A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a galaxy about 3.6 billion light-years away has wowed astronomers around the world — the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event.
At 3:47 a.m. EDT, April 27, Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) triggered on an eruption, designated GRB 130427A, of high-energy light in the constellation Leo.
The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) recorded one gamma ray… read more
A team of neurosurgeons from the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) recently stepped into CAVE2 — a next-generation, large-scale, 320-degree, immersive, 3-D virtual environment — to solve a vexing problem that presented itself in the arteries of the brain of a real patient.
The method they used could someday benefit hundreds of thousands of Americans who fall… read more
A massive, highly sophisticated piece of malware has been newly found infecting systems in Iran and elsewhere and is believed to be part of a well-coordinated, ongoing, state-run cyberespionage operation, Wired Threat Level reports.
Dubbed “Flame,” the malware is an espionage toolkit that has been infecting targeted systems in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa for at least two… read more
In “Censors on Campus,” Index on Censorship magazine asks whether lives might be saved by making vital research freely available.
Some parts of Asia and Africa the fight against malaria is severely hampered because doctors and researchers are denied full access to the 3,000 articles published on the disease each year. At the same time, scientists living and working in developing countries are prevented from becoming global… read more
Most of the specific genes long thought to be linked to intelligence probably have no bearing on one’s IQ, and new study by psychological scientist Christopher Chabris of Union College has revealed.
Chabris and David Laibson, a Harvard economist, led an international team of researchers that analyzed a dozen genes using large data sets that included both intelligence testing and genetic data.
In nearly every case, the researchers found… read more
The most efficient machines remember what has happened to them, and use that memory to predict what the future holds.
That is the conclusion of a theoretical study by Susanne Still, a computer scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and her colleagues, and it should apply equally to “machines” ranging from molecular enzymes to computers, Nature News reports. The finding could help to improve scientific… read more
The human genome has been busy over the past 5,000 years. Human populations have grown exponentially, and new genetic mutations arise with each generation, says Nature News.
Humans now have a vast abundance of rare genetic variants in the protein-encoding sections of the genome.
A study published in Nature now helps to clarify when many of those rare variants arose.
Researchers used deep sequencing to locate… read more
New research from the University of Glasgow suggests that lifespan is affected by the rate at which bodies grow early in life: manipulating growth rates in stickleback fish can extend their lifespan by nearly a third or reduce it by 15 percent.
A team from the University’s Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine altered the growth rate of 240 fish by exposing… read more
Nanoparticles carrying a toxin found in bee venom can destroy human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while leaving surrounding cells unharmed, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown.
The finding is an important step toward developing a vaginal gel that may prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.“Our hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people… read more
Mathematicians at UC Davis have come up with a new way to crinkle up the fabric of space-time — at least in theory.
“We show that space-time cannot be locally flat at a point where two shock waves collide,” said Blake Temple, professor of mathematics at UC Davis. “This is a new kind of singularity in general relativity.”
Background
Einstein’s theory… read more
About two hours after landing on Mars and beaming back its first image, NASA’s Curiosity rover transmitted a higher-resolution image of its new Martian home, Gale Crater.
“Curiosity’s landing site is beginning to come into focus,” said John Grotzinger, project manager of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
“In the image, we are looking to the northwest. What you see on… read more
In a study at the University of California, San Diego and VA San Diego Healthcare, researchers were able to regenerate “an astonishing degree” of axonal growth at the site of severe spinal cord injury in rats.
Their research revealed that early stage neurons have the ability to survive and extend axons to form new, functional neuronal relays across an injury site in the adult central… read more
Salk Institute for Biological Studies researchers have shared a how-to secret for biologists: code for Amazon Cloud that significantly reduces the time necessary to process data-intensive microscopic images.
The method promises to speed research into the underlying causes of disease by making single-molecule microscopy of practical use for more laboratories.
“This is an extremely cost-effective way for labs to process super-resolution images,” says … read more
Apple was granted a patent for a head-mounted display apparatus on Tuesday.
Titled “Peripheral treatment for head-mounted displays,” it describes how images could be projected to generate a peripheral display that would create “an enhanced viewing experience” for the user.
Apple calls its implementation a head-mounted display (HMD) rather than a head-up display (HUD), and it’s designed to display video information in front of one’s eyes.… read more
Bigelow Aerospace and NASA say they’ve agreed to look at ways for private ventures to contribute to human exploration missions, perhaps including construction of a moon base, but not asteroids and Mars, NBC News Cosmic Log reports.
The Moon ranks high among the targets that Bigelow Aerospace has in mind. The Nevada-based company has been working on moonbase concepts for years, including a… read more