Authors: M. J. Griffin, A. Abergel, A. Abreu, P. A. R. Ade, P. André, J.-L. Augueres, T. Babbedge, Y. Bae, T. Baillie, J.-P. Baluteau, M. J. Barlow, G. Bendo, D. Benielli, J. J. Bock, P. Bonhomme, D. Brisbin, C. Brockley-Blatt, M. Caldwell, C. Cara, N. Castro-Rodriguez, R. Cerulli, P. Chanial, S. Chen, E. Clark, D. L. Clements, L. Clerc, J. Coker, D. Communal, L. Conversi, P. Cox, D. Crumb, C. Cunningham, F. Daly, G. R. Davis, P. De Antoni, J. Delderfield, N. Devin, A. Di Giorgio, I. Didschuns, K. Dohlen, M. Donati, A. Dowell, C. D. Dowell, L. Duband, L. Dumaye, R. J. Emery, M. Ferlet, D. Ferrand, J. Fontignie, M. Fox, A. Franceschini, M. Frerking, T. Fulton, J. Garcia, R. Gastaud, W. K. Gear, J. Glenn, A. Goizel, D. K. Griffin, T. Grundy, S. Guest, L. Guillemet, P. C. Hargrave, M. Harwit, P. Hastings, E. Hatziminaoglou, M. Herman, B. Hinde, V. Hristov, M. Huang, P. Imhof, K. J. Isaak, U. Israelsson, R. J. Ivison, D. Jennings, B. Kiernan, K. J. King, A. E. Lange, W. Latter, G. Laurent, P. Laurent, S. J. Leeks, E. Lellouch, L. Levenson, B. Li, J. Li, J. Lilienthal, T. Lim, S. J. Liu, N. Lu, S. Madden, G. Mainetti, P. Marliani, D. McKay, K. Mercier, S. Molinari, H. Morris, H. Moseley, J. Mulder, M. Mur, D. A. Naylor, H. Nguyen, B. O'Halloran, S. Oliver, G. Olofsson, H.-G. Olofsson, R. Orfei, M. J. Page, I. Pain, P. Panuzzo, A. Papageorgiou, G. Parks, P. Parr-Burman, A. Pearce, C. Pearson, I. Pérez-Fournon, F. Pinsard, G. Pisano, J. Podosek, M. Pohlen, E. T. Polehampton, D. Pouliquen, D. Rigopoulou, D. Rizzo, I. G. Roseboom, H. Roussel, M. Rowan-Robinson, B. Rownd, P. Saraceno, M. Sauvage, R. Savage, G. Savini, E. Sawyer, C. Scharmberg, D. Schmitt, N. Schneider, B. Schulz, A. Schwartz, R. Shafer, D. L. Shupe, B. Sibthorpe, S. Sidher, A. Smith, A. J. Smith, D. Smith, L. Spencer, B. Stobie, R. Sudiwala, K. Sukhatme, C. Surace, J. A. Stevens, B. M. Swinyard, M. Trichas, T. Tourette, H. Triou, S. Tseng, C. Tucker, A. Turner, M. Vaccari, I. Valtchanov, L. Vigroux, E. Virique, G. Voellmer, H. Walker, R. Ward, T. Waskett, M. Weilert, R. Wesson, G. J. White, N. Whitehouse, C. D. Wilson, B. Winter, A. L. Woodcraft, G. S. Wright, C. K. Xu, A. Zavagno, M. Zemcov, L. Zhang and E. Zonca.<br />Astronomy and Astrophysics Vol. 518 , page L3<br />Published online: 16/07/2010<br />
Keywords:
instrumentation: photometers ; instrumentation: spectrographs ; space vehicles: instruments ; submillimeter: general.
Water abundance variations around high-mass protostars: HIFI observations of the DR21 region*
Authors: F. F. S. van der Tak, M. G. Marseille, F. Herpin, F. Wyrowski, A. Baudry, S. Bontemps, J. Braine, S. Doty, W. Frieswijk, G. Melnick, R. Shipman, E. F. van Dishoeck, A. O. Benz, P. Caselli, M. Hogerheijde, D. Johnstone, R. Liseau, R. Bachiller, M. Benedettini, E. Bergin, P. Bjerkeli, G. Blake, S. Bruderer, J. Cernicharo, C. Codella, F. Daniel, A. M. di Giorgio, C. Dominik, P. Encrenaz, M. Fich, A. Fuente, T. Giannini, J. Goicoechea, Th. de Graauw, F. Helmich, G. Herczeg, J. Jørgensen, L. Kristensen, B. Larsson, D. Lis, C. McCoey, D. Neufeld, B. Nisini, M. Olberg, B. Parise, J. Pearson, R. Plume, C. Risacher, J. Santiago, P. Saraceno, M. Tafalla, T. van Kempen, R. Visser, S. Wampfler, U. Y?ld?z, L. Ravera, P. Roelfsema, O. Siebertz and D. Teyssier.<br />Astronomy and Astrophysics Vol. 518 , page L107<br />Published online: 16/07/2010<br />
Keywords:
ISM: molecules ; stars: formation ; astrochemistry ; ISM: individual objects: DR21 .
