Influenza's Achilles Heel Discovered By Scientists

As the nation copes with a shortage of vaccines for H1N1 influenza, a team of Alabama researchers have raised hopes that they have found an Achilles' heel for all strains of the flu - antioxidants. In an article appearing in the November 2009 print issue of the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) they show that antioxidants - the same substances found in plant-based foods - might hold the key in preventing the flu virus from wreaking havoc on our lungs.

"The recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza and the rapid spread of this strain across the world highlights the need to better understand how this virus damages the lungs and to find new treatments," said Sadis Matalon, co-author of the study. "Additionally, our research shows that antioxidants may prove beneficial in the treatment of flu."

Matalon and colleagues showed that the flu virus damages our lungs through its "M2 protein," which attacks the cells that line the inner surfaces of our lungs (epithelial cells). Specifically, the M2 protein disrupts lung epithelial cells' ability to remove liquid from inside of our lungs, setting the stage for pneumonia and other lung problems. The researchers made this discovery by conducting three sets of experiments using the M2 protein and the lung protein they damage. First, frog eggs were injected with the lung protein alone to measure its function. Second, researchers injected frog eggs with both the M2 protein and the lung protein and found that the function of the lung protein was significantly decreased. Using molecular biology techniques, scientists isolated the segment of the M2 protein responsible for the damage to the lung protein. Then they demonstrated that without this segment, the protein was unable to cause damage. Third, the full M2 protein (with the "offending" segment intact) and the lung protein were then re-injected into the frog eggs along with drugs known to remove oxidants. This too prevented the M2 protein from causing damage to the lung protein. These experiments were repeated using cells from human lungs with exactly the same results.

"Although vaccines will remain the first line of intervention against the flu for a long time to come, this study opens the door for entirely new treatments geared toward stopping the virus after you're sick," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal, "and as Thanksgiving approaches, this discovery is another reason to drink red wine to your health."

Source: Cody Mooneyhan
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

Archaeologists find 17th century witch bottle in England

Archaeologists have found a 17th-century witch bottle meant to fight evil spirits close to a former pub in England.

Experts say that in the earlier days the so-called cursed people often filled bottles with bent toenails and fingernails, urine, and hair to keep dark spirits away.

However, the x-ray of the newfound beer bottle, originally made in Germany, revealed that it does not contain any such bodily parts.

“It’s not an everyday find. Most of what we find are broken bits of pots and people’s rubbish,” National [^] Geographic News quoted excavation manager Andrew Norton of Oxford Archaeology, a U.K. archaeological-services company, as saying.

The salt-glazed stone bottle is stamped with the face of a grimacing man.

The archaeologists believe it could be an image of anti-Protestant Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine who lived from 1542 to 1621.

Legend dictates that Protestants damaged the jugs to despoil the Catholic leader.

Norton added that another reading suggests it is “green man,” a mythical evil spirit living in the forests.

He also described a crowned lion engraved on the base of the bottle, which is assumed to be the bottlemaker’s trademark.

The witch bottles during the seventeenth age can be compared to “a modern equivalent of hanging a horseshoe on your door,” according to Norton.

ANI
Photograph by Andrew Norton

Newly Discovered Ankylosaur Dinosaur Is 'Biological Version Of An Army Tank'

A husband and wife team of American paleontologists has discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived 112 million years ago during the early Cretaceous of central Montana.

The new dinosaur, a species of ankylosaur, is documented in the October issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Ankylosaurs are the biological version of an army tank. They are protected by a plate-like armour with two sets of sharp spikes on each side of the head, and a skull so thick that even 'raptors' such as Deinonychus could leave barely more than a scratch.

Bill and Kris Parsons, Research associates of the Buffalo Museum of Science, found much of the skull of the newly described Tatankacephalus cooneyorum resting on the surface of a hillside in 1997. Because the skull was 90% complete, it was possible to justify this fossil as a new species.

"This is the first member of Ankylosauridae to be found within the Early Cretaceous Cloverly Geologic Formation," said Bill Parsons, who characterized the fossil as a transitional evolutionary form between the earlier Jurassic ankylosaurs and the better known Late Cretaceous ankylosaurs.

The skull is heavily protected by two sets of lateral horns, two thick domes at the back, and smaller thickenings around the nasal region. "Heavy ornamentation and horn-like plates would have covered most of the dorsal surface of this dinosaur" said Bill Parsons.

"For years, Bill and Kris have been collecting fossils from a critical time in Earth's history, and their hard work has paid off," said Lawrence Witmer, professor of paleontology at Ohio University who was not involved with this study. "This is a really important find and gives us a clearer view of the evolution of armored dinosaurs. But this is just the first; I'm sure, of what will be a series of important discoveries from this team."

Parsons also illustrated the dermal armour of this new species based on the theory by Museum of the Rockies paleontologist John R. Horner that there was an outer keratinous sheathing on it as found in modern turtle shells and bird beaks. In his new reconstruction, Parsons suggests that Tatankacephalus exhibited complex and colorful patterns rather than the dull appearance suggested in earlier ankylosaur portraits. "According to Horner's theory, many other dinosaurs also had this kind of sheathing and also may have been diversely colored," said Parsons.

As to its name, the broad, short horns on the back of its skull resemble the horns found on a modern buffalo skull and Tatankacephalus loosely translates as 'Buffalo head.' Parsons also noted, "of course any further allusions to the city of Buffalo are completely intentional as well."

by Buffalo Museum of Science
Illustration by William Parsons

'Moonlighting' molecules discovered

Now, a collaborative effort at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to examine protein-DNA interactions across the whole genome has uncovered more than 300 proteins that appear to control genes, a newly discovered function for all of these proteins previously known to play other roles in cells. The results, which appear in the October 30 issue of Cell, provide a partial explanation for human complexity over yeast but also throw a curve ball in what we previously understood about protein functions.

"Everyone knows that transcription factors bind to DNA and everyone knows that they bind in a sequence-specific manner," says Heng Zhu, Ph.D., an assistant professor in pharmacology and molecular sciences and a member of the High Throughput Biology Center. "But you only find what you look for, so we looked beyond and discovered proteins that essentially moonlight as transcription factors."

The team suspects that many more proteins encoded by the human genome might also be moonlighting to control genes, which brings researchers to the paradox that less complex organisms, such as plants, appear to have more transcription factors than humans. "Maybe most of our genes are doing double, triple or quadruple the work," says Zhu. "This may be a widespread phenomenon in humans and the key to how we can be so complex without significantly more genes than organisms like plants."

The team set out to figure out which proteins encoded by the genome bind to which DNA sequences. It had been predicted by examining the human genome sequence that about 1,400 to 1,700 of encoded proteins are so-called transcription factors — proteins that bind to specific sequences in DNA to turn a gene on or off. The researchers also included in their study, in addition to these proteins, other types that are known to maintain chromosome structure and bind to structurally different RNA. Also included were proteins that normally relay information within a cell and are not thought to directly come in contact with DNA. In total, they collected nearly 4,200 human proteins together on a protein microarray, or protein "chip."

To identify proteins on that chip that bound DNA directly, the group first reviewed previously published scientific literature and catalogued 460 different, short sequences of DNA that are known or predicted to bind proteins.

One at a time, the team tested each of the 460 DNA sequences against the 4,200 protein-containing chip. In addition to finding many protein-DNA interactions for transcription factors, some confirming previously known interactions, the team found 367 new unconventional DNA binding proteins—proteins known to do other cellular jobs.

"This nearly doubled the number of known protein-DNA interactions," says Jiang Qian, Ph.D., an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Hopkins. "But we only looked at about a fifth of all the proteins in the human genome — there could be hundreds, even thousands more of these unconventional transcription factors that we don't yet know about."

One of the unconventional transcription factors discovered was the protein MAP Kinase 1, also known as ERK2, a protein long studied for its ability to control cell growth and development via its ability to add phosphate groups to other molecules.

