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Cosmic Trojans Sneak Comets Towards Earth

THE Trojan horse of legend held in its belly the men and means to help sack ancient Troy. Now it appears another type of Trojan could endanger every life on Earth. So says a study of the Trojan asteroids that exist around the orbit of Neptune: material from these may go on to become comets that could strike our planet. Around three-quarters of the impact risk to Earth comes from near-Earth asteroids, about 1000 of which are being tracked by sky surveys. The rest of the risk comes from comets.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:52:44 -0500

Helping Joints Regrow Themselves

Today's titanium replacement joints work very well for 10 to 15 years, but replacing them after they've worn out is a challenge for both patient and surgeon. A team of researchers from Columbia University proposes a way around that problem: by implanting a scaffold that encourages the patient's own stem cells to regrow the joint. In research published this week in The Lancet, the researchers demonstrate that the technology--a joint-shaped scaffold infused with a growth factor protein.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:19:05 -0500

Timescapes Timelapse: Learning To Fly

Time-lapse photography is a cinematography technique whereby each film frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. Time-lapse photography can be considered to be the opposite of high speed photography. Processes that would normally appear subtle to the human eye, such as the motion of the sun and stars in the sky, become very pronounced. Time-lapse is the extreme version of the cinematography technique of undercranking, and can be confused with stop motion animation.

(Source: Best of Science)

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:28:34 -0500

Man-Made Fibers

For centuries, "man-made fibers" meant the raw stuff of clothes and ropes; in the information age, it's come to mean the filaments of glass that carry data in communications networks. But to Yoel Fink, an associate professor of materials science and principal investigator at MIT's Research Lab of Electronics, the threads used in textiles and even optical fibers are much too passive. For the past decade, his lab has been working to develop fibers with ever more sophisticated properties, to enable fabrics that can interact with their environment.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:36:44 -0500

Ultra High Resolution Video Used in Surgery

Dr. Steven Palter of New York recently reported the first laparoscopic surgery performed using a high-resolution video camera. Using equipment worth over a million dollars, he and his team were able to obtain one of the clearest views inside the human body ever.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:15:13 -0500

Genome Surprise: Guinea Pigs Have Ebola

The ebola virus is one of the nastiest pathogens known to man. It corrodes blood vessels and stops clotting, leaving most of its human victims bleeding to death through their pores. And guinea pigs - along with opossums, wallabies and insect-eating bats - have it in their genes. A genomic hunt for virus genes traced sequences to Ebola and the closely related Marburg virus in no fewer than six vertebrate species. Echoes of the less-gruesome borna virus family appeared in 13 species.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:04:31 -0500

Sniff-Controlled Keyboards, Wheelchairs

People who are paralyzed from the neck down might soon be leading themselves around by the nose-literally. A new electric wheelchair allows the severely disabled to guide their movements by sniffing into tubes. Sniffing depends on highly coordinated motions of the back of the roof of the mouth, aka the soft palate. This region receives signals from several nerves that are often unaffected by paralytic injuries and disorders. That means some patients with disabilities.

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:49:54 -0500

Aurora Mission Makes Detour To Moon

A pair of Earth-orbiting satellites designed to study the auroras are making a detour to visit the moon. The two spacecraft are part of a fleet of five launched into Earth orbit by NASA in 2007 on a mission called THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms). They have been studying the space storms that trigger the northern and southern lights, or auroras, on Earth. But two of the satellites were set to go on death row earlier this year.

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:25:17 -0500

Photons Meet With Three-Way Split

A single photon can now be split into three, thanks to the work of an international team of physicists. The achievement could open up new avenues in the field of quantum information. The ability to split photons may not sound as extraordinary as other achievements in quantum physics, but for decades it has proved crucial to the success of many experiments. Often researchers need to know that photons are emitted at precisely the same time and are in phase with each other.

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:40:25 -0500

Alien Speculation

For more videos, go to www.discoverynews.com. Will the real ET be little green men or little green bacteria? SETI Institute Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak theorizes what our first alien encounter might be like.

(Source: Discovery Network)

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:22:55 -0500