Cold dust in three massive evolved stars in the LMC ***
Authors: M. L. Boyer, B. Sargent, J. Th. van Loon, S. Srinivasan, G. C. Clayton, F. Kemper, L. J. Smith, M. Matsuura, Paul M. Woods, M. Marengo, M. Meixner, C. Engelbracht, K. D. Gordon, S. Hony, R. Indebetouw, K. Misselt, K. Okumura, P. Panuzzo, D. Riebel, J. Roman-Duval, M. Sauvage and G. C. Sloan.<br />Astronomy and Astrophysics Vol. 518 , page L142<br />Published online: 16/07/2010<br />
Keywords:
Magellanic Clouds ; circumstellar matter ; stars: mass-loss ; stars: massive ; submillimeter: stars .
Herschel special feature
Authors: C. M. Walmsley, C. Bertout, F. Combes, A. Ferrara, T. Forveille, T. Guillot, A. Jones and S. Shore.<br />Astronomy and Astrophysics Vol. 518 , page E1<br />Published online: 16/07/2010
Herschel-ATLAS: Extragalactic number counts from 250 to 500 microns*
Authors: D. L. Clements, E. Rigby, S. Maddox, L. Dunne, A. Mortier, C. Pearson, A. Amblard, R. Auld, M. Baes, D. Bonfield, D. Burgarella, S. Buttiglione, A. Cava, A. Cooray, A. Dariush, G. de Zotti, S. Dye, S. Eales, D. Frayer, J. Fritz, Jonathan P. Gardner, J. Gonzalez-Nuevo, D. Herranz, E. Ibar, R. Ivison, M. J. Jarvis, G. Lagache, L. Leeuw, M. Lopez-Caniego, M. Negrello, E. Pascale, M. Pohlen, G. Rodighiero, S. Samui, S. Serjeant, B. Sibthorpe, D. Scott, D. J. B. Smith, P. Temi, M. Thompson, I. Valtchanov, P. van der Werf and A. Verma.<br />Astronomy and Astrophysics Vol. 518 , page L8<br />Published online: 16/07/2010<br />
Keywords:
galaxies: evolution ; galaxies: statistics ; infrared: galaxies ; submillimeter: galaxies .
Book Excerpt: Sharing Food
L. Shannon Jung on the many levels of the Christian practice of hospitality.
SHOCK POLL!! Republican Clint Didier pulls ahead of Patty Murray – Washington State
"Numerous changes need to be made in our bureaucratic line-up in order to bring our nation back to recognizing our highest political value -- individual liberty " -- Clint Didier
From Eric Dondero:
Just breaking from Rasmussen...
Washington's Senate race looks increasingly like a referendum on incumbent Democrat Patty Murray with two Republican candidates edging past her this month.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Washington State finds Republican hopefuls Dino Rossi and Clint Didier both earning 48% support in match-ups with Murray. She, in turn, picks up 45% of the vote against the two GOP challengers. Less than 10% of voters in both cases prefer some other candidate in the race or are undecided.
Clint Didier (R) 48%
Patty Murray (D-inc) 45%
Didier is of course, a former Washington Redskin, having played for the team for 7 years, and 3 more years for the Green Bay Packers. He was in 3 Super Bowls with the Skins.
Didier is the Tea Party-backed candidate in the race. Didier won the endorsement of Sarah Palin early on. Interestingly, on his campaign website Didier lists Palin as one of his greatest heros along with "Jesus Christ," and "Ronald Reagan."
Palin's endorsement:
“I’m proud to support Clint Didier as he willingly puts it all on the line to serve Washington State in the U.S. Senate for all the right reasons! This selfless, inspiring, commonsense constitutional conservative will help put our country on the right track. Please visit Clint’s website and follow him on Twitter. Let’s get behind #86!”
And from the other end of the libertarian movement, Didier has won Ron Paul's backing, as well. Paul's endorsement, via the Daily Paul:
“I am proud to endorse Clint Didier for United States Senate.
“The American people need more than just another vote. We need a man of principle who will always stand up for what is right. We need a citizen politician who will represent US. Clint Didier is just that kind of individual.”
Though Didier is the favorite of the hard right, Rossi is supported by a number of conservative GOPers, as well. It's been a relatively friendly GOP race between the two so far. Washington has a winner-take-all top two getter primary race with all parties participating.
