Monthly Archives: August 2012

Pinky DNA Points To Clues About Ancient Humans

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Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

A replica of the pinky bone fragment found in a Siberian cave. Researchers used the bone bit to extract and sequence the genome of a girl who lived tens of thousands of years ago.

Scientists in Germany have been able to get enough DNA from a fossilized pinky to produce a high-quality DNA sequence of the pinky's owner.

"It's a really amazing-quality genome," says David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston. "It's as good as modern human genome sequences, from a lot of ways of measuring it."

The pinky belonged to a girl who lived tens of thousands of years ago. Scientists aren't sure about the exact age. She is a member of an extinct group of humans called Denisovans. The name comes from Denisova cave in Siberia, where the pinky was found.

Two years ago, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig reported that they had been able to get just enough DNA from the fossil to make a rough sequence of her DNA. But Matthias Meyer developed a far more efficient way of recovering ancient DNA, so he went back to the tiny amount of DNA left over from the first effort, and reanalyzed it.

"And from this little leftover, we were able to determine the sequence of the Denisova genome 30-fold over," says Meyer.

What that means is they were able to look at every single location along all of this girl's chromosomes 30 times to be absolutely certain that they had the right DNA letter in the right spot. The new results appear in the online edition of the journal Science.

The high-quality sequence gives scientists valuable new data for studying ancient humans. Researchers have begun, for example, to explore which modern human populations may have inherited genes from Denisovans.

The entrance to the Denisova cave in southern Siberia.

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Pinky DNA Points To Clues About Ancient Humans

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Ancient Human Kin’s DNA Code Illuminates Rise of Brains

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By John Lauerman - 2012-08-30T18:00:00Z

DNA analysis of an extinct human ancestor that lived 80,000 years ago has pinpointed fundamental genes tied to the brains evolution, showing how genome testing is changing anthropology and archaeology along with medicine.

At least eight genes that rose to prominence in human DNA since the time of the ancient relatives, called Denisovans, affect nerve growth and language, an international team of researchers said today in the journal Science. The cognitive power conferred by these genes may have keyed the development of complex thinking skills, culture and civilization said Svante Paabo, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

This is perhaps in the long term, to me, the most fascinating part about this; what it will tell us in the future about what makes us special in the world, he said yesterday on a conference call.

New DNA techniques are reshaping knowledge of human evolution just as quickly as theyre sparking the development of medical tests and treatments. Using a tiny amount of material from an ancient finger bone, scientists were able to analyze the ancient ancestors genes as closely as those of anyone who walked into a lab today, said David Reich, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor who contributed to the study.

Almost every cell in an organism holds a complete copy its genome, the chemical code for making proteins and tissues. The Denisovan genome analyzed in the study gives a broad visual picture of the individual it came from, holding genes that predict brown hair, brown eyes and dark skin in humans.

Denisovans, who lived in Asia, were closely related to Neanderthals, a group of human ancestors that existed at about the same time.

The structure of the bone the DNA came from suggests it was that of a young girl, about 7 or 8 years old, the scientists said. Paleontologists excavated the fragment, along with two teeth, at Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia in 2008.

In some ways, this ancient genome is even higher quality than the modern-day genomes weve produced, Reich said in a telephone interview. This means that very degraded ancient DNA samples that werent possible to study before can now be studied.

As part of the investigation, the researchers sequenced 11 new genomes from people in representative populations in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Among modern human populations, the Denisovan genome is most similar to the DNA of Papua New Guinea natives, the study said.

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Ancient Human Kin’s DNA Code Illuminates Rise of Brains

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‘Promiscuous’ enzymes still common in metabolism

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SAN DIEGO Open an undergraduate biochemistry textbook and you will learn that enzymes are highly efficient and specific in catalyzing chemical reactions in living organisms, and that they evolved to this state from their sloppy and promiscuous ancestors to allow cells to grow more efficiently. This fundamental paradigm is being challenged in a new study by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego, who reported in the journal Science what a few enzymologists have suspected for years: Many enzymes are still pretty sloppy and promiscuous, catalyzing multiple chemical reactions in living cells, for reasons that were previously not well understood.

