Scientists’ Drill Hits Magma: Only Third Time on Record

Scientists drilling a borehole deep into Iceland’s rocky crust to explore new methods of using geothermal energy hit a major roadblock on Thursday: Their drill ran into molten rock at a depth of 6,900 feet.“This is only the third time that magma has ever flowed into a geothermal drill hole, as far as we know,” said Peter Schiffman, a geology professor at UC Davis and member of the international team conducting the study. “A research project in Hawaii hit magma in 2005, and in 1977 magma erupted out the top of a producing geothermal well not far from our site in Krafla, Iceland.”In Hawaii, drilling stopped. And Schiffman is doubtful that this project, known as the Iceland Deep Drilling Project, or IDDP, can continue. But if the magma body is narrow — as he and the research team expect it is — it may be possible to bore through it or around it, he said. “We’ve been able to keep circulation of cold water through the drill string, so our equipment is still functional.”The team had originally planned to drill to 11,500 feet, or almost 2.2 miles into the earth.The main purpose of IDDP — an international research effort supported by the National Science Foundation, the International Continental Drilling Program, Alcoa Inc., and Icelandic power companies — is to investigate the economic feasibility of extracting energy from hydrothermal systems that are under extremely high temperatures and pressures.Drilling began at the site near Krafla in northeast Iceland in December 2008. After reaching a depth of 2,600 feet, the project was put on hold for two months before resuming in early March.

via UC Davis News

Biological ‘Fountain Of Youth’ Found In New World Bat Caves

Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history—significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, shows that proper protein folding over time in long-lived bats explains why they live significantly longer than other mammals of comparable size, such as mice.

“Ultimately we are trying to discover what underlying mechanisms allow for some animal species to live a very long time with the hope that we might be able to develop therapies that allow people to age more slowly,” said Asish Chaudhuri, Professor of Biochemistry, VA Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas and the senior researcher involved in the work.

Asish and colleagues made their discovery by extracting proteins from the livers of two long-lived bat species (Tadarida brasiliensis and Myotis velifer) and young adult mice and exposed them to chemicals known to cause protein misfolding. After examining the proteins, the scientists found that the bat proteins exhibited less damage than those of the mice, indicating that bats have a mechanism for maintaining proper structure under extreme stress.

“Maybe Juan Ponce De León wasn’t too far off the mark when he searched Florida for the Fountain of Youth,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “As it turns out, one of these bat species lives out its long life in Florida. Since bats are rodents with wings, this chemical clue as to why bats beat out mice in the aging game should point scientists to the source of this elusive fountain.”

via Biological ‘Fountain Of Youth’ Found In New World Bat Caves.

New Class Of Black Holes Discovered

A new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers.

The finding in a distant galaxy approximately 290 million light years from Earth is reported today in the journal Nature.

Until now, identified black holes have been either super-massive (several million to several billion times the mass of the Sun) in the centre of galaxies, or about the size of a typical star (between three and 20 Solar masses).

The new discovery is the first solid evidence of a new class of medium-sized black holes. The team, led by astrophysicists at the Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France, detected the new black hole with the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope.

“While it is widely accepted that stellar mass black holes are created during the death throes of massive stars, it is still unknown how super-massive black holes are formed,” says the lead author of the paper, Dr Sean Farrell, now based at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester.

He added: “One theory is that super-massive black holes may be formed by the merger of a number of intermediate mass black holes. To ratify such a theory, however, you must first prove the existence of intermediate black holes.

“This is the best detection to date of such long sought after intermediate mass black holes. Such a detection is essential. While it is already known that stellar mass black holes are the remnants of massive stars, the formation mechanisms of supermassive black holes are still unknown.”

via New Class Of Black Holes Discovered.

Alzheimer’s Symptoms Reversed: Blood Stem Cell Growth Factor Reverses Memory Decline In Mice

A human growth factor that stimulates blood stem cells to proliferate in the bone marrow reverses memory impairment in mice genetically altered to develop Alzheimer’s disease, researchers at the University of South Florida and James A. Haley Hospital found.

The granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (GCSF) significantly reduced levels of the brain-clogging protein beta amyloid deposited in excess in the brains of the Alzheimer’s mice, increased the production of new neurons and promoted nerve cell connections.

