Scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash TGF, a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected.

“These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams,” said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor GBM team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville UAH. He presented the findings Monday, during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

via NASA – NASA’s Fermi Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter into Space.

NASA-funded astrobiology research has changed the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth.

Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.

“The definition of life has just expanded,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.”

This finding of an alternative biochemistry makeup will alter biology textbooks and expand the scope of the search for life beyond Earth. The research is published in this week’s edition of Science Express.

Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth. Phosphorus is part of the chemical backbone of DNA and RNA, the structures that carry genetic instructions for life, and is considered an essential element for all living cells.

Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.

“We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we’ve found is a microbe doing something new — building parts of itself out of arsenic,” said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team’s lead scientist. “If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?”

via NASA – NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical.

“When we flipped the telomerase switch on and looked a month later, the brains had largely returned to normal,” said DePinho. More newborn nerve cells were observed, and the fatty myelin sheaths around nerve cells — which had become thinned in the aged animals — increased in diameter. In addition, the increase in telomerase revitalized slumbering brain stem cells so they could produce new neurons.

To show that all this new activity actually caused functional improvements, the scientists tested the mice’s ability to avoid a certain area where they detected unpleasant odors that they associated with danger, such as scents of predators or rotten food. They had lost that survival skill as their olfactory nerve cells atrophied, but after the telomerase boost, those nerves regenerated and the mice regained their crucial sense of smell.

“One of the most amazing changes was in the animals’ testes, which were essentially barren as aging caused the death and elimination of sperm cells,” recounted DePinho. “When we restored telomerase, the testes produced new sperm cells, and the animals’ fecundity was improved — their mates gave birth to larger litters.”

The telomerase boost also lengthened the rodents’ life spans compared to their untreated counterparts — but they did not live longer than normal mice, said the researchers.

via Partial reversal of aging achieved in mice | Harvard Gazette.

The technology decontaminates the air and exposed surfaces by bathing them in a narrow spectrum of visible-light wavelengths, known as HINS-light.

Clinical trials at Glasgow Royal Infirmary have shown that the HINS-light Environmental Decontamination System provides significantly greater reductions of bacterial pathogens in the hospital environment than can be achieved by cleaning and disinfection alone, providing a huge step forward in hospitals’ ability to prevent the spread of infection.

This novel decontamination technology was discovered and developed by a multidisciplinary team of experts, Professor Scott MacGregor (Electrical Engineer), Professor John Anderson and Dr Michelle Maclean (Microbiologists) and Professor Gerry Woolsey (Optical Physicist.)

Professor Anderson said: “The technology kills pathogens but is harmless to patients and staff, which means for the first time, hospitals can continuously disinfect wards and isolation rooms.

“The system works by using a narrow spectrum of visible-light wavelengths to excite molecules contained within bacteria. This in turn produces highly reactive chemical species that are lethal to bacteria such as meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, and Clostridium difficile, known as C.diff.”

via News Releases – University of Strathclyde.

Led by Steven Dubowsky, a professor in both the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and graduate students Amy Bilton and Leah Kelley, the group built a small prototype of the system last spring to test algorithms they had developed to run it. They have since demonstrated that the prototype is capable of producing 80 gallons of water a day in a variety of weather conditions. They estimate that a larger version of the unit, which would cost about $8,000 to construct, could provide about 1,000 gallons of water per day. Dubowsky and his students also estimate that one C-130 cargo airplane could transport two dozen desalination units — enough to provide water for 10,000 people.

via In The World: Drinking water, from sunshine.

Another clever thing is that it uses hardly any external power at all.

Farming spiders for their silk is very very difficult. Farming silkworms is easy. Spider silk is one of the strongest light materials known to man and is better for all kinds of things than hemp, including making lightweight bulletproof vests.

GM silkworms to produce super spider silk | COSMOS magazine.

In a first step toward helping severely paralyzed people communicate more easily, Utah researchers have shown that it is possible to translate recorded brain waves into words, using a grid of electrodes placed directly on the brain.

Although they have only done it with one person and individual words can only be identified with accuracy in tests 50% of the time, the study reported Tuesday provides a ray of hope for people who can now communicate only by blinking, or wiggling a fingertip.

