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Here is your customized PHYSorg.com Newsletter for December 26, 2011:
Spotlight Stories Headlines
- No-glasses 3-D technology to showcase at CES 2012- Scientists succeed in making the spinal cord transparent
- Sea snails help researchers explore a way to enhance memory
- Over 65 million years North American mammal evolution has tracked with climate change
- 'Rare' brain disorder may be more common than thought: study
- New synthetic molecules treat autoimmune disease in mice
- Engineers unleash car-seat identifier that reads your rear end
- Foundation readies $25 computer to seed tech talents
- Sunlight and bunker oil a fatal combination for Pacific herring
- Record reaction cascade yields cancer drug candidate
- Research finds molecular 'maturation clock' that modulates branching architecture in tomato plants
- Three new eczema genes discovered
- Couple finds evidence indicating earliest humans lived by rivers and streams
- ASU cosmologist suggests studying moon for alien artifacts
- Hewlett-Packard offers fix for printers susceptible to remote hacks
Space & Earth news
Russian satellite hits Siberia's 'Cosmonaut Street'
A fragment of a Russian satellite that crashed into Siberia in the latest setback for Russia's space programme hit a residential house on a street named after cosmonauts, officials said Saturday.
Anti-whaling activists' drone tracks Japan fleet
Anti-whaling activists intercepted Japan's harpoon fleet far north of Antarctic waters on Sunday, they said, with the help of a military-style drone.
Decades later, a Cold War secret is revealed
For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets.
Asteroid named for 'disappeared' Argentine student
(AP) -- For 35 years, Zaida Franz has not been able to find her daughter, a girl who dreamed of becoming an astronomer and then disappeared without a trace. Now she at least has an address she can think about - out in space.
Was that Santa up there? No, Soyuz rocket debris
A ball of light streaking across the night sky in northern Europe on Saturday at a time when many imagined that Father Christmas was doing his rounds was nothing more than Soyuz rocket debris, Belgian experts say.
Electricity sparks new life into Indonesia's corals
Cyanide fishing and rising water temperatures had decimated corals off Bali until a diver inspired by a German scientist's pioneering work on organic architecture helped develop a project now replicated worldwide.
European carbon market suffers in annus horribilis
Europe's market in carbon emissions is hoping for outside help after a year in which prices slumped to record lows, savaging claims that trading in CO2 brakes the rise of dangerous greenhouse gases.
Christmas comet Lovejoy captured at Paranal Observatory
(PhysOrg.com) -- The recently discovered Comet Lovejoy has been captured in stunning photos and time-lapse video taken from ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The comet graced the southern sky after it had unexpectedly survived a close encounter with the Sun.
Russian spacecraft delivers 3 to orbiting station
A Soyuz spacecraft safely delivered a Russian, an American and a Dutchman to the International Space Station on Friday, restoring the permanent crew to six members for the first time since September.
The night after Christmas sky show
T'was the Night after Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring ...
ASU cosmologist suggests studying moon for alien artifacts
(PhysOrg.com) -- If you were part of a team sent to explore an unknown planet; and that planet had a natural orbiting moon, wouldn’t it make sense to use that moon as a base camp or remote observation post? Especially if you didn’t want those being observed to know you were there? Professor Paul Davis and research technician Robert Wagner think so, and that’s why they’ve published a paper in Acta Astronautica that suggests we humans begin taking a little closer look at our own moon to see if any alien life forms might have left behind some evidence of their visit.
Sunlight and bunker oil a fatal combination for Pacific herring
The 2007 Cosco Busan disaster, which spilled 54,000 gallons of oil into the San Francisco Bay, had an unexpectedly lethal impact on embryonic fish, devastating a commercially and ecologically important species for nearly two years, reports a new study by the University of California, Davis, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Twin probes to circle moon to study gravity field
The moon has come a long way since Galileo first peered at it through a telescope. Unmanned probes have circled around it and landed on its surface. Twelve American astronauts have walked on it. And lunar rocks and soil have been hauled back from it.
Technology news
China city tightens control of microblogs
Shanghai will require microblog users to register under their real names from Monday, state media said, the latest local government in China to implement the rule after a spate of violent protests.
Sony, Samsung dissolve panel joint venture
Japan's Sony and South Korean rival Samsung are dissolving their joint venture in liquid crystal display panels as Sony tries to stanch years of losses in its TV business.
