In a break from its usual task of searching for distant cosmic explosions, NASA's Swift satellite has acquired the highest-resolution view of a neighboring spiral galaxy ever attained in the ultraviolet. The galaxy, known as M31 in the constellation Andromeda, is the largest and closest spiral galaxy to our own.

"Swift reveals about 20,000 ultraviolet sources in M31, especially hot, young stars and dense star clusters," said Stefan Immler, a research scientist on the Swift team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Of particular importance is that we have covered the galaxy in three ultraviolet filters. That will let us study M31's star-formation processes in much greater detail than previously possible."

M31, also known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is more than 220,000 light-years across and lies 2.5 million light-years away. On a clear, dark night, the galaxy is faintly visible as a misty patch to the naked eye.

Between May 25 and July 26, 2008, Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) acquired 330 images of M31 at wavelengths of 192.8, 224.6, and 260 nanometers. The images represent a total exposure time of 24 hours.

The task of assembling the resulting 85 gigabytes of images fell to Erin Grand, an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland at College Park who worked with Immler as an intern this summer. "After ten weeks of processing that immense amount of data, I'm extremely proud of this new view of M31," she said.

Several features are immediately apparent in the new mosaic. The first is the striking difference between the galaxy's central bulge and its spiral arms. "The bulge is smoother and redder because it's full of older and cooler stars," Immler explained. "Very few new stars form here because most of the materials needed to make them have been depleted."

Dense clusters of hot, young, blue stars sparkle beyond the central bulge. As in our own galaxy, M31's disk and spiral arms contain most of the gas and dust needed to produce new generations of stars. Star clusters are especially plentiful in an enormous ring about 150,000 light-years across.

What triggers the unusually intense star formation in Andromeda's "ring of fire"? Previous studies have shown that tides raised by the many small satellite galaxies in orbit around M31 help boost the interactions within gas clouds that result in new stars.

In 1885, an exploding star in M31's central bulge became bright enough to see with the naked eye. This was the first supernova ever recorded in any galaxy beyond our own Milky Way. "We expect an average of about one supernova per century in galaxies like M31," Immler said. "Perhaps we won't have to wait too long for another one."

"Swift is surveying nearby galaxies like M31 so astronomers can better understand star- formation conditions and relate them to conditions in the distant galaxies where we see gamma-ray bursts occurring," said Neil Gehrels, the mission's principal investigator at NASA Goddard. Since Swift's November 2005 launch, the satellite has detected more than 400 gamma-ray bursts -- massive, far-off explosions likely associated with the births of black holes.

Swift is managed by NASA Goddard. It was built and is being operated in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and General Dynamics of Gilbert, Ariz., in the United States. International collaborators include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy, and additional partners in Germany and Japan.

Artificial Black Hole Created in Chinese Lab
Cloaking technology used to create a region of space that allows microwaves in, but not out again

If you haven't heard of metamaterials and what they can do, where have you been? Most of the media coverage so far has focused on invisibility cloaks but that's just the start of the fun physicists can have with this stuff. Only a few weeks ago we were discussing how to recreate the big bang inside a metamaterial. And earlier this year, a group of physicists suggested that it ought to be possible to create a black hole using metamaterials. That's an interesting idea but a demonstration would be more exciting.

Step forward Qiang Cheng and Tie Jun Cui at the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, who have used metamaterials to create the world's first artificial black hole in their lab. Yep, a real black hole.

That's not quite as scary as it sounds. A black hole is a region of space from which light cannot escape (that's why it's black). According to Einsteins' theory relativity, black holes form when space becomes so distorted by a large mass that light cannot escape its gravitational field.

But gravity needn't be involved. Metamaterials also distort space, as far as light is concerned anyway (in fact there is a formal mathematical analogy between these optical and gravitational distortions). Physicists have already exploited this distortion to steer light around an object within a metamaterial to create an invisibility cloak. If that's possible, then more exotic distortions ought to be possible too.

Now Qiang and Tie have created a metamaterial that distorts space so severely that light entering it (in this case microwaves) cannot escape.

Their black hole consists of 60 layers of printed circuit board arranged in concentric circles (see picture below). The printed circuit boards are coated in a thin layer of copper from which Qiang and Tie have etched two types of pattern that either resonate at microwave frequency or do not.

