When I saw this painting, I got tears in my eyes. Seriously.
I just love this. I think it’s the angles; the 3/4 turn of the grandmother and baby, the look of absorption on the baby’s face, and the semi-gibbous phase of the Earth.
And, of course, the sentiment. You can read a lot into this painting. But isn’t that what art is for?
This work is by Chase Stone, who has a lot of amazing art posted on DeviantArt. I strongly recommend going through his stuff.
Tip o’ the spacesuit visor to Reddit.
Most of life on Earth is a mystery to us. The bulk of biomass on the planet is made up of microbes. By some estimates, there may be 150 million species of bacteria, but scientists have only formally named a few thousand of them. One of the big causes of this ignorance is that scientists don’t know how to raise microbe colonies. If you scoop up some dirt and stick it under a microscope, you’ll see lots of different microbes living happily there. If you mash up all the DNA in that mud and read its sequence, you’ll discover an astonishing diversity of genes belonging to those microbes–thousands in a single spoon of soil. But now try to rear those microbes in a lab. When scientists try, they generally fail. A tiny fraction of one percent of microbe species will grow under ordinary conditions in Petri dish.
This staggering difficulty is the reason why E. coli and a few other species became the laboratory darlings of biologists during the 1900s. As I write in Microcosm, E. coli will happily explode in a flask full of broth. As a result, a lot of what we know about life we know from E. coli. Certainly a lot of those lessons hold true for any species–genes encoded in DNA, DNA used to produce RNA and proteins, a genetic code, and so on. But there are a lot of microbes that are very unlike E. coli. Even in our gut, for example, E. coli is just a minor player in an ecosystem made up of hundreds or thousands of species. Yet we know relatively little about its neighbors.
One reason for the trouble we have in raising microbes is that the environment we like is not the environment a lot of them like. If you are feeding on minerals in boiling water at the bottom of the ocean, it’s possible that you might find life in a luke-warm flask in an oxygen-rich atmosphere at sea-level air pressure unbearable–perhaps even toxic.
But the physical surroundings of microbes can’t account for all the trouble they pose for would-be microbial zoo-keepers. If you scoop up some wet sand from a pleasant beach, you will still be hard-pressed to get more than a few species to grow in the lab.
To coax bacteria to grow, microbiologists have been upgrading their Petri dishes. They have been building cages that mimic the natural habitat of the bacteria, and in some cases taking their chambers out of the lab and putting them in the environments where the bacteria live.
These semi-wild chambers have brought scientists more success, and they’ve also helped scientists figure out why the microbes are so hard to grow in the first place. Along with the right physical conditions, microbes need to live alongside the right microbes.
In the new issue of Chemistry and Biology, Tony d’Onofrio of Harvard and his colleagues report a striking success in cultivating bacteria that were previously impossible to cultivate. They made their discovery while studying some bacteria that live on a beach near Boston. Some of the bacteria, while unable to grow on their own in a Petri dish, grew if they were near certain other species. Perhaps, the scientists speculated, the hard-to-grow bacteria depended on something the other species made.
The scientists tested different molecules made by bacteria to see if any of them were fostering the growth. They eventually figured out that the responsible molecule was something known as a siderophore. Some species of bacteria make siderophores as a way to get their minimal daily required does of iron. Iron is essential for the growth of cells, but in many environments free iron is in short supply. So bacteria make iron-trapping molecules–siderophores–and release them through special channels. The siderophores drift around, and sometimes manage to snag iron atoms. They fold up around the iron, assuming a shape that allows them to slip through other channels back into the bacteria. Once inside, they open up again and set their iron free.
It turns out that a lot of species on the beaches around Boston–and presumably in a lot of other places in the world–don’t make their own siderophores. Instead, they rely on other species to produce siderophores, and once those molecules swallow up the iron, the bacteria that don’t make siderophores snatch them up. The scientists found that with different kinds of siderophores made by different species of bacteria, they could suddenly get a lot of microbes to grow.
Discoveries like these are exciting both in a practical and intellectual way. We’ve already harvested lots of valuable molecules from microbes, such as antibiotics and gene-copying enzymes. If scientists can raise lots of new species of microbes, they may be able to find new molecules. But the result is fascinating in itself. Apparently, a lot of microbial species depend on the kindness of strangers. And apparently, there are bacteria out there that are churning out siderophores despite the fact that other species are slurping up the iron they forage. If that was all there was to the story, this would not be a situation that could last long. The cheaters would thrive by skipping the effort of making siderophores, and eventually there wouldn’t be enough honest bacteria left to keep all the microbes supplied with their iron. It’s likely, instead, that the cheaters are not cheaters at all, but rather have services of their own to offer the microbial community.