“This is quite a simple technology … based on devices that have been used in humans for 50 years now,” said bioengineer Bradley Greger of the University of Utah, the lead author of a report in the Journal of Neuroengineering.

via Electrodes translate brain waves into words – latimes.com.

An upper layer of Earth s atmosphere recently collapsed in an unexpectedly large contraction the sheer size of which has scientists scratching their heads NASA announced Thursday.

The layer of gas – called the thermosphere – is now rebounding again. This type of collapse is not rare but its magnitude shocked scientists.

“This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years ” said John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “It s a Space Age record.”

The collapse occurred during a period of relative solar inactivity – called a solar minimum from 2008 to 2009. These minimums are known to cool and contract the thermosphere however the recent collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain.

“Something is going on that we do not understand ” Emmert said.

via SPACE.com — Record Collapse of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere Puzzles Scientists.

Scientists find antibodies that prevent most HIV strains from infecting human cells — Science Blog.

It could potentially also be used to regenerate bones

Tooth Regeneration Gel Could Replace Painful Fillings : Discovery News.

Stem cells can be made to grow around a three dimensional scaffold in your mouth in as quick as around nine weeks. Much better than dental implants!

Columbia University Medical Center Press Release.

The UK Metropolitan Police has been recording the frequency variations on the National Grid every second and a half for the past five years. When examining recordings, scientists are able to match the variations in the recordings with the database and establish exactly when the recording was made. If there are multiple matches, the recording was edited, and scientists can find out when. The process takes about 10 minutes.

via Met lab claims ‘biggest breakthrough since Watergate’ • The Register.

They now know where it is and where it’s going. Einstein said it couldn’t be done.

Measurement of the Instantaneous Velocity of a Brownian Particle — Li et al., 10.1126/science.1189403 — Science.

Entangled photons have been able to instantaneously transmit their states over 500 m before, but the Chinese have managed to increase this range massively, allowing them to be used for communicative purposes.

Quantum teleportation achieved over 16 km.

What they did is email genetic code to a machine, which constructed DNA and implanted that in a virus cell, after removing the old DNA. The synthetic DNA then reproduced and it’s reproductions also carried the synthetic DNA. The reproduction is the ‘life’ bit.

They’re calling it Cynthia.

Scientists Create First Synthetic Cell – WSJ.com.

YouTube – Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything.

Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen. The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean's L'Atalante basin, which contains salt brine so dense that it doesn't mix with the oxygen-containing waters above. Previous samples taken from the water and sediments in the basin showed that single-celled life was present, but a new study published this week in BMC Biology has identified multi-cellular animals that apparently live and reproduce in the sediments under the salt brine. Italian and Danish researchers describe three new species of tiny animals called Loricifera.

via ScienceShot: Animals That Live Without Oxygen – ScienceNOW.

Chinese doctors have used arsenic in the treatment of APL (leukemia) with cure rates of 90% since 1992 without the side-effects of chemo (hair loss, suppression of bone marrow function).

A paper from Shanghai shows that it works by targetting specific proteins that feed the cancer.

China scientists show how arsenic treats blood cancer | Reuters.

Using Google search technology you can now browse through the entire archive of Popular Science magazine and read the old issues online.

New! Browse the Complete PopSci Archive | Popular Science.

And we’ve known this since the 1890s. Experiments repeatedly show that multitasking basically makes you perform badly at any of the tasks you’re performing. Now, however, it turns out that not only do you do badly at the tasks, but it also destroys your capacity for reasoning.

This article walks quickly through the history of the research on multitasking and brings you up to date with methods to practically use single tasking, from the extreme in classrooms to the more mundane.

Scholars Turn Their Attention to Attention – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

A team of US research scientists have made a startling breakthrough in solar-cell development, creating flexible wire-based cell substrates that use just one per cent of the silicon needed for brittle and comparatively heavy conventional cells.

Solar cells made from this material would not only be less expensive than current photovoltaics, but due to their low weight and bendable structure the could be used in a wide variety of applications.

The trick in this new method is to bundle one-micrometer-thick silicon wires and embed the resulting array vertically in a flexible polymer. Thus bundled, the paper claims, the array could capture and transmit up to 96 per cent of light in peak conditions while requiring only one per cent of the silicon needed by conventional cells.

via US lab births flexy, stingy solar cells • The Register.