In this study, the research team, led by Bernhard Palsson, Galetti Professor of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, brought together decades of work on the behavior of individual enzymes to produce a genome-scale model of E. coli metabolism and report that at least 37 percent of its enzymes catalyze multiple metabolic reactions that occur in an actively growing cell.

Weve been able to stitch all of the enzymes together into one giant model, giving us a holistic view of what has been driving the evolution of enzymes and found that it isnt quite what weve thought it to be, said Palsson.

When organisms evolve, it is the genes or proteins that change. Therefore, gene and protein evolution has classically been studied one gene at a time. However in this work, Palsson and his colleagues, introduce an important paradigm shift by demonstrating that the evolution of individual proteins and enzymes is influenced by the function of all of the other enzymes in an organism, and how they all work together to support the growth rate of the cell.

Using a whole-cell model of metabolism, the research team found that the more essential an enzyme is to the growth of the cell, the more efficient it needs to be; meanwhile, enzymes that only weakly contribute to cell growth can remain sloppy. The study found three major reasons why some enzymes have evolved to be so efficient, while others have not:

Our study found that the functions of promiscuous enzymes are still used in growing cells, but the sloppiness of these enzymes is not detrimental to growth. They are much less sensitive to changes in the environment and not as necessary for efficient cell growth, said Nathan Lewis, who earned a Ph.D. in bioengineering at the Jacobs School in March and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School.

This study is also a triumph in the emerging field of systems biology, which leverages the power of high-performance computing and an enormous amount of available data from the life sciences to simulate activities such as the rates of reactions that break down nutrients to make energy and new cell parts. This study sheds light on the vast number of promiscuous enzymes in living organisms and shifts the paradigm of research in biochemistry to a holistic level, said Lewis. The insights found in our work also clearly show that fine-grained knowledge can be obtained about individual proteins while using large-scale models. This concept will yield immediate and more distant results.

Our teams findings could also inform other research efforts into which enzymes require further study for overlooked promiscuous activities, said Hojung Nam, a postdoctoral researcher in Palssons lab. Besides testing and characterizing more enzymes for potential promiscuous activities, enzyme promiscuity could have far-reaching impacts as scientists try to understand how unexpected promiscuous activities of enzymes contribute to diseases such as leukemia and brain tumors, said Nam.

Funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Institutes of Health (DE-SC0004917, DE-FG02-09ER25917, and 2R01GM057089-13) and a fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF GK-12 742551).

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‘Promiscuous’ enzymes still common in metabolism

NDSU Research Connects the Dots to Renewable Energy Future

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Newswise Svetlana Kilina, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at North Dakota State University, Fargo, has received a $750,000 five-year award from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Early Career Research Program. Funding will be used to conduct research outlined in Dr. Kilinas proposal titled Modeling of Photoexcited Process at Interfaces of Functionalized Quantum Dots.

Dr. Kilinas research occurs at the intersection of renewable energy, high-performance computing, nanotechnology and chemistry. Only 68 awardees were selected from a pool of about 850 university- and national laboratory-based applicants, based on peer review by outside scientific experts.

Quantum dots are nanocrystals discovered by scientists in the 1980s. Ranging in size from two to 10 nanometers, billions of them could fit on the head of a pin. Their tiny sizes belie the Herculean impact they could make in semiconductors and energy. Dr. Kilinas work centers on new generation solar cells and fuel cells using quantum-dot-based materials.

Materials at the nanoscale level behave differently than at larger scales. Energized quantum dots absorb and emit light. The color of the light depends on the size of the dot. In addition, one quant of light can generate more than two carriers of electric current (two electrons-hole pairs instead of one) in quantum dots. As a result, quantum dots could convert energy to light or vice versa more efficiently than conventional energy materials based on bulk semiconductors such as silicon. That makes quantum dots very promising materials for solar cells and other energy applications.

One of the main obstacles in the synthesis of quantum dots is the controllable chemistry of the quantum dot surface, said Dr. Kilina. Due to their nanosize, the dots are extremely chemically reactive, and different organic molecules from solvent/air environment interact with the surface of the quantum dot during and after synthesis. These molecules cover the surface of the quantum dot like a shell, influencing its optical and electronic properties.

