Facelifts can sag. Botox is temporary. But modern science has a new way to return youth to weathered faces: the rock abrasion tool (RAT). If your dermatologist hasn’t heard of it, ask your local Mars scientist.
Billions of years of exposure to the sun, atmosphere and extremely fine Martian dust has given Mars rocks a weathered “rind,” or exterior layer. The RAT, part of the science-instrument package carried by the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, uses a diamond-tipped robotic
After the twin Mars Exploration Rovers bounce onto the red planet and begin touring the Martian terrain in January, onboard spectrometers and cameras will gather data and images – and the rovers’ wheels will dig holes.
Working together, a Cornell University planetary geologist and a civil engineer have found a way to use the wheels to study the Martian soil by digging the dirt with a spinning wheel. “It’s nice to roll over geology, but every once in a while you have to pull out a
Convergent technology is one thing – but using your computer’s printer to make a new TV screen?
Not quite, but close. In a breakthrough for low-cost electronics manufacturing, researchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Xerox subsidiary, have successfully created a transistor array of the type used to control a flat-panel display using a modified ink-jet printer and semiconductor “ink.” Still under development, the technique is expected to dramatically lower the cost of t
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have discovered a surprisingly straightforward mechanism that causes prostate cancer cells to develop resistance to cancer-fighting drugs. The studies also point to specific ways to improve drugs to prevent the problem of drug resistance in prostate tumors.
The researchers describe the molecular mechanism of resistance to anti-androgen therapy for prostate cancer in an advance online publication in the December 21, 2003, issue of the journal
While the controversy surrounding the ethics of stem cell research shows no signs of abating, scientists continue to demonstrate the promise of stem cell–derived therapies for a wide range of degenerative diseases. The hope is that stem cells, which retain a unique “pluripotent” ability to morph into any of the 200 cell types of the human body, could be used to repair or replace damaged or diseased tissue. However, little is known about the molecular events that trigger this differentiation of stem c
This year, Roderick MacKinnon was recognized for working out the atomic structure of an ion channel and Peter Agre for discovering that a major protein found in red blood cells functions primarily as a water channel. Agre went on to establish the family of related channels, which he named “aquaporins.” Solving the structure of these channels provided a platform for exploring the underlying molecular mechanisms that allow the proteins to function as filters and maintain osmotic equilibrium. Robert Str
New Portraits of Spiral Galaxies NGC 613, NGC 1792 and NGC 3627
Not so long ago, the real nature of the “spiral nebulae”, spiral-shaped objects observed in the sky through telescopes, was still unknown. This long-standing issue was finally settled in 1924 when the famous American astronomer Edwin Hubble provided conclusive evidence that they are located outside our own galaxy and are in fact “island universes” of their own.
Nowadays, we know that the Milky Way is just one
Biologists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have demonstrated that desert dust promotes the growth of algae. Scientists had already assumed that the iron in desert dust stimulated algal growth, but this has now been demonstrated for the first time. The researchers have published their findings in the December issue of the Journal of Phycology.
The biologists cultured two species of diatoms in seawater originating from the iron-depleted Southern Ocean, the sea around the
Biogeochemists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have shown that prehistoric tropical oceans were no less than five to eight degrees warmer than they are now. Their findings have been published in the December issue of the renowned American journal Geology.
During the mid-Cretaceous period, some 90 to 120 million years ago, the seawater around the equator had a temperature of 30 to 37 degrees Celsius, which is five to eight degrees higher than the temperature now. This wa
Dutch research has demonstrated that there are no technical barriers to wind energy generating a significant part of the electricity supply. With the appropriate technical measures, possible problems in the electricity grid can be taken care of properly.
Researcher Han Slootweg developed simulation models, which demonstrate how wind energy affects the behaviour of electricity grids in concrete situations. These simulation models can also be used to establish the precise nature and size of a
Bacteria with resistance to multiple antibiotics will become more common in intensive care units unless hospitals improve their hygiene standards. Research published in Critical Care this week shows that there is an “unexpectedly high”level of transmission of bacteria between intensive care patients. Intensive care patients are especially vulnerable to picking up infections in hospital, due to their poor health. Researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden found that 70% of intensive
Physicists from the University of Liège in Belgium have succeeded in creating antibubbles (the exact opposite of bubbles) in one of Belgium’s most famous exports – beer – demonstrating what British real-ale drinkers have claimed for a long time: that Belgian beer actually is a lot like dish-water!
Research to be published today in the New Journal of Physics (NJP) reveals for the first time how antibubbles form and move through a liquid. Antibubbles are the exact opposite of bubbles and move
Size matters, and colder temperatures make things bigger! This is true not just for most large furry animals and for birds, but also for the microscopic plants and animals that are at the base of the ocean’s food chain.
Scientists have long known that animals and plants are usually larger when they grow in colder environments. Now, for the first time David Atkinson, Ben Ciotti, and David Montagnes, from the University of Liverpool’s School of Biological Sciences, have found that this o
After a joint journey of 250 million miles (400 million km), the British-built Beagle 2 spacecraft and the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter should now have parted and gone their separate ways.
At 8.31 GMT, software on Mars Express was scheduled to send the command for the Beagle 2 lander to separate from the orbiter. This would fire a pyrotechnic device that would slowly release a loaded spring and gently push Beagle 2 away from the mother spacecraft at around 1 ft/s (0.3 m/s).
New technologies developed by University of Southern California engineers to measure the toxic properties of ultrafine particles in air pollution are helping scientists understand the connection between smog and cardio-respiratory disease.
“We are just beginning to realize that these microscopic specks of dust and soot are far more toxic in the human body than larger, coarser particles,” said Constantinos Sioutas, deputy director and co-principal investigator of USC’s Southern Californi
Assuming that oil spills such as the one that devastated Alaska’s Prince William Sound almost 15 years ago and other toxic insults to the environment have only short-term impacts on coastal marine ecosystems has been a big mistake, a new study shows.
Oil’s negative effects last far longer, scientists now say, and the findings should be a wake-up call for better environmental research and protection.
The study, conducted by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill res
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