Category Archives: Science

No Sleep, No New Brain Cells

The researchers compared animals who were deprived of sleep for 72 hours with others who were not. They found those who missed out on rest had higher levels of the stress hormone corticosterone. It would be interesting to see if partial sleep deprivation – getting a little bit less sleep every night that you need – had the same effect

They also produced significantly fewer new brain cells in a particular region of the hippocampus. When the animals’ corticosterone levels were kept at a constant level, the reduction in cell proliferation was abolished. The results suggest that elevated stress hormone levels resulting from sleep deprivation could explain the reduction in cell production in the adult brain.

Sleep patterns were restored to normal within a week. However levels of nerve cell production (neurogenesis) were not restored for two weeks, and the brain appears to boost its efforts in order to counteract the shortage.

Light to Matter to Light

Light and Matter United (includes videos) by William J. Cromie:

Lene Hau has already shaken scientists’ beliefs about the nature of things. Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can’t be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic.

Two years later, she brought light to a complete halt in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Next, she restarted the stalled light without changing any of its characteristics, and sent it on its way. These highly successful experiments brought her a tenured professorship at Harvard University and a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation award to spend as she pleased.
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Now Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics, Hau has done it again. She and her team made a light pulse disappear from one cold cloud then retrieved it from another cloud nearby. In the process, light was converted into matter then back into light. For the first time in history, this gives science a way to control light with matter and vice versa.

Arctic Seed Vault Design

‘Doomsday’ vault design unveiled

he Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole. The vault aims to safeguard the world’s agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change. Construction begins in March, and the seed bank is scheduled to open in 2008. The Norwegian government is paying the $5m (Â£2.5m) construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to house three million seed samples.

Dr Fowler said Svalbard, 1,000km (621 miles) north of mainland Norway, was chosen as the location for the vault because it was very remote and it also offered the level of stability required for the long-term project. “We looked very far into the future. We looked at radiation levels inside the mountain, and we looked at the area’s geological structure,” he told BBC News. “We also modelled climate change in a drastic form 200 years into future, which included the melting of ice sheets at the North and South Poles, and Greenland, to make sure that this site was above the resulting water level.”

Declining Science and Maths Degrees in UK

Report: Core science and mathematics degree courses in the UK 1998-2007

In the decade to 2007, there has been a 10% reduction in the number of core, ie single honours, science and maths degree courses offered by UK higher education institutions.

Educational Institutions Economic Impact

I believe investing in creating an environment where science and engineering endeavors will flourish will greatly benefit the economy. Some previous posts discussing these ideas include: Great Engineering Schools and Entrepreneurism, Engineering Future Economic Success, Science Research and the Economy and China’s Economic Science Experiment.

Wisconsin’s effort is hardly unique, but I grew up in Madison and my father taught Chemical Engineering, Statistics, and more at the UW so I pay attention to the efforts in Madison. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has been one of the most successful attempts to take academic work and create successful business efforts to benefit the university, the professors and the economy overall. Their mission: “Moving inventions arising from the university’s laboratories to the marketplace for the benefit of the university, the inventors and society.”

Building Wisconsin’s Economy illustrates how the University of Wisconsin at Madison attempts to focus on creating economic benefit, which I think is a good idea. Economic benefit is not the only purpose, but it is worthy of focus.

Continue reading →

Meteorite, Older than the Sun, Found in Canada

Older than the sun, the meteorite scientists call ‘the real time machine’

The Tagish Lake meteorite was already regarded as exceptional because its mineral composition linked it to the earliest days of the formation of the solar system, more than 4.5bn years ago. The fragments of meteorite that still exist are among the most pristine in the world, as they were protected from contamination when they became wedged in blocks of lake ice. The latest research shows that peppered throughout the meteorite are grains that formed even earlier, in a frigid cloud of molecules, possibly at the edge of the swirling disc of dust that ultimately collapsed to form the sun and all the planets of the solar system.

