Science Ahead

Do you reckon the MAG LEV train? The train that operates by magnetic levitation? Well, recently scientists found out how well levitation can be applied to smaller objects. The recently revealed secret might change the future designs of the micro machines. The secret to levitation is the Casimir force.

Discovered way back in 1948 and measured in 1997, the Casimir force is what keeps things levitated. For example, you will notice a gecko levitated on one toe because of this Casimir force. As Professor Ulf Leonhardt mentioned recently in the journal of physics:

Casimir force is the ultimate cause of friction in the nano world, in particular in some micro-electromechanical systems

Now that you know what the Casimir force is, you are probably wondering about the application of levitation. The levitation can be applied to a wide range of objects from airbags of vehicles to computer chips. The picture above is an artist’s impression of levitated mirror.

While studying the different applications of levitation, scientists decided to sandwich a lens between a couple of conducting plates. This way they were able to levitate ultra thin mirrors. Clearly, this type of achievement would not have been possible if there was too much friction involved. By eliminating friction using the Casimir force, the micro/ nano machines could run smoother.

As of now, levitation is an imaginary element in the human world. Only animals and cartoons use levitation and casimir force. Hopefully with this research, I am sure humans will be able to develop cool micro objects.

Image Credits: St-andrews, Zdnet, France24

A team of HHMI researchers has prompted female mice to behave like male mice in the lab by depriving them of gene called TRPC2, responsible for functioning of pheromones-sensing organ present in nose called the vomeronasal organ.

After researchers genetically switched off the VNO, the female mouse started engaging in sexually aggressive behavior, such as chasing a male mouse, engaging in foreplay, mounting, pelvic thrust, solicitation and complex ultrasonic vocalization shown by males.

Not only this, they abandoned the newly born babies and came out of the nest unlike female mice, who are good at nursing.

Biologist, have long searched for the root cause of sexually dimorphic behavior. They looked at everything from influence of hormones such as testosterone, positing that there may be a region of brain behind dimorphic behavior.

The finding, published in British Journal Nature, is important as it disapproves the decade old studies relating the difference in male and female sexual behavior to difference in brain structure.

Neuroscientist Marc Breedlove at the Michigan State University said,

Until now it was thought that female brains produce feminine behaviour while male brains can produce masculine behaviours, with little cross or no cross talk between them.

The new research will pave way for further studies into the mechanism that governs sexual behavior in animals and signaling events in the brain to see areas controlling sex-specific behavior.

Image Credit: Sciencedaily

Via: Reuters

Did you forget what you had for lunch? Well, all you have to do is study your fingerprint. In a recent development, fingerprint photographs show the substances left on fingertips. This technology lets the experts find everything from caffeine traces to substances of explosive materials left on the finger.

In a recently published paper in the journal of Analytic Chemistry, Sergei Kazarian, Camilla Ricci, and Steve Bleay wrote about this particular technique that the trio developed. The method is called infrared spectroscopy. Basically, it takes photographs of left over particles on your finger(S). I think this will come in handy for researchers as well as authorities of the law.

Kazarian method:

While using the infrared technology, a physical chemist from the Imperial college of London, Kazarian improvised gelatin tapes. This kind of tape is mostly used by crime labs and is popular for gathering evidence. Kazarian uses a military technology to differentiate the content of the fingerprints to a varied depth.

Also, Kazarian’s method is mostly geared towards more accurate fingerprint identifications. This method will further eliminate the contamination process.However, Kazarian’s methods will not be completed anytime soon.

Russell method:

Yet another team of British researchers led by David Russell of the University of East Anglia, found a way to separate the chemicals found in sweat. Once a drug enters the body, traces are left in the human sweat.

These researchers are currently concentrating on making the technology readily available for law enforcement use. I think this kind of research will further enhance the security systems as well as legal proceedings around the globe.

Image Credits: Rsc

Hey! Wish to see all those bizzare characters from the animated animal world in real? Just send a request to the herd of those crazy and impertinent scientists who have already leased a conspiracy to enliven the unusual, entertaining animal-characters of the cartoonists.

It is no joke! Researchers have already tweaked a few Cnox genes to create a ‘dozen headed’ jellyfish right in their laboratory. Related to the Hox genes of humans, the Cnox genes help control the way of the jellyfish-bodies’ lying out with their developing embryos.