In their experiments, they've measured microwaves at 18 GHz going in and none coming out. And the circular symmetry of their metamaterial means that the microwaves are absorbed in all directions at once. What they've built is the world's first artificial black hole. (In case you're wondering, the energy absorbed by the black hole is emitted as heat.)

That's an exciting piece of physics and not just because it's a headline grabber. Artificial black holes could have important applications not least as light harvesters for photovoltaics. The prospect of a black hole in every household may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

Al Sharpton immediately accused them of racism.

hes just kidding about the sharpton thing

Tripping over Psychoactive Toads
How the genus "Bufo" has the hallucinogen market licked...
Since kissing frogs has officially been discounted as a method of obtaining princes (sorry ladies), why would anyone want to lick a toad? The urban legend is that licking a toad can get you high. Indeed, Homer Simpson is seen licking toads and going on bizarre trips, as well as the infamous stories of hippies in the 70s who kept 'toad farms.' These stories are based on the fact that certain types of toad can produce psychoactive compounds in their skins and venoms, which can then be licked off. These toads are known as 'psychoactive toads', and they produce a chemical which causes hallucinations when ingested.

So, is licking a toad a good idea? Definitely not. Not only would it taste disgusting, it would be illegal and extremely bad for your health. The chemical which causes these trips is called 5-methoxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT), and is a derivative of bufotenine. In its pure form it is extremely potent and causes vivid hallucinations. These vivid hallucinations are known as a 'psychedelic trips' and you're certainly not guaranteed to have a good one. Indeed, many users find them frightening and end up hurting themselves. One user described taking the drug as 'being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity' (reference 1). Trips like this can be very, very dangerous, and can have serious long-term consequences on the userג€™s mental health.

That's because, as well as these psychoactive bufotoxins, toad secretions and venom also contain other chemicals including substances that can target the heart and mimic hormones like adrenaline. This can lead to fatal disturbances in heart rhythm, such as ventricular fibrillation, as well as vasoconstriction and death (reference 2). There are also many reports of dogs dying after holding toads in their mouths and one case report of a child experiencing intense seizures after licking a toad (reference 3).

The venom is opaque-white in appearance and users collect it by 'milking' the toad with a squeezing motion, which causes it to ooze from skin surface. Taken orally, 5-MeO-DMT is actually inactive, and so licking a toad will expose you only to the highly dangerous cardiotoxic chemicals on its skin that are orally active. In fact, the only way to avoid the toxicity is to dry the venom and smoke it. And in an hilarious show of scientific bravado, two researchers actually used themselves as 'test subjects' and got high in the name of science (reference 1). Today they are both extremely well respected scientists in their respective fields. But before you try it yourself, even in the name of career progression, smoking the venom is now highly illegal (in Queensland, Australia, for example possession of toad slime is illegal under the Drug Misuse act).

More importantly, though, your chances of getting a good toad are slim. Because only a few toads actually produce these psychoactive compounds while the vast majority don't yet are nonetheless highly poisonous. Even a small amount of their venom can kill or permanently paralyse the licker. So which ones should the determined licker go for? Well the choice isnג€™t large since just one species of toad, Bufo alvarins, is known to produce the correct chemical.

This toad is found in the Sonoran Desert in North America and catching one will be difficult because many amphibian species are disappearing fast due to climate change and loss of habitat. And before any Queenslanders go reaching for a cane toad as a alternative - cane toads donג€™t actually contain any hallucinogens, but they are packed with lethal toxins instead (see reference 1, below).

The toads release the substances through their skins using specialised glands. 'Mucous' glands, as the name suggests, secrete mucus, whilst 'granular' glands secrete toxins. The role of these toxins is to protect the toad from predators like birds, mammals, snakes and crocodiles (see references 4,5 below) and they are thought to have developed when amphibians evolved from fish; so they're a consequence of having to deal with a new environment and new predators.

The secretions may also have other uses as antimicrobials (see reference 6), which may protect against diseases like red leg syndrome, mycobacteriosis and salmonellosis (reference 7). Some toads even make their own anti-virals like the BAS-AH protein isolated from Bufo andrewsi, which exhibits anti-HIV activity (reference 8). Currently, research is underway into the anti-fungal and anti-parasitic properties of some of these secretions too.

