tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853179293659047962024-02-21T02:42:19.604+01:00This week's discoveriesTriweekly update of the things happening in the world of science, made understandable for everyone.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-20275827821158448382017-10-26T19:26:00.001+02:002017-10-26T19:30:57.298+02:00Neutron Star kilonova<span id="docs-internal-guid-714fe22e-5467-e435-5ccd-768440d3c779"></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-714fe22e-5467-e435-5ccd-768440d3c779"><span style="font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 20pt; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Dangerous Waltz</span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Over 130 million years ago, before dinosaurs existed, there were two neutron stars. These two neutron stars were in a dance, spinning around each other at high speed; they were getting closer and closer with every revolution until they finally collided and became one, about 130 million years ago.</b></span></span></h3>
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What is a neutron star?</h3>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-714fe22e-5467-e435-5ccd-768440d3c779"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Neutron stars are born when the core of a massive star is compacted into a sphere with a diameter of about 12 km. The result is a highly dense star which spins on its own axis at extremely high speeds; the mass of a typical neutron star is about twice the mass of our own sun. Neutron stars are so dense that if you were to take a piece that was about the size of a sugar cube, it would weigh at least 1-billion tons (that’s the mass of Mt Everest).</span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-714fe22e-5467-e435-5ccd-768440d3c779"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The rapid spin of the star is due to the conservation of angular momentum; a good analogy for angular momentum is a figure skater. When figure skaters spin, they can spin with their arms out or with their arms near themselves. When they spin with their arms closer to their bodies, they decrease their radius of gyration. Since they keep the same momentum, their angul</span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ar velocity increases to compensate. The same exact thing happens in stars. When the core of a star is compacted into such a small area, the radius of gyration decreases immensely, thereby leading the star’s angular velocity </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">to compensate by increasing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gravitational whats?</span></span></h4>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-714fe22e-5467-e435-5ccd-768440d3c779"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gravitational waves are disturbances in the space time fabric that travel at the speed of light and are caused by the displacement of objects with mass. Warping of space-time is done by any massive object (object with mass). The only issue with finding evidence of this on earth is that significant warping requires immense mass. Since we can’t bring anything so massive to earth, we make do with what we can (i.e: the stars). In the video below, there is an animation of two massive bodies orbiting each other and losing energy as they go along until they eventually collide. We can see that, the faster they go, the more gravitational waves are created. This goes on until the two crash and release a deluge of gravitational waves.</span></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-714fe22e-5467-e435-5ccd-768440d3c779"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bdB3tL9VNds/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bdB3tL9VNds?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-714fe22e-5467-e435-5ccd-768440d3c779">Courtesy of NASA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Striking gold!</span></span></h4>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-714fe22e-5467-e435-5ccd-768440d3c779"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=485317929365904796" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=485317929365904796" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=485317929365904796" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=485317929365904796" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the collision of these two neutron stars, they released a large amount of energy in a kilonova. This explosion released a tremendous amount of energy, and it also generated precious metals. When the two neutron stars collided, they released neutrons in their surroundings, effectively bombarding any nearby atoms and changing their chemical composition. Since elements created in the core of stars typically get no heavier than iron, this bombardment increases the mass of these atoms to make rare and precious metals.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/science/neutron_stars.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/science/neutron_stars.html</span></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw</span></a></div>
