In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a vaccine
of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later
Getting ordinary plastic bags to rot away like banana peels would be an environmental dream come true. After all, we produce 500 billion a year worldwide and they take up to 1,000 years to decompose. They take up space in landfills, litter our streets and parks, pollute the oceans and kill the animals that eat them. Now a Waterloo teenager has found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster — in three months, he figures. Daniel Burd’s project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. He came back with a long list of awards, including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment
The same blue food dye found in M&Ms and Gatorade could be used to reduce damage caused by spine injuries, offering a better chance of recovery, according to new research. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that when they injected the compound Brilliant Blue G (BBG) into rats suffering spinal cord injuries, the rodents were able to walk again, albeit with a limp. The only side effect was that the treated mice temporarily turned blue
Rocket-driven spacecraft normally use strong, heavy-metal mountings to hold their fuel tanks in place within the fuselage. But there may be a better way. Burt Rutan, the aerospace pioneer whose firm Scaled Composites is designing civilian suborbital spacecraft for Virgin Galactic, is using an alternative technique to secure the fuel tanks in order to keep the weight of the space plane down. Rutan says the use of heavy mountings can be avoided completely by careful design of the tank and fuselage. His idea, described in a US patent granted last month, is to glue the fuel tanks to the inside of the craft
There’s a growing chorus of calls to send astronauts to Mars rather than the moon, but critics point out that such trips would be long and gruelling, taking about six months to reach the Red Planet. But now, researchers are testing a powerful new ion engine that could one day shorten the journey to just 39 days. Traditional rockets burn chemical fuel to produce thrust. Most of that fuel is used up in the initial push off the Earth’s surface, so the rockets tend to coast most of the time they’re in space. Ion engines, on the other hand, accelerate electrically charged atoms, or ions, through an electric field, thereby pushing the spacecraft in the opposite direction. They provide much less thrust at a given moment than do chemical rockets, which means they can’t break free of the Earth’s gravity on their own
Transparent aluminium, a sci-fi material brought to 20th century Earth by the crew of The Enterprise in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, turns out to exist after all — if you see in X-rays. To create this exotic state of matter, researchers at the FLASH facility in Hamburg, Germany, took a thin piece of aluminium foil and blasted it with an X-ray laser that can generate about 10 million gigawatts of power per square centimetre. At standard temperature and pressure, solid aluminium is a lattice of ions, with a sea of free electrons in between. The FLASH beam had enough energy to knock an electron out of each ion and set it free, while the photon got absorbed in the process
A eucalyptus-like tree that grows in New Zealand is still defending itself from a giant bird that died out about 500 years ago. The lancewood tree changes its appearance twice in its lifetime — an adaptation, a new study suggests, that prevented it from being eaten by flightless moas. As a seedling, the lancewood tree (Pseudopanax crassifolius) sprouts small, brown, blotchy leaves. Then, as a sapling, its leaves grow into footlong spears with tiny barbs along the edge. Finally, the adult lancewood, which can reach a height of 20 meters, sports rounded, nondescript green leaves. Many scientists think that the tree evolved these metamorphoses to avoid moas, the main herbivores on the islands and a relative of emus and ostriches that humans hunted to extinction
The stunning metallic green sheen of the jewelled beetle
is produced by microscopic cells in its exoskeleton. Researchers reporting in the journal Science have revealed that, with no green pigments, these structures make the beetle appear iridescent green. These cells, they said, were almost identical to hi-tech liquid crystals
The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal. Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals
Bats use sonar to navigate and hunt. Many have been killed by wind turbines, however, which their sonar doesn’t seem to recognise as a danger. Surprisingly, radar signals could help keep bats away from wind turbines, scientists have now discovered
By adding fluorescent dyes to DNA and then spinning the DNA strands into nanofibres, researchers at the University of Connecticut have made a new material that emits bright white light. The material absorbs energy from ultraviolet light and gives off different colours of light — from blue to orange to white — depending on the proportions of dye it contains
A new ultrasound device, used in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allows neurosurgeons to precisely burn out small pieces of malfunctioning brain tissue without cutting the skin or opening the skull. A preliminary study from Switzerland involving nine patients with chronic pain shows that the technology can be used safely in humans. The researchers now aim to test it in patients with other disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Google Earth 5.0 now incorporates the landscape and terrain of our closest and dearest celestial relative, the Moon. Earth’s moon, often known as the Moon, or simply just Moon
for short, is the rocky, cooler companion to the star of our local cosmic show, the Sun. And if you’re familiar with Google Earth 5.0, you’ll know what to expect of its appearance within this update
The blog of Anthony Wesley, an Australian amateur astronomer, has what may be the first photos of a recent comet or asteroid impact on Jupiter, near the south pole. These photos are 11 hours old. The ones at the bottom of the page show three small dark spots in addition to the main dark mark. The Bad Astronomy blog picked up the story a few hours later — but cautions that what we’re seeing may not be an impact event
A new paper by Montreal researchers is providing evidence that the gene variants found in some non-cancerous tissues may differ from those present in blood samples from the same individual. The researchers, who were studying a condition called abdominal aortic aneurysm, or AAA, found that SNPs in a gene called BAK1 were different in aortic tissue than in blood samples, even in samples taken from the same individuals
Discovered 13 years ago, and officially added to the periodic table just weeks ago, element 112 finally has a name. It will be called copernicium
, with the symbol Cp, in honour of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus deduced that the planets revolved around the Sun, and finally refuted the belief that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. The team of scientists who discovered the element chose the name to honour the man who changed our world view
Our brains can rewire themselves in just seconds to compensate for a break in incoming data, suggesting they are even more flexible than previously thought
A food thickener used in yoghurts and jellies could be used to help make artificial muscle. Nanotechnology graduate Cameron Ferris, and supervisor Dr Marc in het Panhuis, of the University of Wollongong report on their work developing tissue scaffolds in the journal Soft Matter. Tissue engineers use scaffolds to help get cells to grow into the right kind of tissues
In a study published in Cell Metabolism, chemical and biomolecular engineering professor James Liao, associate professor of human genetics and paediatrics Katrina Dipple, and their research team at UCLA showed that genetic alterations enable mice to convert fat into carbon dioxide and remain lean while eating the equivalent of a fast-food diet
Teams at Stanford and MIT have each reported getting strong light signals from germanium-based diodes on silicon at room temperature. Engineers have long sought to do this because, with further refinement into lasers, such diodes would allow for optical interconnects on chips. Optical interconnects could operate much faster and with less power than electrical (metal) ones that are becoming bottlenecks on current chips — via Slashdot
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