So, with all the amazing things these secretions can do, it is unsurprising to find that there is a lot of research in this area. These compounds have a huge potential to yield the medicines and cures of tomorrow. Each species is capable of producing different compounds, so there are literally thousands of new chemicals just waiting to be discovered. However, this incredible drug resource may soon be lost - toads are dying out at an alarming rate, and we may lose more than 50% of them in next 20 years due to loss of habitat, disease and climate change (see reference 9, below). This loss isnג€™t helped by the fact some people catch and kill the poor beasts for their psychoactive substances.

In essence, toad-derived compounds have a fantastic ability to harm and heal, but should always be treated with caution. So the next time you spot a juicy-looking toad, remember all that youג€™ve read here- and 'just say no.'

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2009) ג€” Two studies published this month in the Journal of Clinical Investigation provide a significant advance in understanding how some species of monkeys such as sooty mangabeys and African green monkeys avoid AIDS when infected with SIV, the simian equivalent of HIV.

Using comparative genomics of SIV infection, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, with collaborators from University of Minnesota, the University of Toronto, and Emory University, looked at sooty mangabeys, and a second group at the Pasteur Institute in France, looked at African green monkeys to identify possible genes related to disease progression or resistance.

"Sooty mangabeys are able to rapidly shut down the immune response after the initial SIV infection, and remain healthy. The mangabeys respond to SIV in a manner similar to rhesus macaques, which get sick, or to humans infected with HIV, but the mangabeys do not get sick," says first author Steven E. Bosinger, PhD , a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

"The Penn study is a step forward in understanding why some African monkeys do not get sick when they are infected with SIV, which is a key question in contemporary AIDS research," says senior author Guido Silvestri, MD, associate professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Director of Clinical Virology.

The Penn study compared changes induced by SIV infection on the overall profile of gene expression in two species of monkeys: rhesus macaques, which undergo an AIDS-like disease when infected with SIV, and sooty mangabeys, which, in stark contrast, remain AIDS-free despite life-long infection. Sooty mangabeys, which are native to Western Africa and infected naturally in the wild, were previously believed by some to remain asymptomatic because of a genetic inability to mount innate immune responses to SIV, and in particular, to produce type I interferons.

However, the current studies change the way AIDS researchers think about human versus simian AIDS infection. The sooty mangabeys' robust antiviral immune response upon SIV infection, including a massive up-regulation of interferon response genes, or ISGs, indicates production of type I interferons in the mangabeys. Of note, this antiviral response is transient, as seen in sooty mangabeys, lasting for about four weeks, but remains constant over time in rhesus macaques, which may contribute to the immunodeficiency seen in this species. SIV induces a massive activation of immune molecules in both species, but only sooty mangabeys are able to bring the response under control.

In addition, by comparing the changes induced by SIV infection on the overall profile of gene expression of rhesus macaques versus sooty mangabeys, the research teams identified genes whose expression may be responsible for disease progression or, alternatively, disease resistance. These genes may provide novel targets for AIDS therapy.

The research was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2009) ג€” An extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily long-lasting supernova named SN 2007bi, snagged in a search by a robotic telescope, turns out to be the first example of the kind of stars that first populated the Universe. The superbright supernova occurred in a nearby dwarf galaxy, a kind of galaxy that's common but has been little studied until now, and the unusual supernova could be the first of many such events soon to be discovered.

SN 2007bi was found early in 2007 by the international Nearby Supernova Factory (SNfactory) based at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The supernova's spectrum was unusual, and astronomers at the University of California at Berkeley subsequently obtained a more detailed spectrum. Over the next year and a half the Berkeley scientists participated in a collaboration led by Avishay Gal-Yam of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science to collect and analyze much more data as the supernova slowly faded away.

The analysis indicated that the supernova's precursor star could only have been a giant weighing at least 200 times the mass of our Sun and initially containing few elements besides hydrogen and helium -- a star like the very first stars in the early Universe.

"Because the core alone was some 100 solar masses, the long-hypothesized phenomenon called pair instability must have occurred," says astrophysicist Peter Nugent. A member of the SNfactory, Nugent is the co-leader of the Computational Cosmology Center (C3), a collaboration between Berkeley Lab's Physics Division and Computational Research Division (CRD), where Nugent is a staff scientist. "In the extreme heat of the star's interior, energetic gamma rays created pairs of electrons and positrons, which bled off the pressure that sustained the core against collapse."

