mission, which is called Mars Arctic 365. Human Mars exploration generated a lot of headlines last year when the Netherlands-based non-profit Mars One proposed a one-way trip to the Red Planet that would land in 2023.

Cosmic Lights: Bright Venus, Solar Eclipse Dominate Sky This Week

Venus reaches maximum elongation from the sun Friday (Nov. 1) evening, and the moon passes directly in front of the sun, creating a solar eclipse Sunday morning. On Friday, Venus reaches a point as far from the sun in our sky as it can get. Because Venus is closer to the sun than the Earth, it never strays very far from the sun in the sky. Have you seen Venus lately?

Finned Monster Chomped Heads Off Ancient Amphibians

Diplocaulus, the boomerang-head, was a truly strange amphibian with an impractically wide, bony skull. "It's just so weird," said study researcher Robert Bakker, the curator of paleontology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Bakker and his colleagues discovered the Dimetrodon and Diplocaulus interaction in the Craddock bone bed in Baylor County, Texas.

Hurricane Sandy Exposes Jersey's Marsh Mistakes

When Hurricane Sandy's powerful storm tide pummeled New Jersey, 70 percent of the state's old submerged marshes flooded, researchers reported Monday (Oct. 28) at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Denver. About 25 percent of those marshes were developed, and two-thirds of that development took place between 1995 and 2007, said Joshua Galster, a geomorphologist at Montclair State University in New Jersey. "A lot of these areas were being developed when we really should have known better," Galster said. Before Hurricane Sandy hit, Galster and students at Montclair State University had compiled a database of all the former submerged marshes and swamplands in New Jersey and Delaware.

Maine's Volcanoes (Yes, Maine) Among World's Biggest

DENVER — Maine has supervolcanoes. Wait, Maine has volcanoes? Yes, and their eruptions could have been among the biggest ever on Earth, geoscientist Sheila Seaman reported here Tuesday (Oct. 29) at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting. "Long before there were these things called supervolcanoes, we've known about giant, big, horrific silicic volcanic eruptions," said Seaman, of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

'Smart Glasses' Could Help Blind People Navigate

A pair of "smart glasses" might help blind people navigate an unfamiliar environment by recognizing objects or translating signs into speech, scientists say. Now, researchers from Oxford University in England are developing a set of sophisticated glasses that use cameras and software to detect objects and display them on the lenses of glasses. The team recently won an award from the Royal Society to continue this work. "The Royal Society's Brian Mercer Innovation award will allow us to incorporate this research into our glasses to help sight-impaired people deal with everyday situations much more easily."

US Preterm Birth Rate Lowest in 15 Years

A baby is considered preterm if he or she is born before 37 weeks of pregnancy. The country's preterm birth rate peaked in 2006 (at 12.8 percent), but has declined each year since, resulting in an estimated 176,000 fewer babies born preterm over the six-year period, according to the March of Dimes, the charity organization that released the report. The March of Dimes also gave each state a grade based on how much progress the state had made towards the 2020 preterm birth rate goal of 9.6 percent — an annual "report card" that the organization started in 2008. "I think California is an important example here," said Dr. Edward McCabe, chief medical officer of the March of Dimes.

Promising Comet ISON Gives Perplexing Performance En Route to Sun

With just one month to go before its dramatic solar rendezvous, skirting to within a hairbreadth of the surface of the sun, Comet ISON continues to befuddle observers with its performance en route to the sun. Time Running Out

Science in Space: Contest Selects Experiments Headed for Space Station

Calling all citizen scientists! The nonprofit organization that manages American-led research aboard the International Space Station announced the winners of its public contest to design experiments to send to the orbiting outpost. The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) held a month-long contest, called "What Would You Send to the ISS?" to cultivate interest in the orbiting laboratory, and to solicit ideas for how to use the facility to benefit humans on Earth. The grand prize winner, Elizabeth MacDonald, proposed flying a geo-tagged video camera to the International Space Station to record real-time images of the northern and southern lights. The aurora images could be posted on the Aurorasaurus website, a citizen science project that aims to build accurate, easy-to-use and real-time maps of aurora sightings.

Lasers Zap Tiny Holes in Heads of Flies to Expose Brains

Using lasers, scientists can now surgically blast holes thinner than a human hair in the heads of live fruit flies, allowing researchers to see how the flies' brains work. Surgically preparing small live animals for such "intravital microscopy" is often time-consuming and requires considerable skill and dexterity. Now, Supriyo Sinha, a systems engineer at Stanford University in California, and his colleagues have developed a way to prepare live animals for such microscopy that is both fast — taking less than a second — and largely automated.

Brain-Machine Interface Puts Anesthesia on Autopilot

A new brain-machine interface could replace human administration of anesthetics to patients in a medically induced coma. The machine monitors a patient's brain activity and automatically delivers just the right amount of anesthetic to keep the patient in a coma — thus reducing the amount of anesthetic needed and preventing an overdose, researchers say. Doctors maintain these comas, which often last for several days, by monitoring a patient's electroencephalogram (EEG) brain activity and delivering a precise dose of anesthetic. In contrast, the brain-machine interface puts the process on autopilot.

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