Rand Paul epitomizes the best of Libertarian Republicans
Like Father, (un)like Son
From Eric Dondero:
An incredibly succinct and apt description of Rand Paul, Republican candidate for US Senate - Kentucky - from longtime Human Rights contributing editor and Washington Times contributor Cliff Kincaid, in a recent column (via RightsideNews):
His son Rand Paul is running for the Senate in Kentucky as a libertarian Republican who believes in a strong national defense.
Ironically, the comment came in an article blasting Rand Paul's father Ron Paul for his lack of support for a strong defense, "Ron Paul Helps Obama Slash National Defense."
Emmer’s Campaign Manager "too libertarian" – He wants to Privatize State Parks
A Pot Legalizing Republican too
Tom Emmer, libertarian-conservative for Minnesota Governor has a full-time state representative as his statewide campaign manager. Rep. Mark Buesgens is described by his GOP primary opponent Tom Rees, a former legislator, as a highly skilled political operative, but perhaps a bit too over-extended.
But it is Buesgen's views on the proper role of state government that has Rees most concerned.
From the St. Paul HometownSource.com, July 15:
Additionally, Rees argues that Buesgens is less conservative than libertarian.
He is especially troubled, Rees explained, by Buesgens’ attitude towards state parks.
During a House floor debate last March, Buesgens, asked by a Duluth lawmaker whether he would be willing to close and sell the state parks, replied “Yes.”
Buesgens is viewed as a bit of a edgie rightwinger on other issues, as well.
From the Minn. Post June 3 "Tom Emmer's campaign manager is a non-traditional choice -- and a non-traditional Republican":
He's not so much right of center as he is an outspoken libertarian, who frequently does not attend House Republican caucus meetings because he doesn't like the idea of "group think."
As a state rep, Buesgens was pretty much a predictable "No!" vote on anything proposed by the DFL-controlled Legislature. Yet, as a libertarian, he would occasionally come up with a surprise vote.
Rep. Mark BuesgensFor example, in the 2009 session, Buesgens voted for a bill that would have legalized the use of medicinal marijuana. That bill passed in both the House and Senate but eventually was vetoed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Geert Wilders taking a Jan Brewer approach against invasive Islamic Immigration to the West
"The fight for freedom and (against) Islamization as I see it is a worldwide phenomenon and problem to be solved"
From Eric Dondero:
The United States, Canada, Britain, France and Germany; those are the Nations Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders hopes to rally to take a stronger stance against immigration to the West from Muslim nations. Wilders argues Islam's intolerant views clash with Western values of women's rights, alternative lifestyles, free speech, and protection of Jews.
The AP headlines:
Wilders to launch international anti-Islam group
His plan:
Wilders, who calls Islam a "fascist" religion and wants an end to immigration from Muslim nations to the West, has seen his support in the Netherlands soar in recent years.
His Freedom Party won the biggest gains in a national election last month, coming third with 24 seats, up from the nine his party held in the last parliament.
Wilders is due to stand trial in October on hate speech charges.
Interestingly, later in the piece Wilders is quoted as distancing himself from the highly controversial British Nationalist Party (BNP), suggesting more of an alliance with elements of the Conservative Party or even Nigel Farage's British Independence Party.
For the U.S. Wilders has given no indication as to which political alliances he may sake.
According to AP, he's naming the group - International Freedom Alliance. Towards the end of the year he promises an ambitious speaking agenda in all 5 countries to build support.
Pamela Geller – New Liberty Movement Superstar!
Ayn Rand would be Proud
Atlas Shrugs website publisher and self-described "Ayn Randian" Pamela Geller has appeared on numerous major media shows in the last week on the issue of the proposed New York City Ground Zero Mosque. The list of her appearances include:
MSNBC News
CNN's America Morning
NBC's Nightly News
CNN Newsroom
Fox & Friends
Fox News Huckabee Show
On MSNBC Geller said:
We know in Islamic history that they build triumphal mosques on the cherished sites of sacred lands of conquered lands. So how is building a mosque, looking down at the cemetery of ground zero where they're still finding remains outreach?
NASA Rocks Our World Again
Guess what? NASA is up to its usual tricks – wowing us when we least expect it.
How many of you have heard of the “World Wide Telescope”? NASA sent out emails about it Monday (071210), and I have to admit I was extremely interested when I read about it. Take a look at this Mars image (it enlarges), just for starters:
NASA/Microsoft World Wide Telescope - Mars
You see the possibilities immediately. Here’s one of Olympus Mons, and it also enlarges:
NASA/Microsoft - HiRIS Olympus Mons
Read this about it from NASA:
Today, Microsoft Research and NASA are providing an entirely new experience to users of the WorldWide Telescope, which will allow visitors to interact with and explore our solar system like never before. Viewers can now take interactive tours of the red planet, hear directly from NASA scientists, and view and explore the most complete, highest-resolution coverage of Mars available. To experience Mars up close, Microsoft and NASA encourage viewers to download the new WWT|Mars experience at http://www.worldwidetelescope.org.