Dr. Kilina uses supercomputers to conduct computer-simulated experiments, investigate and advance her research in this field. Her goal is to generate theoretical insights to the surface chemistry of quantum dots, which are critical to design efficient quantum-dot-based materials for solar energy conversion and lighting applications.

To apply her model and algorithmic methods, Dr. Kilinas research group uses supercomputers at the NDSU Center for Computationally Assisted Science and Technology, in addition to Department of Energy and Los Alamos National Laboratory leadership-class, high-performance computing facilities. The combination of NDSU supercomputing and government facilities substantially reduces the amount of time needed for the massive calculations used in this research.

Dr. Kilinas research aims to gain fundamental understanding of nanomaterials at the molecular and electronic level, said Dr. Greg Cook, chair of NDSUs Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Insights gained from this research will enable the progression of solar energy technology to help solve the worlds energy challenges. The Department of Energy award recognizes Dr. Kilinas unique expertise in the area of theoretical modeling of these materials critical for the future, said Cook.

Dr. Kilinas research addresses fundamental questions of modern materials science that affect the design and manufacture of new-generation energy conversion devices. To design and manufacture such devices requires developing new multi-functional materials with controllable properties. As part of Dr. Kilinas work centered around new generation solar cells and fuel cells, she develops and applies a new generation non-adiabatic photoinduced dynamics methodology that simultaneously includes electron-hole coupling response for excitonic effects and exciton-phonon coupling critical in photoexcitation and couplings between electronics and crystal-lattice vibrations responsible for energy-to-heat losses.

It is anticipated that the acquired theoretical knowledge gained from the research at NDSU will help better explain and interpret experimental data and could facilitate rational design of new nanostructures with desired optical, transport, and light harvesting properties that are fundamental to a myriad of clean energy technologies.

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NDSU Research Connects the Dots to Renewable Energy Future

Science Study Shows ‘Promiscuous’ Enzymes Still Prevalent in Metabolism

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Newswise Open an undergraduate biochemistry textbook and you will learn that enzymes are highly efficient and specific in catalyzing chemical reactions in living organisms, and that they evolved to this state from their sloppy and promiscuous ancestors to allow cells to grow more efficiently. This fundamental paradigm is being challenged in a new study by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego, who reported in the journal Science what a few enzymologists have suspected for years: many enzymes are still pretty sloppy and promiscuous, catalyzing multiple chemical reactions in living cells, for reasons that were previously not well understood.

In this study, the research team, led by Bernhard Palsson, Galetti Professor of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, brought together decades of work on the behavior of individual enzymes to produce a genome-scale model of E. coli metabolism and report that at least 37 percent of its enzymes catalyze multiple metabolic reactions that occur in an actively growing cell.

Weve been able to stitch all of the enzymes together into one giant model, giving us a holistic view of what has been driving the evolution of enzymes and found that it isnt quite what weve thought it to be, said Palsson.

When organisms evolve, it is the genes or proteins that change. Therefore, gene and protein evolution has classically been studied one gene at a time. However in this work, Palsson and his colleagues, introduce an important paradigm shift by demonstrating that the evolution of individual proteins and enzymes is influenced by the function of all of the other enzymes in an organism, and how they all work together to support the growth rate of the cell.

Using a whole-cell model of metabolism, the research team found that the more essential an enzyme is to the growth of the cell, the more efficient it needs to be; meanwhile, enzymes that only weakly contribute to cell growth can remain sloppy. The study found three major reasons why some enzymes have evolved to be so efficient, while others have not:

Enzymes that are used more extensively by the organism need to be more efficient to avoid waste. To increase efficiency, they evolve to catalyze one specific metabolic reaction. When enzymes are responsible for catalyzing reactions that are necessary for cell growth and survival, they are specific in order to avoid interference from molecules that are not needed for cell growth and survival.

Since organisms have to adapt to dynamic and noisy environments, they sometimes need to have careful control of certain enzyme activities in order to avoid wasting energy and prepare for anticipated nutrient changes. Evolving higher specificity makes these enzymes easier to control.