Explaining their creation, evolutionary biologist and invertebrate zoologist Bernd Schierwater at the Hanover University of Veterinary Medicine in Germany said that —

The researchers designed RNA molecules that specifically only silenced Cnox genes in these saltwater critters. Normally, the saltiness of these animals would prevent the molecules from entering their cells, but the scientists diluted seawater with freshwater enough where the jellyfish still survived and the RNA got in.

Though this experimenting on the European hydromedusa (Eleutheria dichotoma) — collected from the south of France - may one day provide clues on how the other multi-headed organisms’ natural colonies first originated, which includes some of the coral reefs-building ones, this can be just the beginning of cloning humans with bizarre features!

After all, the Cnox genes used are closely related to Hox genes of humans and the scientists’ inquiring minds are always bustling with exotism.

Photo Credit: University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover

While on one hand the world is being alarmingly robbed of its forests, be it by natural calamities or to meet the selfish, merciless ends of humans - on the other, the poor across the world are starving of their forest resources necessary for their daily living.

With nearly 98 percent of the native Haiti forest being alarmingly disappeared, with an unresisted cut down of more and more trees every year, the burnt of the impact can be felt significantly in the region.

True, it is tough to make these ever-widening ends meet, but, scientists seem to be optimistic with their efforts. This is well revealed by the innovative attempts by a team of MIT students.

To combat this environmental problem as well as to make the life for Haitians, relying on wood to cook their food easy, they have come up with a simple and affordable method of producing charcoal briquettes from organic material — like sugarcane waste, which is otherwise destined only to add to the growing landfill.

This profitable and socially responsible ‘alternative-fuel venture’ would definitely be an exemplary for developing regions of the world, which can be of great help to the tribes, indigenes and villagers, while also being a lucrative business.

Photo: Jules Walter

He was awarded with the title of ‘Supreme Scientist’ in 2004. He was hailed as a national hero in South Korea, when he published details of what were purported to be the first stem cells made from cloned human embryos.

Yes, we are talking about renowned Scientist Woo Suk Hwang who came into news first when eight years ago he claimed to clone a dairy cow called Yeongrongi. He later gained international stardom by publishing two papers in Science to show that he had cloned a human embryo.

Then in 2005, it was claimed that his results have been fake as his cloning experiment had been conducted using eggs donated by junior staff of his own laboratory. He was found guilty of serious breaching of ethics for which he was dismissed by Seoul National University and indicted for embezzlement of some funding which he had received from Government. His disgrace was viewed as national humiliation.

These days again he is in news after American Scientists published analysis shows that a line of human embryonic stem cells created by professor Hwang, were in fact the first to have been made by asexual reproduction and have significant medical potential.

George Daley, of Children’s Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, based on his new research says that isolation of parthogenetic stem cells is an important achievement though Professor Hwang and his team did this accidentally and lacked tools to test them properly in order to show their origin. He further added that this mistake could lead to more important results in medical field. He showed the possibility of creating bank of stem cells paving a way for the treatment of many genetic diseases.

Professor Hwang may fail to reestablish his lost scientific reputation, may be accidentally, but the credit goes to Professor Hwang for this breakthrough in using a technique that takes its name from the virgin birth.

Image Credit: ABC

Via: Times

Thanks to the revolutionary implant of electrodes deep in his brain that a man who spent his six years in a vegetable state, as declared by doctors, regained his cognitive functions.

The 38-year old suffered brain injury during an assault with a blunt instrument that caused haematoma - bleeding in the brain, which forced him to spend six years with occasional consciousness. Researchers made an experimental attempt to rev up his brain by placing electrodes in it and now he is able to talk, eat normally, laugh, drink and carry out simple tasks such as brushing his teeth.

Patient’s mother, choking back tears during a news conference, described the change in her son.

My son can now eat, speak; watch a movie without falling asleep. The most important part is he can say, ‘Mommy’ and ‘Pop.’ He can say, ‘I love you, Mommy’ ... I still cry every time I see my son, but it’s tears of joy.

Before the electrodes were implanted, the man was in, what doctors call, a ‘minimally conscious state’. Patients in a minimally conscious state have very low and sporadic levels of awareness, and have a little chance of recovery past the initial 12 months post-injury.

Dr. Ali Resai, the neurosurgeon who fitted the electrodes at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, described the linkage of man’s functional abilities to use of DBS and hopes the first use of DBS to treat patients in MCS will mark the beginning of a significant period of innovation in their approach to traumatic brain injury.

The man gained his consciousness via procedure called Deep Brain Stimulation in which electrodes are planted near the central thalamus, area involved in relaying sensory signals. The concerned specialists and doctors are very excited about this typical outcome, which holds great promise for patients suffering similar situation.