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<a href="https://phys.org/news/2017-10-astronomers-cosmic-gold-precious-metals.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://phys.org/news/2017-10-astronomers-cosmic-gold-precious-metals.html</span></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.livescience.com/60701-ligo-neutron-stars-heavy-metals-gold.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.livescience.com/60701-ligo-neutron-stars-heavy-metals-gold.html</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/the-making-of-cosmic-bling/543030/">https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/the-making-of-cosmic-bling/543030/</a></span></div>
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<a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov//vis/a010000/a010500/a010543/WhtDwrfCollid_ProRes_720x486_59.94fps.webmhd.webm" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov//vis/a010000/a010500/a010543/WhtDwrfCollid_ProRes_720x486_59.94fps.webmhd.webm</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (VIDEO)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small; white-space: normal;">If you want to read more about astronomy, click </span><a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Astronomy" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: medium; white-space: normal;">here.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click </span><a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Physics" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">here</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> to read more about physics</span></div>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09524218400399341756noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-18964377490488493332017-10-26T19:26:00.000+02:002017-10-26T19:26:09.429+02:00DIY fuel for Martian astronauts<br />
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Plans for a manned mission to Mars are on the news just about every other day. But for now, such a manned mission seems impossible. However, Portuguese scientists have brought us one step closer taking people to Mars.</span></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/STS120LaunchHiRes-edit1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="511" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/STS120LaunchHiRes-edit1.jpg" width="204" /></a><b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Houston, my rocket is too heavy</span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One of the
main problems when travelling to Mars, and for space travel in general, is
fuel. Of course, fuel is absolutely necessary to travel around in space, but
it’s also extremely heavy. For example, the fuel that the space shuttle needed
was almost 20 times as heavy as the space shuttle itself. And the space
shuttles always stayed relatively close to earth. Imagine the fuel a spacecraft
flying to Mars, landing there, launching again, and travelling back to earth
would need. It’s impossible to build such a rocket, let alone launch it. Because
of this, space engineers thought for a long time that it would be impossible to
have people return from Mars, making a trip to Mars a lifelong mission. But
now, Vasco Gama and his team at the university of Lisbon have made an
interesting discovery that could change this.</span></span><br />
<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Don't bring it, make it!</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://web.ist.utl.pt/ist13264/img/mars_isru.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://web.ist.utl.pt/ist13264/img/mars_isru.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This
discovery has everything to do with the atmosphere of Mars. Martian air
contains roughly the same stuff; oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, as the earth’s
atmosphere. The only difference is that the proportions are vastly different.
Mars’s atmosphere consists of over 95 percent carbon dioxide, while on earth,
that’s just 0,04 percent. Gama and his team have come up with a clever
technique to make that high percentage of carbon dioxide on Mars useful. They
have found a way to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon monoxide using a
special substance called a plasma. The oxygen can of course be breathed by the
astronauts staying on Mars, but it can also be used as rocket fuel, in
combination with carbon monoxide. This means that the astronauts can make fuel
for their rocket while they are on Mars, so they don’t need to bring it along
with them. With this new technique, we can go to Mars with lighter and thus
safer rockets, bringing the chances of a manned mission to Mars one step
closer. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Earth can tag along as well</span></b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But that’s
