'Immortal' jellyfish swarming across the world

An 'immortal' jellyfish is swarming through the world's oceans, according to scientists.

The Turritopsis Nutricula is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature.

Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die.

Dr Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute said: "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion."

The jellyfish are originally from the Caribbean but have spread all over the world.

Turritopsis Nutricula is technically known as a hydrozoan and is the only known animal that is capable of reverting completely to its younger self.

It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation.

Scientists believe the cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it potentially immortal.

While most members of the jellyfish family usually die after propagating, the Turritopsis nutricula has developed the unique ability to return to a polyp state.

Having stumbled upon the font of eternal youth, this tiny creature which is just 5mm long is the focus of many intricate studies by marine biologists and geneticists to see exactly how it manages to literally reverse its aging process.

Sources: Wikipedia, Telegraph


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Our world may be a giant hologram

DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets, however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres.

For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

Read the complete article at Newscientist.


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Newborn had foot embedded in brain

Inside a newborn's brain: two feet, a hand and thigh. Unbelievable, huh?

But it's true...



The parents of Sam Esquibel know him only as a miracle baby.

The Colorado Springs infant survived surgery to remove what was believed to be a tumor when he was just 3 days old.

"The doctors said to us, 'This one is for the books,' " mom Tiffnie Esquibel said.

Inside the microscopic tumor was what looked like the formations of two feet, a hand and thigh.

"To find a perfectly formed structure (like this) is extremely unique, unusual, borderline unheard of," said Dr. Paul Grabb, the veteran pediatric neurosurgeon who performed the operation on Sam at Colorado Springs' Memorial Hospital for Children.

As for what this could mean to science books, Grabb said he did not pursue it because it was not vital to saving Sam, although he did say it gave insight to stem-cell research.

"How does the body form complete extremities? Who is to say we can't grow a heart, leg or foot?" Grabb said. "This could show a window of what's possible."

At 41 weeks into Esquibel's pregnancy, an ultrasound showed fluid in Sam's brain, and an emergency cesarean section was scheduled. The infant appeared healthy, but was given an MRI exam to be sure.

"If they hadn't done the (testing), the hospital said they would have sent Sam home with me," Esquibel said. "He just seemed as healthy as can be."

The MRI ultimately revealed a tumor, and at 3 days old, Sam underwent a two-hour surgery to remove it.

"I was absolutely devastated," Esquibel said. "We didn't know if he'd make it through the surgery or not, and it was a 50-50 percent chance the tumor could be cancerous."

Two and half months later, Sam has mostly recovered. Now that the sutures have healed, the infant is scheduled for 25 sessions of physical therapy to improve use of the right side of his head and neck.

Source: Denver Post



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Spinning water droplets behave like black holes

What does a drop of water have in common with a black hole and an atom? Well, levitating water droplets can now simulate the dynamics of both cosmological and subatomic objects.


Researchers at the University of Nottingham, UK, turned to water droplets because the surface tension that holds the drops together can be used to model other forces. For example, the event horizon of a black hole is sometimes thought of as a "stretched" membrane with a surface tension. Similar forces also prevent atoms from flying apart.

The team levitated the droplets using an effect called diamagnetism: when an external magnetic field was applied to the droplets, they created their own opposing magnetic field, initiating a repulsive force strong enough to counteract gravity. To set the droplets spinning, they implanted two tiny electrodes, which generated an electric field.

They found that once a droplet with a diameter of 1 centimetre reached about 3 revolutions per second, its shape, when viewed from above, became triangular, an effect never seen before in the lab (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.234501).

Via newscientist

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Scientists extract images directly from the brain

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11.

According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.


The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.

For now, the system is only able to reproduce simple black-and-white images. But Dr. Kang Cheng, a researcher from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, suggests that improving the measurement accuracy will make it possible to reproduce images in color.

“These results are a breakthrough in terms of understanding brain activity,” says Dr. Cheng. “In as little as 10 years, advances in this field of research may make it possible to read a person’s thoughts with some degree of accuracy.”

The researchers suggest a future version of this technology could be applied in the fields of art and design — particularly if it becomes possible to quickly and accurately access images existing inside an artist’s head. The technology might also lead to new treatments for conditions such as psychiatric disorders involving hallucinations, by providing doctors a direct window into the mind of the patient.