"SN 2007bi was the explosion of an exceedingly massive star," says Alex Filippenko, a professor in the Astronomy Department at UC Berkeley whose team helped obtain, analyze, and interpret the data. "But instead of turning into a black hole like many other heavyweight stars, its core went through a nuclear runaway that blew it to shreds. This type of behavior was predicted several decades ago by theorists, but never convincingly observed until now."

SN 2007bi is the first confirmed observation of a pair-instability supernova. The researchers describe their results in the 3 December 2009 issue of Nature.

On the trail of a strange beast

SN 2007bi was recorded on images taken as part of the Palomar-QUEST Survey, an automated search with the wide-field Oschin Telescope at the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory, and was quickly detected and categorized as an unusual supernova by the SNfactory. The SNfactory has so far discovered nearly a thousand supernovae of all types and amassed thousands of spectra, but has focused on those designated Type Ia, the "standard candles" used to study the expansion history of the Universe. SN 2007bi, however, turned out not to be a Type Ia. For one thing, it was at least ten times as bright.

"The thermonuclear runaway experienced by the core of SN 2007bi is reminiscent of that seen in the explosions of white dwarfs as Type Ia supernovae," says Filippenko, "but on a much larger scale and with a far greater amount of power."

"The discovery is a great example of how we can get all the science, in addition to cosmology, out of the SNfactory search," says Greg Aldering, SNfactory project leader, who was not an author of the Nature paper. "Berkeley Lab and Caltech's Astronomy Department agreed that we would split the work, the Lab handling the Type Ia's and Caltech all the other types."

Nugent contacted Gal-Yam, then a Caltech postdoctoral fellow, the lead investigator for the all-other category. "I asked, are you interested? He said, sure!" Nugent then contacted Filippenko, who was about to conduct a night of observation with the 10-meter Keck I telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Filippenko immediately set out to obtain an optical spectrum of the unusual supernova.

Caltech researchers subsequently acquired additional spectra with the Keck telescope, as did Paolo Mazzali's team from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.

Says Mazzali, "The Keck and VLT spectra clearly indicated that an extremely large amount of material was ejected by the explosion, including a record amount of radioactive nickel, which caused the expanding gases to glow very brightly."

Rollin Thomas of CRD, a member of C3 and the SNfactory, aided the early analysis, using the Franklin supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) to run a code he developed to generate numerous synthetic spectra for comparison with the real spectrum.

"The code uses hundreds of cores to systematically test a large number of simplified model supernovae, searching through the candidates by adjusting parameters until it finds a good fit," says Thomas. "This kind of data-driven approach is key to helping us understand new types of transients for which no reliable theoretical predictions yet exist." The model fit was unambiguous: SN 2007bi was a pair-instability supernova.

"The central part of the huge star had fused to oxygen near the end of its life, and was very hot," Filippenko explains. "Then the most energetic photons of light turned into electron-positron pairs, robbing the core of pressure and causing it to collapse. This led to a nuclear runaway explosion that created a large amount of radioactive nickel, whose decay energized the ejected gas and kept the supernova visible for a long time."

Gal-Yam organized a team of collaborators from many institutions to continue to observe SN 2007bi and obtain data as it slowly faded over a span of 555 days. Says Gal-Yam, "As our follow-up observations started to roll in, I immediately realized this must be something new. And indeed it turned out to be a fantastic example of how we are finding new types of stellar explosions."

Because it had no hydrogen or helium lines, the usual classification scheme would have labeled the supernova a Type Ic. But it was so much brighter than an ordinary Type Ic that it reminded Nugent of only one prior event, a supernova designated SN 1999as, found by the international Supernova Cosmology Project but unfortunately three weeks after its peak brightness.

Understanding a supernova requires a good record of its rise and fall in brightness, or light curve. Although SN 2007bi was detected more than a week after its peak, Nugent delved into years of data compiled by NERSC from the SNfactory and other surveys. He found that the Catalina Sky Survey had recorded SN 2007bi before its peak brightness and could provide enough data to calculate the duration of the rising curve, an extraordinarily long 70 days -- more evidence for the pair-instability identification.

A fossil laboratory of the early Universe

"It's significant that the first unambiguous example of a pair-instability supernova was found in a dwarf galaxy," says Nugent. "These are incredibly small, very dim galaxies that contain few elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, so they are models of the early Universe."

