The uncertainty of science: New research now suggests an explanation for why in some cases having a high level of the supposedly good HDL cholesterol is not a good thing.
They think it is genetic, and that some people are missing the genes that help the HDL work to clean cholesterol out of the body. It is important however to recognize the uncertainties here. They still do not understand very well how this all works.
Scientists have found a way to use tiny nanoparticles of gold to destroy 100% of the cancer cells in mice.
The engineering is complex, but the nanoparticles tend to cluster around cancer cells, and when heated cause water around them to vaporize, destroying the cells. Human trials expected within two years.
A European experiment on ISS has found that fungi from Antarctica can survive in a Mars-like environment.
For 18 months half of the Antarctic fungi were exposed to Mars-like conditions. More specifically, this is an atmosphere with 95% CO2, 1.6% argon, 0.15% oxygen, 2.7% nitrogen and 370 parts per million of H2O; and a pressure of 1,000 pascals. Through optical filters, samples were subjected to ultra-violet radiation as if on Mars (higher than 200 nanometres) and others to lower radiation, including separate control samples. “The most relevant outcome was that more than 60% of the cells of the endolithic communities studied remained intact after ‘exposure to Mars’, or rather, the stability of their cellular DNA was still high,” highlights Rosa de la Torre Noetzel from Spain’s National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), co-researcher on the project.
Does this prove that life exists on Mars? Not at all (though I wouldn’t be surprised if we see news articles in the mainstream press over the next week suggesting exactly that). It does show us once again that life is resilient and could develop in many very extreme environments.
NASA astronauts have successfully gotten their zinnias to bloom for the first time.
As the article correctly notes, these are not the first flowers to bloom in space. Nonetheless, they represent an important achievement in making it possible for humans to live and survive in space.
The uncertainty of peer review: Three science papers that had suggested that genetically modified crops were harmful to animals and have been used by activist groups to argue for their ban have been found to contain manipulated and possibly falsified data
Papers that describe harmful effects to animals fed genetically modified (GM) crops are under scrutiny for alleged data manipulation. The leaked findings of an ongoing investigation at the University of Naples in Italy suggest that images in the papers may have been intentionally altered. The leader of the lab that carried out the work there says that there is no substance to this claim.
The papers’ findings run counter to those of numerous safety tests carried out by food and drug agencies around the world, which indicate that there are no dangers associated with eating GM food. But the work has been widely cited on anti-GM websites — and results of the experiments that the papers describe were referenced in an Italian Senate hearing last July on whether the country should allow cultivation of safety-approved GM crops. “The case is very important also because these papers have been used politically in the debate on GM crops,” says Italian senator Elena Cattaneo, a neuroscientist at the University of Milan whose concerns about the work triggered the investigation.
I know I am generalizing here and have not actually researched this, but I would bet that many of those same anti-GM websites and the people who support them are also firm believers in human-caused global warming. Similarly, I would guess that if you asked these scientists above who wrote the anti-GM papers they also would be firm believers in human-caused global warming. I know this is a guess, but based on years of watching these political battles I think a very safe guess.
In December four of seven zinnia plants in a greenhouse on ISS became sickly or died because they were receiving too much water and developed mold.
The story doesn’t really tell us much, but this paragraph reveals I think some fundamental management problems in the way NASA is running the station:
ISS commander and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly reported the mold to Mission Control Dec. 22 just as Veggie principal investigator Trent Smith was trying to manage the water problem. In pictures, Smith saw water on the plants a few days before. He told Discovery News he was trying to relay a command from NASA’s station operations team to increase fan speed in Veggie, but the mold developed before the command could be put through. One solution was, on Christmas Eve, to designate Kelly “commander” of Veggie. Kelly now has more autonomy to make changes to Veggie’s conditions if he feels the plants need it.
The scientist noticed a problem but was unable to cut through the communications bureaucracy to talk to the astronauts so that changes could be made quickly. Meanwhile, the astronauts on board ISS had not been given the freedom to make common sense changes themselves. The result is that some of the plants died.
