“…engineers have produced a material that absorbs on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it — a development that promises to open new frontiers in space technology….”The reflectance tests showed that our team had extended by 50 times the range of the material’s absorption capabilities. Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared,”…”No one else has achieved this milestone yet.”…” Full Slice

“…”The result is thrilling,”…”It might be an indicator that the universe is different from what we thought it to be.” [scientist] says he’s open to the idea that fundamental constants might actually change over time and position, as scientists don’t have a decent explanation for why the fundamental constants have their particular values anyway. Still, the huge claim that a constant changes demands weighty evidence—which the new data are not…They say the chances that random statistical fluctuations in the data could produce a fake signal as big are less than 1 in 15,000…” Full Slice

“…In this technique, antibodies anchored to gold electrodes on a piece of quartz crystal act like the “hooks” on the sticky side of a Velcro strap, grabbing molecules of interest as they pass by. The more molecule-sensing antibodies on the surface of the sensor, the more sensitive the QCM device’s detection capabilities….” Full Slice

“An international team of researchers…has shed light on the inner workings of the endocycle, a common cell cycle that fuels growth in plants, animals and some human tissues and is responsible for generating up to half of the Earth’s biomass. This discovery…leads to a new understanding of how cells grow and how rates of cell growth might be increased or decreased, which has important implications in both agriculture and medicine….” Full Slice

“…The researchers analyzed 18 canned tomato products from various markets with NMR and found that the instrument could estimate most of the tastes assessed by the human taste testers. But the NMR instrument went even farther. By determining the chemical composition, it showed which compound is related to which sensory descriptor….” Full Slice

“…”We were initially surprised to learn how much the pancreatic beta cell contributes to the onset and severity of diabetes,”…”The observation that beta cell malfunction significantly contributes to multiple disease signs, including insulin resistance, was unexpected. We noted, however, that studies from other laboratories published over the past few decades had alluded to this possibility.”

In healthy people, pancreatic beta cells monitor the bloodstream for glucose
using glucose transporters anchored in their cellular membranes. When blood
glucose is high, such as after a meal, beta cells take in this additional glucose and respond by secreting insulin in a timed and measured response. In turn, insulin stimulates other cells in the body to take up glucose, a nutrient they need to produce energy. In this newly discovered pathway, high levels of fat were found to interfere with two key transcription factors—proteins that switch genes on and off.

These transcription factors, FOXA2 and HNF1A, are normally required for the production of an enzyme called GnT-4a glycosyltransferase that modifies proteins with a particular glycan (polysaccharide or sugar) structure….” Full Slice

“When populations around the globe started turning to agriculture around 10,000 years ago, regardless of their locations and type of crops, a similar trend occurred: The height and health of the people declined.

“This broad and consistent pattern holds up when you look at standardized studies of whole skeletons in populations,”…early agriculturalists experienced nutritional deficiencies and had a harder time adapting to stress, probably because they became dependent on particular food crops, rather than having a more significantly diverse diet.”

She adds that growth in population density spurred by agriculture settlements led to an increase in infectious diseases, likely exacerbated by problems of sanitation and the proximity to domesticated animals and other novel disease vectors….” Full Slice

“…2008 saw the longest and weakest solar minimum since scientists have been monitoring the sun with space-based instruments.

Observations have shown, however, that magnetic effects on Earth due to the sun, effects that cause the aurora to appear, did not go down in synch with the cycle of low magnetism on the sun…these effects on Earth did in fact reach a minimum — indeed they attained their lowest levels of the century — but some eight months later. The scientists believe that factors in the speed of the solar wind, and the strength and direction of the magnetic fields embedded within it, helped produce this anomalous low….” Full Slice

“…researchers…describe how a single cell genetically engineered to express green fluorescent protein (GFP) can be used to amplify the light particles called photons into nanosecond-long pulses of laser light…the first report of a successful biological laser based on a single, living cell…we wondered whether there was a fundamental reason why laser light, as far as we know, does not occur in nature or if we could find a way to achieve lasing in biological substances or living organisms…Not only did the cell-based device produce pulses of laser light as in the GFP solution experiment, the researchers also found that the spherical shape of the cell itself acted as a lens, refocusing the light and inducing emission of laser light at lower energy levels than required for the solution-based device. The cells used in the device survived the lasing process and were able to continue producing hundreds of pulses of laser light…”One of our long-term goals will be finding ways to bring optical communications and computing, currently done with inanimate electronic devices, into the realm of biotechnology. That could be particularly useful in projects requiring the interfacing of electronics with biological organisms….” Full Slice

“Single-cell organisms have been known to live deep in the earth, more than 9,000 feet below the surface.

But until now, it was thought that the temperature, energy, oxygen and space constraints of the subsurface biosphere were too extreme for multicellular organisms….” Full Slice

“We report new functions of the cell-adhesion molecule E-cadherin in murine pluripotent cells. E-cadherin is highly expressed in mouse embryonic stem cells, and interference with E-cadherin causes differentiation. During cellular reprogramming of mouse fibroblasts by OCT4, SOX2, KLF4 and c-MYC, fully reprogrammed cells were exclusively observed in the E-cadherin-positive cell population and could not be obtained in the absence of E-cadherin. Moreover, reprogrammed cells could be established by viral E-cadherin in the absence of exogenous OCT4. Thus, reprogramming requires spatial cues that cross-talk with essential transcription factors. The cell-adhesion molecule E-cadherin has important functions in pluripotency and reprogramming.” Full Slice

“It may not be Atlantis, but evidence of a lost civilization probably lies beneath the waves all along the Washington coast — in fact, all along the Pacific coast from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

A recently announced discovery of stone tools on California’s northern Channel Islands, just across the Santa Barbara Channel from the city of Santa Barbara, may tell us a good deal about what that civilization did….” Full Slice

“…An international collaboration of scientists…may have discovered humanity’s beneficiary – a tiny variation within a single gene that determines the formation of brain convolutions…”The demonstration of the fundamental role of this gene in human brain development affords us a step closer to solve the mystery of the crown jewel of creation, the cerebral cortex,”…The folding of the brain is seen only in mammals with larger brains, such as dolphins and apes, and is most pronounced in humans….” Full Slice

The inventor of the vanadium redox flow battery is interviewed.

“Data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have revealed that Enceladus, one of Saturn’s diminutive moons, is linked to Saturn by powerful electrical currents - beams of electrons that flow back and forth between the planet and moon…The work also reports the presence of an ultraviolet auroral spot in Saturn’s upper atmosphere, and of energetic ions flowing towards Enceladus….” Full Slice