Dwarf galaxies are ubiquitous but so faint and dim -- "they take only a few pixels on a camera," says Nugent, "and until recently, with the development of wide-field projects like the SNfactory, astronomers had wanted to fill the chip with galaxies" -- that they've rarely been studied. SN 2007bi is expected to focus attention on what Gal-Yam and his collaborators call "fossil laboratories to study the early Universe."

Says Filippenko, "In the future, we might end up detecting the very first generation of stars, early in the history of the Universe, through explosions such as that of SN 2007bi -- long before we have the capability of directly seeing the pre-explosion stars."

With the advent of the multi-institutional Palomar Transient Factory, a fully automated, wide-field survey to find transients, led by Caltech's Shri Kulkarni, and with the aid of the Deep Sky Survey established by Nugent at NERSC to compile historical data from Palomar-QUEST, the SNfactory, the Near Earth Asteroid Team, and other surveys, the collaborators expect they will soon find many more ultrabright, ultramassive supernovae, revealing the role of these supernovae in creating the Universe as we know it today.

The study -- by Avishay Gal-Yam, Paolo Mazzali, Eran Ofek, Peter Nugent, Shrinivas Kulkarni, Mansi Kasliwal, Robert Quimby, Alex Filippenko, Brad Cenko, Ryan Chornock, Roni Waldman, Dan Kasen, Mark Sullivan, Ed Beshore, Andrew Drake, Rollin Thomas, Joshua Bloom, Dovi Poznanski, Adam Miller, Ryan Foley, Jeffrey Silverman, Iair Arcavi, Richard Ellis, and Jin-Song Deng -- appears in the 3 December 2009 issue of Nature.

The Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley contribution to this work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the TABASGO Foundation, Gary and Cynthia Bengier, and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.

Octopuses have been discovered tip-toeing with coconut-shell halves suctioned to their undersides, then reassembling the halves and disappearing inside for protection or deception, a new study says.

"We were blown away," said biologist Mark Norman of discovering the octopus behavior off Indonesia. "It was hard not to laugh underwater and flood your [scuba] mask."

The coconut-carrying behavior makes the veined octopus the newest member of the elite club of tool-using animalsג€”and the first member without a backbone, researchers say.

Coconuts to Go

A team led by biologist Julian Finn of Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, was observing 20 veined octopuses (Amphioctopus marginatus) on a regular basis.

The researchers noticed that the animals were frequently using their approximately 6-inch-long (15-centimeter-long) tentacles to carry coconut shells bigger than their roughly 3-inch-wide (8-centimeter-wide) bodies.

An octopus would dig up the two halves of a coconut shell, then use them as protective shielding when stopping in exposed areas or when resting in sediment.

This, on its own, astonished the team. Then they noticed that the octopuses, after using the coconut shells, would arrange them neatly below the centers of their bodies and "walk" around with the shellsג€”awkwardly.

"I've always been impressed by what octopuses can do, but this was bizarre," said study co-author Norman, senior curator for mollusks at Museum Victoria.

To carry the shells, a veined octopus has to stick its arms out and over the edges of the coconut and walk around as if on stiltsג€”making the octopus, while in motion, more vulnerable to predatorsג€”study leader Finn explained.

"An octopus without shells can swim away much faster by jet propulsion," he said. "But on endless mud seafloor, where are you fleeing to?" In other words, a coconut-carrying octopus may be slow, but it's always got somewhere to hide.

So what makes the veined octopus's behavior tool use, versus, say, the hermit crab's use of seashells as armor?

Worn nearly constantly, a hermit crab's adopted shell isn't considered a tool, because it's always useful. Tools, by definition, provide no benefit until they're used for a very specific purposeג€”showing that the animal is capable of what you might call advance planning.

The octopus's coconut carrying qualifies as tool use, Finn said, because the shells provide only "delayed benefits."

Octopuses of many species are well known for their intelligence. In captivity they've been known to navigate mazes, seem to be able to remember past events, and are cunning escape artists.

Tool use, once thought to be a uniquely human behavior, is seen as a sign of considerable mental sophistication among nonhuman animals.

It's been known for years now that chimpanzees use whole "tool kits," that some dolphins attach sponges to their beaks for fishing, and that crows fish for insects using sticks and leaves, for example.

Even so, the octopus discovery stands apart.