not everything. On earth, we’re currently facing a great problem in the shape
of global warming. This is caused by carbon dioxide emissions, which have
greatly raised the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. With this plasma
technique discovered by Gama and his team, we might be able to change some of
our ‘own’ carbon dioxide into oxygen. However, there are some challenges when
it comes to this. For example, the amount of carbon dioxide on earth is way
lower than the amount on Mars, making it harder to ‘find’ the molecules in the
air. More research has to be done to make this new technique properly useful on
both earth and Mars, but the first step has been taken.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=485317929365904796" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=485317929365904796" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=485317929365904796" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=485317929365904796" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6595/aa8dcc#psstaa8dccs3">http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6595/aa8dcc#psstaa8dccs3</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(planeet)#Fysieke_eigenschappen">https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(planeet)#Fysieke_eigenschappen</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/STS120LaunchHiRes-edit1.jpg"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/STS120LaunchHiRes-edit1.jpg</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://web.ist.utl.pt/ist13264/img/mars_isru.jpg"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://web.ist.utl.pt/ist13264/img/mars_isru.jpg</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If you want to read more about astronomy, click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Astronomy">here.</a></span></div>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-24823293133526872462016-11-21T20:06:00.004+01:002016-11-21T22:08:39.173+01:00Pluto got tipped over by its ice cap<span id="docs-internal-guid-7cb7825e-883d-0e0d-933c-28cd534afdc1"></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-7cb7825e-883d-0e0d-933c-28cd534afdc1"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Pluto is an extremely cold planet with quite a lot of ice. So much so that New Horizons discovered that it even tilted Pluto to its side.</span></span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-7cb7825e-883d-0e0d-933c-28cd534afdc1"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That’s a whole lot of ice</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A few months ago, space probe New Horizons flew past Pluto. The advanced equipment it has on board includes a device that detects solarwinds, an ultraviolet detector, and a multitude of cameras and telescopes. These cameras have already taken extremely detailed pictures of Pluto, revealing things about the dwarf planet that we had no idea about previously. For example, we now know that our previous information about Pluto’s size was inaccurate; it is a bit bigger than we thought, but unfortunately still not big enough to be classified as a planet. New Horizons also discovered that a large part of Pluto is covered by a tear-shaped ice cap which is so big and so heavy that scientists think that it has actually caused the dwarf planet’s tilt. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2uZSEAEtYIG1SztL3eGqW6N9T7-E9P9NFndL5FLTKNxBoiUbPiQhFDl0gCdEbyuMD_SS_exybbzsHmPyEi7eyWxM2K6Jp1Z93IQcJi1AyJ-PylMHDN4602TesU0NjMPmDCWLhWQ_1D3w/s1600/plutoiceafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2uZSEAEtYIG1SztL3eGqW6N9T7-E9P9NFndL5FLTKNxBoiUbPiQhFDl0gCdEbyuMD_SS_exybbzsHmPyEi7eyWxM2K6Jp1Z93IQcJi1AyJ-PylMHDN4602TesU0NjMPmDCWLhWQ_1D3w/s320/plutoiceafb2.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There goes your frisbee</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Pluto’s rotational axis is tilted about 60 degrees. Previously, scientists had no idea what the reason was. Now, James Keane and his team think it has something to do with the enormous ice cap, Sputnik Planitia. They think that the ice cap is so heavy that it has actually tipped over the dwarf planet a little. Imagine Pluto as a frisbee and the ice cap as a small weight stuck to one side of the frisbee. If you throw the frisbee, it will tilt to the side because of the weight; the same thing has happened to Pluto.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The imaginary bar is shown in re</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: bold;">Hey moon!