The findings are reported online in Neuroscience and are scheduled to appear in the journal’s print edition in August.

GCSF is a blood stem cell growth factor or hormone routinely administered to cancer patients whose blood stem cells and white blood cells have been depleted following chemotherapy or radiation. GCSF stimulates the bone marrow to produce more white blood cells needed to fight infection. It is also used to boost the numbers of stem cells circulating in the blood of donors before the cells are harvested for bone marrow transplants. Advanced clinical trials are now investigating the effectiveness of GCSF to treat stroke, and the compound was safe and well tolerated in early clinical studies of ischemic stroke patients.

“GCSF has been used and studied clinically for a long time, but we’re the first group to apply it to Alzheimer’s disease,” said USF neuroscientist Juan Sanchez-Ramos, MD, PhD, the study’s lead author. “This growth factor could potentially provide a powerful new therapy for Alzheimer’s disease – one that may actually reverse disease, not just alleviate symptoms like currently available drugs.”

The researchers showed that injections under the skin of filgrastim (Neupogen®) — one of three commercially available GCSF compounds — mobilized blood stem cells in the bone marrow and neural stem cells within the brain and both of these actions led to improved memory and learning behavior in the Alzheimer’s mice. “The beauty in this less invasive approach is that it obviates the need for neurosurgery to transplant stem cells into the brain,” Dr. Sanchez-Ramos said.

via Alzheimer’s Symptoms Reversed: Blood Stem Cell Growth Factor Reverses Memory Decline In Mice.

First Direct Evidence Of Lightning On Mars

An illustration of a dust storm on Mars.

For the first time, direct evidence of lightning has been detected on Mars, say University of Michigan researchers who found signs of electrical discharges during dust storms on the Red Planet.

The bolts were dry lightning, says Chris Ruf, a professor in the departments of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

“What we saw on Mars was a series of huge and sudden electrical discharges caused by a large dust storm,” Ruf said. “Clearly, there was no rain associated with the electrical discharges on Mars. However, the implied possibilities are exciting.”

Electric activity in Martian dust storms has important implications for Mars science, the researchers say.

“It affects atmospheric chemistry, habitability and preparations for human exploration. It might even have implications for the origin of life, as suggested by experiments in the 1950s,” said Nilton Renno, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences.

The findings are based on observations made using an innovative microwave detector developed at the U-M Space Physics Research Laboratory. The kurtosis detector, which is capable of differentiating between thermal and non-thermal radiation, took measurements of microwave emissions from Mars for approximately five hours a day for 12 days between May 22 and June 16, 2006.

On June 8, 2006 both an unusual pattern of non-thermal radiation and an intense Martian dust storm occurred, the only time that non-thermal radiation was detected. Non-thermal radiation would suggest the presence of lightning.

The researchers reviewed the data to determine the strength, duration and frequency of the non-thermal activity, as well as the possibility of other sources. But each test led to the conclusion that the dust storm likely caused dry lightning.

This work confirms soil measurements from the Viking landers 30 years ago, and it challenges 2006 experiments that suggested otherwise.

via First Direct Evidence Of Lightning On Mars Detected.

Police: Conn. teens mishear sex screams, beat man

Police say a Connecticut girl overheard her mother’s screams during sex and thought she was being assaulted, so she rounded up some friends to attack the woman’s companion. The 16-year-old girl, two boys and a 19-year-old man were arrested Tuesday and arraigned Wednesday on assault and conspiracy charges.

According to Torrington police and the woman, the girl thought her mother was being attacked on June 6. Police say the teens went into the bedroom and beat the mother’s 25-year-old companion with a baseball bat and punched him. The man, Roger Swanson of Torrington, says he suffered a black eye and several bruises.

The woman, Melanie Arnold, denies she screamed. She tells The Associated Press her daughter heard a slap and thought it was an assault.

via Police: Conn. teens mishear sex screams, beat man – Yahoo! News.

Reminds me of a line in an XTC song, “Welcome to the Garden of Earthly Delights… This is your life and you’ll do what you want to do… just don’t hurt nobody… unless, of course, they ask you.”

Here it is:

Miracle escape for man hit by 100mph train

Noah Hodgkiss, 56, did not notice the train thundering towards him because he has cataracts and hearing problems.