"It's one of the best studied proteins out there, but no one ever thought ERK2 could directly regulate gene expression by actually binding to DNA," says Seth Blackshaw, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neuroscience and a member of the High Throughput Biology Center and the Neuroregeneration Program at the Institute for Cell Engineering.

To be certain that ERK2 really does bind DNA and control genes in living cells, the team tested the protein in human cells. They found that ERK2 mutated to no longer bind DNA causes specific genes to be turned on, while both normal ERK2 and ERK2 that's no longer able to chemically modify proteins turn off those same genes. "It clearly acts to repress specific genes," says Blackshaw. "Maybe this will help clear up some of the puzzles that have arisen in ERK2 experiments over the years."

A central question in understanding how genes are controlled is hich of the 20,000 proteins encoded by our genome act on which segments of DNA. "It's not possible to predict this a priori," Blackshaw says. "Someone has to do the experiment — because we just don't know enough about how proteins bind to DNA — patterns have surfaced in this field's 45 year history, but not enough yet to establish any rules."

Source: Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

Microcapsules to deliver chemicals on demand!

Californian scientists have created a new generation of microcapsules that promise to deliver "chemicals on demand " for a wide range of uses, including medicine and personal care.

The microcapsules are used in carbon-free copy paper, in which capsules burst and release ink with pressure from a pen.

They burst when exposed to light and release their contents in ways that could have wide-ranging commercial uses from home and personal care to medicine.

Jean Frechet, Alex Zettl and colleagues have noted that liquid-filled microcapsules have many other uses, including self-healing plastics.

The plastics contain one group of microscapsules filled with monomer and another with a catalyst.

When scratches rip open the capsules, the contents flow, mix, and form a seal.

Scientists have said that microcapsules that burst open when exposed to light would have great advantages.

Light could be focused to a pinpoint to kill cancer cells, for instance, or shined over a large area to print a pattern.

The new microcapsules consist of nylon spheres about the size of a grain of sand.

They enclose a liquid chemical sprinkled with carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes convert laser light to heat that bursts the nylon capsule, releasing the chemical.

Using such a system, doctors, for example, might inject microcapsules containing anti-cancer drugs to specific cells and make the capsules burst upon exposure to laser light, delivering their contents precisely where and when they are needed in the body.

The study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a weekly publication.

ANI

Mega-star explosion most distant object ever seen

It took 13 billion years to reach Earth, but astronomers have seen the light of an exploding mega-star that is the most distant object ever detected, two studies published Thursday reported.

The stunning gamma-ray burst (GRB) was observed by two teams of researchers in April, and opens a window onto a poorly known period when the Universe was in its infancy.

GRBs are the most violent explosions known to exist, and can be 10 million times more luminous than the brightest of galaxies.

They accompany the catastrophic death of a massive star, and are probably triggered by the collapse of the star's centre into a black hole.

Dubbed GRB 090423, the new discovery was first spotted by the NASA satellite Swift.

Astronomers alerted to the find trained several of Earth's largest telescopes skyward just in time to see the gamma-ray burst's fading afterglow.

The discovery is especially exciting for scientists because the explosion occurred during the so-called "cosmic dark ages", which started a mere 400,000 years after the Big Bang set the Universe in motion some 13.7 billion years ago.

During this period, free electrons and protons combined to form neutral atoms with the same number of positive and negative charges, resulting in an opaque -- or "dark" -- universe.

Not until 800 to 900 million years after the Big Bang were atoms and molecules "re-ionised", or electrically charged, resulting in the relatively transluscent inter-galactic medium we see today.

GRB 090423 flashed and crashed toward the end of these dark ages, making it the oldest object ever seen.

"This observation allows us to begin exploring the last blank space on our map of the Universe," said Nial Tanvir, a professor at the University of Leicester and lead author of one of the studies.

"It is tremendously exciting to be looking back in time to an era when the first stars were just switching on," said Andrew Levan, a professor at the University of Warwick in Britain and co-author of the same study.

The previous record holder for oldest object is at least 150 million years younger than the newly discovered gamma-ray burst.

Both studies were published in the British science journal Nature.

Bureau Report

New Sauropod dinosaur species may have been discovered in Cotswold Water Park

A new species of dinosaur bone is believed to have been discovered at the Cotswold Water Park.

The fossilised remains of a giant plant-eating Sauropod dinosaur identified as Cetiosauriscus was uncovered during the restoration of a site which had been quarried by Hanson Aggregates.

Only a few bones of this type of dinosaur have ever been found in Britain and analysis of the bone indicates that it could belong to a group of Dinosaurs whose remains are very rarely found in the UK.

The Cetiosauriscus inhabited Northern Europe during the Middle Jurassic period 168 million years ago.

Several hundred pieces of bone, which were unearthed from the edge of a drainage ditch by palaeontologist Dr Neville Hollingworth, have been painstakingly pieced together over the last six months to form a giant 1.4m long leg bone.

Dr Hollingworth had to sift through several tons of clay to rescue the bones before the site was flooded.

He said: "There was a point when I wondered if I would recover all the pieces in time – although it took me over a week to get everything out of the ground it was worth it for such an exciting find."

He added that it was most likely that the leg bone belonged to a Sauropod - the group of long-necked plant-eaters that includes the diplodocus.

"Such discoveries of dinosaur bones of this size are extremely rare because most of Britain was covered by the sea during the Jurassic period of geological time," Dr Hollingworth continued.

"It may have fallen to the sea floor from a rotting carcass. The animal would have been almost 20m (65ft) long.

"What is most interesting is how the bone ended up in the Oxford Clay which is a marine deposit.

"The chances are that the land living animal was swept into the sea, perhaps by a flood where the carcass was eaten by scavengers. "

Despite diligent searching no other bones of this giant reptile were found.

The Sauropod leg bone will be on display at the Fossil Fest, a family event being organised by the Cotswold Water Park Society on Sunday at the Four Pillars Hotel, South Cerney.

By Andy Woolfoot
andy.woolfoot@gwent-wales.co.uk

Skull of 'sea monster' discovered

The fossilised skull of a giant "sea monster" has been discovered off the UK's Jurassic Coast, a local council announced.

The fossil comes from a pliosaur, a ferocious predator which lived in the oceans 150 million years ago.

The skull, which was discovered by a local collector off the Dorset coast, measures 2.4m in length and scientists believe the creature would have been 16m in length - one of the largest pliosaurs ever found.

The fossil was purchased by Dorset County Council for £20,000 with money from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

After it has been scientifically analysed and prepared, it will be put on display at the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester.

Pliosaurs were a form of plesiosaur, a group of giant aquatic reptiles which lived in the seas at around the same time dinosaurs roamed the Earth. They had short necks and huge, crocodilian-like heads that contained immensely powerful jaws and a set of huge, razor-sharp teeth.

They used four paddle-like limbs to propel their bulky bodies through the water, and would have preyed on dolphin-like ichthyosaurs and even other plesiosaurs.

David Martill, a palaeontologist from the University of Portsmouth, said: "These creatures were monsters. They had massive big muscles on their necks, and you would have imagined that they would bite into the animal and get a good grip, and then with these massive neck muscles they probably would have thrashed the animals around and torn chunks off. It would have been a bit of a blood bath."

David Tucker, the council's museums adviser, said: "Our aim is to purchase fossils found along the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and to get them into local museums - we want to put really exceptional fossils in museums."

The council is meeting with experts to discuss how best to study and prepare the fossil.

Press Association 2009

Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Produced By An External Dynamo System, Not An Internal Dynamo

Photo credit to Peter Reid

Researcher finds that Earth’s magnetic field is not produced by an internal dynamo. Nor is it produced by ocean current. The dynamo is outside the Planet! New findings by independent researcher, Dennis Brooks, show that Earth’s magnetic field and the planet itself are components of a complex dynamo system, which surrounds the planet. The planet and its magnetic field are part of the dynamo.

According to this new theory, no internal dynamo or ocean current helps in producing or maintaining the magnetic field because other planets with magnetic fields do not have ocean currents or iron cores.

Each planet does not have a unique way of producing its magnetic field. The magnetic field of each planet is produced by a planetary dynamo system and its ring current.