</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But there’s something else that’s a bit odd about the icecap that has to do with Pluto’s moon. Pluto and its biggest moon, Charon, are always facing each other with the same side. So a Plutonian would only ever see one side of Charon and a creature living on Charon would only see one side of Pluto. Pluto and Charon seem to be connected to each other by an imaginary bar. The ice cap however, is located exactly opposite to the side that’s facing Charon. So our Charon-creature would never see the icecap. And this is exactly one of the places where a heavy weight like the ice cap could be located without tilting the dwarf planet further. If you imagine the frisbee with the weight again, but now, you stick the weight exactly in the center of the frisbee. Then it won’t tilt to the side anymore when you throw it. The same is true for the location of the ice cap on Pluto, because Charon keeps the dwarf planet in check.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Satellites are expensive</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But the problem is, we can only guess how heavy the icecap is. And how it actually influences Pluto’s gravity. To study this more closely, we need a satellite orbiting around Pluto. This satellite could then study closely how Pluto’s gravity field behaves, and if the ice cap actually has any effect on it. This won’t happen anytime soon however, since it’s incredibly difficult and expensive to get a satellite in orbit around such a distant dwarf planet. But for now, it’s a good explanation for Pluto’s tipped axis and the location of Sputnik Planitia.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Astronomy">here</a> to read more about astronomy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/pluto-s-heavy-heart-may-have-moved-its-poles" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/pluto-s-heavy-heart-may-have-moved-its-poles</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://sci-hub.cc/10.1038/nature20120" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://sci-hub.cc/10.1038/nature20120</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/plutos-icy-heart-poles-wandered-180961111/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/plutos-icy-heart-poles-wandered-180961111/</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.space.com/29924-pluto-larger-than-thought-nasa-flyby.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.space.com/29924-pluto-larger-than-thought-nasa-flyby.html</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Science_payload" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Science_payload</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_polar_wander" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_polar_wander</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt</span></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">https://cdn.instructables.com/FCF/C3BB/HIYWUAXK/FCFC3BBHIYWUAXK.MEDIUM.jpg</span></div>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-18833868468660896042016-11-12T23:28:00.003+01:002016-11-21T21:50:55.159+01:00Zombie mice and fish?<span id="docs-internal-guid-560f668f-5aa4-e5a5-5574-0f726f7b0436"></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-560f668f-5aa4-e5a5-5574-0f726f7b0436"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When you’re dead, you’re dead, right? Which means nothing is going on in your body anymore. But recent studies have proven that that may not be so true after all.</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZf9EevQPNLqUBecZ4QCMaXi3sT_NeSvrSjqonx6ywy63gc2EAyKbUO52ZArHOCRc5_gIwPCvurNRBzXkOihB6zfqsYxy21smKjUxc1aLtl4nEmFu1rN3cwKPRyVjCYggmt1J0V68PbKY/s1600/zombiemiceafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZf9EevQPNLqUBecZ4QCMaXi3sT_NeSvrSjqonx6ywy63gc2EAyKbUO52ZArHOCRc5_gIwPCvurNRBzXkOihB6zfqsYxy21smKjUxc1aLtl4nEmFu1rN3cwKPRyVjCYggmt1J0V68PbKY/s320/zombiemiceafb1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It’s alive!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Alexander Pozhitkov and his team have published a study in which they discovered that some genes keep being active for up to a few days after an organism died. Or after mice and zebrafish died, at least, because that are the two species Pozhitkov and his team studied. They found out that the cells in those animals keep producing proteins, because that’s what genes do, up to four days after the zebrafish died. The genes in the mouse survived a little shorter; up to a day. This is really weird, because this essentially means that the cells of the mouse are still alive after the mouse died. From this, Pozhitkov and his team concluded that these cells must also still have enough energy to create these proteins. This is something scientists thought was impossible. Because when an organism, like a mouse, is dead, its heart stops. This means now blood flows through the mouse’s body anymore, and its cells don’t get enough oxygen and can’t produce any energy anymore. But it appears that some energy is still around in the cell.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjURIJqx7UM5XZgcjTrRW9cIkDcirCjk7lN5MxNenW80UyVgQSML9v3o10izT33gfNKq8TplKbwvgGCdObi1DGh43Rjnwt4B6Rzut1rpzEnvBsGu5CuMcLHkhudQAnEQfeDY7K1Mam4qP4/s1600/zombiemiceafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjURIJqx7UM5XZgcjTrRW9cIkDcirCjk7lN5MxNenW80UyVgQSML9v3o10izT33gfNKq8TplKbwvgGCdObi1DGh43Rjnwt4B6Rzut1rpzEnvBsGu5CuMcLHkhudQAnEQfeDY7K1Mam4qP4/s320/zombiemiceafb2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nah, not really.