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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
How-To Do Just About Anything...In the show this week: More Neurons For Your Brain, Uranus is a Girl's Best Friend, How To Melt a Moon, Mental Time Travel Moves, How To Run Faster, The Dolphin Bat, Levitating Magnets and Dust-Bunnies, Minion Mailbag, and Much More!
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How to Make Neurons Behave...... Raise them to act appropriately... While scientists are currently able to turn stem cells into nerve cells, getting them to integrate into the brain is another story. However, a new study has moved science a step toward using stem cells to fight degenerative brain disease: nerve cells differentiated from embryonic stem cells and implanted into newborn mouse brains made appropriate neural connections. Diamond Oceans?Research into the melting point of diamonds shows that it behaves like water, with its solid form floating upon its liquid form. Liquid oceans of diamond may explain the unique magnetic poles of Uranus and Neptune.How to Melt a MoonBombard it with space debris, according to scientists puzzling over why two similarly sized moons of Jupiter, Ganymede and Callisto, appear to have formed by melting and freezing, respectively. They concluded that though of similar size and location Ganymede was hit by 80 times more mass in the form of asteroids and comets, which caused it to melt.Experiment: Think back to what you were doing five years ago... now think about what you'll be doing five years from now. Did you lean backwards and then forwards? A study shows that people tend to lean back when thinking about the past, and forward while think about the future, leading to interesting questions about how we process time.
Book Club - The Canon by Natalie Angier. Discuss this book at twisbookclub.ning.com:
How to Run FasterScientists researching the biological limits of running speeds previously assumed that we were at or near the physiological limit to our top speed. However, studies involving hopping have shown that we have not actually reached our full force-on-limb potential. They think our muscles can produce MORE force, raising our potential speed to greater than 40 mph.Dolphins are More Batty than Previously ThoughtScientists looking at the specialized inner ear hair cells that enable echolocation in both dolphins and bats have found that the same mutations in the same gene are responsible for the trait in both species. This finding suggests that there might be only one way the mutations COULD occur to cause echolocation.Better Fusion Through LevitationTaking inspiration from our own planet, MIT scientists have created a magnetic plasma containment system by levitating a half-ton magnet inside an electromagnetic field. Currently, they are studying plasma dynamics, but the hope is that it will lead to the fusion reactor of the future. Acoustic LevitationScientists have developed a new way to dust by shooting a standing wave of acoustic energy at dust particles. This overcomes the van der waals adhesive forces that bind the particles to a surface, levitating the dust, which can then blow away. This was developed to deal with the overwhelming presence of fine dust on the Moon and Mars, the only catch is you need an atmosphere to create sound waves. This technique might also be used to unstick geckos from walls, a common problem. Minion Mailbag: Justin's Science Career advice!Ignore the idea that what you study for initially will be your life's work. Justin predicts good science-y career potential in Microbiology and Computer Programming.
Some links from minion Ed Brydon related to HERVs: A research paper... Virology discussion about the research paper... NYTimes article that gets the science mostly right, one of the few press articles that does, and furthers the discussion.
Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, TMBG, Warp11, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.
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current science news posted by bob at 1/26/2010 11:23:00 AM
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