For many years researchers thought that a similar dynamo system was within the planet and that this internal dynamo generated the magnetic field. However, we know now that it is too hot inside the planet to produce and maintain a magnetic field there.

The planetary dynamo system is composed of a magnetosphere, the planet, the magnetic field, radiation belts, ring current, and charged particles from the solar wind. The planet is the central component of the system and its rotation plays an important part in operating the dynamo and generating ring current. The magnetic field is generated by the system’s ring current, which is made up of charged particles. The magnetic field captures even more charged particles and brings them into the dynamo system as fuel. Everything works together.

Earth’s inner and outer core simply cannot provide the fuel a dynamo system needs. If earth’s dynamo had to depend on energy from the planet for fuel, the entire planet would have been completely consumed many years ago.

By Dennis Brooks
To learn more about Earth’s magnetic field, Visit
http://sites.google.com/site/earthsmagneticfield/
Contact: Dennis Brooks
Phone: 1-808-566-0654
Email: dennisbroo@gmail.com
.

Evidence of Tidal Waves Discovered off Caesaria Coast

New geo-archaeological research at the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa has exposed evidence of four tsunami events on the coast of Caesarea, between Tel Aviv and Haifa. In a statement released by the university on Sunday, Dr. Beverly Goodman, who headed the research, said, "We expected to find the remains of ships, but were surprised to reveal unusual geological layers the likes of which we had never seen in the region before."

Using Carbon-14 dating and OSL (optically stimulated luminescence), Dr. Goodman found evidence of tsunami events in 1500 BCE, 100-200 CE, 500-600 CE, and 1100-1200 CE. In an article published in Geological Society of America, she says that the earliest resulted from the eruption of the Santorini volcano, which affected the entire Mediterranean region. Dr. Goodman assumes the later, more local tidal waves - reaching 5 meters high and as far as 2 km onshore - were generated by underwater landslides caused by earthquakes.

© IsraelNN Syndications

New species of giant spider discovered in Madagascar

Slovenian and US researchers have reported the discovery of a new species of spider of the giant Nephila (golden orb weaver spider) family in Africa and the island of Madagascar, the first new finding of this particular species in more than a century. Reporting their findings in a recent issue of the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE, the scientists determined that the new species is the largest orb weaver known, whereby it is the females who are the larger, with a body length of 3.8 centimetres and leg span of 10-12 centimetres.

The find was reported by Matjaz Kuntner, chair of the Institute of Biology of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Jonathan Coddington, senior scientist and curator of arachnids and myriapods in the Department of Entomology at the Smithsonians National Museum of Natural History.

Nephila spiders are renowned for being the largest web-spinning spiders. They make the largest orb webs, which often exceed one metre in diameter.

The report noted that more than 41,000 spider species are known to science and some 400 to 500 new species are added each year. But for some well-known groups, such as the giant golden orb weavers, the last valid described species dates back to 1879.

Kuntner and Coddington described how they came on the trail of the new species in seeing a giant female Nephila from South Africa in the Plant Protection Research Institute in Pretoria which "did not match any described species."

Then, a South African researcher found a male and two females in Tembe Elephant Park and it became clear that the specimens were indeed a valid new species, the two scientists reported. The new species was designated "N. komaci" in honour of Andrej Komac, a fellow-scientist and friend of Kuntner's who was killed in an accident at the time of the discoveries.

Giant golden orb weavers are common throughout the tropics and subtropics. Thousands of Nephila specimens that have been collected are in natural history museums.

Further information: http://everyone.plos.org/media.

By dpa
Nature Environment News
Image by Bernard Gagnon

Promising new path for treating traumatic injuries discovered

Scientists from Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation have made a new a discovery that would help save lives threatened by traumatic injuries like those sustained in car crashes or on the battlefield.

The discovery also holds potential for treating severe infectious diseases and diabetes.

Lead author Dr Charles Esmon has shed light on how proteins called histones can enter the bloodstream and begin to kill the lining of blood vessels, leading to uncontrolled internal bleeding.

During the study, researchers, along with Temple University’s Dr Marc Monestier, have found an antibody can block the histones’ ability to kill.

“This discovery could open the door to new ways to treat soldiers hurt in IED attacks, gunshot wound victims and people who suffer a traumatic injury,” Nature magazine quoted Esmon as saying.

“When we realized that histones were so toxic, we immediately went to work looking for a way to stop their destructive tendencies.

“When a patient is suffering from severe bleeds, these antibodies could prevent multi-organ failure,” Esmon added.

The researchers have already tested the antibodies in pre-clinical trials, where they showed promising results and no adverse effects. A potential future step, said Esmon, would be human trials.

The study appears in journal Nature Medicine.

ANI

Astronomers have discovered evidence that a long night falls over Saturn's rings

Astronomers have discovered evidence that a long night, lasting from 6 to 14 hours, falls over Saturn's rings.

However, once approximately every 15 years, night falls over the entire visible ring system for about four days. This happens during Saturn's equinox, when the sun is directly over Saturn's equator.

"The equinox is a very special geometry, where the sun is turned off as far as the rings themselves are concerned, and all energy comes from Saturn," said Dr Michael Flasar of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

Although the rings are wide, they are only about 30 feet thick. They are made of particles that are mostly water-ice.

"At first glance, Saturn's rings look broad and bland, but then we got close-up images from the Voyager flybys, and our reaction was: oh, my gosh, there's structure everywhere – what's going on?" said Linda Spilker of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California.

Researchers have discovered that while most of the ring particles are as small as dust and pebbles, there are a few chunks as big as mountains, and even some small moons several miles across embedded in the rings.

Instead of orderly orbiting around Saturn, the particles clump together and drift apart, and the rings ripple and warp under the gravitational influence of Saturn's swarm of more than 60 moons.

"The closer we look at the rings, the more complex they get," said Spilker, Deputy Project Scientist for the CASSINI mission and a Co-Investigator on CIRS. She is leading the instrument team's investigation of the rings.

"Because Saturn's rings are so extended, going out to more than twice Saturn's radius (from the cloud tops), the furthest rings get less heat from Saturn than the innermost rings, so the ring temperatures at equinox tend to fall off with distance from Saturn's centre," said Flasar.

However, the CIRS team discovered that the A-ring – the outermost of the wide, bright rings – did not cool off as much as expected during the equinox. This might give clues about its structure and evolution.

"One possibility is that the gravitational influence of moons outside the A-ring is stirring up waves in it. These waves could be much higher than the typical thickness of the rings. Since the waves rise above the ring plane, material in the waves would still be exposed to sunlight during the equinox, which would warm up the A-ring more than expected," said Spilker.

Bureau Report

Astronomers detect most distant galaxy cluster yet discovered

Astronomers, by combining data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical and infrared telescopes, have detected the most distant galaxy cluster yet discovered.

The cluster is located about 10.2 billion light-years away and is observed as it was when the universe was only about a quarter of its present age.

The galaxy cluster, known as JKCS041, beats the previous record holder by about a billion light-years. Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe.

Finding such a large structure at this very early epoch can reveal important information about how the universe evolved at this crucial stage.

JKCS041 is found at the cusp of when scientists think galaxy clusters can exist in the early universe based on how long it should take for them to assemble.

Therefore, studying its characteristics - such as composition, mass, and temperature - will reveal more about how the universe took shape.

“This object is close to the distance limit expected for a galaxy cluster,” said Stefano Andreon of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Milan, Italy. “We don’t think gravity can work fast enough to make galaxy clusters much earlier,” he added.

Distant galaxy clusters are often detected first with optical and infrared observations that reveal their component galaxies dominated by old, red stars.

JKCS041 was originally detected in 2006 in a survey from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT).

The distance to the cluster was then determined from optical and infrared observations from UKIRT, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Chandra data were the final - but crucial - piece of evidence as they showed that JKCS041 was, indeed, a genuine galaxy cluster.

The extended X-ray emission seen by Chandra shows that hot gas has been detected between the galaxies, as expected for a true galaxy cluster rather than one that has been caught in the act of forming.

