Satellites currently use radio waves to exchange data. Now the data rate has been increased a hundredfold in two test satellites by using lasers instead of radio signals.

The tests between German satellite TerraSAR-X and US satellite NFIRE, covering more than 5000 kilometers in space without any errors, was special in that the space tests recently performed by Tesat-Spacecom was that the data was transmitted by laser.

The bandwidth achieved in the test was a hundred times greater than during conventional communication by radio waves, enabling a data rate equivalent to roughly 400 DVDs per hour. This could make it possible to transmit large data packets between several satellites in the future, for instance to send image data from Earth observation satellites to a ground station. That has not been possible until now, as the bandwidth of radio waves is not large enough. Another advantage of this new form of communication is that lasers are easier to focus than radio waves, which means that data transmissions can be directed more accurately.

A new study released today in the online edition of Physiological Genomics finds that individuals with a specific genetic variation consistently consume more sugary foods. The study offers the first evidence of the role that a variation in the GLUT2 gene – a gene that controls sugar entry into the cells – has on sugar intake, and may help explain individual preferences for foods high in sugar.

Summary of the Study

Food preferences are influenced by the environment as well as genetics. Cravings for foods high in sugar vary from person to person, but the reasons why are still unclear. To better understand the mechanism, the research team examined the effect of a common variation in a gene that controls the entry of sugar (glucose) into cells.

Long-term harmful effects of marijuana include risk for heart attacks and strokes in addition to impaired learning and memory.

The active chemical in marijuana, called delta-9-tetrahyrdocannabinol (THC), is believed to exert these effects by binding to cannabinoid (CB) receptors located on several cell types in various organs.

Scientists have found CB receptors in many organs including the brain, heart, liver, kidney, and spleen. In this study, researchers investigated if persistent heavy marijuana use might be associated with changes in different blood proteins in order to check if the abnormalities in the identified proteins might be related to other side-effects of marijuana.

In March, the US House Energy and Commerce Committee launched an investigation into potential conflicts of interest in scientific panels that advise the Environmental Protection Agency on the human health effects of toxic chemicals.

The committee identified eight scientists that served as consultants or members of EPA science advisory panels while getting research support from the chemical industry to study the chemicals under review. Two scientists were actually employed by companies that made or worked with manufacturers of the chemicals under review.

Such conflicts, Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) noted, stand in stark contrast to the agency’s dismissal last summer of highly respected public health scientist Deborah Rice, an expert in toxicology, from a panel examining the health impacts of the flame retardant deca. The EPA fired Rice after the chemical industry’s trade group, the American Chemistry Council, complained that she could not provide an objective scientific review because she had spoken out about the health hazards posed by deca.

Women who breast feed for longer have a smaller chance of getting rheumatoid arthritis, suggests a study published online ahead of print in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

The study also found that taking oral contraceptives, which are suspected to protect against the disease because they contain hormones that are raised in pregnancy, did not have the same effect. Also, simply having children and not breast feeding also did not seem to be protective.

The researchers compared 136 women with rheumatoid arthritis with 544 women of a similar age without the disease. They found that that those who had breast fed for longer were much less likely to get rheumatoid arthritis.

A goal that remained elusive for 25 years has now allowed astronomers to obtain the most precise measurement of the cosmic temperature at an incredible distance; in a well-hidden galaxy whose light has taken almost 11 billion years to reach us - about 80% of the age of the universe.

The only way this galaxy can be seen is through the imprint its interstellar gas leaves on the spectrum of an even more remote quasar [1]. “Quasars are here only used as a beacon in the very distant Universe. Interstellar clouds of gas in galaxies, located between the quasars and us on the same line of sight, absorb parts of the light emitted by the quasars. The resulting spectrum consequently presents dark ‘valleys’ that can be attributed to well-known elements and possibly molecules,” explains Raghunathan Srianand (Pune, India), who led the team making the observations.

600 million years of evolution has taken two unlikely distant cousins, turkeys and scallops, down very different physical paths from their common ancestor but a motor protein, myosin 2, remains structurally identical in both creatures.

Myosin molecules generate tension in smooth muscle by adhering to form a filament, which grabs hold of a neighbouring filament, and relaxes by letting go. When the muscle is in a relaxed state, myosin molecule folds itself up into a compact structure.

The discovery suggests that the tiny motor protein is much more important than previously thought – and for humans it may even hold a key to understanding potentially fatal conditions such as aneurisms.

A University of Leicester space scientist has worked out that sending texts via mobile phones works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Nigel Bannister’s calculations were used for the Channel 4 Dispatches program “The Mobile Phone Rip-Off.”

He worked out the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble – and compared that with the 5p cost of sending a text.

In the Cerrado region of Brazil, four dogs trained to detect animal feces by scent are helping researchers monitor rare and threatened wildlife such as jaguar, tapir, giant anteater and maned wolf in and around Emas National Park, a protected area with the largest concentration of threatened species in Brazil.

The researchers analyze feces found by the dogs to learn about where and how the threatened mammals live. Data such as numbers, range, diet, hormonal stress, parasites and even genetic identity contribute to a study of how the mammals use environments inside and outside the park, especially on privately owned lands of the region.

The information helps develop conservation and development strategies that meet the needs of both the animals and local farmers. The dogs are rewarded for their good work with tennis balls to chase and chomp.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, social anxiety disorder affects approximately 15 million American adults and is the third most common mental disorder in the United States, after depression and alcohol dependence.

The essential feature of the disorder is the fear of being evaluated by others, with the expectation that such an assessment will be negative and embarrassing. It tends to run a chronic and unremitting course and often leads to the development of alcoholism and depression. The disorder most often surfaces in adolescence or early adulthood, but it can occur at any time, including childhood.

Using single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), researchers in The Netherlands were able to detect biochemical differences in the brains of individuals with generalized social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia), providing evidence of a long-suspected biological cause for the dysfunction.