And so the reason that we know so little about life on Earth may be that we have yet to figure out the complicated social life of microbes.
This spring, many beekeepers across America opened their hives and found ruin within. At a time when they should have been buzzing with activity, the hives were half-empty, with most adult bees having flown off to die. A new federal survey indicates that 2010 has been the worst year so far for bee deaths. Another study suggests that pesticides might be to blame for the mass wipeout of adult honeybees.
This winter’s die-off was the continuation of a four-year trend. At any given point, beekeepers can expect to see 15 to 20 percent of their bees wiped out due to natural causes or harsh weather. But this alarming phenomenon, termed colony collapse disorder (CCD), has seen millions of bees perish in a mysterious epidemic, with some farmers losing 30 to 90 percent of their hives.
As for the cause of this epidemic, experts say their best guess is that many factors are combining to sicken bees, with the list of culprits including parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, and pesticides. Now a new study published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE strengthens the case for pesticides’ culpability.
In the study, researchers found about three out of five pollen and wax samples from 23 states had at least one systemic pesticide — a chemical designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant [AP]. The scientists say that in the 887 wax, pollen, bee, and hive samples, they found 121 different types of pesticides. The pesticides weren’t present in sufficient quantities to kill the bees, they say, but when combined with the other detrimental factors the mix could prove lethal for the tiny workers.
This is the fourth year of honey bee losses across the United States. In 2007, the nation’s beekeepers lost 32 percent of their colonies. In 2008 they lost 36 percent. In 2009, 29 percent [Discovery News]. With the official 2010 numbers (which will be announced in April) expected to be even worse, farmers across the United States are worried. About one-third of the human diet is from plants that require pollination from honeybees, which means everything from apples to zucchini [AP]. Almond growers in California are particularly concerned; the state is one of the largest producers of almonds in the world, and with the decline in the bee population, pollinating the trees has been a challenge. CCD has also dealt a tough economic blow to the beekeepers who truck their hives to the orchards. For Zac Browning, one of the country’s largest commercial beekeepers, the latest woes have led to a $1 million loss this year [AP].
As federal, state, and private agencies hunt for the elusive bee killer, the USDA has advised people not to use pesticides indiscriminately—especially at midday when honey bees are most likely out foraging for nectar. The agency is also asking people to plant and encourage the planting of good nectar sources like red clover, foxglove, bee balm, and joe-pye weed to give the besieged honey bees a boost.
Related Content:
80beats: Honeybee Murder Mystery: “We Found the Bullet Hole,” Not the “Smoking Gun”
80beats: Are Reports of a Global Honeybee Crisis Overblown?
80beats: Honeybee Killer Still at Large
DISCOVER: The Baffling Bee Die-Off Continues
DISCOVER: Beepocalypse
Image: Flickr / Todd Huffman
There are aliens among us!
Don’t believe me? Then gaze upon this picture, O Foolish Human:
BABloggee Jeremy Theriot sent this picture to me. It looks innocent, doesn’t it? Ah, certainly, until you see it from a different angle…
J’accuse! Obviously, they walk among us! Or, more accurately, they are rooted among us. If prickly pear cacti have roots. I think they do. Yeah, let’s assume they do.
So maybe they’re not a major threat, but have you ever seen one up close? I’m positive I don’t want one probing me, I assure you. There’s a reason they’re prickly…
P.S. This one provides even more evidence that they photosynthesize among us.
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The Kennecott Garfield Smelter of the Bingham Canyon Mine is located 17 miles west of downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. It sits between the south shore of the Great Salt Lake and the Oquirrh Mountains. As the tallest free-standing structure west of the Mississippi River, the Kennecott stack rises 1,215 feet from a 124-foot-diameter base. The Bingham Canyon Mine, owned by global mining giant Rio Tinto, has the distinction of being the biggest man-made excavation on the face of the earth, daily producing 150,000 tons of copper ore and 270,000 tons of “overburden.” Called “The Richest Hole on Earth,” it is nearly a mile deep and about three miles wide at the top, and still expanding.