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But does this mean that zebrafish and mice are essentially zombies for up to four days? Of course not. All active genes are related to stress, immunity and inflammation. So those genes are only creating proteins that were useful in the few moments before the mouse or zebrafish died. And since a mouse or zebrafish can’t live with only those proteins. Because mice and fish, like all other organisms, also need other proteins to grow, digest their food, move and generally live. And since the mice and fish lack those when they die, they just stay dead. That’s also we don’t see zombie mice or zebrafish in our daily lives, because they need way more proteins to become alive or a zombie.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Better transplantations</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But this can help us greatly when it comes to learning more about transplantation. Since mouse-genes live after the mouse died, it is quite likely that human genes do the same. Pozhitkov and his team are thinking about new transplantation methods that can make use of these still-active genes. We could use this knowledge to keep transplantation organs ‘fresh’ for a longer period of time, and we also could learn how to ‘revive’ organs that would otherwise be useless for transplantation. This can be a great advantage for the medical world in general, and especially for the people waiting for an organ transplant.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Biology">here</a> to read more about biology.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/undead-genes-come-alive-days-after-life-ends" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/undead-genes-come-alive-days-after-life-ends</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/11/058305.full.pdf+html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/11/058305.full.pdf+html</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://cimbaliuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/o-HUMAN-GENE-SUPREME-COURT-facebook.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://cimbaliuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/o-HUMAN-GENE-SUPREME-COURT-facebook.jpg</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.onekind.org/uploads/a-z/az_mouse.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.onekind.org/uploads/a-z/az_mouse.jpg</span></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Solar cells will probably be one of the cornerstones of our civilisation in the near future. So scientists are continuously trying to improve the solar cells we have today. Their newest innovation are perovskite solar cells.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That’s way easier!</span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">These new solar cells use inexpensive, commonly available materials. Which means that they are on their way to be used everywhere! On top of that, these new solar cells are just as good, or maybe even better than the solar cells we use today. Their secret is that they’re made of perovskite. Perovskite is a material that is mostly made of calcium-titanium crystals. And it is relatively easy to find calcium and titanium in the earth’s crust. Furthermore, Giles Eperon, Tomas Leijtens and Kevin Bush, the scientists that developed these new solar panels, could build the solar panels quite easily in their laboratorium. Something that is unthinkable with the solar panels we currently use, since they can only be manufactured at extremely high temperatures. </span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_iDMxMCyPUMFp0KGXEP_NQ4F2RtvPVFYN5FApHyR3IGDTvoU9-R0eCM-AyN8n_iInR9ogLii0CYYev07ePuCOp1kACBaKImlwRyEwBkojlY6BtvkYYPix5X0fB03x8bbGyUMnLC184l4/s1600/percellafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_iDMxMCyPUMFp0KGXEP_NQ4F2RtvPVFYN5FApHyR3IGDTvoU9-R0eCM-AyN8n_iInR9ogLii0CYYev07ePuCOp1kACBaKImlwRyEwBkojlY6BtvkYYPix5X0fB03x8bbGyUMnLC184l4/s320/percellafb1.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The alternating layers or perovskite</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Combining the best traits</span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But the advantages don’t stop here yet. Perovskite solar panels are also thinner, more flexible, cheaper and better at capturing energy than the solar panels we currently use. Which are made of silicium, or basically just sand. Eperon and his team managed to achieve most of these advantages with just one trick. Instead of just using one layer of perovskite for their solar cell, they used two. And two layers with totally different abilities to be precise. The first layer can only absorb some specific types of light, but can then turn that into a super high electrical energy output. The second layer isn’t that picky and can absorb almost every type of light, but only puts out little electrical energy. By combining those two, the scientists got one super efficient solar cell.