Scientists have identified the oldest known bee (Melittosphex burmensis), a 100 million-year-old specimen preserved in amber.
…The ancient insect, trapped in tree sap, is at least 35-45 million years older than any other known bee fossil.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have demonstrated that they can cheaply, quickly and accurately identify even subnanogram amounts of weapon-grade plutonium and uranium. Their work was presented in September at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society.
The Indonesian volcano Talang on the island of Sumatra had been dormant for centuries when, in April 2005, it suddenly rumbled to life. A plume of smoke rose 1000 meters high and nearby villages were covered in ash. Fearing a major eruption, local authorities began evacuating 40,000 people. UN officials, meanwhile, issued a call for help: Volcanologists should begin monitoring Talang at once. Little did they know, high above Earth, a small satellite was already watching the volcano. No one told it to. EO-1 (short for “Earth Observing 1″) noticed the warning signs and started monitoring Talang on its own.
Several features of credit cards make them different from traditional forms of lending and encourage high levels of consumer debt by taking advantage of “consumers’ cognitive and behavioral vulnerabilities,” Adam J. Goldstein wrote in the latest issue of the University of Illinois Law Review. Goldstein is a former editor at the review who now works for a Chicago law firm.
Of all the reasons to lose weight, perhaps the dumbest one was given global exposure today by a journal not previously known for its medical or behavioral health credentials.
Water, the only indispensable ingredient of life, is just about the most versatile stuff on Earth. Depending on its temperature we can heat our homes with it, bathe in it, and even strap on skates and glide across it, to name only the most common of its many forms. When subjected to high pressures, however, water can take any of more than 15 different forms.
Growing evidence shows that the dinosaurs and their contemporaries were not wiped out by the famed Chicxulub meteor impact alone, according to a paleontologist who says multiple meteor impacts, massive volcanism in India and climate changes culminated in the end of the Cretaceous Period. The Chicxulub impact may have been the lesser and earlier of a series of meteor impacts and volcanic eruptions that pounded life on Earth for more than 500,000 years, say Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller and her collaborators Thierry Adatte from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and Zsolt Berner and Doris Stueben from Karlsruhe University in Germany.
In the long run, a drink or two a day may be good for the brain. Researchers found that moderate amounts of alcohol – amounts equivalent to a couple of drinks a day for a human – improved the memories of laboratory rats. Such a finding may have implications for serious neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, said Matthew During, the study’s senior author and a professor of molecular virology, immunology and cancer genetics at Ohio State University.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Tyzeka (telbivudine) for the treatment of adults with chronic hepatitis B (HBV), a serious viral infection that attacks the liver and can cause lifelong infection, scarring of the liver (cirrhosis), and eventually liver cancer, liver failure, and death. Tyzeka is a new molecular entity, which is a term used by the FDA to describe a medication containing an active substance that has never before been approved for marketing in any form in the United States.
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have created a new chemical compound that could be developed into a drug treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. The research team has used a family of long chain sugars called Heparan Sulphates (HS), found on nearly every cell of the body, to produce a new compound that can prevent the formation of clumps of small proteins that form in the brain. These clumps or ‘plaques’ disrupt the normal function of cells leading to progressive memory loss which is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.
NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories mission, known as STEREO, successfully launched Wednesday at 8:52 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. STEREO’s nearly identical twin, golf cart-sized spacecraft will make observations to help researchers construct the first-ever three-dimensional views of the sun. The images will show the star’s stormy environment and its effects on the inner solar system, vital data for understanding how the sun creates space weather.
No matter how low the job approval rating of Congress goes – it is now a healthy 16 percent – people still say their own representative is pretty good. It’s those partisan hacks, thieves and pederasts from other districts who are no good. The same phenomenon seems to be true in health care as well: The system is rotten and the prices are too high but “my doctor is good and damned if I won’t pay for the best possible care.”
For more on how historic districts in New Orleans built homes above floods and how new postwar construction didn’t link to
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1161755730212810.xml&coll=1
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – One of the world’s most famous fossils – the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974 – will go on display for the first time in the United States next year, and is likely to make a stop at the Smithsonian.
Even the Ethiopian public has seen Lucy only twice. [Updated]
From The Onion:
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists overseeing the ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission said Monday that the Spirit’s latest transmissions could indicate a growing resentment of the Red Planet.
A new method for targeting malignant brain tumors through inducing the cancerous cells to “commit suicide” has been developed by a team of researchers headed by a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor of biochemistry. Alexander Levitzki, who is the Wolfson Family Professor of Biochemistry, his research associate, Dr. Alexei Shir, and his colleagues from the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany, have pioneered a technique in which a molecule containing long, double-stranded RNA is attached to epidermal growth factor (EGF) and delivered selectively to cells with an abnormally high number of epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR).
Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) are working on an implantable electronic chip that may help establish new nerve connections in the part of the brain that controls movement. Their most recent study, to be published in the Nov. 2, 2006, edition of Nature, showed such a device can induce brain changes in monkeys lasting more than a week. Strengthening of weak connections through this mechanism may have potential in the rehabilitation of patients with brain injuries, stroke, or paralysis.
Abused children may have a difficult time developing adult relationships with new people who reminded them of their abusive parent, even if only implicitly, according to a recent study published in the November issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, an official publication of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, published by SAGE Publications.