Vogue's vast archives make online leap from paper
Bookshelves groaning under the weight of every issue of American Vogue ever published since December 17, 1892, and there have been about 2,800 of them, can now heave a sigh of relief.
Two accused of luring robbery victims with fake iPad ad on Craigslist
Police have arrested two men who are suspected of robbing people at gunpoint after luring them to a restaurant parking lot with fake ads on Craigslist.
Japan 'was unprepared' for nuclear disaster: official probe
The operators of the tsunami-stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant and government regulators were woefully unprepared for disaster, the first official probe into the March 11 catastrophe said Monday.
Data to be a defining tech trend in 2012
The start of this year was marked by a tech industry obsession with where to put growing mountains of information gathered online and by sensors increasingly woven into modern lifestyles.
'Anonymous' hackers target US security think tank
Hackers with the loose-knit movement "Anonymous" claimed on Sunday to have stolen a raft of emails and credit card data from U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor, promising it was just the start of a weeklong, Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.
Engineers unleash car-seat identifier that reads your rear end
(PhysOrg.com) -- Cars of the future may use the driver’s rear end as identity protection, through a system developed at Japan’s Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology. A report surfaced earlier this month that researchers there developed a system that can recognize a person by the backside when the person takes a seat. The system performs a precise measurement of the person’s posterior, its contours and the way the person applies pressure on the seat. The developers say that in lab tests, the system was able to recognize people with 98 percent accuracy.
No-glasses 3-D technology to showcase at CES 2012
(PhysOrg.com) -- Stream TV Networks plans to introduce a line of products that feature 3-D viewing without glasses. What’s so special about its announcement, on top of scores of 3-D-without-glasses announcements? The company says it has special technology in the name of Ultra-D, which can do nothing less than shift the way people will view media, according to its CEO.
Medicine & Health news
France to pay for removal of risky breast implants
France took a costly and unprecedented leap Friday in offering to pay for 30,000 women to have their breast implants removed because of mounting fears the products could rupture and leak cheap, industrial-grade silicone into the body.
Interpol seeks arrest of breast implant company founder
Interpol on Friday issued a "red notice" seeking the arrest of Frenchman Jean-Claude Mas, founder of the breast implant company at the centre of a widespread women's health scare.
Tough choice looms on 9/11 health lawsuits
(AP) -- More than 1,600 people who filed lawsuits claiming that their health was ruined by dust and smoke from the collapsed World Trade Center must decide by Jan. 2 whether to keep fighting in court, or drop the litigation and apply for benefits from a government compensation fund.
Toxin found in Chinese milk
China has discovered excessive levels of a cancer-causing toxin in milk produced by one of the nation's leading dairy companies, the firm said, in the latest in a series of food safety alarms.
Memo to pediatricians: Allergy tests are no magic bullets for diagnosis
An advisory from two leading allergists, Robert Wood of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and Scott Sicherer of Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, urges clinicians to use caution when ordering allergy tests and to avoid making a diagnosis based solely on test results.
Study links quality of mother-toddler relationship to teen obesity
The quality of the emotional relationship between a mother and her young child could affect the potential for that child to be obese during adolescence, a new study suggests.
Researchers shorten time for manufacturing of personalized ovarian cancer vaccine
(Medical Xpress) -- Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania are in the midst of testing a personalized, dendritic cell vaccine in patients with recurrent ovarian, primary peritoneal or fallopian tube cancer – a group of patients who typically have few treatment options. Now, they have shown they can shorten the time to manufacture this type of anti-cancer vaccine, which reduces costs of manufacturing the treatment while still yielding powerful dendritic cells that may be beneficial for these and a variety of other tumor types. The data is published in the December issue of PLoS ONE.
Women with celiac disease suffer from depression, disordered eating
(Medical Xpress) -- Women with celiac disease -- an autoimmune disorder associatedwith a negative reaction to eating gluten -- are more likely than the general population to report symptoms of depression and disordered eating, even when they adhere to a gluten-free diet, according to researchers at Penn State, Syracuse University and Drexel University.
New powerful painkiller has abuse experts worried
Drug companies are working to develop a pure, more powerful version of the nation's second most-abused medicine, which has addiction experts worried that it could spur a new wave of abuse.