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are some clouds...</span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But it’s not all sunshine with these new solar cells. Perovskite is known to degrade more quickly than silicon when exposed to moisture or light. But this problem mostly arises when the solar panels contain tin. And scientists have already found a way to work around this. They’ve designed perovskite solar panels that don’t contain any tin at all. So the only thing that the researchers have to do is perfect their design so that the solar panels can generate a maximum amount of electrical energy, and the solar panels are ready to roll.</span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Physics">here</a> to read more about physics.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sources:</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142037.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142037.htm</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/perovskite-solar-cells-supercharge-electricity-production/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/perovskite-solar-cells-supercharge-electricity-production/</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/10/161020142037_1_540x360.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/10/161020142037_1_540x360.jpg</span></span></a></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-2fc05c28-55a6-9c0a-4f7a-6d829bc98459"><a href="http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/solar-cell-efficiency-record-1.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/solar-cell-efficiency-record-1.jpg</span></span></a></span></div>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-58253800309267265042016-10-02T00:40:00.000+02:002016-10-02T22:09:44.364+02:00It’s raining meteorites!<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>The dinosaurs went extinct when the earth was struck by a meteorite 65 million years ago. Recent research suggests that another meteor may have hit 10 million years later.</b></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlZ-SdZIX_mCgF9RX6n1tz_MpCgQmOylX419GCgGhKGAr7ZeNc71v1kJz0SmBNF8o36G54TyVdAlUq8jTTlLg1ye52QbO38v36vgLMQ5Jh_NO5a_MZ_vya9ojWGoubKnCMCm5QleEcCyw/s1600/moremeteoafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlZ-SdZIX_mCgF9RX6n1tz_MpCgQmOylX419GCgGhKGAr7ZeNc71v1kJz0SmBNF8o36G54TyVdAlUq8jTTlLg1ye52QbO38v36vgLMQ5Jh_NO5a_MZ_vya9ojWGoubKnCMCm5QleEcCyw/s320/moremeteoafb2.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Some species of foraminifera</span></td></tr>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Spheres, but no micro-organisms<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Megan Fung and her team were looking for Foraminifera. Foraminifera are the fossils of single celled microorganisms, often used for determining how old a particular layer in the soil is. They have calcium carbonate shells, which can reveal things such as the climate in particular time period. Fung and her team discovered something strange; they didn’t find any Foraminifera, or forams for short, when they were studying the soil by the coast of New Jersey. Instead, they found a whole bunch of small, black orbs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia5fKUDSU6isqSP7jGNYnfKlKCG38zk3EJMw_Z7FBvzD81YXG5wCOKlIT0RNvRdwdUao7fjASk20ZjGZ9pg2Uf3lm_9oO0shSoXzeEZdBtA0Wgm5PxRZ2_Bc9DsiY_DHD2uCI5KGhWemc/s1600/moremeteoafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia5fKUDSU6isqSP7jGNYnfKlKCG38zk3EJMw_Z7FBvzD81YXG5wCOKlIT0RNvRdwdUao7fjASk20ZjGZ9pg2Uf3lm_9oO0shSoXzeEZdBtA0Wgm5PxRZ2_Bc9DsiY_DHD2uCI5KGhWemc/s320/moremeteoafb1.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Microtektites in all kinds of shapes</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Can’t believe we missed that!</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The spheres appeared to be a bit like glass, and the team quickly discovered that they had found microtektites. This is the debris that forms from the extreme heat and force of the impact of a meteorite on earth. What really surprised them though, were two things. First, the soil in which they discovered the spheres was extremely well-studied. Why hadn’t other scientists found the orbs yet? The answer is quite simple. Foraminifera are usually white, thus they are gathered in black trays and scientists can easily see them stand out. Nobody noticed the microtektites because spheres are black, the same color as the tray. Second, Fung and her team found the microtektites in a layer that is only 56 million years old. It’s almost impossible that the spheres were formed by the meteorite that killed off the dinosaurs, since that event happened millennia ago. Another asteroid must have hit the earth 10 million years later.