As photographer Michael Light points out, if you look closely at this photograph, you will see the beach of the prehistoric freshwater Lake Bonneville, behind the top half of the stack, to the left. Shooting from the open side of a helicopter, with nothing between him and the void but a lap belt, Light was in the air for about two hours, shooting some 450 exposures using a large format aerial camera loaded with 5” roll film. “Photographing Bingham Canyon is an act of looking at one geological epoch precisely as it merges into another, the Holocene becoming the Anthropocene,” writes Light.
Garfield Stack, Oquirrh Mountains, and Ancient Beach of Great Salt Lake.
All images are by Michael Light, courtesy Radius Books/Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco
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After six months in the International Space Station, two astronauts, a Russian and an American, returned to earth on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 in the Soyuz TMZ-16. The Soyuz dropped into four feet of snow in a remote region of Kazakhstan. NASA photographer Bill Ingalls, who has been shooting for NASA since 1991, says that one of the hardest parts of shooting a landing is trying to catch the rockets on the spacecraft that are supposed to fire milliseconds prior to landing, in order to cushion it. Ingalls arrived in the first group of recovery helicopters on the scene that circle the landing zone. The same snow that blocked the ground recovery vehicles from reaching the Soyuz also made it difficult for Ingalls to tell how high above the ground the it was, and when the rockets would fire.
He shot at a high shutter speed using motor drive to capture it all. Ingalls had made his shot, but for the astronauts, the journey was hardly over. Coming all the way from outer space back to earth is only part of the commute from the Space Station. After recovery from the snow at the landing site near Arkalyk, these hardy spacemen then traveled two and a half hours by helicopter to Kustanay, Kazakhstan. There they participated in a ceremony at the airport, where the locals presented them with traditional hats. Then they hopped on a plane for another two and a half hour ride before finally coming to rest at Star City, outside of Moscow.
Image courtesy Bill Ingalls/NASA
When a person has a heart attack, the heart repairs its damaged muscle by forming scar tissue. As a result, the heart never truly goes back to the way it was. But when a zebrafish has a heart injury, like having a large chunk of it chopped off, it grows a brand new piece to replace it.
Two independent reports published in the journal Nature show that within days of an injury to its heart, the zebrafish has the remarkable ability to regenerate most of the missing cardiac tissue using mature heart cells–not stem cells, as some researchers had suspected.
The findings help explain why human beings can’t regenerate a heart or missing limbs. The reports contradict a previous study (pdf) done by one of the research teams in 2006 that suggested that stem cells, the general all-purpose cells that develop into all the mature and functional cells of the body, were responsible for self-repair.
The finding suggest that doctors have been on the wrong track with recent stem cell-based therapies for heart attack patients. Many heart patients have received injections of stem cells, often ones taken from their own bone marrow. But the beneficial effects have generally been unremarkable [The New York Times].
In one study, a team led by Chris Jopling and Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte genetically engineered the fish’s heart muscle cells so that when they proliferated they would synthesize a fluorescent green protein [The New York Times].Then they chopped off part of the fish’s heart and watched to see if the fish would employ stem cells to regrow the heart or use mature heart muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes.
In just a few days, scientists found the zebrafish had regrown the missing piece of heart. On further observation, scientists found that all the cells in the new part of the heart glowed green, proving that existing heart muscle cells were the principal or only source of the new tissue [The New York Times]. Further experiments showed that the cardiomyocytes near the injury site seem to take a step backward in development, detaching from one another and losing their typical shape—presumably to make it possible for them to start dividing again as they replenish the lost tissue [ScienceNOW]. Experiments conducted by Kenneth Poss, the researcher behind the 2006 study, showed similar results. Both teams say the next step is to identify the cellular signals that trigger the regeneration process.
The scientists say that prior to heart failure, mammalian heart cells go into a state called hibernation, where the muscle cells stops contracting in an effort to save themselves. Hibernating cardiomyocytes are also seen in zebrafish, but unlike the mammal cells, the fish cells then take another step and begin proliferating. Scientists are trying to understand what gives the fish cells the ability to start multiplying, and hope to conduct further studies on mice to see whether mammalian cells can be induced to follow suit. “Maybe all they need is a bit of push in the right direction,” Jopling said [HealthDay News].