ATR chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani says, “This technology can also be applied to senses other than vision. In the future, it may also become possible to read feelings and complicated emotional states.”

The research results appear in the December 11 issue of US science journal Neuron.


Source pink tentacle

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Diet = $$$$

The focus of the next diet fad might be cash rather than carbohydrates. Kevin Volpp of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia found that obese people offered a financial reward for every kilogram shed lost more weight during a 16-week trial than those given standard diet advice.


The drawback? Like other weight-loss methods, many of the participants put the pounds back on once the programme ended. To achieve longer-lasting results the monthly payments, some totalling several hundred dollars, might have to be made for longer periods.

Volpp's results mean that obesity may join the list of social maladies that can be addressed using financial incentives. Previous experiments have shown that smokers and cocaine addicts can be weaned off their habits by paying them to stay drug-free. Incentives have also successfully been used to ensure that parents in developing countries send their children to school.

One of the biggest incentives schemes ever run in a rich nation got underway last year in New York. Over 5000 families are being studied to see if cash incentives can improve the rate at which children receive regular health check ups and adults attend work training courses.

Journal reference: Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 300, p 2631

Source: newscientist

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Neutralizing hurricanes

Each year, hurricanes or typhoons may cause billions of dollars' worth of damage and a large number of fatalities. It would be hugely significant if we could find an effective way of reducing the destructive power of these storms, which convert heat energy from warm oceans into damaging kinetic energy in the atmosphere.

Now Arkadii Leonov at the University of Akron in Ohio says that the complex air flows and other atmospheric "machinery" that produce this prodigious power are surprisingly delicate.


In a patent application, Leonov and colleagues say that they can put a spanner in the atmospheric works by flying supersonic jet aircraft in concentric circles around a hurricane's eye, the calm area around which the storm rotates.

The idea is that the sonic-boom shockwave would dramatically raise air pressure in the eye, disrupting the upward flow of warm air that drives the hurricane (you can see some sonic-boom shockwaves HERE).

But how many planes would you need? Sonic booms spread out as they travel away from an aircraft, so even a small number of relatively small aircraft could do the job, say Leonov and colleagues.

"Two F-4 jet fighters flying at approximately Mach 1.5 are sufficient to suppress, mitigate and/or destroy a typical sized hurricane/typhoon," they claim in their application.

The original patent aplication is HERE.

Via newscientist


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Do you think you know your astrological sign? Think again...

It's a great conversation starter: "What's your sign?"

But before you ask or answer that question, consider this: your zodiac sign corresponds to the position of the sun relative to constellations as they appeared over 2200 years ago!

The science behind astrology may have its roots in astronomy but don’t confuse these two disciplines. Astronomy can explain the position of the stars in the sky but it’s up to you to determine what, if anything, their alignment signifies.


The Constellations of the Zodiac

The ecliptic, or the position of the Sun as it’s perceived from the revolving Earth, passes through the constellations that formed the Zodiac - Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Zodiac signs were originally determined by which constellation the Sun was "in" on the day you were born.

Early astronomers observed the Sun traveling through the signs of the Zodiac in the course of one year, spending about a month in each. Thus, they calculated that each constellation extends 30 degrees across the ecliptic.

However, a phenomenon called precession has altered the position of the constellations we see today.

Precession and Astrology

The first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere was once marked by the zero point of the Zodiac. Astronomers call this the vernal equinox and it occurs as the ecliptic and celestial equator intersect.

Around 600 BCE, the zero point was in Aries and was called the "first point of Aries" (Figure 1, below).


The constellation Aries encompassed the first 30 degrees of the ecliptic; from 30 to 60 degrees was Taurus; from 60 to 90 degrees was Gemini; and so on for all twelve constellations of the Zodiac.

Unbeknownst to the ancient astrologers, the Earth continually wobbles around its axis in a 25,800-year cycle. This wobble—called precession—is caused by the gravitational attraction of the Moon on Earth's equatorial bulge(figure 1.1, left).

Over the past two-and-a-half millennia, this wobble has caused the intersection point between the celestial equator and the ecliptic to move west along the ecliptic by 36 degrees, or almost exactly one-tenth of the way around. This means that the signs have slipped one-tenth—or almost one whole month—of the way around the sky to the west, relative to the stars beyond.

