Researchers have resurrected a 500-million-year-old gene from bacteria and inserted it into modern-day Escherichia coli(E. coli) - the bacterium has now been growing for more than 1,000 generations, which has given the scientists a front row seat to observe descent with modification in action.
It's paleo-experimental evolution.
'Got less milk?" is unlikely to resonate with consumers in the heartland, but it may be so, says a new projection.
The group behind the model found that a possible decline in milk production due to climate change will vary across the U.S., since there are significant differences in humidity and will be impacted by how much the temperature swings between night and day across the country. The humidity and hot nights make the Southeast the most unfriendly place in the US for dairy cows right now. That's not new, scientists and obviously farmers have long known about and studied the impact of heat stress on cows' milk production.
Spaceflight is tough on humans, due to weightlessness and radiation exposure. But if it bothers the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, they aren't talking.
Researchers writing in Nature Scientific Reports say they were interested in seeing how C. elegans reacts to living in space because it was the first multicellular life form to have its full genetic structure mapped. They found the astronaut worms showed less toxic proteins in their muscles than if they had stayed on Earth. Further investigation revealed that seven genes were less active in space; living on the Space Station led to certain genes not functioning normally.
For not being a planet, according to 2 percent of astronomers, Pluto sure has a lot of moons.
Now it has one more, joining Charon, which was discovered in 1978, Nix and Hydra, discovered in 2006, and P4, found in 2011.
Pluto’s new-found moon, provisionally designated S/2012 (134340) 1, or P5, is tiny and only visible as a speck of light in Hubble images, so it is estimated to be irregular in shape and between 10 and 25 kilometers across. It is in a 95,000 kilometer-diameter circular orbit and assumed to lie in the same plane as Pluto’s other known moons.
Want to get into a bar fight at a physics conference? Argue that quantum mechanics is the best way to predict outcomes. Or argue the opposite.
A new paper argues that quantum mechanics is close to optimal in terms of its predictive power but even if all the information is available, the outcomes of certain quantum mechanics experiments generally can't be predicted perfectly beforehand. Optimal but unpredictable? The best but often not good enough? Quantum mechanics is a confusing dichotomy, basically the LeBron James of the physics world.
Dark galaxies, theorized but unobserved, may have been spotted.
Dark galaxies are essentially gas-rich galaxies in the early Universe that are very inefficient at forming stars and astronomers think they have detected these elusive objects by observing them glowing as they are illuminated by a quasar. They are predicted by theories of galaxy formation and are thought to be the building blocks of today’s bright, star-filled galaxies. They may have fed large galaxies with much of the gas that later formed into the stars that exist today.
The path of the LHC experiments to the successful observation of a Higgs boson has not been the smoothest I could think of, with delays in construction, incidents, and the like; but we are finally there. And now, with over 10/fb of data fully analyzed and presented at ICHEP, we can take stock and draw the "summer 2012" picture on existing and non-existing subnuclear entities, the non-existing ones notably including SUSY particles and other new physics candidates which are periodically evoked by theorists to mend the shortcomings of the standard model.
Telstar 1 enabled the first transatlantic TV broadcasts, was the proof that communications satellites were viable, and began start of an industry. It also provided the first US #1 Billboard song hit, from a song about Telstar 1 by a group called the Tornados. The song was simply called 'Telstar' and is also notable as an early piece of electronica.
Oxford BioMedica plc, a gene-based biopharmaceutical company, and Cardiff University announced a Phase II trial to assess the safety and immunological activity of TroVax(R), a therapeutic vaccine for patients with inoperable metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC). The study will be funded by Cardiff University, with some funding awarded by Cancer Research Wales, and Oxford BioMedica will provide TroVax(R). The trial is supported by the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC), Cardiff.
