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NASA

Submission + - SPAM: Magnetic field in distant galaxy a surprise

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Using a powerful radio telescope to peer into the early universe, a team of California astronomers has obtained the first direct measurement of a nascent galaxy's magnetic field as it appeared 6.5 billion years ago. Astronomers believe the magnetic fields within our own Milky Way and other nearby galaxies--which control the rate of star formation and the dynamics of interstellar gas--arose from a slow "dynamo effect." In this process, slowly rotating galaxies are thought to have generated magnetic fields that grew very gradually as they evolved over 5 billion to 10 billion years to their current levels. But in the October 2 issue of Nature, the astronomers report that the magnetic field they measured in this distant "protogalaxy" is at least 10 times greater than the average value in the Milky Way!"
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Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: HIV/AIDS pandemic began around 1900

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "New research indicates that the most pervasive global strain of HIV began spreading among humans between 1884 and 1924, not during the 1930s, as previously reported. The earlier period of origin coincides with the establishment of urban centers in the west-central African region where the epidemic of this particular HIV strain--HIV-1 group M--emerged. This suggests that urbanization and associated high-risk behaviors set the stage for the HIV/AIDS pandemic. To reach this earlier estimation of the origin of HIV, a team of scientists from four continents screened multiple tissue samples and uncovered the world's second-oldest genetic sequence of HIV-1 group M, which dates from 1960."
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Businesses

Submission + - SPAM: Sexism pays

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "When it comes to sex roles in society, what you think may affect what you earn. A new study has found that men who believe in traditional roles for women earn more money than men who don't, and women with more egalitarian views don't make much more than women with a more traditional outlook. A total of 12,686 people, ages 14 to 22 at the beginning of the study, participated; the results showed that men in the study who said they had more traditional gender role attitudes made an average of about $8,500 more annually than those who had less traditional attitudes."
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Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Plants in forest emit aspirin to deal with stress

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Plants in a forest respond to stress by producing significant amounts of a chemical form of aspirin. The finding, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), opens up new avenues of research into the behavior of plants and their impacts on air quality, and it also has the potential to give farmers an early warning signal about crops that are failing. "Unlike humans, who are advised to take aspirin as a fever suppressant, plants have the ability to produce their own mix of aspirin-like chemicals, triggering the formation of proteins that boost their biochemical defenses and reduce injury. Our measurements show that significant amounts of the chemical can be detected in the atmosphere as plants respond to drought, unseasonable temperatures, or other stresses.""
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NASA

Submission + - SPAM: A new type of star explosion?

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Eta Carinae, the galaxy's biggest, brightest and perhaps most studied star after the sun, has been keeping a secret : Its giant outbursts appear to be driven by an entirely new type of stellar explosion that is fainter than a typical supernova and does not destroy the star. Eta Carinae is a massive, hot, variable star visible only from the Southern Hemisphere, and is located about 7,500 light years from Earth in a young region of star birth called the Carina Nebula. It was observed to brighten immensely in 1843, and astronomers now see the resulting cloud of gas and dust, known as the Homunculus nebula, wafting away from the star."
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NASA

Submission + - SPAM: Virtual telescope zooms in on Milky Way black hole

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "An international team, led by astronomers at the MIT Haystack Observatory, has obtained the closest views ever of what is believed to be a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The astronomers linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a virtual telescope more than 2,800 miles across that is capable of seeing details more than 1,000 times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope. The cosmic target of the observations was the source known as Sagittarius A* ("A-star"), long thought to mark the position of a black hole whose mass is 4 million times that of the sun. Though Sagittarius A* was discovered three decades ago, the new observations for the first time have an angular resolution, or ability to observe small details, that is matched to the size of the black hole "event horizon" — the region inside of which nothing, including light, can ever escape."
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Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Scent lures mosquitoes, but humans can't smell it

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Mosquito traps that reek like latrines may be no more. A University of California, Davis research team led by chemical ecologist Walter Leal has discovered a low-cost, easy-to-prepare attractant that lures blood-fed mosquitoes without making humans hold their noses. The synthetic mixture, containing compounds trimethylamine and nonanal in low doses, is just as enticing to Culex mosquitoes as the current attractants, Leal said, but this one is odorless to humans."
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NASA