For instance, those born between March 21 and April 19 consider themselves to be Aries. Today, the Sun is no longer within the constellation of Aries during much of that period. From March 11 to April 18, the Sun is actually in the constellation of Pisces! (Figure 2, below)


See also Figure 3 (below), which demonstrates the precession of the equinoxes from 600 BCE to 2600.


Your "Real Sign"

The table below lists the dates when the Sun is actually within the astronomical constellations of the Zodiac, according to modern constellation boundaries and corrected for precession (these dates can vary a day from year to year).

You will most likely find that once precession is taken into account, your zodiac sign is different. And if you were born between November 29 and December 17, your sign is actually one you never saw in the newspaper: you are an Ophiuchus! The eliptic passes through the constellation of Ophiuchus after Scorpius.

Now you really have something cool with which to start that conversation!

Check out your “real” zodiac sign below and see what the sky looked like on your birthday by going to the Birthday Sky application.

Capricorn - Jan 20 to Feb 16
Aquarius - Feb 16 to Mar 11
Pisces - Mar 11 to Apr 18
Aries - Apr 18 to May 13
Taurus - May 13 to Jun 21
Gemini - Jun 21 to Jul 20
Cancer - Jul 20 to Aug 10
Leo - Aug 10 to Sep 16
Virgo - Sep 16 to Oct 30
Libra - Oct 30 to Nov 23
Scorpius - Nov 23 to Nov 29
Ophiuchus - Nov 29 to Dec 17
Sagittarius - Dec 17 to Jan 20

Via livescience

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Meteor over Canada

Beautiful meteor exploding over Alberta, Canada, on November 20.

The fireball was filmed by a police car dashboard camera (first video) and a security camera (second video).

The fireball was attributed to a re-entering piece of rocket from a Soyuz launch on November 14th, but it appears that any rocket debris left over from Soyuz is still being tracked in space and has not re-entered. The Saskatchewan fireball is therefore assumed to be a naturally occurring meteoroid, possibly as large as a grapefruit car.

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Billions of particles of anti-matter created in laboratory

According to a press release issued this week by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, announcing the production of 'billions of particles of anti-matter':

"Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter, also known as positrons, shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma 'jet.'

This new ability to create a large number of positrons in a small laboratory opens the door to several fresh avenues of anti-matter research, including an understanding of the physics underlying various astrophysical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts."

The press release doesn't characterize the laser used in this experiment, but according to the guys at slashdot it may have been this one.



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Animated Aurora Borealis

Astronaut Don Pettit created an astounding video using a sequence of still images he shot of the aurora borealis from the International Space Station.

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Spiders on dope

How would be the net of a spider on LSD? And what about the net of a spider that is high on caffeine?

See after the jump...


Above is the image of a regular 'drug-free' spider net. Below you see what spiders can do after eating flies soaked in these substances: hashish, mescaline, LSD, caffeine.

Images from the book "Spider Communication: Mechanisms and Ecological Significance".

Via indiemall

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Interactive 3D map of our interstellar neighbourhood

Try this one... it's a great work from Krystian Majewski:

A spatial representation of every star within 14 light-years of the Solar System in orthographic projection. There are 32 stars in this region, including the Sun.

The stars are colored according to the spectral type, which may not reflect the actual color. Each grid square represents 1 square light year. The grid is aligned to the ecliptic. Planets are not shown on this map because they would be indistinguishable at this scale.

Click HERE to access the map.


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This page in Portuguese: AQUI

The best defense? A glowing blue spit cloud...

And this is true for Heterocarpus laevigatus shrimp. Know as "smooth nylon shrimp" it inhabits the dark depths of the Pacific and employs a brilliant method of defense. When threatened with attack, the creature spits a cloud of glowing blue fluid from its mouth, temporarily blinding predators and allowing it to escape.

Via pinktentacle



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German scientists think LEDs are the new Botox

If a new German study about wrinkle reduction is correct, the use of Botox will soon be a thing from the past. This study reveals that the intense visible light from light emitting diodes (LEDs - those miniature lights used in an array of products, from TV remote controls to traffic lights) applied daily for several weeks resulted in rejuvenated skin, with reduced wrinkle levels and increased resiliency.

And its not from any special LEDs either; its the same ones that are used in all the products that you use daily. Only these ones need to be high intensity ones.

Apparently the light penetrates the molecular structure of a layer of water on elastin (the protein that provides elasticity to the skin), allowing the skin to regain its elasticity - and so reducing the wrinkles.

Via engadget



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