Related Content:
80beats:Injecting Special Protein Could Make Hearts Heal Themselves
80beats: Could Stem Cells Patch Up a Broken Heart?
80beats: Researchers Could Grow Replacement Tissue to Patch Broken Hearts
80beats: Harvesting Infant Hearts for Transplants Raises Ethical Questions
80beats: The Upside of Nuclear Testing: Traceable Radioactivity in Our Heart Cells
Image: Chris Jopling. The green-glowing heart cells are shown at 7, 14, and 30 days after injury.
Today Discover gains two new bloggers: Razib Khan and Ed Yong. But while they’re new to Discover, they’re far from new to the science blogosphere. I’m a long time reader of both of their blogs, and urge everyone to check them out, too. Welcome!
I am delighted to welcome two of our favorite science bloggers on the planet to their new home with us at Discover Blogs! Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science and Razib Khan of Gene Expression begin settling in today and I cannot imagine two better additions to the family! In case you're not already familiar with these phenomenal blogs, Ed's an award-winning science writer who breaks down research papers into easy to understand posts like no one else. He only uses the primary literature and Not Exactly Rocket Science was just named Research Blog of the Year, Best Lay-Level Blog, and home of the Best Post of the Year in the Research Blogging Awards. In other words, Ed's writing is a must-read for anyone interested in science online. Razib's also a superstar blogger and covers genetics better than anyone! He not only reports on the latest research, but he synthesizes and analyzes the data from primary sources in novel ways--ways that often impress those scientists originally engaged in the studies. Razib offers new insights on topics from human migration to standards of beauty and I always learn something new when I visit his site. He also makes me laugh. On top of ...
We have a budget proposal from the President that expands ISS utilization, invests in building a commercial LEO services-based launch capability, promotes a push to do R&D on exploration-enabling technologies, and, yes, cancels the Constellation program.
We have a Congress that, amongst the members who seem to care, largely doesn’t like this proposal, but is split amongst the various local concerns about what the best response to the budget is. I have to admit that I share Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s sense of irony at a Democratic White House arguing for increased privatization against Congressional Republicans advocating the continuation of a monolithic government program.
The space community itself is just as divided. You can see it on the space blogs and in the press, where we argue amongst ourselves about extending Shuttle, building a more direct derivative of it, saving Constellation (or not), supporting commercial endeavors, and just about every iteration in between.
This goes beyond just a technical debate, though. People are taking this personally. I experienced it first-hand when I found myself leaving a young professionals group that I had eagerly helped launch last fall, largely because I felt that dissenting views were no longer welcomed or respected and messaging decisions were being made on the basis of their marketability, not their content.
Speaking as someone who grew up watching the Shuttle, once worked on Constellation, and who now works on the Space Station Program, I can see where most people are coming from. Putting aside the typical politics that seem to be dominating the debate on Capitol Hill for a moment, I understand why people would feel trepidation at the vanguard of human space flight for the past 30 years coming to an end and discomfort at the uncertainty of what the future holds. As an engineer myself, I know my first instinct is to prefer the comfort of being pointed in a certain direction and told to go forth.
Personally, though, I do think NASA needs to focus on core strengths – exploration beyond LEO, scientific discovery, and technological innovation. The Space Act is clear that NASA is not to compete with private industry where such capability exists. The Vision for Space Exploration and the 2004 Aldridge Commission both said that NASA should not replicate existing LEO launch capabilities. It’s long past time we stop thinking everything will be alright if we can just pick up where Apollo left off. The world has changed since then and so must we.
When I search inside myself, I find that my strongest loyalty is to the enterprise of space exploration itself, not necessarily any particular program. As long as we are moving forward and I am making a meaningful contribution, I’ll be happy. If that means I have to change my own personal notion of what the future holds, so be it.
So long as we support an endeavor that is subject to the vagaries of the political winds, we will not have any hard-and-fast guarantees. The reality of the matter is that this could all change again when the next President comes along. Our best insurance against having change imposed on us against our will is to pursue missions with clear, unambiguous benefit to the nation. I think we can take a lesson in this from another part of the government.
Few question the value the military, as an institution, provides our country. No one lamented the “end of the Army,” though, when the immense, $340-billion Future Combat Systems program was canceled. FCS, despite completing its Systems of Systems Functional Review, was over budget and failing to meet its original requirements.