Our study found that the functions of promiscuous enzymes are still used in growing cells, but the sloppiness of these enzymes is not detrimental to growth. They are much less sensitive to changes in the environment and not as necessary for efficient cell growth, said Nathan Lewis, who earned a Ph.D. in bioengineering at the Jacobs School in March and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School.

This study is also a triumph in the emerging field of systems biology, which leverages the power of high-performance computing and an enormous amount of available data from the life sciences to simulate activities such as the rates of reactions that break down nutrients to make energy and new cell parts. This study sheds light on the vast number of promiscuous enzymes in living organisms and shifts the paradigm of research in biochemistry to a holistic level, said Lewis. The insights found in our work also clearly show that fine-grained knowledge can be obtained about individual proteins while using large-scale models. This concept will yield immediate and more distant results.

Our teams findings could also inform other research efforts into which enzymes require further study for overlooked promiscuous activities, said Hojung Nam, a postdoctoral researcher in Palssons lab. Besides testing and characterizing more enzymes for potential promiscuous activities, enzyme promiscuity could have far-reaching impacts as scientists try to understand how unexpected promiscuous activities of enzymes contribute to diseases such as leukemia and brain tumors, said Nam.

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Science Study Shows 'Promiscuous' Enzymes Still Prevalent in Metabolism

‘Promiscuous’ enzymes still prevalent in metabolism: Challenges fundamental notion of enzyme specificity and efficiency

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ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2012) Open an undergraduate biochemistry textbook and you will learn that enzymes are highly efficient and specific in catalyzing chemical reactions in living organisms, and that they evolved to this state from their "sloppy" and "promiscuous" ancestors to allow cells to grow more efficiently. This fundamental paradigm is being challenged in a new study by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego, who reported in the journal Science what a few enzymologists have suspected for years: many enzymes are still pretty sloppy and promiscuous, catalyzing multiple chemical reactions in living cells, for reasons that were previously not well understood.

In this study, the research team, led by Bernhard Palsson, Galetti Professor of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, brought together decades of work on the behavior of individual enzymes to produce a genome-scale model of E. coli metabolism and report that at least 37 percent of its enzymes catalyze multiple metabolic reactions that occur in an actively growing cell.

"We've been able to stitch all of the enzymes together into one giant model, giving us a holistic view of what has been driving the evolution of enzymes and found that it isn't quite what we've thought it to be," said Palsson.

When organisms evolve, it is the genes or proteins that change. Therefore, gene and protein evolution has classically been studied one gene at a time. However in this work, Palsson and his colleagues, introduce an important paradigm shift by demonstrating that the evolution of individual proteins and enzymes is influenced by the function of all of the other enzymes in an organism, and how they all work together to support the growth rate of the cell.

Using a whole-cell model of metabolism, the research team found that the more essential an enzyme is to the growth of the cell, the more efficient it needs to be; meanwhile, enzymes that only weakly contribute to cell growth can remain 'sloppy.' The study found three major reasons why some enzymes have evolved to be so efficient, while others have not:

Enzymes that are used more extensively by the organism need to be more efficient to avoid waste. To increase efficiency, they evolve to catalyze one specific metabolic reaction. When enzymes are responsible for catalyzing reactions that are necessary for cell growth and survival, they are specific in order to avoid interference from molecules that are not needed for cell growth and survival.

Since organisms have to adapt to dynamic and noisy environments, they sometimes need to have careful control of certain enzyme activities in order to avoid wasting energy and prepare for anticipated nutrient changes. Evolving higher specificity makes these enzymes easier to control.

"Our study found that the functions of promiscuous enzymes are still used in growing cells, but the sloppiness of these enzymes is not detrimental to growth. They are much less sensitive to changes in the environment and not as necessary for efficient cell growth," said Nathan Lewis, who earned a Ph.D. in bioengineering at the Jacobs School in March and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School.

This study is also a triumph in the emerging field of systems biology, which leverages the power of high-performance computing and an enormous amount of available data from the life sciences to simulate activities such as the rates of reactions that break down nutrients to make energy and new cell parts. "This study sheds light on the vast number of promiscuous enzymes in living organisms and shifts the paradigm of research in biochemistry to a holistic level," said Lewis. "The insights found in our work also clearly show that fine-grained knowledge can be obtained about individual proteins while using large-scale models." This concept will yield immediate and more distant results.