</span><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Boom! The climate changed<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Conveniently, the impact also accounts for something scientists couldn’t explain, a change in climate that happened around the same time. Around 56 million years ago, the earth suddenly became extremely warm, warmer than it is now. Scientists were puzzled by this climate change for a long time. Now there finally seems to be an answer; it was a meteorite.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Maybe not…<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Not everybody in the world of geology has accepted this explanation. One man, Jerry Dickens from the university of Houston has his doubts. “They have completely misinterpreted the data and missed the correct, and more cool, story.” he told <i>Science</i>. He believes that the microtektites were around throughout the whole warmer time period. He says the spheres disappeared in some layers of the soil because they got broken down by microorganisms that flourished in the warmer climate. This would mean the meteorite hit the Earth way earlier than Fung and her team proposed, and the meteorite and the hotter climate have nothing to do with each other. Either way, it’s an interesting discovery that will tell us more about the time period between us humans and the dinosaurs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Geography">here</a> to read more about geography. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/comet-may-have-struck-earth-just-10-million-years-after-dinosaur-extinction">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/comet-may-have-struck-earth-just-10-million-years-after-dinosaur-extinction</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2016AM/webprogram/Paper286189.html">https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2016AM/webprogram/Paper286189.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foraminifera#Foraminiferenanalyse"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foraminifera#Foraminiferenanalyse</span></a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://descentintotheicehouse.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Capture4.jpg">http://descentintotheicehouse.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Capture4.jpg</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://rses.anu.edu.au/highlights/figure.php?id=882"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://rses.anu.edu.au/highlights/figure.php?id=882</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-41966906368339781302016-09-30T01:05:00.001+02:002016-10-01T04:04:38.763+02:00If you can’t find you limbs<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>We all know our five senses. But, we have many more senses than just those five. We have the sense of proprioception, for example, that helps you keep track of where your body parts are. But, what if you lack that?</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtw2dLJBQOVkponcJzjWdF8G_QqIJZV05gj5Pu8UP5ZXCo4Dk6Jgck42cgCP4AbJAtyOj2TdRUVa3BFCzRyhhelHANq5rjVaptysmMUYzyiwWejOJdTt0V8rU-H8Dq-ObxzbPMhEIse-k/s1600/noproafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtw2dLJBQOVkponcJzjWdF8G_QqIJZV05gj5Pu8UP5ZXCo4Dk6Jgck42cgCP4AbJAtyOj2TdRUVa3BFCzRyhhelHANq5rjVaptysmMUYzyiwWejOJdTt0V8rU-H8Dq-ObxzbPMhEIse-k/s320/noproafb2.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Where’s my nose?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Proprioception is, the sense that allows you to touch your nose with your eyes closed, or type without looking at your hands. The reason for this is that your brain knows where your hands and nose are without necessarily having to look at them. And that’s what proprioception does. But what if you don’t have that sense? What if you’re blind, but instead of lacking sight, your proprioception did not work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hard to find that sense<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Well, it’s quite hard to study that. Because the symptoms of lacking proprioception aren’t as clear as, say, lacking hearing. Another things is that the sense isn’t located at one point in your body, unlike, for example, your eyes. Eyes have a specific place and you know exactly what they do; they see. But with proprioception, the location isn’t really clear. The sense is working all over your body. So you know where all your body parts are hanging out. But this makes it really hard to study this sense.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">9 and 19<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Fortunately, Carsten Bönnemann and his team have found two people; a nine-year-old girl and a nineteen-year-old woman who totally lack proprioception. With their eyes closed, they can’t tell where they limbs are, or in which way their joints are being moved. With their eyes open, they can tell, but they can only do so if they actually see what’s happening. The researchers considered the situation of the woman and the girl to be so weird that they did a genetic test on both of them. The scientists discovered that both of them have an extreme mutation in a gene called PIEZO2. Scientists already linked this gene to our sense of touch earlier, which made Carsten Bönnemann and his team think that PIEZO2 plays an important role in proprioception.