“This discovery is exciting because it is like finding a Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil that is much older than any other known,” said co-author Ben Maughan, from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

The previous record holder for a galaxy cluster was 9.2 billion light-years away, XMMXCS J2215.9-1738, discovered by ESA’s XMM-Newton in 2006.

This broke the previous distance record by only about 0.1 billion light-years, while JKCS041 surpasses XMMXCS J2215.9 by about 10 times that.

ANI

Sub's wartime grave discovered

The wreck of a British naval submarine lost for more than 90 years has been found in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Estonia.

HMS E18 - with its complement of three officers and 28 ratings - went out on patrol in May 1916 and was never seen again.

The submarine was one of a handful sent to the Baltic during World War I by Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to disrupt German shipments of iron ore from Sweden and support the Russian navy.

E18 left its base in the Russian port of Reval - now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia - on the evening of 25 May 1916 and headed west.

The following day she was reported to have engaged and torpedoed a German ship.

A few days later, possibly 2 June, she is believed to have struck a German mine and sunk with all hands.

Appendicitis

Following the submarine's loss, Tsar Nicholas of Russia gave posthumous medals to the crew, including my great-uncle, Luke Landale, the 1st Lieutenant, who was awarded the Order of St Vladimir. He was just 27 years old.

The submarine was found last weekend close to the Estonian island of Hiiumaa by a Swedish marine survey company, MMT.

They were guided by information provided by an Australian descendant of one of the crew, Darren Brown - an airline engineer from Melbourne - who has spent years researching the submarine's history.

His great-grandfather, Signalman Albert Robinson survived the loss of E18 because he fell ill with appendicitis shortly before its last patrol and was confined to his bed.

The Swedish survey vessel, the MV Triad, deployed a remote-operated vehicle and obtained the first pictures showing the 181ft (55m)-long submarine in remarkably good condition.

The Baltic water is cold, brackish and anoxic which means wrecks suffer less rust and degradation than in other seas.

There are also fewer potentially damaging ocean currents.

Photographs from the seabed show the submarine with its hatch open, suggesting that it was sailing on the surface when it hit the mine.

David Hill, an expert in E-class submarines who has examined the images, said: "Without a shadow of doubt they do show an E-class submarine and certain details indicate that it is probably E18."

Successful missions

The owner of the survey company, Carl Douglas, said the discovery was the fruition of almost a decade of work.

"We will now complete our mission to document this wreck and inform the relevant authorities," he said.

"We want to investigate the exact cause of the sinking - and to honour the fallen by telling their story."

The E-class boats were considered to be Britain's most successful submarines during World War I.

E18's sister ship, E19, once sank four German transport ships on one day in October 1915.

These were the submarines that flew the Jolly Roger after successful combat operations to cock a snook at the snobbish, surface-based admirals who looked down on their submerged colleagues.

Such was the success of the eight submarines in the Baltic that it was here the Germans developed the convoy system to protect their shipping.

E18 carried five torpedo tubes and a 12lb gun on deck. It had a top surface speed of 15 knots, submerged it could make 10 knots.

With its four diesel and electric engines and its twin screws, it had a surface range of about 3,000 nautical miles; submerged it could cover more than 60 nautical miles.

But the Baltic was a dangerous place for submarines. Not only is its entrance between Denmark and Sweden extremely narrow, but the sea itself is shallow, providing few deep hiding places.

Rarely did E18 reach its diving limits of about 200 ft.

E18 was the only E-class submarine lost on active service in the Baltic; the rest were scuttled by the Navy off Helsinki in April 1918 to avoid capture by advancing German forces.

Of the 57 E-class submarines that were built during World War I, 26 were lost.

'Pants down'

Conditions on board the E-class submarines were pretty basic and extremely cramped.

There was just one bunk which the three officers shared; the ratings slept where they could.

The heads - or toilets - were more often than not a bucket. The weather in the Baltic was also extremely cold, with much of the submarine's superstructure freezing over the moment it surfaced.

E18, which was launched in early 1915, was once bombed by a Zeppelin airship after its captain, Lt Cdr Robert Halahan, surfaced so he could go to the loo on deck rather than in the cramped conditions down below.

As such, he was literally caught with his pants down.

Shortly before E18's last patrol, Lt Cdr Halahan was told by a fortune teller that his life was "in grave danger".

So he asked the local Vice-Consul's wife if she could inform his own wife of his death - if E18 was lost - before the official Admiralty telegram reached his home.

The story of E18's ill-fated voyage is to be retold in a documentary, Churchill's Lost Submarine, made by Mallinson Sadler Productions and Deep Sea Productions.

By James Landale
BBC News

Time-keeping brain neurons discovered

Groups of neurons that precisely keep time have been discovered in the primate brain by a team of researchers that includes Dezhe Jin, assistant professor of physics at Penn State University and two neuroscientists from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "This research is the first time that precise time-keeping activities have been identified in recordings of neuron activity," Jin said. The time-keeping neurons are in two interconnected brain regions, the prefrontal cortex and the striatum, both of which are known to play critical roles in learning, movement, and thought control. The timing of individual actions, like speaking, driving a car, or throwing a football, requires very precise control. Although the lives of humans and other primates are extremely dependent on this remarkable capability, surprisingly little has been known about how brain cells keep track of time. This new discovery, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is an important step toward answering this fundamental question.

To make the discovery, Jin analyzed thousands of neural-activity recordings made by Naotaka Fujii, from RIKEN, who then was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Ann Graybiels, an institute professor at MIT. Jin developed the computational tools that enabled the discovery of the novel results to emerge from the team's vast data set.

"The key finding is that neurons in the prefrontal cortex and the striatum encode the time information associated with sensory cues," Jin explained. "Visual cues, for example, elicit a variety of responses in a particular population of neurons. We found that the brain is able to tell the passage of time from the visual cues because different neurons are active at different times. Most remarkably we found that there are neurons that are active at precise times after a particular visual cue, and these neurons act like clocks that mark time."

The team of researchers trained two macaque monkeys to perform a simple eye-movement task. After receiving a "go" signal, the monkeys were free to perform the task at their own speed. The researchers found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex and the striatum consistently fired at specific times after the "go" signal -- at 100 milliseconds, 110 milliseconds, 150 milliseconds, and other intervals. Like a stopwatch, these neurons provided a fine-scale coverage over a period of several seconds. The combined activity of these neurons provided "time stamps" that could specify any given time point with a remarkable precision of less than 50 milliseconds, which is more than sufficient to account for most behaviors.

"Another key finding of our work is that the brains of the monkeys constructed neural activities to encode time even though timing was not required for the experimental task," Jin said. "We suggest that time encoding is the essential function of the brain's neural networks."

Jin said this kind of time-keeping activity long had been suggested in theories of how animals learn to recognize a stimulus that leads to delayed rewards, but his team's work is the first experimental demonstration of this Time-keeping function using recordings of neuron activity.

The discovery opens the door to many investigations, including how the brain produces this time code, and how the time code is used to control behavior and learning. In the longer term, the ability to read the brain's natural time code may facilitate the development of neural prosthetic devices for conditions such as Parkinson's disease, in which neurons in the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia are disrupted and the ability to control the timing of movements is impaired.

Source: Penn State

"Hadrian's Auditorium" Found in Rome

Archaeologists on Wednesday unveiled the remains of an ancient auditorium where scholars, politicians and poets held debates and lectures, a site discovered during excavations of a bustling downtown piazza in preparation for a new subway line.

The partially dug complex, dating back to the 2nd century A.D., is believed to have been funded by Emperor Hadrian as a school to promote liberal arts and culture.

Known as the "Athenaeum" and named after the city of Athens, which was considered the center of culture at the time, the auditorium could accommodate up to 200 people, experts said.

"Hadrian, who was a cultured emperor, wanted to re-establish the tradition of public recitation, conferences and poetry contests, as it used to happen in classic Greece," Roberto Egidi, an archaeologist overseeing the digs, said during a tour.