"Our team's findings could also inform other research efforts into which enzymes require further study for overlooked promiscuous activities," said Hojung Nam, a postdoctoral researcher in Palsson's lab. "Besides testing and characterizing more enzymes for potential promiscuous activities, enzyme promiscuity could have far-reaching impacts as scientists try to understand how unexpected promiscuous activities of enzymes contribute to diseases such as leukemia and brain tumors," said Nam.

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'Promiscuous' enzymes still prevalent in metabolism: Challenges fundamental notion of enzyme specificity and efficiency

'Ultima Forever' wants you to be 'good'

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In "Ultima Forever," players must make choices based on questions that often don't have black-or-white answers.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Making a video game espousing the virtues of compassion, sacrifice and spirituality doesn't sound like a winner in today's battle-happy gaming environment. But 27 years ago, it was exactly the type of game that caught the imagination and spurred excitement in gamers.

Developers at Bioware are hoping to catch that same virtual lightning in a bottle with "Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar," the next chapter in the search for the Avatar of Britannia.

In it, the hero must achieve the highest levels in eight virtues: Valor, Justice, Honor, Compassion, Honestly, Humility, Sacrifice and Spirituality. Through actions in the game, players strive to become a shining example of good for the population.

The new title is based off "Ultima IV," a computer game dating all the way to 1985. It is considered one of the most innovative games ever because of its divergence from the typical hack-and-slash approach. Lead designer Kate Flack said "Ultima Forever" hopes to bring back the appeal of being a good person in a video game.

"Games are a cultural artifact. They are affected by all the things around them," Flack said. The developers of "Ultima IV" "were saying games can be about being a good person. At the time, it was in reaction to a backlash against the violence and things in video games.

"I think the parallel nowadays is that we are almost frightened of high fantasy. If it's not covered in blood, we don't believe it. I'm going to be as subversive as 'Ultima IV' was at the time."

"Ultima Forever" picks up 21 years after "Ultima IV" left off. Players can join up to three friends, as each works toward the goal of becoming the virtuous "avatar" of the land.

While the graphics, look and feel have obviously been upgraded due to advancements in technology over the years, Flack said the concept still remains true to what it was nearly three decades ago.

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'Ultima Forever' wants you to be 'good'

Spacewalkers do repairs at space station

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Sticky bolts proved too much for spacewalking astronauts Thursday, forcing them to leave a new power-switching box dangling from the International Space Station instead of bolted down.

It was a major disappointment for NASA's Sunita Williams and Japan's Akihiko Hoshide, who spent hours struggling with the bolts. They used all sorts of tools and tactics as the spacewalk went into overtime, but nothing worked.

With time running out, Mission Control finally told them to tie down the box and head back inside. The work will be left for a future spacewalk, presumably sometime soon.

"We'll figure this out another day," Mission Control radioed.

Thursday's spacewalk was supposed to last six and a half hours but instead went for eight hours and 17 minutes. It ended up in NASA's top 10 list for longest spacewalks at the No. 3 spot.

The power router is one of four, and NASA stressed that the other three all of them redundant are working fine. Nonetheless, the electrical system will need to be reconfigured at the 260-mile-high (418-kilometer-high) lab, given Thursday's failed effort.

The old box started acting up last fall, and NASA decided to replace it before it failed altogether. This was the first spacewalk by Americans since the final shuttle flight a year ago.

Williams and Hoshide had trouble getting the old unit out because of two sticky bolts, and they found metal shavings in the area. They squirted in compressed nitrogen gas to clear the holes, and some debris came out. But still, the bolts wouldn't go back in to secure the new box. None of the tools seemed to do the trick.

Space news from NBCNews.com

Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: Saturn's shades of blue and butterscotch are changing along with the planet's seasons, as illustrated by true-color photos from the Cassini orbiter.

