SHP-2, a common biological protein molecule, is central to placental growth and could hold the key to mitigating growth restriction of babies in the womb,  according to research is published today in Endocrinology.

In a survey conducted about patients’ expectations of electronic retina prostheses (retina implants) a decade ago, visually impaired or blind patients with degenerative retina conditions stated they would be happy if they were able to regain some mobility and recognize faces and read again.

According to the presentations given at the international symposium “Artificial Vision” September 19th, 2009 at the Wissenschaftszentrum Bonn, that's gotten a lot closer.

Scientists at a research institute in Austria are trying to figure out how life might evolve under different biochemistry conditions and with exotic solvents than what would exist on a world similar to Earth - think sulphuric acid instead of water.

Traditionally, planets that might sustain life are looked for in a ‘habitable zone’ - the region around a star in which Earth-like planets with carbon dioxide, water vapor and nitrogen atmospheres could maintain liquid water on their surfaces.

I’ve been putting the case for some months now, that evolutionary biology is in a deplorable state due to an uncritical acceptance of the unrealistic assumptions that lie at the heart of selfish gene theory, by those who are directing current research. (See also Gerhard Adam’s articles on Hamilton’s Rule, Selfish Gene Theory, and Biology.) Contributing biologists have responded by telling me that my fears are groundless, that biology has moved on, that the influence of selfish gene theory has waned, that I should concentrate on the current literature and not dwell on the past. So I went to the trouble of checking out the Oxford University Zoology Department’s very good selection of papers available online, that deal with current research in this area.

The Economist reported that in early 2007, for the first time in history, more humans lived in cities than in the countryside. We are now a different species, in terms of the environmental niche we inhabit.  One thinks of Isaac Asimov’s Trantor, the planet that was completely covered by buildings.  Is Earth headed for a similar future?

2004 was the first year Amazon.com moved more dollar volume in consumer electronics than in

I was notified today that within three weeks I am due to write a proceedings article for the "Physics in Collision" conference I attended in Kobe two weeks ago. The task is not too stimulating for me, given that the material it has to cover just consists in projections of the discovery reach of the Higgs boson, based on simulated data; but to add unexcitement to the whole thing, I found out that I am bound to stay within the limit of two pages of text.

Galileo's contributions to science in general, and optics and astronomy in particular, were so monumental that over 350 years later we still discuss them in introductory physics courses.

Planck, a European-US collaborative mission launched by ESA, has provided its first pictures. Planck is a followup to WMAP, and looks at the cosmic microwave background. But it has a host of other detectors and purposes, too. Stealing blatently from Wikipedia, Planck will do:

1. High resolution detections of both the total intensity and polarization of the primordial CMB anisotropies


2. Creation of a catalogue of galaxy clusters through the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect


3. Observations of the gravitational lensing of the CMB, as well as the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect

Black holes are invading stars, according to a new hyposthesis for the origin of the bright flashes in the universe that are one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy today. 

Those flashes, known as gamma ray bursts, are beams of high energy radiation produced by jets of plasma from massive dying stars.   The current model for these cosmic 'jet engines' involves plasma being heated by neutrinos in a disk of matter that forms around a black hole, which is created when a star collapses. 

Meteorites discovered with known orbits are incredibly rare but researchers using cameras which capture fireballs streaking across the night sky have managed to find not only a tiny meteorite on the vast Nullarbor Plain, but also mathematically determine its orbit and the asteroid it came from.

The ability to track meteorites back to their asteroid home also means it is an incredibly cheap way of sampling that asteroid, rather than conducting an expensive space mission.

To find the meteorite, the team deployed three 'all sky cameras' on the Nullarbor Plain to form a fireball camera network.   The cameras take a single time lapse picture of the sky throughout the entire night to record any fireballs over the Plain.