The discovery suggests that while the first light from the sun fell on the fledgling Earth, as the dinosaurs rose and died out and humans gained dominance, the meteorite was hurtling around the heavens on a billions-of-years-long journey destined to terminate with a thud in Yukon territory. Researchers at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston examined a two gram fragment of the meteorite and focused on tiny, hollow, carbon spheres embedded within it. Each “globule” measured just a few thousandths of a millimetre across.

Interesting stuff.

Over 100 Dinosaur Eggs Discovered

Over 100 fossilised eggs of dinosaur found in Madhya Pradesh, India

three amateur explorers have stumbled upon more than 100 fossilised eggs of dinosaurs in Madhya Pradesh. The eggs, belonging to the Cretaceous Era (approximately 144 to 65 million years ago), have been discovered in Kukshi-Bagh area of Dhar district, some 150 kms south-west of Indore. The rare find is a significant step in the study of pre-historic life in the Narmada Valley.

“All the eggs were discovered from a single nesting site in a start to end exploration for 18 hours at the site in Kukshi-Bagh area, 40 kms from Manavar. As many as 6-8 eggs were found per nests,” an excited Vishal Verma of the Mangal Panchayatan Parishad, a group of amateur explorers, told Hindustan Times from near the site.

“The eggs are from upper cretaceous era… These eggs can be categorised in three types of soropaud dinosaurs, which were herbivorous. These animals used to come from far away areas to lay eggs on the sandy banks of the rivers in this area, identified scientifically as Lameta bed,” Verma said. The dinosaurs were 40-90 feet in length, he added.

via: More than 100 Dinosaur Eggs Discovered in a Remote Area of India

African Union – Science Meeting

Local heroes

Despite these successes, many African scientists feel neglected by their politicians who, they suspect, do not understand that geeks as well as businessmen are crucial to economic development. That, however, might be about to change. For the first time, the theme of the twice-yearly African Union Summit (held on this occasion in Addis Ababa) was science, technology and climate change.

An afternoon of science in Africa – African leaders set guidelines for scientific growth – African Union, Jan 2007 meeting on “Science, Technology and Scientific Research and Climate change”, objectives:

• To show case innovative S&T projects in AU member States
• To demonstrate the role that S&T can play in Africa’s socio-economic development
• To demonstrate the potential investment return in S&T and innovation
• To encourage African policymakers to invest in science education
• To encourage African youth to take up careers in S&T
• To encourage skills and capacity building in S&T

Cancer Cure – Not so Fast

Follow up on Cheap, Safe Cancer Drug?: In which my words will be misinterpreted as “proof” that I am a “pharma shill”:

This drug has only been tested in cell culture and rats. Yes, the results were promising there, but that does not–I repeat, does not– mean the results will translate to humans. In fact, most likely, they will not. Those of us who’ve been in the cancer field a while know that all too common are drugs that kill tumors in the Petrie dish and in mice or rats but fail to be nearly as impressive when tested in humans.

Perhaps the blog post I quote above just resonates with me (see: confirmation bias). To me,it supports my contention in my “Cheap, Safe Cancer Drug?” post, though much more effectively and with supporting evidence. But this is my blog so I get to quote whoever I want, and it isn’t surprising I find those that share my thoughts to be the most compelling 🙂 Anyway the post I quote is definitely worth reading.

‘Hobbit’ human is a new species

‘Hobbit’ human ‘is a new species’:

Archaeologists had found sophisticated tools and evidence of a fire near the remains of the 1m-tall adult female. “People refused to believe that someone with that small of a brain could make the tools,” said Professor Falk. She said the Hobbit brain was nothing like that of a microcephalic and was advanced in a way that is different from living humans.

A previous study of LB1’s endocast revealed that large parts of the frontal lobe and other anatomical features were consistent with higher cognitive processes. “LB1 has a highly evolved brain,” said Professor Falk. “It didn’t get bigger, it got rewired and reorganised, and that’s very interesting.”