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Spacewalkers do repairs at space station

Space Station Astronauts Battle Stuck Bolts in Record-Setting Spacewalk

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Two astronauts were thwarted by stubborn bolts during a record-setting spacewalk today (Aug. 30) to repair broken equipment on the outside of the International Space Station. During the marathon eight-hour excursion, the orbiting complex passed over Tropical Storm Isaac, which was recently downgraded from a hurricane after mercilessly hammering the state of Louisiana and the U.S. Gulf Coast with ...

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Space Station Astronauts Battle Stuck Bolts in Record-Setting Spacewalk

NASA and Boeing Busy Testing Next Generation Space Capsules

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Its been a busy seven days in the world of space capsule testing, with both Boeing and NASA taking steps towards the eventual first missions of their CST-100 and Orion spacecraft. NASAs Orion program managed to test phases of the reentry process with a water impact and parachute test of the capsule designed for taking humans beyond earth orbit for the first time since the Apollo era.

Orion is expected to make its first test flight in 2014 with an unmanned mission to a point 3,600 miles from Earth. The test flight will take the capsule about 15 times further out than the International Space Station and is designed to test the heat shield and parachutes at reentry speeds similar to what the capsule will experience after returning from deep space.

The recent water impact test was of an 18,000 pound version of the Orion capsule being used specifically for testing. The spacecraft is dropped into water at different angles from whats essentially a giant swing set at the Langley Water Impact Basin, which has been used for decades for this kind of testing.

Orion will be dropped from different trajectories and different heights to simulate the many ways it may hit the ocean, including a straight impact as well as a sideways velocity that could be experienced if it were swinging underneath the parachutes during the descent.

In the most recent tests Orion impacted the water both with a side angle trajectory and a classic belly flop, straight in the pool.

While one Orion test article was busy practicing its dives, another was high over the desert being pushed out ofa C-130 Hercules to test the parachutes. Its actually less of a capsule and more of a dart-shaped design engineered to be the same basic weight as the Orion to test the drogue, pilot and main parachutes of the Orion re-entry system.

After the smaller drogue and pilot parachutes deploy at 20,000 feet, three main chutes each 116 feet in diameter are deployed to provide the familiar ride back to Earth seen in many spaceflights dating back to the Mercury missions.

In the meantime, Boeing completed a jettison test of its forward heat shield that will protect the parachutes of its CST-100 spacecraft during reentry. The CST-100 is part of NASAs program to use commercial space transportation for future manned missions to low earth orbit.

The jettison testing of the heat shield is a small early step in the development of a complete spacecraft from Boeing capable of carrying humans to the International Space Station and elsewhere in earth orbit.

Boeing is one of three companies, along with SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corporation, developing spacecraft with funding help from NASA capable of carrying humans into orbit.

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NASA and Boeing Busy Testing Next Generation Space Capsules

NASA launches twin satellites to radiation belts

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Twin satellites rocketed into orbit Thursday on a quest to explore Earth's treacherous radiation belts and protect the planet from solar outbursts.

NASA launched the science probes before dawn, sending them skyward aboard an unmanned rocket.

"They're now at home in the Van Allen belts where they belong," said Nicola Fox, the deputy project scientist for the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

It's the first time two spacecraft are flying in tandem amid the punishing radiation belts of Earth, brimming with highly charged particles capable of wrecking satellites.

These new satellites shielded with thick aluminum are designed to withstand an onslaught of cosmic rays for the next two years.

"We're going to a place that other missions try to avoid and we need to live there for two years. That's one of our biggest challenges," said Richard Fitzgerald, project manager for Johns Hopkins.

Fitzgerald wore a black tuxedo for the big event, "my good-luck tux." It's the same suit he wore for the launch of another set of twin science satellites that still are going strong after 10 years. "I'm hoping for the same" with these Radiation Belt Storm Probes, he said.

The Johns Hopkins lab built the radiation belt probes for NASA, and is operating them from Maryland following a week of launch delays.

Scientists expect the $686 million mission to shed light on how the sun affects the Van Allen radiation belts, named after the astrophysicist who discovered them a half-century ago.

Earth's two doughnut-shaped radiation belts stretch thousands of miles into space; these inner and outer belts are full of high-energy particles from the sun and elsewhere in the cosmos, trapped by Earth's magnetic field.