Egidi said the identification of the auditorium as Hadrian's is "a likely hypothesis" due to the building's specific structure, as well as references in ancient texts. The digs have turned up two terraced staircases used for seating, a corridor and marbled floors, Egidi said.

Egidi also said the building's upper floors are believed to have crumbled during an earthquake.

The auditorium was discovered during excavations at Piazza Venezia, a busy intersection in the heart of Rome, just a few meters (yards) from the Roman Forum.

Archaeologists have been probing the depths of the Eternal City for months to pave the way for some of the 30 stations of the city's planned third subway line. Many of the digs are near famous monuments or on key thoroughfares and several archaeological remains - including Roman taverns and 16th-century palace foundations - have already turned up at Piazza Venezia.

Francesco Giro, a top official with Italy's culture ministry, said the entrance to the subway would be close to the auditorium, but in an area where digs turned up only ancient sewers.

The archaeological investigations are needed only for the subway's stairwells and air ducts, because the 15 miles of subway stations and tunnels will be dug at a depth of 80 to 100 feet - below the level of any past human habitation.

However, most of the digs still have yet to reach levels that date back to Roman times, where plenty of surprises may be waiting.

Rome's 2.8 million inhabitants rely on just two subway lines, which only skirt the city center, leaving it clogged with traffic and tourists.

Plans for a third line that would serve the history-rich heart of Rome have been put off for decades amid funding shortages and fears that a wealth of archaeological discoveries would halt work.

AP

Roman temple from 4th century discovered in Tuscany

Archaeologists have discovered a Roman temple dating from the fourth century AD inside the Maremma Park, located in the central Italian region of Tuscany.

According to a report in Adnkronos Culture And Media, the rectangular-shaped temple was found by a group of archaeologists after three months of work about three kilometres from the beach of Marina di Alberese, in the province of Grosseto.

Archaeologists said that the temple suggests there was once an important Roman settlement in the area, which served as a trading port that handled goods coming from Africa and from the entire Mediterranean basin.

The goods would then be transported north to the city of Siena and the Etruscan town of Roselle or south towards the town of Heba (now called Magliano in Toscana) and the ancient town of Ager Cosanus, which is also located in Tuscany.

At the temple site, archaeologists found at least 50 Roman coins and a huge quantity of ceramic artefacts originating from all over the Mediterranean basin, but especially from Tunisia.

The team of archaeologists will be carrying out further excavations in the area, where they believe there is another temple, dedicated to the pagan goddess of hunting, Diana.

ANI

Trigger Of Deadly Food Toxin Discovered

A toxin produced by mold on nuts and grains can cause liver cancer if consumed in large quantities. UC Irvine researchers for the first time have discovered what triggers the toxin to form, which could lead to methods of limiting its production.

Because of lax or nonexistent regulation, 4.5 billion people in developing countries are chronically exposed to vast amounts of this toxin, called aflatoxin -- often hundreds of times higher than safe levels. In places such as China, Vietnam and South Africa, the combination of aflatoxin and hepatitis B virus exposure increases the likelihood of liver cancer occurrence by 60 times, and toxin-related cancer causes up to 10 percent of all deaths in those nations.

"It's shocking how profoundly these molds can affect public health," said Sheryl Tsai, UCI molecular biology & biochemistry, chemistry, and pharmaceutical sciences associate professor and lead author of a study appearing Thursday, Oct. 22, in the journal Nature that reports the finding.

Aflatoxin can colonize and contaminate nuts and grains before harvest or during storage. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration considers it an unavoidable food contaminant but sets maximum allowable limits.

The toxin wreaks havoc on a cancer-preventing gene in humans called p53. Without p53 protecting the body, aflatoxin can compromise immunity, interfere with metabolism, and cause severe malnutrition and cancer.

Tsai, graduate student Tyler Korman and undergraduate Oliver Kamari-Bidkorpeh, along with Johns Hopkins University researchers, found that a protein called PT is critical for aflatoxin to form in fungi. Previously, scientists didn't know what prompted the toxin's growth.

"The protein PT is the key to making the poison," Tsai said. "With this knowledge, perhaps we could kill the PT with drugs, inhibiting the mold's ability to make aflatoxin."

Destroying the mold -- rather than just the PT -- is the traditional method of decontamination, but it's expensive, costing hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide.

"This finding will lead to an increased understanding of how aflatoxin causes liver cancer in humans," said Dr. Frank Meyskens, Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. Endowed Chair and director of UCI's Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. "It should allow for the development of inhibitors and, hopefully, a new chemoprevention approach to this deadly cancer."

Aflatoxin belongs to a class of organic compounds called polyketides. "Because polyketides provide the building blocks for both carcinogens and some of our most significant drugs, the importance of this study cannot be overemphasized," said Christopher Hughes, molecular biology & biochemistry professor and chair.

"This discovery provides insight into the mechanism of carcinogen production as well as an Achilles' heel that can be targeted by new generations of inhibitors. The basic understanding of polyketide synthesis that this work provides will be invaluable in the design of new polyketide-derived drugs."

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

By Jennifer Fitzenberger
Source

Life Ingredients Found on Extrasolar Gas Giant

Rendering: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)

The basic ingredients for life have been found around a second extrasolar planet, scientists reported Tuesday.

Although the planet itself is not habitable by life as we know it, the discovery could mean that the basic components of life are widespread in the atmospheres of many kinds of exoplanets.

The new find was made by training both the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes on HD 209458b, a hot Jupiter that orbits very close to its sunlike star. It’s located 150 light years away in the Pegasus constellation. In December of last year, Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer Mark Swain and his team found a similar Jupiter-like planet, HD 189733b, with carbon dioxide in its atmosphere.

“Detecting organic compounds in two exoplanets now raises the possibility that it will become commonplace to find planets with molecules that may be tied to life,” Swain said in a press release.

The study of exoplanets has exploded since the first were discovered in the early 1990s. Just Monday, astronomers announced the discovery of 32 new exoplanets. And detections aren’t just growing in number, but sophistication as well. Exoplanetary scientists are learning more and more about the systems in which the planets are found.

Early exoplanet discoveries were made using a variety of techniques, but primarily by measuring the “wobble” a star exhibits in the presence of another massive body. In more recent years, scientists have looked for “transiting” planets, which pass in front of and behind their stars. Far more can be learned about these celestial bodies.

When an exoplanet passes in front of its star, scientists are able to translate small differences in the color of the light arriving at Earth into a chemical signature for the planet’s atmosphere. For example, HD 209458b has water and carbon dioxide, just like HD 189733b, but it’s also got a lot more methane.

“The high methane abundance is telling us something,” said Swain. “It could mean there was something special about the formation of this planet.”

Planetary spectroscopy is easiest to do for systems in which a large exoplanet orbits very close to its home star. With smaller planets orbiting farther from their star, it is harder to detect the minute changes in the star’s light.

Though the Kepler Space Telescope is likely to find many Earth-like planets, it could be a decade before we have the technological capability to definitively detect a rocky planet with an atmosphere and orbit like ours, an Earth twin.

By Alexis Madrigal
Wired.com
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Master mechanism behind regeneration of body parts discovered

Using zebrafish as a model, researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered how the process of regeneration of body parts works.

Some animals have the unique ability to regenerate their lost body parts. For example, Newts can lose a leg and grow a new one identical to the original. Zebrafish can re-grow fins. These animals and others also can repair damaged heart tissue and injured structures in the eye.

Humans, however, have only rudimentary regenerative abilities, so scientists hoping eventually to develop ways of repairing or replacing damaged body parts are keenly interested in understanding the mechanism behind regeneration.

They have found that some of the same genes underlie the process in different types of tissues. Genes involved in fin regeneration and heart repair are also required for rebuilding damaged light receptors in the eye, they found, suggesting that a common molecular mechanism guides the process, no matter what body part is damaged.

The researchers briefly exposed zebrafish to intense light, which destroys the light receptors in their eyes, just as staring into the sun harms human eyes. But unlike humans, who remain blinded if the damage is severe enough, zebrafish repair the damage with new nerve cells (neurons).

