The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain. Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen. Using DNA taken from these skin samples, the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known. It is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned
A £2 energy saving lightbulb that lasts for 60 years has been developed by scientists at Cambridge University. The researchers have designed a bulb that is three times more energy efficient than today’s best offer and can cut lighting bills by 75 per cent. The bulbs are made using Gallium Nitride (GaN), a man-made substance used in LEDs. It is routinely used in bike lights, mobile phones and camera flashes
The Turritopsis Nutricula is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature. Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die
A team is reporting what is the first successful transfer of a qubit — an undecided bit of quantum information — between two widely separated, charged atoms. Because the quantum information instantly hops from one atom to the other without ever crossing the space between the two, scientists call the transfer teleportation. Being able to teleport such information between atoms could aid the development of ultrafast quantum computers and extremely secure quantum communication, the researchers point out
Relief may be on its way for women who suffer from a loss of libido and other symptoms when taking contraceptives, with a new pill set to be trialled at a Sydney Hospital. The Royal Hospital for Women in Randwick will trial the oral contraceptive which uses a natural form of the female hormone oestrogen, called estradil
US researchers have developed a new type of semiconductor ink that brings companies a step closer to making bendable computer screens or inexpensive sensor tags to help retailers keep track of their inventory. The discovery lies in the new material &8212; a soluble semiconductor ink capable of carrying a negative electrical charge, said Philippe Inagaki, chief executive officer of Polyera Corp, a specialty chemicals company in Skokie, Illinois, that makes materials for flexible and printed electronics
Surgical procedures could soon be helped along with tiny robots, according to researchers. Miniaturisation of motors has not kept pace with that of electronics, leaving such tiny robots with no means to get around in the body. Now, research reported in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering has demonstrated a motor about twice the size of a human hair
Proteus Biomedicals, a company in California, has developed an intelligent pill that sends digital signals to an external receiver after being swallowed. The pill still works as an ordinary drug that a patient might take to control a health issue such as heart trouble or a psychiatric disorder. But it also has digestible sensors that are made of food products and are activated by stomach fluids. Once swallowed, the sensors can send a digital signal through the body to a receiver. The receiver date- and time-stamps, decodes, and records information about the drug and the dosage. It also measures and reports heart rate, activity, and respiratory rate
A new light-bending material has brought scientists one step closer to creating a cloaking device that could hide objects from sight. Beyond possible military applications, it also might have a very practical use by making mobile communications clearer
New research reveals there is hope for Mars yet. The first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars indicates the planet is still alive, in either a biologic or geologic sense, according to a team of NASA and university scientists
Searching the web may be more beneficial for the brain than reading a book, scientists say. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles measured a two-fold increase in brain activity among the websavvy compared with internet novices in a study of the elderly. Team leader Dr Gary Small said the results encouraged the idea that computerised technologies may have benefits for middleaged and older adults
One of life’s greatest mysteries is how it began. Scientists have pinned it down to roughly this: Some chemical reactions occurred about 4 billion years ago — perhaps in a primordial tidal soup or maybe with help of volcanoes or possibly at the bottom of the sea or between the mica sheets — to create biology. Now scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened. It’s not life, they stress, but it certainly gives the science community a whole new data set to chew on. The researchers, at the Scripps Research Institute, created molecules that self-replicate and even evolve and compete to win or lose. If that sounds exactly like life, read on to learn the controversial and thin distinction
Implants that sit in the body and reprogram a person’s immune cells could be used to treat a range of infectious diseases and even cancer. In a trial on mice with an aggressive melanoma that usually kills within 25 days, the new treatment saved 90% of the group. Because cancer cells originate within the body, the immune system usually leaves them alone. Therapies exist that involve removing immune cells from the body before priming them to attack malignant tissue and injecting them back into a patient
A combination of drugs could trick the body into sending its repair mechanisms into overdrive, say scientists. The technique could be used to speed the healing of heart or bone damage, they claim. The bone marrow of treated mice released 100 times as many stem cells — which help to regenerate tissue
The emerging field of transparent and flexible electronics not only holds the promise of a new class of device components that would be more environmentally benign than current electronics; being able to print transparent circuits on low-cost and flexible plastic substrates also opens up the possibility of a wide range of new applications, ranging from windshield displays and flexible solar cells to clear toys and artificial skins and even sensor implants
Regenerating a whole tooth is no less complicated than rebuilding a whole heart, says Songtao Shi of the University of Southern California, who heads a team working on creating such a tooth. Not only do you have to create smart tissue (nerves), strong tissue (ligaments) and soft tissue (pulp), you’ve got to build enamel — by far the hardest structural element in the body. And you have to have openings for blood vessels and nerves. And you have to make the whole thing stick together. And you have to anchor it in bone. And then you have to make the entire arrangement last a lifetime in the juicy stew of bacteria that is your mouth. It’s a nuisance, but researchers are closing in on it. In fact, they think the tooth will probably be the first complex organ to be completely regenerated from stem cells. In part this is because teeth are easily accessible — say ahhhhh. So are adult stem cells, found abundantly in both wisdom and baby teeth — no embryos required, and your immune system won’t reject your own cells
A robot radiotherapy machine to treat cancer is to be available in the UK for the first time from February. Called the Cyberknife, it moves with a patient’s breathing so tumours can be targeted with greater accuracy, and damage to healthy tissue is reduced
Random numbers — numbers without any pattern — are vital to many applications, such as computer simulations, statistics, and cryptography. There are many ways to generate them using unpredictable physical processes, including electric-signal noise and radioactive decay, but these methods cannot produce the quantities of numbers needed to keep up with the high data-processing rates of today’s computers. A group of scientists seems to have discovered a way around this problem. They have found that the physical chaos present in semiconductor lasers — laser light produced using a semiconductor as the medium — can produce good-quality random number sequences at very high rates
It must have been an appalling moment when a Viking realised he had paid two cows for a fake designer sword; a clash of blade on blade in battle would have led to his sword, still sharp enough to slice through bone, shattering like glass. You really didn’t want to have that happen,
said Dr Alan Williams, an archaeometallurgist and consultant to the Wallace Collection, the London museum which has one of the best assemblies of ancient weapons in the world. He and Tony Fry, a senior researcher at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, south-west London, have solved a riddle that the Viking swordsmiths may have sensed but didn’t quite understand
Cryptol, a domain specific language for the design, implementation and verification of cryptographic algorithms
, is now available to the public. Cryptol was originally designed for the NSA. It allows for a quick evaluation and continued revisions, and is available for Linux, OS X, and Windows — via Slashdot
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