Dan Fay, director of Microsoft Research’s Earth, Energy and Environment effort, works with scientists around the world to see how technology can help solve their research challenges. Since early 2009, he’s been working with NASA to bring imagery from the agency’s Mars and Moon missions to life, and to make their valuable volumes of information more accessible to the masses.
“We wanted to make it easier for people everywhere, as well as scientists, to access these unique and valuable images,” says Fay. “NASA had the images and they were open to new ways to share them. Through the WorldWide Telescope we were able to build a user interface at WWT|Mars that would allow people to take advantage of the great content they had.”
To create the new Mars experience in the WorldWide Telescope, Fay worked closely with Michael Broxton of the NASA Ames Research Center’s Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG). Broxton leads a team in the IRG informally called the Mapmakers, which applies computer vision and image processing to problems of cartography. Over the years, the Mapmakers have taken satellite images from Mars, the moon and elsewhere, and turned them into useful maps. Broxton says that getting the results of NASA’s work out to the public is an important part of his mission.
“NASA has a history of providing the public with access to our spacecraft imagery,” he says. “With projects like the WorldWide Telescope, we’re working to provide greater access so that future generations of scientists can discover space in their own way.”
Interested? Here’s a link to the NASA press release, with of course more images and links.
Enjoy.
How a Massive Star Is Born | 80beats
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Our sun and a much bigger star that resides 10,000 light years away have something in common: the way they were born. Though scientists had previously wondered if stars 10 to 20 times the sun’s size required a different setup to grow, new observations show that both our sun and plus-sized stars can form from large hoops of dust called accretion disks.
Astronomers arrived at the findings, published online today in Nature, by weaving together observations from two observatories–the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and NASA’s orbital Spitzer Space Telescope. Researchers combined the observatories’ power to get a “virtual” telescope of much better resolution, the equivalent of one with a 280-foot mirror.
Lead researcher Stefan Kraus and his colleagues took a close peek at a 60,000-year-old stellar infant about 20 times our sun’s mass, called IRAS 13481-6124. The researchers were able to piece together temperature data to make a model of stellar birth that might resemble something from our 4.6 billion-year-old sun’s baby-book.
The team’s observations yielded a jackpot result: the discovery of a massive disk of dust and gas encircling the giant young star. “It’s the first time something like this has been observed,” Kraus said. “The disk very much resembles what we see around young stars that are much smaller, except everything is scaled up and more massive.” [Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
Previously, scientists weren’t sure if giant stars could form from accretion disks. They wondered if solar winds and other radiation coming out of bigger stars would prevent the disk’s dust from falling into the forming star.
As an alternative, some proposed that bigger stars came from smaller stars colliding into one another. Though IRAS 13481-6124 gives one example of stellar birth by disk, researchers must find others to say that this is the preferred birthing technique.
Astronomers are on the hunt for other big baby stars still wrapped in dust cocoons, but massive young stars are relatively rare, quite distant and typically clumped together so that it is difficult to pick out individual objects in the tumultuous, complicated environment. “For now, we can only talk about this object, where we found a disk, but it means in general it is possible for a disk to exist around stars with these properties,” Kraus said. [Discovery]
The picture isn’t exactly the same for smaller stars and larger ones. IRAS 13481-6124 had a much larger disk, 12 billion miles across, or 130 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. Still researchers say the findings suggest that the accretion disks around massive stars could, at least temporarily, serve as home to planet offspring. The neighborhood, though, wouldn’t be too pleasant.
“In the future, we might be able to see gaps in this and other dust disks created by orbiting planets, although it is unlikely that such bodies could survive for long.” Kraus said. “A planet around such a massive star would be destroyed by the strong stellar winds and intense radiation as soon as the protective disk material is gone, which leaves little chance for the development of solar systems like our own.” [Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
Related content:
80beats: Breathtaking Images of Star Birth Amid the Cold Cosmic Dust
80beats: Photo: Heart and Soul Nebulae Reveal Star Birth in the Cold Dust
80beats: Hubble Snaps New Pics of Star Birth to Celebrate 100,000 Orbits
80beats: Star Birth on the Edge of a Black Hole
Image 1: ESO/L. Calçada, Image 2: ESO/Spitzer/NASA/JPL/S. Kraus, Image 3: ESO
NCBI ROFL: Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children. | Discoblog
“Sex differences in toy preferences in children are marked, with boys expressing stronger and more rigid toy preferences than girls, whose preferences are more flexible. Socialization processes, parents, or peers encouraging play with gender-specific toys are thought to be the primary force shaping sex differences in toy preference. A contrast in view is that toy preferences reflect biologically-determined preferences for specific activities facilitated by specific toys. Sex differences in juvenile activities, such as rough-and-tumble play, peer preferences, and infant interest, share similarities in humans and monkeys. Thus if activity preferences shape toy preferences, male and female monkeys may show toy preferences similar to those seen in boys and girls. We compared the interactions of 34 rhesus monkeys, living within a 135 monkey troop, with human wheeled toys and plush toys. Male monkeys, like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences. Thus, the magnitude of preference for wheeled over plush toys differed significantly between males and females. The similarities to human findings demonstrate that such preferences can develop without explicit gendered socialization. We offer the hypothesis that toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and cognitive biases which are sculpted by social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and humans.”