The researchers suspected they develop from cells in the retina called Muller glia, known to have the ability to give rise to nerve cells, and in previous work another graduate student in Raymond's lab confirmed the suspicion.

In the current work, Zhao Qin, a graduate student in the department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, wanted to find what prompts Muller glia to start the regeneration process.

To get at the question, she looked at patterns of gene expression in Muller glia from damaged, regenerating zebrafish retinas and from undamaged zebrafish retinas to see which genes are expressed differently in damaged and undamaged retinas.

"Of course I found a lot of genes - a total of 953,but two were of particular interest," Qin said.

The two genes, hspd1 and mps1, had been found in other studies to be required for fin and heart regeneration in zebrafish, and Qin's work showed that they also were switched on in Muller glia from damaged zebrafish retinas.

Co-author Pamela Raymond said: "This suggests that, although we don't fully understand it yet, there might be a bigger molecular program, involving not just these two genes but a number of cooperating genes that are required for injury-triggered regeneration."

The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It will be presented on Oct. 19 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago.

ANI

New species of first land animals discovered in India

Three new species of the rare Caecilians - the first land animals, which look like snakes or earthworms but are neither - have been discovered from forests of Manipur and Nagaland including two species having a unique "moustache-like stripe on its upper lip".

Amphibian researcher SD Biju, Associate Professor, University of Delhi, who led the team of researchers talking to Hindustan times said, "The caecilians are the first land animals and extremely important from the evolutionary point of view being the oldest of the amphibians. They are the link between animals of the land and the water. There is no evolutionary data available as there are no fossil record of these animals".

In northeast rare species faces threat due to environmental degradation.

"Apart from habitat destruction, local myth also contributes to caecilian depletion; local communities believe that caecilians are extremely poisonous 'snakes'. Actually caecilians are neither poisnous nor are they snakes! They never bite. They open their mouth only to eat food," he added.

Caecilians are carnivorous and eat insect larvae, termites, and earthworms and live for five to 20

The discovery was the result of a collaborative effort between University of Delhi, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and The Natural History Museum, London, Royal Society London.

The team of Dr Biju included Dr David Gower and Mark Wilkinson from London and Ms Rachunliu, G Kamei, Biju's PhD student and lecturer in St Stephens College, University of Delhi.

The new find was published in the latest issue of 'Zootaxa' (International Journal of Zoological Taxonomy). years.

Biju said "This peculiar characteristic of a moustache like stripe is being reported for the first time for caecilians. Worldwide, there are more than 170 species of caecilians. We have named one of the species as 'Ichthyophis moustakius' meaning an 'Ichthyophis' with moustache as they have projection of muscles marked with prominent yellow streak on their upper lip. The other species with a slight moustache is Ichthyophis sendenyu and the third species without a moustache is Ichthyophis khumhzi".

Ichthyophiidae are the family of Asiatic tailed caecilians or fish caecilians found in southeast Asia with numerous scales on their body. They lay their eggs in cavities in moist soil, some also give live birth, and the size when mature is around 30-35 centimetres.

"We are still studying the function of the bright yellow colour in the wild under the soil. As their visibility is very low one probable reason could be kind of fluorescence in the dark," he added.

"Locating this group of animals is extremely difficult simply because they burrow and live under the soil. Caecilians can be found only by digging up soil. There is no indicator that predicts where caecilians can be found. Therefore, caecilian researchers have to dig and continue to dig till they find what they are looking for. For this species we had to dig for nearly three months on a continuous basis".

Dr Biju said that it is after a decade that such a major find was of caecilians was made in the northeast, the last discovery was that of two species ichthyophis garonesis and ichthyophis husaini in 1999.

Expressing concern at the vanishing biodiversity due to habitat destruction by humans in this region by rapid conversion of forestland into agricultural land, he stressed the need to conserve these species and their habitats in northeast.

"They are very sensitive to environmental changes and small disturbances in their habitat could wipe out several species. Habitats are rapidly disappearing and immediate steps are required to protect the remaining forests from human activities like Jhum cultivation".

Bio-chemical research is being undertaken in China, Kenya, and Tanzania on the potential economic value in the chemical alkaloids to be found in caecilians for production of anti viral and anti bacterial products, he added.

By Satyen Mohapatra
Hindustan Times

Scientists develop new technique for detecting liquids that could be used as explosives

Scientists say they have developed a quick technique for detecting liquids that could be used as explosives, which if commercialized, could potentially end restrictions on liquids carried onto commercial airlines.

According to a report by BBC News, the light-based approach uses cheap components and can reliably identify a range of liquids in just one-fifth of a second.

A number of research efforts are under way to solve the liquids problem for airline passengers.

There are, in fact, several techniques which could be employed. These include nuclear magnetic spectroscopy, which uses the magnetic properties of chemical nuclei to obtain information about a sample.

However, all of the available options are either too expensive or require too much time for the practical screening of thousands of pieces of luggage.

Now, a group at the Research Centre Juelich in Germany has proposed a technique they call Hilbert spectroscopy.

Their idea is to use a very wide spectrum of light to identify either liquids that could be mixed to form an explosive, or that are already mixed.

All materials reflect light in a way that is particular to their identity, and many techniques used in both security and scientific research rely on measuring the reflection or absorption of light to identify materials.

However, in practice, measurements on baggage are confused by the packaging and items inside.

Researchers behind the new technique say they have managed to get around this problem by using a wide range of frequencies between a few gigahertz and a few terahertz, which is between 100 and 10,000 times lower in frequency than the visible light that passes easily through labels and packaging.

The trick, they say, is to use a “nano-electronic” device known as a Josephson junction. This allows the frequencies of light reflected from a sample to be quickly added up.

This in turn provides a chemical “fingerprint” of the item being analysed.

“The principal advantage of using the Josephson junction is that it can span the low and high frequency ranges covered by other, significantly more expensive devices,” said Yuri Divin, of the Research Centre Juelich.

“No one type of spectroscopy can operate from a few gigahertz to a few terahertz in the way Hilbert spectroscopy can,” he told BBC News.

“In applications where you need high-speed operation - such as security screening - it should happen fast and in a “broadband” way to make it reliable with a low number of false alarms. Hilbert spectroscopy does that,” he added.

ANI

Lots more planets found outside solar system

Astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop.

Scientists using European Southern Observatory telescopes didn't find any planets quite the size of Earth or any that seemed habitable or even unusual. But their announcement increased the number of planets discovered outside the solar system to more than 400.

Six of the newly found planets are several times bigger than Earth, increasing the population of so-called SuperEarths by more than 30 percent. Most planets discovered so far are far bigger, Jupiter-sized or even larger.

Two of the newly discovered planets were as small as five times the size of Earth and one was up to five times larger than Jupiter.

Astronomer Stephane Udry of the University of Geneva said the results support the theory that planet-formation is common, especially with certain type of common stars.

"I'm pretty confident that there are Earth-like planets everywhere," Udry said in a Web-based news conference from a conference in Portugal. "Nature doesn't like a vacuum. If there is space to put a planet there, there will be a planet there."

What astronomers said is especially exciting is the high percentage — about half — of a type of star systems with relatively light stars that had planets around them. This is more than planet-formation theory expected, astronomers said. Two of the four planets found around these type stars were relatively close to Earth size, said astronomer Xavier Bonfils of Grenoble Observatory in France.

Bureau Report

Sunken boat discovered in Deer Lake

Junior Pinksen at the shore of the sunken boat’s site where the Humber River and Deer Lake meet.
— Star photo by Katherine Hudson

There is a boat at the bottom of Deer Lake. Junior Pinksen, recreation director for the town came across it accidentally while searching for a snowmobile this past June.

Pinksen and members of the Stephan Hopkins Memorial Foundation used the foundation’s side-scan sonar equipment and boat to go back out on the water earlier this week and garner more information on the sunken boat.

“We caught sight of something earlier in the summer, but time and weather did not permit us to go back out. We put a marker there in the lake so we knew where it was and went out this past week and just reconfirmed that it’s still there,” said Pinksen.

