weekly science picks – Australian Science

Weekly Science Picks

Sharon — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:12:16 +0000

Science Sunday! Our recurring collection of some of the week’s blogs and science articles that you may have missed.

What a week! So much science! Let’s start with mosquitoes….

The beat the mosquito’s heart didn’t miss…

Frankly I’ve not given much thought to the heartbeat of mosquitoes. I’m usually much more worried that mine will continue will continue to beat for many more years to come. But Charles Ebikeme’s article covering the research done by Dr Julian Hillyer and his team at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennesee, is fascinating.

“A mosquito’s heart is very different — without veins or arteries, it pumps a clear liquid called hemolymph. The hemolymph flows from the heart into the abdominal cavity and eventually cycles back through the heart. The heart runs along the insects body as an unbranched tube, no thicker than three tenths of a millimeter. Helical twists of muscle fibres support the central tube. Their sequential contractions makes the heart in a wave-like peristaltic action. A peristaltic action that has the ability to run in both directions.”

As an insect that carries various diseases that wreaks havoc on the human population, mosquitoes are a significant concern for health authorities. Hillyer’s research is just one more step in understanding the pest and developing effective control strategies.

FishMap – Mapping Australian Fish

Millions of Australians are recreational fishers, there’s a large commercial seafood and aquaculture industry, and plenty of us who like to eat fish!! So who wouldn’t be interested in an online mapping tool that allows us to check out where our favourite marine fish are hiding?

“With FishMap you can find out what fish occur at any location or depth in the waters of Australia’s continental shelf and slope. You can also create species lists for any region that include photographs and illustrations, distribution maps and current scientific and common names.”

FishMap is a pretty cool tool – and you’d be surprised how much time you can spend looking at fish….

Creative Commons announces ‘School of Open’ project

The “School of Open” offers courses on the meaning, application, and impact of “openness

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Weekly Science Picks

Markus — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:58:59 +0000

Ahhh, the end of the week again. It seems that every time it’s my turn to give the weekly science picks, it’s been an interesting week in science. This leads me to believe that every week is an interesting week in science! Amongst other things, this week was the birthday of Albert Einstein – March the 14th. Which, to those who use American date formats, might also be known as Pi Day. But enough irrational trivia. Here are the things which caught my eye this week…

Probably the biggest news this week was the fact that those lovely people at CERN have officially confirmed that the particle which they announced last summer is indeed the much acclaimed Higgs boson!

Physicists Say They Have Found a Higgs Boson

“To me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is,” said Joe Incandela, a physicist who heads one of the two main teams at CERN, each involving about 3,000 scientists.

Meanwhile, Colossal shows some rather impressive trickery with water, sine waves, and a video camera set to the right frame rate. I can’t really do justice to this one with words. Just… have a look.

This is What Happens When You Run Water Through a 24Hz Sine Wave

What!? How is this even possible? Because science, my friends. Brusspup’s latest video explores what happens when a stream of water is exposed to an audio speaker producing a loud 24hz sine wave. If I understand correctly the camera frame rate has been adjusted to the match the vibration of the air (so, 24fps) thus creating … magic zigzagging water. Or something.

On a more serious note, good news in the medical world! A device has been created which can enable human livers available for transplant to survive outside the body for a whole day – something utterly without precedent. Something like this is most certainly going to save lives!

Donor livers kept alive outside the body for 24 hours

Donated livers can survive for at least a day outside the body thanks to a new device which keeps the organ ticking over as if it hadn’t been removed. The machine is likely to more than double the availability of livers for transplant.

A lot further from home, this week saw a science meeting to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Keck observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Among all the lovely new science presented at the meeting, UC Berkeley’s Geoff Marcy announced new findings which suggest than a whopping 23% of Sun-like stars have at least one Earth-sized planet in orbit around them. Pretty amazing…

Quarter of Sun-Like Stars Host Earth-Size Worlds

“I’ll say that again, because that number really surprised me: 23 percent of sun-like stars have a nearly-Earth-sized planet orbiting in tight orbits within 0.25 AU of the host stars,

Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2013-03-17 10:58:59). Weekly Science Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 29, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/weekly-science-picks-23/
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Weekly Science Picks

Jessie — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 17:55:20 +0000

With the exponential growth of scientific research, there were a plethora of articles which could have been reported this week. A few that caught my attention are listed below.