Photo: flickr/jackol
Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Two Cute: Research that would make grad school snugglier.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Viewing cute images increases behavioral carefulness.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: This just in: Children like to play with food!!!
WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!
A billion km distant ice mountain against the black | Bad Astronomy
Carolyn Porco just tweeted about a beautiful image from Cassini, showing the icy moon Tethys hanging in space:
How forbidding and lovely!
Tethys is big, about 1100 km (660 miles) across (about 1/3 the diameter as our own Moon). Its density is actually a bit less than that of water, so it’s most likely predominantly composed of water ice. The surface is bombarded with craters, including the big one at the bottom called Melanthius. It’s 250 km across (150 miles!) and sports a massive central peak, common in larger craters. The crater itself is from a gigantic impact on the moon, and the central mountain forms when material is first displaced by the impact, then flows back. Under those titanic stresses, solid material can actually flow as the impact shock wave passes through, so these peaks are seen on lots of big objects in the solar system.
Cassini was 670,000 km (415,000 miles) from Tethys when it took this shot, which is nearly twice the Earth-Moon distance. The Sun is shining on Tethys from the left (the angle between the Sun, Tethys, and Cassini was about 41°, for those keeping track at home). You can see just how beaten Tethys is by looking at the terminator, the day/night dividing line, where shadows highlight the cratering. Even so, sandblasting by particles in Saturn’s rings has smoothed the moon’s surface, making it highly reflective — it’s shiny!
If there ever comes a day when I tire of seeing pictures like this, write my obituary. I’ll be done.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Solar Sail Success! Japanese Spacecraft Propelled by the Sun’s Force | 80beats
Ikaros hasn’t flown too close to the sun. It’s flown just close enough to ride the light.
Japan’s space agency JAXA confirmed on Friday that its solar sail project, Ikaros, achieved another of its goals: The sun’s photons pushed against the sail and accelerated the craft.
The effect stems from the cumulative push of light photons striking the solar sail. When measured together, it adds up to a small continuous thrust that does not require fuel use by the Ikaros craft. JAXA engineers used Doppler radar measurements of the Ikaros craft to determine that sunlight is pressing on the probe’s solar sail with a force of about 1.12 millinewtons (0.0002 pounds of force) [MSNBC].
Japan launched Ikaros in May and unfurled the sail in June. Now, JAXA scientists say, “with this confirmation, the IKAROS was proved to generate the biggest acceleration through photon during interplanetary flight in history.” Coming soon: A controlled flight in which the researchers turn the sail toward or away from the sun to control Ikaros’ velocity.
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Related Content:
80beats: Today In Space: Japanese Craft Spreads a Solar Sail
80beats: Japan’s Venus-Bound Probe Will Hunt Volcanoes And Study Violent Storms
DISCOVER: Japan Stakes Its Claim in Space, on the Hayabusa mission
Image: JAXA
Are You Lacking “Science Acid-Trip Pulp-Horror”? Try Some of This | Science Not Fiction
New York Times bestselling author Scott Sigler has just come out with another novel in the fast-moving, horrific, science-tastic style that he’s made his trademark. The new book is about a creature engineered to be the perfect organ donor–the ANCESTOR of the title–and he (and his publisher, Crown) have agreed to let us run an excerpt right here on SNF for your reading pleasure. To entice you to read on, check out the great blurbs from these top-notch reviewers:
“ANCESTOR isn’t science fiction. It’s science acid-trip pulp-horror, an irresistible genre unique to Scott Sigler’s wonderfully warped mind.” —Carl Zimmer
“Fun, creepy, and impossible to stop reading, ANCESTOR is the rare thriller that’s based on cutting-edge science and is entirely possible. Long after you’re done with the book, you’ll still be looking over your shoulder. Just in case.” —Phil Plait
Without further ado, here is your ANCESTOR excerpt:
The tiny, floating ball of cells could not think, could not react. It could not feel. If it could, it would have felt only one thing . . .
Fear.
Fear at the monster floating close by. Amorphous, insidious, unrelenting, the monster reached out with flowing tendrils that touched the ball of cells, tasting the surface.
The floating ball vibrated a little each time one of its cells completed mitosis, splitting from one cell into two daughter cells. And that happened rapidly . . . more rapidly than in any other animal, any other life-form. Nothing divided this fast, this efficiently. So fast the living balls vibrated every three or four minutes, cells splitting, doubling their number over and over again.