The boat’s location is in 42 feet of water about 500 feet out from the Nicholsville side, or north end, of the lake. The foundation is using the discovery as an opportunity to train with the equipment.

“This enables us to go out and practise our skills and to adjust to different things, and when we see things of different shapes, different shadows, different lengths. We’ve got the equipment to go down and verify ... OK, it’s a stump, it’s a tree, it’s a log, or, oh wait, it’s a boat.” said Pinksen. “So we can fine tune our skills so when we’re called upon, we’re ready to go.”

The side-scan sonar identifies objects based on shadows. Pinksen said knowing what debris is at the bottom of the lake, such as stumps and logs — from the days when wood was hauled down the river to Corner Brook— allowed the team to realize they were dealing with something much bigger. Pinksen said the boat is approximately 26 feet long.

“With further investigation, we side-scanned again and adjusted our images. With the equipment that we do have, with our remote-operated vehicle, we went down and looked at what this object was. We found a 26-foot boat with a cabin on it. We didn’t know it was there and with the little bit of investigation that we’ve done, nobody really can remember a boat sinking out there, “said Pinksen.

“So now, as a group, for a training exercise, we’re going back and tweaking our skills and using our equipment to go down and practise, and be able to do visuals and get used to our equipment, in our lake. This equipment can uncover things you don’t expect. This we didn’t expect, we didn’t anticipate. It was very, very interesting.”

Pinksen isn’t sure how old the boat is, but knows the team could see sections of the boat very clearly, such as an antenna.

“Obviously that was used for some type of communication. So it’s not dated back that far,” he said.

Pinksen is eager to get back on the water, gather more information and video footage of the wreck.

“We’re going to go down and take a look at the stern, the bow, see if we can get some markings off of it. We can tell there’s a horn that’s on the top of the boat along with the antenna. There’s even a piece of rope still there attached on the front of the boat. There are windows on the boat and it looks like they can open up. Right now, with our initial investigation of it, there’s a lot of questions, but a little bit of excitement and a little bit of history there now we’re trying to uncover,” said Pinksen.

Pinksen said he’s not sure what else could be at the bottom of the lake because no one has really explored to the extent his team can with their equipment.

“Why would you ever go out and search there unless you knew a particular boat went down. We were told that maybe a snowmobile was there so we went out looking for that, and then we came across something like this. It’s sparking the curiosity of a lot of people in the community. Before, nobody really knew what was here .... We really don’t know what else is there, this is totally new.”

Pinksen said this time of year is difficult to find a calm day to go out on the water, with the wind being strong on most days. The side-scan sonar deals with shadows and when the water is choppy with waves, the images get contorted. Yet the bottom of Deer Lake is ideal for searching for oddities in the water. Its sandy bottom creates an almost flawless canvas for out-of-place objects to become obvious to a searcher.

“We’re starting the digging to try to find the history,” said Pinksen. “We’re asking locals in the communities: ‘Did you hear tell of this?’”

By KATHERINE HUDSON
The Western Star

Experts find rare Crusader-era murals in Syria

Archaeologists have discovered two Crusader-era murals depicting heaven and hell in a medieval church near Syria's coast -- a rare find that could reveal new information about the Christian knights who battled Muslims for control of the Holy Land hundreds of years ago.

Experts are now renovating the 12th century paintings, which were discovered last year by a joint Syrian-Hungarian team excavating an old Crusader fortress on a hilltop near the Mediterranean Sea in the western province of Tartous.

The discovery was announced Saturday by Bassem Jamous, Syria's director general of antiquities and museums, who told the state-run Al-Thawra newspaper that the paintings could provide information about the traditions and beliefs of the Crusaders.

The murals, which measure about 8 feet (2.5 meters) high and 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide, were hanging on either side of the altar of a 12th century chapel inside the al-Marqab Citadel and had accumulated thick layers of dust and dirt, archaeologists said.

The panel depicting hell shows people being tortured inside a wheel covered with knives and others being hanged and burned, said Marwan Hassan, head of the Department of Antiquities in Tartous. The one portraying heaven includes saints surrounded by light colors.

Hassan said the Crusader murals are important because they are the first ones found in the Middle East depicting heaven and hell.

Authorities have restricted access to the paintings while archaeologists finish their excavation

"Crusaders did not stay in one place for a long time, and so it is very rare to find such paintings left behind by them," Michel Makdisi, head of excavations at Syria's Directorate General of Antiquities, told The Associated Press.

Pope Urban II ordered the First Crusade in 1095 to establish Christian control of the Holy Land. European Crusaders soon took Jerusalem, but they lost it in 1187 to the famed Muslim leader Saladin.

The al-Marqab Citadel is one of several imposing Crusader fortresses located in Syria. The country is also home to the famed Krak des Chevaliers -- Castle of the Knights -- that Lawrence of Arabia called the best in the world.

By ALBERT AJI and BASSEM MROUE
AP

‘Brain-to-brain communication’ developed

Reading minds would soon be possible, thanks to British scientists who have developed a system that creates “brain to brain communication.”

The system, developed by a team at the University of Southampton, makes it possible to send messages formed by one person’s brain signals through an internet connection to another person’s brain many miles away.

Christopher James said the experiments were “the first baby steps” towards technologies that would allow people instantly to send thoughts, words, and images directly into the minds of others, reports The Times.

“This could be useful for those people who are locked into their bodies, who can’t speak, can’t even blink,” James said.

In their study, boffins used “brain-computer interfacing”, a technique that allows computers to analyse brain signals, that enabled them to send messages through an internet connection.

According to James, during transmission two people were connected to electrodes that measure activity in specific parts of the brain.

The first person generated a series of zeros and ones, where they imagined moving their left arm for zero and right arm for one.

After the first person’s computer recognises the binary thoughts, it sends them to the internet and then to the other person’s PC.

A lamp is then flashed at two different frequencies for one and zero.

“It’s not telepathy,” James said.

He added: “There’s no conscious thought forming in one person’s head and another conscious thought appearing in another person’s mind.

“The next experiments are to get that second person to be aware of the information that is being sent to them. For that, I need to get my thinking cap on, so to speak.”

ANI

Cassini finds Saturn's moons reshaping its rings

Some deformations from the normal pattern in the shape of F ring, one of the seven rings of Saturn, have been recently captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Scientists at NASA believe that the deformation in the shape of the ring, considered to be held together by its "shepherd moons" -- Prometheus and Pandora -- could be a result of the gravitational force exerted by the oblong moon Prometheus, visible just inside the ring.

The images captured by the spacecraft features channels carved into the ring supposedly when Prometheus occasionally forays into the ring structure while travelling on its elliptical orbit.

"These so-called streamers are formed when the elliptical orbit of Prometheus brings the moon into the F ring. The gravity of the moon pulls material out of the ring, carving out a new streamer on each 15-hour orbit," according to NASA.

A subtle deformation in the narrow F ring, situated approximately 1,40,180 kms from the centre of the planet, is also visible, in the images, toward the outer portion of the A ring, which lies close to the F-ring.

The A ring is nearly 15,000 kilometers across while the F ring is just a few hundred kilometers broad at its widest point.

The planet's seven rings are named A to G in the order they were discovered. From the innermost ring to the outermost the designators are D, C, B, A, F, G and E, according to the information on the website of "The Planetary Society", a space-interest group.

The spacecraft took the images in August this year, when it was on a mission to observe latest Saturn's equinox, which takes place every 15 Earth years or so.

At the equinox, the plane of Saturn's rings aligns with the Sun, casting shadows that bring out subtle details in their structure.

Shepherd moons are natural satellites that orbit near the outer edges of planetary rings or within gaps in the rings. They constrain the extent of the ring through their gravitational influence.

Bureau Report

Significant Hellenistic-era statue discovered in Alexandria of Egypt

The important finding unearthed during excavations conducted by the Hellenic Research Institute of the Alexandrian Civilization (HRIAC) under the direction of archaeologist Calliope Limneou-Papakosta was formally presented in the National Museum of Alexandria on Oct. 7.