"I really wasn't expecting to see tool use appear in cephalopods"ג€”squid, cuttlefish, and octopusesג€”said biological anthropologist Craig Stanford, co-director of the Jane Goodall Research Center in Los Angeles, who wasn't involved in the new study.

That the octopuses weren't using their tools to rustle up dinner only added to Stanford's surprise. "Even chimps," he added, "do not use natural materials to create shelters over their heads."

That the octopuses weren't using their tools to rustle up dinner only added to Stanford's surprise. "Even chimps," he added, "do not use natural materials to create shelters over their heads."

This man has bigger balls then me.

http://gizmodo.com/5454895/man-to-break-sound-barrier-jumping-from-edge-of-space


"This manג€”looking as badass as Ed Harris in The Right Stuffג€”is Felix Baumgartner. He actually has The Right Stuff: The cojones to reach the edge of space in a weather balloon. Up to 120,000 feetג€”and then jump.

Baumgartner will join United States Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger as the only man to jump from near space altitude. Kittinger jumped on August 16, 1960, from the Excelsior III balloon, which at the time was flying at 102,800 feetג€”that's 19.47 miles or 31 kilometers up in the sky. Compared to Baumgartner, however, Kittinger's suit looks miserable:

In fact, his right glove failed in the descent, and his hand dilated to twice its size. Absolutely crazy.

Hopefully, Baumgartner won't have any of Kittinger's problems. He will jump sometime in 2010, after a few test jumps at lower altitudes, as part of Red Bull's Stratus mission. Kittinger will be assisting Baumgartner from the ground control, while the mission team monitors his position and body state as he plummets down to Earth, surpassing the speed of sound. "

I for one welcome our tentacled, shelter-building overlords.

Scientists say crack HIV/AIDS puzzle for drugs
Study solves puzzle that eluded scientists for 20 years

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Scientists say they have solved a crucial puzzle about the AIDS virus after 20 years of research and that their findings could lead to better treatments for HIV.

British and U.S. researchers said they had grown a crystal that enabled them to see the structure of an enzyme called integrase, which is found in retroviruses like HIV and is a target for some of the newest HIV medicines.

"Despite initially painstakingly slow progress and very many failed attempts, we did not give up and our effort was finally rewarded," said Peter Cherepanov of Imperial College London, who conducted the research with scientists from Harvard University.

The Imperial and Harvard scientists said that having the integrase structure means researchers can begin fully to understand how integrase inhibitor drugs work, how they might be improved, and how to stop HIV developing resistance to them.

When the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infects someone, it uses the integrase enzyme to paste a copy of its genetic information into their DNA, Cherepanov explained in the study published in the Nature journal on Sunday.

Some new drugs for HIV -- like Isentress from Merck & Co (MRK.N) and elvitegravir, an experimental drug from Gilead Sciences (GILD.O) -- work by blocking integrase, but scientists are not clear exactly how they work or how to improve them.

The only way to find out was to obtain high-quality crystals -- a project that had defeated scientists for many years.

"When we started out, we knew that the project was very difficult, and that many tricks had already been tried and given up by others long ago," said Cherepanov.

"Therefore, we went back to square one and started by looking for a better model of HIV integrase which could be more amenable for crystallisation."

The researchers grew a crystal using a version of integrase borrowed from another retrovirus very similar to its HIV counterpart.

It took more than 40,000 trials for them to come up with one a crystal of sufficiently high quality to allow them to see the three-dimensional structure, they said.

They tested the Merck and Gilead drugs on the crystals, and were able to see for the first time how the medicines bind to, and block, integrase.

Almost 60 million people have been infected with HIV and 25 million people have died of HIV-related causes since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. There is no cure and no vaccine, although drug cocktails can keep patients healthy.

United Nations data for 2008 show that 33.4 million people had HIV and 2 million people died of AIDS. The worst-affected region is sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 67 percent of all people living with HIV.

Solar Airplane Completes Maiden Voyage



Solar Impulse, a prototype of an airplane designed to fly around the world using only solar power, made its first real flight today. As the sun shone down on the Swiss countryside an aircraft powered by 12,000 solar cells flew for 87 minutes to an altitude of nearly 4,000 feet.

Solar Impulse program founder Bertrand Piccard called the inaugural flight a crucial step toward fulfilling his goal of circumnavigating the globe in such an unusual aircraft. In a statement from the Solar Impulse team, Piccard said he was relieved to have the first flight completed after seven years of hard work.