The floating balls had begun as a cow’s single-celled egg. Now? Only the outer membrane could truly be called bovine. The interior contained a unique genome that was mostly something else. The amorphous monster? A macrophage, a white blood cell, a hunter/killer taken from that same cow’s blood and dropped into a petri dish with the hybrid egg.
The monster’s tendrils reached out, boneless, shapeless, flowing like intelligent water. They caressed the rapidly dividing egg, sensing chemicals, tasting the egg for one purpose only:
To see if the egg was self.
It was not. The egg was other.
And anything other had to be destroyed.
Jian knew, even at this early stage, that failure had come calling once again. She, Claus Rhumkorrf, Erika Hoel and Tim Feely watched the giant monitor that took up an entire wall of the equipment-packed genetics lab. The monitor’s upper-right-hand corner showed green numbers: 72/150. The rest of the huge screen showed a grid of squares, ten high, fifteen across. Over half of those squares were black. The remaining squares each showed a grainy-gray picture of a highly magnified embryo.
The “150” denoted the number of embryos alive when the experiment began. Fifty cows, three genetically modified eggs from each cow, each egg tricked into replicating without fertilization. As soon as a fertilized egg, called a zygote, split into two daughter cells it became an embryo, a growing organism. Each embryo sat in a petri dish filled with a nutrient-rich solution and immune system elements from the same cow: macrophages, natural killer cells and T-lymphocytes, elements that combined to work as the body’s own special-ops assassins targeted at viruses, bacteria and other harmful pathogens.
The “72” represented the number of embryos still alive, not yet destroyed by the voracious white blood cells. Jian watched the counter change to 68/150. Rhumkorrf seemed to vibrate with anger, the frequency of that vibration increasing ever so slightly each time the number dropped. He was only a hair taller than Jian, but she outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. His eyes looked wide and buglike behind thick, black-framed glasses. The madder he became, the more he shook. The more he shook, the more his comb-over came apart, exposing his shiny balding pate.
65/150
“This is ridiculous,” Erika said, her cultured Dutch accent dripping with disgust. Jian glared at the demure woman. She hated Hoel, not only because she was a complete bitch, but also because she was so pretty and feminine, all the things that Jian was not. Hoel wore her silvery-gray hair in a tight bun that revealed a haughty face. She had the inevitable wrinkles due any forty-five-year-old woman, but nothing that even resembled a laugh line. Hoel looked so pale Jian often wondered if the woman had seen anything but the inside of a sunless lab for the last thirty years.
61/150
“Time?” Rhumkorrf asked.
Jian, Tim and Erika automatically looked at their watches, but the question was meant for Erika. “Twenty-one minutes, ten seconds,” she said.
“Remove the failures from the screen,” Rhumkorrf said through clenched teeth. Tim Feely quietly typed in a few keystrokes. The black squares disappeared.
Sixty-one squares, now much larger, remained.
Tim was Jian’s assistant, a biologist with impressive bioinformatics skills. He wasn’t on Jian’s level, of course, but his multidisciplinary approach bridged the gap between Jian’s computer skills and Erika’s biological expertise. He was bigger than Rhumkorrf, but not by much. Jian hated the fact that even though the project had two men and two women, she was always the largest person in the room.
Jian focused on one of the squares. The tiny embryo sat helpless, a gray, translucent cluster of cells defined by a whitish circle. At sixteen cells, the terminology changed from embryo to morula, Latin for mulberry, so named for its resemblance to the fruit. It normally took a mammalian embryo a few days to reach the morula stage — Jian’s creatures reached this stage in just twenty minutes.
Left alone, the morula would continue to divide until it became a hollow ball of cells known as a blastocyst. But to keep growing, a blastocyst had to embed itself into the lining of a mother’s uterus. And that could never happen as long as the cow’s immune system treated the embryo like a harmful foreign body.
54/150
Jian focused on a single square. From the morula’s left, a macrophage began oozing into view, moving like an amoeba, extending pseudopodia as it slid and reached. All along the wall-sized monitor, the white squares steadily blinked their way to blackness.
48/150
“Dammit,” Rhumkorrf hissed, and Jian wondered how he could speak so clearly with his teeth pressed together like that.
The macrophage operated on chemicals, grabbing molecules from the environment and reacting to them. The morula’s outer membrane, the zona pellucida, was the same egg membrane taken from the cow. That meant it was 100 percent natural, native to the cow, something macrophages would almost never attack. But what lay inside that outer shell was something created by Jian . . . Jian and her God Machine.
34/150
“Clear them out again,” Rhumkorrf said. Tim tapped the keys. The black squares again disappeared: the remaining grayish squares grew even larger. Instantly, the larger squares started blinking to black.
24/150
“Fuck,” Erika said in a decidedly uncultured tone. Inside the morula, a cell quivered. Its sides pinched in, the shape changing from a circle to an hourglass. Mitosis. A macrophage tendril reached the morula, touched it, almost caressing it.