Before its cancellation, critical funding elements were already strapped and advanced technology development had been deferred. The Pentagon was recommending further deferral as early as 2005 because of budget strains elsewhere and expected funding declines. Sound familiar?
The Army is now working to figure out how to manage their programs better, what from FCS is really of value, and how to roll that forward into building its next generation of ground combat vehicles. Studies of program management have repeatedly shown that there is a declining trend in successful completion with increasing size, budget, and complexity. Instead of one monolithic program, the Army is now separating their modernization effort into role-specific programs.
We must not make the mistake of conflating the vision with the implementation, nor can we let ourselves fall victim to the sunk costs fallacy. We need to be honest with ourselves and our stakeholders – the American public – about where the space program is now, where it is going if we stay on the present path, and where we really want to take it.
I think the Vision for Space Exploration is still a good one and that the findings of both the Aldridge and Augustine reports validate it. Instead of fighting amongst ourselves, we should have a conversation about how to best realize that Vision within the political and fiscal realities we must face.
The traditional disdain of engineers and scientists for dealing with politics has only hurt us over the past few decades. We must bridge that gap if we expect policymakers to hear us, but we must also be careful to not lose our objectivity in the process of advocacy. Otherwise, we will fall into the same trap that has recently discredited climate science in the public eye.
I believe with all of my heart that our civilization’s future is in space. Our continued evolution and survival depends on our ability to explore the solar system, peel back its mysteries through scientific inquiry, and utilize its resources for the benefit of both our country and the rest of the world. As far as I am concerned, that is our mission. Let’s not lose sight of it.
From mental_floss Blog:
Today's bizarre-but-true video: zebra finches playing electric guitars. They're not all that good at it, but they rock roughly as hard as an untrained human would. From the YouTube description: French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot … creates a
From BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition:
China overtook the US during 2009 to become the leading investor in renewable energy technologies, according to a new analysis. Researchers with the Pew Charitable Trusts calculate that China invested $34.6bn (£23.2bn) in clean
From Discovery News - Top Stories:
Why spend the time and expense necessary to harvest energy when you can simply steal it? For the first time, scientists from California and Korea have successfully stolen an electric current from algae. The research could eventually create a ne
From Discovery News - Top Stories:
The National Renewable Energy Lab, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, has some new deputies in its push to develop cheaper, more efficient solar cells. Meet the NREL bots. In the shiny Process Development and Integration Laborato
From Discovery News - Top Stories:
Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Spirit and Opportunity have surpassed their designed mission lifespan by an astonishing six years, but don't let that fool you into thinking their mental capacity is suffering. Far from it. With help from the ME
From Wired Top Stories:
Thanks to its compact, comfortable design, the Cougar is as cuddly as a kitten. The optics are excellent too — objects popped out of the dark like monsters on a carnival ride. Like the LN-PB3 from Luna, these use a combination of first generation ni
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and Masten Space Systems’ Xombie vehicle both completed milestone test flights recently over the Mojave Desert, another step on the path towards commercial suborbital flights to space.
On March 20, Masten Space Systems’ Xombie vehicle, which successfully competed in NASA’s Lunar Lander Challenge last year, reached its highest altitude yet, 1046 feet, during a test launch. The recent flight marks another milestone towards Masten’s stated goal of providing “affordable access to space for a variety of scientific payloads” including “microgravity, space, and earth science experiments.”
On March 22, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, built by Scaled Composites, successfully completed its first “captive carry” atmospheric test flight at Mojave Spaceport attached to the WhiteKnightTwo mother aircraft, remaining aloft for 3 hours. “This is a momentous day for the Scaled and Virgin Teams,” said Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites. “The captive carry flight signifies the start of what we believe will be extremely exciting and successful spaceship flight test program.”
"It's quite common to fill one with liquid nitrogen, let it sit on the lab bench, and when you come back three days later there will still be liquid nitrogen in it. Now imagine what it can do for beer." More »
Jobs and Schmidt, whose companies have just ended their love affair, were spotted minutes ago talking business at Calafia in the Town and Country shopping center in Palo Alto. Update: That's not an iPad. And body language analysis, here. More »
Fighting cancer or making nuclear reactors that constantly self-repair themselves, helping to avoid the possibility of another Chernobyl. Clearly, nanotechnology will either save Earth or convert us into Borgs. Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists are betting on the first option. More »