Image Credit: Telegrapah

Via: Yahoo!

From the dawn of medical history, mice have always been a tool, used for the development of medical treatments and understanding of human anatomy. In medical history, mice models have greatly helped medical scientists to study mainly, structure and diseases related to heart, kidney and genes.

Scientists at John Hopkins University in Baltimore have another success in medical history as they bred world’s first schizophrenic or mentally ill mouse.

For the first time we have an animal genetically engineered with a mental illness. It will allow researchers to study the disease and develop treatments.

To develop this mouse, scientists modified its DNA to mimic the gene responsible for schizophrenia. This gene was inserted into the egg cell and then fertilized by using surrogate mothers. Features, such as hyperactivity and depression, similar to those humans with schizophrenia, were detected in mice’s brain.

This gene is believed to be found first in a Scottish family with high incident of schizophrenia, which affects one in about every 100 people.

However, such an act of forcing animals to mental suffering is an ethical issue for animal right campaigners. They called it an immoral and unnatural act. They further showed doubts about the reliability of mice models in modeling human diseases.

However, scientists are of the opinion that ninety-nine percent of human genes share a comparable version in the mouse, and many of them appear in the same order in our chromosomes. Therefore, we have similar reproductive and nervous system. That is why mouse has served as a model for biomedical studies for more than a century. By some estimates, 25 million mice are used in medical research each year.

Image Credit: BRIC

Via: Times Online

Neuroscience, from the past many years, had tried to understand the complexities of human brain and its working. They are often entangled in challenges posed by mood disorders, learning problems, insomnia, obesity and many more sufferings caused by brain dysfunctions.

Working with advanced microscopic techniques called restorative deconvolution microscopy, the team studied the changes associated with synapses in the hippocampus and appearance of LTP-related markers.

Long -term potentiation (LTP) is a physiological phenomenon closely related to memory storage. The UC Irvine team found that LTP marker appears during learning and there is change in synaptic structure.

UC Irvine team found that synaptic junctions in rats changed their shape on exposure to complex environment and learning to find a path. When these changes blocked by injecting drugs, rats found it difficult to learn.

This study and outcomes will pave a way for one of the great objective of life sciences: mapping the distribution of memory across the brain. Until today, researchers were facing obstacles in locating memory trances or ‘engrams‘ because there was no technique to tag the synapses and the changes related to their shape.

Now, the contents inside your brain and experiences of your daily life can be encoded in terms of synaptic connections as their physical substrate.

Image Credit: EUROPA

Via: PhyOrg

After research of more than three decades in cloning and producing the first cloned animal, a goat in 2000, China has once again been successful in cloning world’s first rabbit. The Chinese scientists have produced the cloned female rabbit biologically, using the somatic cells of a rabbit fetus.

Dr. Li Shangang who conducted the experiment of rabbit cloning is a researcher at the National Center for Molecular Genetics and Animal Breeding of the Beijing Institute of Animal Sciences.

Dr. Li and his team chose the back skin cells of a 20-day old rabbit embryo. They cultured these cells into fibroblast cell lines. Then these fibroblast cells (donor cells) were fused with an enucleated rabbit’s oocyte (immature egg cell of animal ovary) through electric pulse. Thus cloned embroys were produced which were later transferred into the rabbit’s oviduct. The female clone rabbit was born after a month-long normal pregnancy on February 12 and had weighed 60 grams at birth. Now the rabbit is doing well and is at an animal center in Shanghai.

The first animal to be cloned using somatic cells was the sheep - Dolly in 1996. Since then many other animals as mice, cattle and pigs have been cloned by scientists.

In 2002, French scientists too had claimed to produce the world’s first cloned rabbit but that was done by using cells from an adult female rabbit. However, the Chinese rabbit is the world’s first clone rabbit that has used “fibroblast” cells from a fetal rabbit.

On the achievement, Wang Hongguang, director of the China Center for Biotechnology Development affiliated to the Ministry of Science and Technology said:

Chinese cloning research has reached a global advanced level. We can reproduce almost all the cloning results in top-class laboratories around the world. However, we are lacking in original creations such as the newly cloned rabbit.

Rabbits are considered significant research tools because of their shorter gestation period than other big mammals such as sheep or cows.

Malaysia has also turned to cloning and is in efforts to clone some of its threatened leatherback turtles to save them from extinction.

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Source: Reuters