The unique planetary nebula NGC 2818 is nested inside the open star cluster NGC 2818A. Both the cluster and the nebula reside 10,400 light-years (3.2 kiloparsecs) away, in the southern constellation Pyxis, also called the Compass.

NGC 2818 is one of very few planetary nebulae in our galaxy located within an open cluster. Open clusters, in general, are loosely bound and they disperse over hundreds of millions of years. Stars that form planetary nebulae typically live for billions of years. Hence, it is rare that an open cluster survives long enough for one of its members to form a planetary nebula. This open cluster is particularly ancient, estimated to be nearly one billion years old.

JERUSALEM and NEEDHAM, Massachusetts, January 15 /PRNewswire/ --

- Oridion Microstream(R) Technology to be Incorporated Into Market Leader's Patient-Controlled Analgesia (PCA) Device

JERUSALEM and NEEDHAM, Massachusetts, January 15 /PRNewswire/ --

Oridion Systems Ltd. (SIX Swiss Exchange: ORIDN) today announced an agreement with a global healthcare company that is a market leader in medication infusion systems. Under this agreement, Oridion's Capnostream(TM) carbon dioxide (CO2) monitor using Microstream(R) capnography technology will be incorporated into a PCA infusion device at a future date, allowing hospital patients to control the flow of their pain medication within specified limits.

Free-range chickens are more prone to disease than chickens kept in cages, according to a study published in Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica.  This also applies to all chickens kept in litter-based housing systems.

Researchers led by Oddvar Fossum, at the National Veterinary Institute in Sweden, noted that during the switch in housing from battery cages to enriched cages and litter-based systems, including free-range, there was an increase in the number of chickens dying. During the study, the authors compared the causes of deaths in flocks of chickens kept in different types of housing across Sweden.

By carefully selecting which varieties of food crops to cultivate, much of Europe and North America could be cooled by up to 1°C during the summer growing season, say researchers from the University of Bristol, UK. This is equivalent to an annual global cooling of over 0.1°C, almost 20% of the total global temperature increase since the Industrial Revolution. 

The growing of crops already produces a cooling of the climate because they reflect more sunlight back into space, compared with natural vegetation. Different varieties of the same crop vary significantly in their solar reflectivity (called 'albedo'), so selecting varieties that are more reflective will enhance this cooling effect. Since arable agriculture is a global industry, such cooling could be extensive.

Ever since the 1966 Hollywood movie "Fantastic Voyage",  written by Harry Kleiner (with what is actually a pretty good novelization by Isaac Asimov afterward) and starring Raquel Welch as the most convincing portrayal of a scientist ever , doctors have sought a day when they could have access to the real thing – a medical vehicle shrunk small enough to "submarine" in and fix faulty cells in the body.  According to new research by Tel Aviv University scientists, that may be only three years away. 

The downside to new antibiotics is that bacteria think of new ways to become resistant to them.    While resistant bacteria continue to increase, scientists keep searching for new sources of drugs in this week's Journal of Biological Chemistry, one potential new bactericide has been found in the tiny freshwater animal Hydra.

The protein identified by Joachim Grötzinger, Thomas Bosch and colleagues at the University of Kiel, hydramacin-1, is unusual,  and clinically valuable, as it shares virtually no similarity with any other known antibacterial proteins except for two antimicrobials found in another ancient animal, the leech.


Not this Hydra.

HUMANS have actively changed the coats of domestic animals by cherry-picking rare genetic mutations, causing variations such as different colours, bands and spots, according to a new study. 

Although the study was carried out on pigs, the results can explain the evolution in the coat colors of all domesticated animals as they all express the same melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R) gene, one of the genes that controls coat colour in animals. 

The study also explains for the first time why there is a stark contrast between the coat colors of wild and domestic animals and gives further insight into the process of evolution, particularly since animals were first domesticated about 10,000 years ago.