The 80 cm-tall statue was found buried under 8 meters of soil and depicts a young man in standing position bearing all the characteristics found in the “epic” portraits of Alexander the Great. The discovery was made on May 4 during excavations in Alexandria’s Shalalat Gardens.

Alexandria Governor Adel Labib expressed satisfaction for the most important discovery made in Alexandria in recent times and stated that the responsible agencies in Egypt will support the excavations conducted by the Greek archaeologist.

The statue presentation attended Egyptian authorities, members of the Greek Community, a Patriarchate of Alexandria representative, Greece’s Consul General to Alexandria and representatives of institutions.

HRIAC director Kalliopi Limneou-Papakosta referring to the marble statue had described it as “a very important Hellenistic statue, very rare in terms of craftsmanship and beauty, and one that depicts a great figure of Hellenic history.”

ANA-MPA

1,700-year-old footprints discovered under Lod mosaic

Ancient footprints of the artisans who built a 1,700-year-old mosaic floor in Israeli city of Lod were recently discovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

While working on detaching the mosaic from the ground, IAA workers discovered the footprints and sandal prints on the plaster bedding below, said the report.

Experts believe the footprints belong to the builders of the mosaic, and further speculate that they had used their feet to pack the plaster. Sandal prints in different sizes were discovered.

"We were very excited," Jacques Neguer, head of the IAA Art Conservation Branch, was quoted as saying. "It is fascinating to find 1,700-year-old personal evidence of people who, just like us, worked on this very mosaic. You can really feel the generational continuity."

The mosaic floor, one of the biggest and most remarkable mosaics to be discovered in Israel, spans 180 square meters and is composed of colorful and detailed depictions of animals, plants and boats.

The impressive mosaic, discovered in 1996, is believed to have decorated the home of a wealthy man during the Roman period.

Following the discovery of the mosaic, it was covered up due to lack of the resources required to preserve and display it. The floor was recently uncovered again, with the aim of opening the site to the public, after the IAA and the Lod municipality were able to raise the funds required for the endeavor.

Xinhua

Researchers discover RNA repair system in bacteria

In new papers appearing this month in Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Illinois biochemistry professor Raven H. Huang and his colleagues describe the first RNA repair system to be discovered in bacteria. This is only the second RNA repair system discovered to date (with two proteins from T4 phage, a virus that attacks bacteria, as the first).

The novelty of the newly discovered bacterial RNA repair system is that, before the damaged RNA is sealed, a methyl group is added to the two-prime hydroxyl group at the cleavage site of the damaged RNA, making it impossible to cleave the site again. Thus, the repaired RNA is "better than new."

This discovery has implications for protecting cells against ribotoxins, a class of toxins that kills cells by cleaving essential RNAs involved in protein translation. Because the enzyme responsible for methylation in the newly-discovered RNA repair system is the Hen1 homolog in bacteria, the finding has also implications for the understanding of RNA interference and gene expression in plants, animals, and other eukaryotes. The eukaryotic Hen1 is one of three enzymes (along with Dicer and Argonaute) essential for the generation of small noncoding RNAs of 19-30 nucleotides in RNA interference.

While the Science paper describes the mechanism of the entire RNA repair process, the article in PNAS focuses on the chemistry of the methylation reaction, specifically the crystal structure of the methyltransferase domain of bacterial Hen1. Because the eukaryotic Hen1 carries out the same chemical reaction, the study should further understanding of RNA interference in eukaryotic organisms.

"Hen1 is one of three essential enzymes in generating small noncoding RNAs for RNA interference in eukaryotes," Huang said. "We found out that Hen1 homologs exist in bacteria, but bacteria have no RNA interference. Therefore, we were very curious to find out what bacterial Hen1 is used for."

"Our studies demonstrated that bacterial Hen1 carries out the same chemical reaction as its counterpart in eukaryotes, which was not surprising," he said. "What surprised us was that, instead of involvement in RNA interference, the bacterial Hen1 is part of a RNA repair and modification system. And Hen1 is responsible for producing the repaired RNA that is 'better than new.'"

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Source

Rare terracotta youth statue found in China

A rare, ancient terracotta statue of a young warrior was discovered at a major archeological site in Xian, China, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported yesterday.

The discovery represents a significant find for the study of Chin Dynasty military history as well as China's iconic terracotta warriors (兵馬俑).

Previously discovered clay warriors have a mustache or goatee; this latest figure has no beard, appearing to be a child vigorously brandishing a spear at the army's vanguard, said Yuen Chung-i (袁仲一) former curator of the Terracotta Army Museum, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Of the more than 1,000 warriors that have been recently excavated, archeologists have found no more than 10 adolescent soldiers, most of whose faces are decayed. The recently unearthed solider has a clear face contour.

In ancient Chinese tradition, it was considered inappropriate for a man to have no beard; criminals were forced to shave their beards as punishment. Yuen indicated that craftsmen would not model figures deemed disrespectful to the Emperor, and all mortuary objects underwent careful examination.

In addition to more than 1,000 recently excavated soldiers, the Terracotta Army comprises more than 8,000 other soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses buried under the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, around 210 BCE.

The figures, the majority of which are still underground, were discovered in 1974 near Xian in China's Shaanxi province. The artifacts also include officials, acrobats and musicians.

The China Post

New Leonardo da Vinci painting 'discovered'

Art experts believe a new portrait by Leonardo da Vinci may have been discovered thanks to a 500-year-old fingerprint.

The small picture of a young woman in profile was previously believed to be a German work from the early 19th century and has changed hands in recent years for about £12 000.

But a growing number of leading Leonardo scholars agree the work is almost certainly by the Renaissance figurehead because it appears to have his fingerprint on it. Carbon dating and infrared analysis of Leonardo's techniques back up the theory.

If the scholars are correct, it will be the first major work by Leonardo to be identified for 100 years and will be worth tens of millions of pounds.

Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University, is so convinced the portrait is a Leonardo that he has written an as yet unpublished 200-page book about it.

Kemp said he first thought the find was "too good to be true -- after 40 years in the Leonardo business I thought I'd seen it all".

But gradually, "all the bits fell into place like a well-made piece of furniture. All the drawers slotted in," he told the Times.

The fingerprint, which corresponds to the tip of the index or middle finger, was found by Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, when he examined images taken of the portrait by the revolutionary multispectral camera. Multi-spectral analysis can capture light from frequencies beyond the visible light range, such as infrared, allowing the extraction of information that the human eye fails to capture.

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Biro believed the fingerprint, which was found near the top left corner of the work, was "highly comparable" to a fingerprint on Leonardo's St Jerome in the Vatican, the Antiques Trade Gazette reported.

The magazine said infrared analysis showed "significant" stylistic parallels with those in Leonardo's Portrait of a Woman in Profile in Windsor Castle and showed the work was made by a left-handed artist, as Leonardo is known to have been.

Drawn in ink and chalks, the beautiful young woman's costume and elaborate hairstyle reflected Milanese fashion of the late 15th century, and carbon analysis was consistent with that dating, the magazine reported.

Kemp believed that "by a process of elimination", the fresh-faced teenager could be Bianca Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan from 1452-1508, and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis.

Kemp said he thought the portrait, which measures 33cm x 22cm, must date from around 1496 when, aged 13 or 14, the Bella Principessa married the Duke's army captain, Galeazzo Sanseverino, a patron of Leonardo's. She died four months after the wedding.

It would be Leonardo's first known portrait of the princess, although he painted two of the duke's mistresses Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli.

The picture was sold at Christie's in New York in 1998, in an Old Master Drawings sale as a Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, catalogued as German, early 19th century, with an estimate of $12 000 to $16 000.

It sold for $19 000 and later went for a similar sum to Canadian-born collector Peter Silverman, in 2007.

Silverman believed there was more to the portrait and delved into the matter after a discussion last year with Dr Nicholas Turner, formerly the keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum.

Silverman told the Times that when he first saw the picture, "my heart started to beat a million times a minute. I immediately thought this could be a Florentine artist. The idea of Leonardo came to me in a flash."

The portrait is due to go on display in an exhibition in Sweden next year.

Guardian News and Media 2009
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