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NASA launches twin satellites to radiation belts

NASA snaps stunning shots of Saturn and Titan

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(SPACE.com) NASA's Cassini probe has beamed home stunning images of Saturn and Titan, the ringed planet's largest moon.

The new natural-color Cassini photos, which were unveiled Wednesday (Aug. 29), capture the Saturn system as it undergoes a seasonal shift. The ringed planet and its many moons look quite different today than they did when Cassini arrived on the scene eight years ago, researchers said.

"As the seasons have advanced, and spring has come to the north and autumn to the south throughout the Saturn system, the azure blue in the northern winter Saturnian hemisphere that greeted Cassini upon its arrival in 2004 is now fading; and it is now the southern hemisphere, in its approach to winter, that is taking on a bluish hue," Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco, of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., said in a statement.

"This change is likely due to the reduced intensity of ultraviolet light and the haze it produces in the hemisphere approaching winter, and the increasing intensity of ultraviolet light and haze production in the hemisphere approaching summer," Porco added. [More Spectacular Photos of Saturn by Cassini]

NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward the night side of Saturn's moon Titan and sees sunlight scattering its atmosphere, forming a colorful ring. The images were acquired on June 6, 2012, when Cassini was about 134,000 miles from Titan.

Another photo shows Titan's south polar vortex -- an odd mass of swirling gas that Cassini noticed earlier this year -- in clear and dramatic detail. The formation of the vortex is likely related to the seasonal changes occurring on Saturn, Titan and its other moons, scientists have said.

The south polar vortex of Saturn's moon Titan stands out in this natural-color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, snapped on July 25, 2012.

Cassini launched in 1997 and has been studying Saturn and its rings and moons since it arrived in orbit around the planet in 2004. Cassini's primary mission ended in 2008, but the probe's activities have been extended twice, most recently through 2017.

NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have worked together on the mission over the years.

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA snaps stunning shots of Saturn and Titan

BG Medicine, Inc. to Present at Robert W. Baird 2012 Health Care Conference

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WALTHAM, Mass., Aug. 30, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BG Medicine, Inc. (BGMD), a company focused on the development and commercialization of novel, biomarker-based diagnostics, announced today that it will present at Robert W. Baird & Company's 2012 Health Care Conference on September 5, 2012 at 1:20 p.m. Eastern Time. Eric Bouvier, President and CEO of the Company, will present an overview of BG Medicine and updates on the Company's portfolio of cardiovascular diagnostic tests.

Webcasts of the Company's presentation will be available to the public and accessible by visiting: http://wsw.com/webcast/baird30/bgmd/ or on the "Investors" section of the Company's website at http://www.bg-medicine.com. Replays will be available on the Company's website for 30 days after the initial presentation.

About BG Medicine, Inc.

BG Medicine, Inc. (BGMD) is a life sciences company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of novel cardiovascular diagnostics to address significant unmet medical needs, improve patient outcomes and contain healthcare costs. The Company's first commercialized product, the BGM Galectin-3(R) test for use in patients with heart failure, is available in the United States and Europe. BG Medicine is also developing the CardioSCORE TM test, a blood test designed to identify individuals at high risk for near-term major cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke. For additional information about BG Medicine, heart failure and galectin-3 testing, please visit http://www.bg-medicine.com and http://www.galectin-3.com.

The BG Medicine Inc. logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=10352

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BG Medicine, Inc. to Present at Robert W. Baird 2012 Health Care Conference

Paging Dr. Tomorrow: U-M Medical Students Get Business Training

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Newswise ANN ARBOR, Mich. With American health care poised on the brink of its largest change in decades, 177 students started down the path to becoming doctors this month at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Chosen from nearly 5,400 applicants, and coming from 26 states, they all have a history of strong academic achievements. They now all have short white coats and new stethoscopes, given to them by alumni in the White Coat ceremony on their first day of medical school, an event steeped in tradition and symbolism.

But they also share something else: the potential to be leaders of the medical profession and health care community.

Through a new partnership with U-Ms Stephen M. Ross School of Business, all the new medical students will receive training that goes beyond anatomy, physiology and other traditional subjects. They will learn how to work with others to lead change, helping set them on a course that will continue through their careers.