The existence of neutrophils in the spleen discovered
For the first time, it has been discovered that neutrophils exist in the spleen without there being an infection. This important finding made by the research group on the Biology of B Cells of IMIM (Hospital del Mar Research Institute) in collaboration with researchers from Mount Sinai in New York, has also made it possible to determine that these neutrophils have an immunoregulating role.
Three new eczema genes discovered
(Medical Xpress) -- Researchers from Children of the 90s at the University of Bristol, in collaboration with 22 other studies from across the world, have discovered three new genetic variants associated with the skin condition eczema, a chronic inflammatory disease that afflicts millions of patients around the world.
New synthetic molecules treat autoimmune disease in mice
A team of Weizmann Institute scientists has turned the tables on an autoimmune disease. In such diseases, including Crohn's and rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's tissues. But the scientists managed to trick the immune systems of mice into targeting one of the body's players in autoimmune processes, an enzyme known as MMP9. The results of their research appear today in Nature Medicine.
'Rare' brain disorder may be more common than thought: study
A global team of neuroscientists, led by researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida, have found the gene responsible for a brain disorder that may be much more common than once believed. In the Dec. 25 online issue of Nature Genetics, the researchers say they identified 14 different mutations in the gene CSF1R that lead to development of hereditary diffuse leukoencephalopathy with spheroids (HDLS). This is a devastating disorder of the brain’s white matter that leads to death between ages 40 and 60. People who inherit the abnormal gene always develop HDLS. Until now, a definite diagnosis of HDLS required examination of brain tissue at biopsy or autopsy.
Sea snails help researchers explore a way to enhance memory
(Medical Xpress) -- Efforts to help people with learning impairments are being aided by a species of sea snail known as Aplysia californica. The mollusk, which is used by researchers to study the brain, has much in common with other species including humans. Research involving the snail has contributed to the understanding of learning and memory.
Scientists succeed in making the spinal cord transparent
(Medical Xpress) -- In the event of the spinal cord injury, the long nerve cell filaments, the axons, may become severed. For quite some time now, scientists have been investigating whether these axons can be stimulated to regenerate. Such growth takes place on a scale of only a few millimetres. To date, changes like this could be determined only by cutting the tissue in question into wafer-thin slices and examining these under a microscope. However, the two-dimensional sections provide only an inaccurate picture of the spatial distribution and progression of the cells. Together with an international team, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Martinsried have now developed a new method by virtue of which single nerve cells can be both examined in intact tissue and portrayed in all three dimensions.
Biology news
Capture of rare Sumatran rhino gives hope for species
Malaysian wildlife authorities said Monday the capture of a young female Borneo Sumatran rhino had given them a last chance to save the highly endangered species from extinction.
Improved method for protein sequence comparisons is faster, more accurate, sensitive
Lightning fast and yet highly sensitive: HHblits is a new software tool for protein research which promises to significantly improve the functional analysis of proteins. A team of computational biologists led by Dr. Johannes Soding of LMU's Genzentrum has developed a new sequence search method to identify proteins with similar sequences in databases that is faster and can discover twice as many evolutionarily related proteins as previous methods. From the functional and structural properties of the identified proteins conclusions can then be drawn on the properties of the protein to be analysed.
A radar for ADAR: Altered gene tracks RNA editing in neurons
To track what they can't see, pilots look to the green glow of the radar screen. Now biologists monitoring gene expression, individual variation, and disease have a glowing green indicator of their own: Brown University biologists have developed a "radar" for tracking ADAR, a crucial enzyme for editing RNA in the nervous system.
Research finds molecular 'maturation clock' that modulates branching architecture in tomato plants
The secret to pushing tomato plants to produce more fruit might not lie in an extra dose of Miracle-Gro. Instead, new research from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) suggests that an increase in fruit yield might be achieved by manipulating a molecular timer or so-called "maturation clock" that determines the number of branches that make flowers, called inflorescences.
Over 65 million years North American mammal evolution has tracked with climate change
Climate changes profoundly influenced the rise and fall of six distinct, successive waves of mammal species diversity in North America over the last 65 million years, shows a novel statistical analysis led by Brown University evolutionary biologists. Warming and cooling periods, in two cases confounded by species migrations, marked the transition from one dominant grouping to the next.
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