A Future of Genetically Superior Humans

On Wednesday it was reported that geneticists have moved into an area of research previously believed to be highly unethical. Researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University took steps to prevent women from giving birth to children with genetic diseases. “That kind of genetic engineering has been ruled off-limits,” says Marcy Darnovsky of the Centre for Genetics and Society. As the Dartmouth bioethicist Ronald Green mentions, this kind of research could lead to generations of genetically superior humans. A concerning concept, I’m left with visions of the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley warning of such actions. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/10/24/163509093/geneticists-breach-ethical-taboo-by-changing-genes-across-generations

The Dangers of Pumpkin Carving

In light of Halloween this Wednesday
, this article caught my attention as families throughout Canada and the USA begin carving pumpkins in preparation for this spooky holiday. “Even with optimal treatment, injuries from pumpkin carving accidents may leave people with compromised hand function,

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Weekly Science Picks

Markus — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:48:37 +0000

It’s been an interesting week for science news, and I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to give this week’s science picks! This made me spend a little while sipping contemplatively on a cup of vanilla iced coffee and wondering where to even start…

The articles I’ve selected are, of course, slanted towards my own (rather geeky) interests, but all the same I hope you find them all as fascinating as I did!

First up, the news that Star Trek style warp drives may actually be possible, at least in theory, made me exclaim “Oh wow!” out loud. Fortunately, people who spend any time with me are generally used to me talking to myself while staring at a computer screen…

Warp Drive May be More Feasible than Thought

“Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light. But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light.”
– Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar

Artists impression of Mimivirus, the first giant virus to be discovered. Image Credit: InvaderXan/Wikimedia Commons

From the vastness of space to life under the microscope, biologists have been debating for years whether or not viruses qualify as a form of life. The latest evidence is that they may indeed be a life form in their own right, and an old one at that!

Giant Viruses are Ancient Living Organisms

They found that many of the most ancient protein folds in living organisms were present in the giant viruses, which “offers more evidence that viruses are embedded in the fabric of life,” Caetano-Anollés said.

Heritage Daily had a fascinating article about the archaeology of the future, and what precisely our distant descendents may one day think of us and the way we lived…

The Archaeology of the Future

The point is that most of what survives will not be determined by conscious decisions on our part. This may not be for want of trying, as shown by the current popularity of time capsules. The most impressive of these must be the KEO satellite, due to be launched in 2014 and to return to Earth 50,000 years later.

And speaking of what we know of the past, it’s been shown again and again that our primitive relatives, the neanderthals, were likely not the brainless savages they’re often depicted to be. Evidence suggests that neanderthals liked to collect bird feathers as ornaments.

Neanderthals Used Feathers as ‘Personal Ornaments’

“I think this is the tip of the iceberg,” said Prof Finlayson: “It is showing that Neanderthals simply expressed themselves in media other than cave walls. The last bastion of defence in favour of our superiority was cognition.” Neanderthals, he said, may have been “different”, but “their processes of thinking were obviously very similar”.

Curiosity self-portrait. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

As the Curiosity rover settles into its new home in Gale Crater on our neighbouring planet, one small worry is growing in the backs of the minds of certain NASA scientists. Could a blunder on the part of some engineers lead to Curiosity contaminating the surface of Mars with Earth life?

Drill Bits on Rover Could Contaminate Mars

John D. Rummel, a professor of biology at East Carolina University, said, partly in jest: “It will be a sad day for NASA if they do detect ice or water. That’s because the Curiosity project will most likely be told, ‘Gee, that’s nice. Now turn around.’ “

And finally, planet hunters are scouring the sky for exoplanets. Astrobiologists are hoping to soon be able to look into the atmospheres of those planets in search of life signs, in the form of certain molecules created by living organisms. But could they be fooled by those molecules coming from somewhere else?

Meteors Might Add Methane to Exoplanet Atmospheres

One key gas astrobiologists looking for extraterrestrial life would concentrate on would be oxygen […] Another possibility would be methane, a colorless, odorless, flammable organic gas that microbes on Earth produce. Seeing both together in an exoplanet’s atmosphere might be an especially significant sign of life, since they would both ordinarily remove each other from the atmosphere without something like life to constantly replenish them.

Have a good weekend!

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