14/150
The macrophage’s entire amorphous body slid into view, a grayish, shapeless mass.
9/150
The squares steadily blinked out, their blackness mocking Jian, reminding her of her lack of skill, her stupidity, her failure.
4/150
The macrophage moved closer to the morula. The dividing cell quivered once more, and the single cell became two. Growth, success, but it was too late.
1/150
The macrophage’s tendrils encircled the ball, then touched on the other side, surrounding it. The tendrils joined, engulfing the prey. The square turned black, leaving only a white-lined grid and a green number.
0/150
“Well, that was just spectacular,” Rhumkorrf said. “Absolutely spectacular.”
“Oh, please,” Erika said. “I really don’t want to hear it.”
Rhumkorrf turned to face her. “You’re going to hear it. We have to produce results. For heaven’s sake, Erika, you’ve built your whole career on this process.”
“That was different. The quagga and the zebra are almost genetically identical. This thing we’re creating is artificial, Claus. If Jian can’t produce a proper genome, the experiment is flawed to begin with.”
Jian wanted to find a place to hide. Rhumkorrf and Erika had been lovers once, but no more. Now they fought like a divorced couple. Erika jerked her thumb at Jian. “It’s her fault. All she can do is give me an embryo with a sixty-five percent success probability. I need at least ninety percent to have any chance.”
“You’re both responsible,” Rhumkorrf said. “We’re missing something here. Specific proteins are producing the signals that trigger the immune response. You have to figure out which genes are producing the offending proteins.”
“We’ve looked,” Erika said. “We’ve gone over it again and again. The computer keeps analyzing, we keep making changes, but the same thing happens every time.”
Rhumkorrf slowly ran a hand over his head, putting his comb-over mostly back in place. “We’re too close to it. We’ve got to change our way of thinking. I know the fatal flaw is staring us in the face, we just don’t recognize it.”
Tim stood up and stretched. He ran both hands through his short but thick blond locks, looking directly at Rhumkorrf when he did. Jian wondered if Tim did that on purpose, to mock Rhumkorrf’s thinning hair. “We’ve been over this a hundred times,” Tim said. “I’m already reviewing all of Jian and Erika’s work on top of doing my own.”
Erika let out a huff. “As if you could even understand my work, you idiot.”
“You shut up!” Jian said. “You do not talk to Tim like that.”
Erika smirked, first at Jian, then at Tim. “Such a big man, Tim. You need a fat old woman to fight your battles for you?”
Tim’s body stayed perfectly still except for his right hand, which extended and flipped Erika the middle finger.
“That will be enough, Mister Feely,” Rhumkorrf said. “If you’re not smart enough to contribute to the work, the least you could do is shut your mouth and focus your worthless brain on running your little computer.”
Tim’s hands clenched into fists. Jian felt so bad for him. All his life, Tim Feely had probably been used to being the smartest person in the room. Here, he was the dumbest — something Claus never let him forget.
“I realize we’re all frustrated,” Rhumkorrf said, “but we have to find a way to think in new directions. We’re so close, can’t you all feel it?” His bug-eyed glare swept around the room, eliciting delayed nods of agreement from all of them. They were close, maddeningly so. Jian just couldn’t find that missing piece. It almost made her long for the days before the medicine, when the ideas came freer, faster. But no, that wouldn’t do — she knew all too well where that led.
Rhumkorrf took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I want you all to think about something.” He put the glasses back on. “It took us an hour to conduct this experiment. In that hour, at least four people died from organ failure. Four people who would have lived if they had a replacement. In twenty-four hours, almost a hundred people will die. Perhaps you should consider that before you start bickering again.”
Jian, Tim and even Erika stared at the floor.
“What ever it takes,” Rhumkorrf said. “What ever it takes, we will make this happen. We’ve just failed the immune response test for the sixteenth time. All of you, go work from your rooms. Maybe if we stop sniping at each other, we can find that last obstacle and eliminate it.”
Jian nodded, then walked out of the lab and headed back to her small apartment. Sixteen immune response tests, sixteen failures. She had to find a way to make number seventeen work, had to, because millions of lives depended on her and her alone.
Report: Many of Toyota’s Acceleration Problems Due to Driver Error | 80beats
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s full report on Toyotas and their “sudden unintended acceleration” problem has yet to see the light of day, but the first wave of information from it suggests that driver error—not some mysterious mechanical problem in the electronic throttle control—could be to blame in many, if not most, of the reported accidents.
NHTSA has been studying data recorders from wrecked Toyotas—dozens of them—in their investigation, which will go on for months to come. Those data recorders show that the cars had their throttles open and brakes disengaged at the times of the crashes.
The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes [Wall Street Journal].