The solution, to give an astronaut more “autonomy”, is one that the Russians learned a long time ago on their Mir space station. It was also a lesson NASA learned even longer ago on Skylab. Moreover, when astronauts are finally flying interplanetary spaceships to the planets with greenhouses just like this, they will have to have that autonomy, no matter what rules NASA establishes. It seems amazing to me that NASA is still learning this lesson now.
One more thought: It is not really a problem that the scientist had trouble reaching the astronauts quickly. In fact, it probably indicates an area of management that NASA is handling well. Communications from the ground up to ISS can be a major problem, as everyone wants to talk to the astronauts and if NASA didn’t control that communications the astronauts would never have time to do anything. Thus, placing limits on that communications makes sense, though once again it also requires that the astronauts be given a great deal of freedom to make their own decisions, as they might not be able to talk to the right experts whenever necessary.
Update: It appears the story below is bogus. (Hat tip Pzatchok.) It appears to be a combination of two different stories, one in which gardeners from the Miami Nation in Indiana donated old seeds to a research group, and the second where that same research group attempted to grow seeds found in a Kentucky cave, with poor results.
Original post:
Students who discovered some ancient seeds in a clay pot at an archaeological site in Canada successfully planted them to grow a previously extinct species of squash.
Not all the seeds grew, but enough did. Moreover, the new squash produced new seeds. This once extinct squash is no longer extinct. And according to the article is also tastes delicious!
Good news! Federal wildlife officials have determined that the grizzly bear population in and around Yellowstone has recovered so well that they have the option of removing the species from the endangered species list.
The latest count of grizzlies in the Yellowstone region puts the estimated population of the hump-shouldered bruins at just over 750, well exceeding the government’s recovery goal of 500 animals, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That compares with just 136 believed left in the Yellowstone ecosystem – encompassing parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho – when grizzlies were formally listed as threatened throughout the Lower 48 states in 1975, after they were hunted, trapped and poisoned to near extinction.
Not surprisingly, the article notes how environmental and American Indian groups oppose changing the bear’s status. Want to bet that they win the day and the bear remains endangered? Science really has very little to do with the endangered species act these days. It is all politics.
A new hybrid species, two-thirds coyote and one-third wolf with a little bit of dog, has spread throughout the eastern United States in the past century.
The animal’s range has encompassed America’s entire north-east, urban areas included, for at least a decade, and is continuing to expand in the south-east following coywolves’ arrival there half a century ago. This is astonishing. Purebred coyotes never managed to establish themselves east of the prairies. Wolves were killed off in eastern forests long ago. But by combining their DNA, the two have given rise to an animal that is able to spread into a vast and otherwise uninhabitable territory.
Called either the eastern coyote or the coywolf, it is estimated that their population could now be as high as a million.
Posted from Mexico City.
News you can use! A research study has found that drinking beer could help slow down the development of brain disorders.
Don’t start swilling it down right away. I must emphasize that this result also falls strongly under the category of “the uncertainty of science.”
An evening pause: Rocco had suggested this short video about the joys of going out and digging clams. I prefer the video below, of a real clam doing its own digging, because it shows us something we normally don’t see and that is really amazing. Who would have thought that a clam could bury itself so quickly, with a single digging foot?
The yearlong manned mission on ISS is now halfway over.
If they complete their planned 341-day mission through March, Mark Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko will have logged the fifth and sixth longest human flights in space. They will not complete a full year in space, (as has been advertised by NASA), something that four Russians did in their Mir space station, including one flight of fourteen and a half months.
I had not realized that this mission was not actually a complete year until I read the story above. In reality, they are actually only spending just over eleven months in space. I find this very disappointing. The whole reason to have ISS is to do these long missions. To cut this short of a year seems silly. If anything, they should take advantage of the situation and try to push to break the longevity mission of 14.5 months.