ג€œThis first mission was the most risky phase of the entire project,ג€ Piccard said. ג€œEighty-seven minutes of intense emotion after seven years of research, testing and perseverance. Never has an airplane as large and light ever flown before!ג€

The aircraft, known by its identifier HB-SIA, has a wingspan of a jumbo jet yet weighs the same as an average sedan. It made a ג€œflea hop,ג€ as the team called it, back in December when it lifted about three feet off the runway and flew less than a quarter mile. Todayג€™s flight demonstrates that the airplane can not only fly, it can do so for an extended period at altitudes high enough for basic flight testing.

ג€This first flight was for me a very intense moment,ג€ test pilot Markus Scherdel said after emerging from the solar airplaneג€™s podlike cockpit.

During the flight, HB-SIA lifted off at just under 30 mph and a relatively short takeoff run. The four 10-horsepower electric motors are expected to deliver enough power for a cruise speed of around 40 to 45 mph. No, Solar Impulse wonג€™t set any speed records.

Scherdel said the first flight was a familiarization flight for he and the team.

ג€œThe execution of these various maneuvers (turns, simulating the approach phase) was designed to get a feel for the aircraft and verify itג€™s controllable,ג€ Scherdel said. Despite the planeג€™s immense size and light weight, the team found the plane met their expectations.

The wingspan of HB-SIA is 208 feet, thatג€™s about 10 feet more than Boeingג€™s 787 Dreamliner. But the airplane only weighs 3,500 pounds loaded for flight, about 499,000 pounds less than the 787.

After more flight testing with the sun powering HB-SIA, the Solar Impulse team hopes to perform night testing later this year. During those flights, the team will examine the viability of the schedule they plan to use for the around-the-world flight. The plan is to climb to higher altitudes during the day, and trade that altitude for airspeed, supplemented with battery power, to continue flying during the night. They expect to fly 36-hour shifts.

Piccard says the many years of work paid off today, but the work is only beginning.

ג€œWe still have a long way to go until the night flights and an even longer way before flying round the world, but today, thanks to the extraordinary work of an entire team, an essential step towards achieving our vision has been taken,ג€ Piccard said in the statement from the team.

The around-the-world flight is scheduled to take place in 2012 with an updated version of HB-SIA. The flight will take place in several stages with pilots alternating regularly and a team on the ground keeping a careful eye on weather for the delicate aircraft.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/04/so ... en-voyage/

New species 'live without oxygen'
The first animals that do not depend on oxygen to breathe and reproduce have been discovered by scientists on the bed of the Mediterranean Sea.

By Nick Collins
Published: 10:34AM BST 09 Apr 2010



Three species of creature, which are only a millimetre long and resemble jellyfish encased in shells, were found 2.2 miles (3.5km) underwater on the ocean floor, 124 miles (200km) off the coast of Crete, in an area with almost no oxygen.

The animals, named Loriciferans due to their protective layer, or lorica, were discovered by a team led by Roberto Danovaro from Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona, Italy.

One of the species has been named Spinoloricus Cinzia, after Dr Danovaro's wife, while the other two, known as Rugiloricus and Pliciloricus, have yet to be formally named.

They were found during three expeditions to find life in the sediment of L'Atlante basin in the Mediterranean, which took place over the course of a decade.

Professor Danovaro told BBC News bodies of multicellular animals had been found in sediment from a similarly oxygen-starved area of the Black Sea, but they were thought to have been carried there from adjacent oxygenated water.

The species found in the latest expedition were alive, two of them containing eggs, and though they died on extraction the eggs were successfully incubated on the ship, and hatched in an oxygen-starved environment.

The professor said: "It is a real mystery how these creatures are able to live without oxygen because until now we thought only bacteria could do this."

Lisa Levin, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wrote in the journal BMC Biology that further research into animals that can live without oxygen could help scientists examining the possibility of alien life existing on other planets.

who is this guy, Mel Gibson?

who is this guy, Mel Gibson?

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/ ... chman-text

Glasses that let blind people see, Bionic skin, arms legs....

shit is trill science - kewl article if a bit dumbed down

who is this guy, Mel Gibson?

Killer fungus seen in Pacific Northwest

A rare but life-threatening tropical fungus that causes lung infections in both people and animals has been seen in the Pacific Northwest and could spread, researchers are reporting.