Submission + - SPAM: NASA new observatory reveals entire gamma-ray sky

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "NASA's newest observatory, the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, has begun its mission of exploring the universe in high-energy gamma rays. NASA announced today that GLAST has been renamed the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The new name honors Prof. Enrico Fermi (1901 — 1954), a pioneer in high-energy physics. "Enrico Fermi was the first person to suggest how cosmic particles could be accelerated to high speeds. His theory provides the foundation for understanding the new phenomena his namesake telescope will discover." Scientists expect Fermi will discover many new pulsars in our own galaxy, reveal powerful processes near supermassive black holes at the cores of thousands of active galaxies and enable a search for signs of new physical laws. Follow the developments on the official NASA GLAST website."
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Earth

Submission + - SPAM: Need climate data? Send in the seals

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Elephant seals are helping scientists overcome a critical blind-spot in their ability to detect change in Southern Ocean circulation and sea ice production and its influence on global climate. Seals fitted with special oceanographic sensors are providing a 30-fold increase in data recorded in parts of the Southern Ocean rarely observed using traditional ocean monitoring techniques. "They have made it possible for us to observe large areas of the ocean under the sea ice in winter for the first time," says co-author Dr Steve Rintoul. "Conventional oceanographic platforms cannot provide observations under the sea ice, particularly on the Antarctic continental shelf where the most important water mass transformations take place. Until now, our ability to represent the high-latitude oceans and sea ice in oceanographic and climate models has suffered as a result.""
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NASA

Submission + - SPAM: Water Discovered in Ancient Moon Samples

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "A research team has for the first time discovered evidence of water that came from deep within the Moon, a revelation that strongly suggests water has been a part of the Moon since its early existence — and perhaps ever since it was created by a cataclysmic collision between the early Earth and a Mars-sized object about 4.5 billion years ago. The team believes that the water was contained in magmas erupted from fire fountains onto the surface of the Moon more than 3 billion years ago. About 95 percent of the water vapor from the magma was lost to space during this eruptive "degassing," the team estimates. But traces of water vapor may have drifted toward the cold poles of the Moon, where they may remain as ice in permanently shadowed craters. NASA plans to send its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later this year to search for evidence of water ice at the Moon's south pole. If water is found, the researchers may have figured out the origin."
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NASA

Submission + - SPAM: Einstein's theory passes strict, new test

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Taking advantage of a unique cosmic configuration, astronomers have measured an effect predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity in the extremely strong gravity of a pair of superdense neutron stars. Essentially, the famed physicist's 93-year-old theory passed yet another test. Scientists at McGill University used the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to do a four-year study of a double-star system unlike any other known in the Universe. The system is a pair of neutron stars, both of which are seen as pulsars that emit lighthouse-like beams of radio waves."
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NASA

Submission + - SPAM: Volcanic activity shaped Mercury after all

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "A research team led by Brown University planetary geologist James Head has determined that volcanism played a central role in forming Mercury's surface. In a paper that appears in the July 4 issue of Science, part of a special section describing the MESSENGER spacecraft's first flyby of Mercury, the researchers have found evidence of past volcanic activity, suggesting that the planet underwent an intense bout of changes to its landscape about 3 to 4 billion years ago — and that the source for much of that reshaping was within. "What this shows is that Mercury was not dead on arrival," says Head, the paper's lead author. "It had a pulse for a while. Now, we want to know when it had that pulse and what caused it to slow down and eventually stop.""
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Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Synthetic molecules emulate enzyme behavior

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Ohio State University chemists have created a synthetic catalyst that can fold its molecular structure into a specific shape for a specific job, similar to natural catalysts. In tests, the chemists caused the catalysts to twist one way or the other, either to form one chemical product or its mirror image. They confirmed the shape of the molecules at each step using techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Being able to quickly produce a catalyst of a particular shape would be a boon for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries."
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NASA

Submission + - SPAM: First images of solar system's invisible frontier

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FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "NASA's sun-focused STEREO spacecraft unexpectedly detected particles from the edge of the solar system last year, allowing scientists to map for the first time the energized particles in the region where the hot solar wind slams into the cold interstellar medium. Mapping the region by means of neutral, or uncharged, atoms instead of light "heralds a new kind of astronomy using neutral atoms," said Robert Lin, UC Berkeley professor of physics and lead for the suprathermal electron sensor aboard STEREO. "You can't get a global picture of this region, one of the last unexplored regions of the heliosphere, any other way because it is too tenuous to be seen by normal optical telescopes.""
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Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: 'Hibernation-on-demand' drug improves survival

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that the administration of minute amounts of inhaled or intravenous hydrogen sulfide significantly improves survival from extreme blood loss in rats. "Our goal is to develop life-saving treatment for critically ill people suffering from acute, sustained blood loss, such as in a car accident or on the battlefield," said senior author Roth. "These findings have obvious implications for the military, but they also have tremendous implications for the civilian population.""
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