A tip of the hat to our friends at Popular Mechanics who called this months ago, saying it made no sense to blame some “ghost in the machine” and pointing out incidents in the past—like the investigation of Audi in the 1980s—where claims of sudden unintended acceleration turned out to be a bust.
But the news isn’t all good for Toyota. The company still must deal with the problems of sticky accelerators and sliding floor mats that can trap accelerators on the floor.
Those equipment and mechanical problems were behind the worldwide recall of more than 8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles in October 2009 and January 2010 for unintended acceleration. Toyota faces a potential civil liability estimated at more than $10 billion from lawsuits sparked by complaints of runaway cars and trucks [Reuters].
However, a traffic fatality from last August, in which the gas pedal got stuck in the floor mat, is the only one so far that the NHTSA has tied to a mechanical problem.
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Image: flickr / danielctw
Cosmic X-ray blast temporarily blinded NASA satellite! | Bad Astronomy
On June 21, an intense blast of X-rays from a distant explosion slammed into NASA’s Swift satellite, and was so bright it actually temporarily blinded the observatory!
Swift is a satellite designed to look for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs); incredibly violent cosmic explosions that occur when black holes form. We think there are several ways this can happen, but the most common is when a massive star explodes at the end of its life. Forces in the star’s core can create unbelievably destructive power; essentially packing all the energy the Sun emits in its entire lifetime into two narrow beams that march across the Universe. A GRB beam can be so intense that from a hundred light years away it would blowtorch the Earth, and so bright it can be seen from clear across the observable Universe.
For once, I’m not exaggerating.
In the case of last month, the GRB was about 5 billion light years away. Called GRB 100621A (from right to left, the first GRB seen on the 21st of June in 2010), it was unusually, amazingly bright in X-rays. A lot of GRBs emit light across the spectrum, from radio to super-energetic gamma rays, but this one really overachieved in the X-ray department. Swift, normally easily able to handle the X-ray load from these explosions, was overwhelmed, and actually shut down temporarily when software detected that the cameras onboard might get damaged by the flood of light. That’s never happened before.
The burst was so bright in X-rays it put other GRBs to shame: slamming Swift with 143,000 X-ray photons per second, it was 5 times brighter than the previous record holder, and nearly 200 times as bright as a typical GRB! Weirdly, it didn’t look out of the ordinary in visible light.
So why was this burst such an overachiever? At the moment, that’s not clear. The good news is, GRBs don’t just blink on and off, they fade over time, allowing for long observations, and for other observatories to take a peek at other flavors of light (like radio, optical, and infrared). With a fleet of telescopes keeping their eyes on this prize, I expect the journals will soon see their own flood of papers being submitted to explain this extraordinary event.
I can’t help but add that for several years I worked on the Swift team, doing education and public outreach. Whenever we got an extraordinary burst like this one — and we did see a few whoppers! — everyone got very excited and the email and phone calls would fly. Neil Gehrels, the Principal Investigator of Swift (think of him as Big Daddy) was always particularly gung-ho about these, and was really supportive and willing to give time to talk to me about them. He was incredibly helpful to me when I wrote the GRB chapter of my book, and is just an all-around good guy. I’m really glad to see that Swift — one of NASA’s all-time most successful satellites — is still cranking out the hits, and the team is still jumping into action when it does.
Tip o’ the Cesium-iodide X-ray detector to my old pal Dan Vergano. Image credits: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler, NASA
Related posts:
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Jungle Cat to Potential Prey: Nobody Here but Us Monkey Babies | Discoblog
One pied tamaran turns to another: Do you hear that infant monkey call?
That’s one weird-sounding baby, the other responds. Shrugging their shoulders, the pair goes to investigate. Surprise! It’s not a baby monkey at all, but a margay cat doing impersonations. Then it’s up to the monkeys to escape becoming a snack.
In the domain of jungle tricks, monkeys usually take center-stage. They may give false alarms to steal bananas or (shamelessly) carry an infant to strike up a conversation. But the above fake-out scene, documented in 2005 by Wildlife Conservation Society researchers, hinted that at least one feline is giving monkeys a dose of their own medicine.
The small spotted margay won’t be winning any stand-up awards: Fabio Rohe, a researcher at the Society, told National Geographic that the cat’s impressions were “poor.” Though researchers watched the monkeys escape, they still found the ruse impressive, given that no other cat is documented to have used vocal mimicry in hunting (though some people claim to have heard similar strategies used by jaguars and cougars).
The margay’s acting skills may soon prove crucial, since the South American species is threatened by hunting, the pet trade, and habitat destruction. As National Geographic reports, researchers believe the cat may have other animals in its “repertoire” including macuco birds and agouti rodents.
Given its apparent skills and the fact that the seven-pound cat also eats lizards, perhaps the tongue-flick pictured here is only another act of cunning.
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Image: Wikimedia / Malene Thyssen