U-M is the first medical school to give all its students this kind of training, which will prepare them to be the impactful change agents that American health care will need in the coming decades.

For more than 160 years, our school has graduated some of the highest-achieving physicians in the country, and many of our alumni have gone on to lead large practices and hospitals, medical schools, companies, professional societies, government agencies and major research initiatives, says Rajesh Mangrulkar, M.D., associate dean for medical student education at the U-M Medical School. But this new training, which will continue throughout their four years, will equip our students with the specific leadership skills that will help them achieve even more.

The new students kicked off their leadership training in a couple of unusual and lighthearted ways.

First, they began to understand their individual leadership tendencies, participating in a workshop on Competing Values by Jeff DeGraff, a clinical professor at the Ross School of Business. Then, the students were assigned into one of four teams, and engaged in a MedChef cooking contest, a competition to prepare meals (along with a marketing and communication strategy) that were then judged by faculty and alumni.

They may have looked like a couple of fun orientation-week events, but they were specifically designed to test the medical students organizational, leadership and management skills.

Erin McKean, M.D., who is helping direct the Leadership Initiative, says, In the first year, well be focusing on building productive teams,what it means to be a team member and respecting the skills and values that other people bring to the table. In phase two, well go on to health care systems, including health policy, economics and finance. In the last phase, students will be planning and executing change, which is something that health leaders do every day. McKean is a clinical assistant professor of otolaryngology and is just about to graduate with her MBA from Ross.

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Paging Dr. Tomorrow: U-M Medical Students Get Business Training

Gold, Copper Explorer Liberty Star Receives ZTEM Proposal for the Tombstone Super Project – Southeastern Arizona

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TUCSON, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Mineral explorer Liberty Star Uranium & Metals Corp. (Liberty Star or the Company)(LBSR: OTCQB) is pleased to announce that a proposal for a helicopter-borne ZTEM (geophysical) survey has been received from Geotech LTD (Geotech) of Ontario, Canada, covering the Hay Mountain and other lands comprising the Companys Tombstone Super Project (TSP) in southeastern Arizona. The survey will also cover other land within and around the Tombstone caldera.

Geotech proposes 1,440 flight lines investigating the geophysical response in a single block measuring survey area, results in approximately 2,430 line kilometers at 200 meter line spacing. According to Geotech, The proprietary receiver design using the advantages of modern digital electronics and signal processing delivers exceptionally low-noise levels. The result is unparalleled depth of investigation in precision electromagnetic measurements with a geophysical measurement every 8.5 meters along the lines and a penetration of approximately 6,000 feet below the land surface. Liberty Stars target elements are gold, copper, moly, silver, rare earth metals, lead and zinc, along with other byproduct metals occurring in a porphyry gold copper environment, as indicated by Liberty Stars detailed geochemical survey results (News Release 127, June 29, 2012).

James A. Briscoe James A. Briscoe, Professional Geologist, AZ CA CEO/Chief Geologist Liberty Star Uranium & Metals Corp.

About the Tombstone Super Project (TSP)

The TSP initially consisted of 33 unpatented federal lode mining claims over a projected covered porphyry copper mineral center in Cochise County, Arizona. InSeptember 2011, more claims coveringapproximately eight square miles were added after Chief Geologist James Briscoe discovered a large multimodal anomaly over a large covered porphyry copper mineral center within the larger TSP area. In 2011, SRK Consulting prepared three NI 43-101 compliant technical reports over Liberty Stars holdings. Each report recommended further exploration on the area. An extensive geochemical survey for 64 elements revealed the presence of porphyry copper, gold, silver, lead, moly, zinc and several rare earth elements. Mining throughout the region began in the late 19th century and led to the rise of legendary boomtown Tombstone, Arizona. Many of the old mining sites, and what is now Liberty Stars unmined land, reside within or adjacent to a large volcanic and intrusive geologic feature known as a caldera. These caldera structures are present throughout southern Arizona, making the region one of the richest porphyry copper areas on the planet.

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Gold, Copper Explorer Liberty Star Receives ZTEM Proposal for the Tombstone Super Project – Southeastern Arizona