The fungus, known as Cryptococcus gattii (or C. gattii), has infected dozens of humans and animals--including cats, dogs, and dolphins--in Washington and Oregon in the past five years. While rare, the fungus has been lethal in about 25 percent of the people in the U.S. who have developed infections, according to Edmond Byrnes III, a doctoral student in molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University and one of the lead authors of a new study about the fungus.

In the study, Byrnes and his colleagues analyzed 18 cases in people and 21 in animals that occurred in the U.S. between 2005 and 2009.

The symptoms of infection include chest pain, a persistent cough, shortness of breath, fever, and weight loss. The fungus can also cause meningitis, or inflammation of the membranes lining the brain, but can be treated with antifungal drugs. C. gattii is found in soil and trees, but experts haven't yet determined how humans breathe it in.

Byrnes and colleagues have discovered a new, especially dangerous strain of the fungus. This strain--which is confined to Oregon, for now--is "highly virulent," says Byrnes. "Overall it's a pretty low threat, and it's still uncommon in the area, but as the range of the organism expands and the number of cases increases accordingly, it's becoming more of a concern," he says.

The new strain is likely to move into Northern California and other neighboring regions, the researchers say. Other strains of the fungus have been found in people in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in a bottlenose dolphin as far south as San Diego.

Health.com: Can't stop coughing? 8 possible reasons

The fungus hails from the tropics and may have been carried to North America on imported plants or trees, experts say. It first emerged on this continent in 1999, on Vancouver Island off the coast of British Columbia, where it ultimately infected more than 200 people, killing nearly 9 percent of them.

From there, the fungus is believed to have crossed the border into the U.S. on logging trucks or car tires sometime before 2005, when the first infections were reported in Washington and Oregon. The cases in California "indicate that C. gattii can survive in that habitat," says Yonathan Lewit, a research technician at Duke and a co-author of the new study, which appears in the journal PLoS Pathogens.

Health.com: 7 surprising triggers of lung trouble

The new strain described by Byrnes and his colleagues seems to have mutated relatively recently, and has appeared in humans as well as in cats, dogs, and other animals. (In animals, symptoms include a runny nose and breathing problems, and other strains have been seen in ferrets and llamas too.)

The mutation "is causing major illness in the region, and it's different from what's causing disease on Vancouver Island," says Christina Hull, PhD, an assistant professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, in Madison.

Health.com: What ails you: Cold, flu, or something else?

"It supports the idea that this is a recent change in the organism," she adds. "That's a little more unnerving than what people had thought before."

In the past, C. gattii has tended to cause disease in people with weakened immune systems, such as those with HIV/AIDS. (The fungus was found in AIDS patients in Los Angeles, for instance.) But the new strain is causing respiratory symptoms and meningitis in otherwise healthy people.

Experts aren't sure what makes some individuals more vulnerable to infection and illness. "We've not been able to distinguish these people from the population at large," says Hull. "Are they more likely to be smokers? No. And it's happened across a range of ages and different backgrounds."

Nor is it clear how people are contracting the infections. Although the fungus is found in trees and soil, Hull explains, it's unclear if breathing near a tree carrying the fungus is enough to infect a person. And because the incubation period is unknown, tracing the illness back to the point of infection is nearly impossible.

Health.com: 15 ways to breathe easier when eating

"Our best guess is that it's mostly associated with trees and soil, so certain disturbances might allow the organism to become airborne and more or less float in the area," says Byrnes.

Although C. gattii has been found in a North Carolina man who had traveled to San Francisco several months earlier, experts say that the fungus is not readily passed between people (or people and animals), and it's therefore unlikely that it will spread across the continent via plane or other travel.

Experts stress that even people near the epicenter of the outbreak should not be unduly concerned.

Philip Alcabes, Ph.D., an infectious diseases epidemiologist at Hunter College, in New York City, says that genetic changes such as those described by Byrnes are "a pretty normal, expectable evolutionary event in nature that has a slight amount of human fallout."

In fact, he says, if this fungus follows previous patterns, it's very possible that the virulence will decline with time.

And besides, there's not much you can do to protect yourself from it in the meantime.

"There are no real precautions you can take, because it's hard to tell which areas would be more infected or where levels of C. gattii could be higher," Byrnes says.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/22/ki ... northwest/