To make matters worse, the batteries on his hearing aid were flat and he had no idea the train was there until he glanced over his shoulder at the last second.

“I was right in the middle of the two tracks when it happened. Before I knew what was going on it was on me.

“I tried to leap out of the way but it was too late and it hit me from behind. I can’t describe how it felt, I was just thinking what was going to happen to me.”

Mr Hodgkiss flew several metres down the track but remained conscious.

A dog walker heard his cries for help and dialled 999.

Mr Hodgkiss’s ordeal happened as he walked in Tibberton, Worcestershire, on Saturday.

He dropped his mobile from the railway bridge but, as he was looking for it, the train slammed into him.

He was airlifted to hospital and treated for arm injuries, a broken pelvis and ribs but discharged himself on Monday.

“I don’t even have the phone – it’s in A&E somewhere smashed into a million pieces,” he added.

“I have been unbelievably lucky and I will never go near the railway lines again. I’m not a hero, I’m an idiot.”

via Miracle escape for man hit by 100mph train – Telegraph.

Man with two penises removes one

The things men will do to keep their girlfriends…

Ang Qiang was born with two penises but has had one of them surgically removed after his lover said either it went or she would.

‘When we first started going out she was amazed but in the end she thought it was a bit creepy,’ said the 23-year-old from Guangzhou.

via Man with two penises removes one | Metro.co.uk.

The strange way dinosaurs chewed

A novel analysis of microscopic scratches on fossilized teeth reveals how plant-eating duck-billed dinosaurs used a now-extinct type of jaw to chew their food. The study also suggests duckbills were more likely to graze on low-lying greenery than to chomp on tree leaves like giraffes (or like the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”).

The researchers behind the study, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say the technique they used to uncover the tale of the teeth could be applied to other scientific mysteries as well.

“We did it by measuring literally hundreds and hundreds of scratches on these teeth, and then doing a statistical analysis of the directions of the scratches,” University of Leicester paleontologist Mark Purnell, who led the research, told me today.”The statistical analysis turned out to be quite a tricky business.”

The mouth of a hadrosaur has been compared to a “cranial Cuisinart,” with hundreds of teeth lined up in rows to chop up the tough plants of the late Cretaceous. But the dinosaurs didn’t have the complex jaw joint that mammals have, leaving scientists to puzzle over exactly how hadrosaurs did all that chewing.

Purnell and his colleagues say they found the answer after going through a three-dimensional analysis of the scratches left behind on fossilized hadrosaur teeth from Wyoming. Co-author Paul Barrett, a paleontologist at Britain’s Natural History Museum, said the dinosaurs chewed “in a completely different way [compared] to anything alive today.”

“Rather than a flexible lower-jaw joint, they had a hinge between the upper jaws and the rest of the skully,” Barrett explained in a news release describing the research. “As they bit down on their food, the upper jaws were forced outward, flexing along this hinge so that the tooth surfaces slid sideways across each other, grinding and shredding food in the process.”

via How dinosaurs chewed – Cosmic Log – msnbc.com.

Dinosaur mummy yields its secrets

A remarkably well-preserved fossil of a dinosaur has been analysed by scientists writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

They describe how the fossil’s soft tissues were spared from decay by fine sediments that formed a mineral cast.

Tests have shown that the fossil still holds cell-like structures – but their constituent proteins have decayed.

The team says the cellular structure of the dinosaur’s skin was similar to that of dinosaurs’ modern-day descendants.

A member of the duck-billed hadrosaur family, the fossil was found in North Dakota in the US and has been nicknamed “Dakota”. …

The team found that although the proteins that made up the hadrosaur’s skin had degraded, the amino acid building blocks that once made up the proteins were still present.

“We’re looking at the altered products of proteins from the skin of this animal, locked within the three dimensional mineralised skin,” Dr Manning told BBC News.

“You’re looking at cell-like structures; you slice through this and you’re looking at the cell structure of dinosaur skin. …

A study of the cell structures show that, like modern-day crocodiles and birds, the skin was made up of two layers: a surface epidermis against a deeper dermis layer made up of dense connective tissue.

Although that finding is what might have been expected based on the presumed lineage of the modern animals…

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Dinosaur mummy yields its secrets.