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCkieZJo8Qd0C3U6L9sUCeahcD3m8t-cf_5_mZntmpTcdaNkqXsy7ikbLEdOSFneF4qs4-aWVbvQpxGtu1HvU1hxjOy6UEKpRZodiInh_TGLIn6FlVZBAHIfcAyqQhQsjuFJ8H9naFzE/s1600/noproafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCkieZJo8Qd0C3U6L9sUCeahcD3m8t-cf_5_mZntmpTcdaNkqXsy7ikbLEdOSFneF4qs4-aWVbvQpxGtu1HvU1hxjOy6UEKpRZodiInh_TGLIn6FlVZBAHIfcAyqQhQsjuFJ8H9naFzE/s320/noproafb1.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Whoops, I didn’t mean to…<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The discovery of this gene also has another advantage, especially when you’re a bit clumsy. Clumsiness has already been linked to your sense of proprioception not working perfectly. Since proprioception is linked to the PIEZO2 gene, this means that, if you’re clumsy, you may have a mutation in that gene. It doesn’t have to be extreme to the point that you totally lack the sense. But if it malfunctions a bit, this could also be reason enough for you to tip over glasses of water a little more often. So don’t worry, it’s not your fault, it’s just your genetics.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/researchers-discover-gene-behind-sixth-sense-humans">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/researchers-discover-gene-behind-sixth-sense-humans</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1602812">http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1602812</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.livescience.com/images/i/000/078/671/original/boys-nose.jpg?interpolation=lanczos-none&downsize=*:1000">http://www.livescience.com/images/i/000/078/671/original/boys-nose.jpg?interpolation=lanczos-none&downsize=*:1000</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://joshuamhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/water.jpg"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://joshuamhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/water.jpg</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-51928259735076117552016-09-18T11:39:00.002+02:002016-09-18T11:39:13.872+02:00Gaia is mapping the stars<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Spacecraft Gaia is going to map our entire galaxy. And with all that data, NASA scientists hope to compose a five-dimensional map of our galaxy, and discover the Milky Way’s past.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRyN4n6KSMW7u_SF54yLd6jvDn9ZRHyfnPdijzfwgd_-i5ILVAMr5uS2sJxFQ2GrGlw3pvGLSyc33PuSeozIncvz_59VdJIwh_03KU3LpYKax48j76kYZEI8WBFfermo-2uS48pqZApUo/s1600/gaiastarsafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRyN4n6KSMW7u_SF54yLd6jvDn9ZRHyfnPdijzfwgd_-i5ILVAMr5uS2sJxFQ2GrGlw3pvGLSyc33PuSeozIncvz_59VdJIwh_03KU3LpYKax48j76kYZEI8WBFfermo-2uS48pqZApUo/s320/gaiastarsafb1.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">spacecraft Gaia</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Where are the stars?</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Three years ago, spacecraft Gaia was launched. Then the spacecraft, which basically is a giant telescope floating in space, needed the past three years to put together a draft of a map of our galaxy. The reason it took Gaia so long to only turn out a draft is that the spacecraft has already catalogued more than a billion stars for this draft. This is of course an incredible amount, but Gaia isn’t done yet. Our galaxy consists of over 200 billion stars, so the telescope has only catalogued half a percent of all stars. Gaia is going to further map our galaxy for at least another two years. In these five years, Gaia isn’t going to be able to map the other 199 billion stars, instead Gaia is going to focus on refining the data about the billion stars that the spacecraft already mapped.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7sLXm_T0rFlizhELLXwrO3Oc6opNn0BIjgFvje-27-gplknZdfjgzJzj25pAaPr4_rkMbI7wkfoFNR5fyl65ctBOS1KkA7O6PRsaz_ysgPt0qCMrjTek6c74f-2kkHafQiXCAq_rhTjg/s1600/gaiastarsafb2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7sLXm_T0rFlizhELLXwrO3Oc6opNn0BIjgFvje-27-gplknZdfjgzJzj25pAaPr4_rkMbI7wkfoFNR5fyl65ctBOS1KkA7O6PRsaz_ysgPt0qCMrjTek6c74f-2kkHafQiXCAq_rhTjg/s320/gaiastarsafb2.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gaia's map so far</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A look into the future and the past</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gaia has already mapped the position and brightness of over a billion stars, and also the distance and speed of the two million brightest stars. In the next two years, NASA scientists, who control the spacecraft, want to find the distance and speed of way more stars. They’re hoping for a billion. But that’s not all, they also want to map the speeds of the 100 million brightest stars in 3D. While the speeds of the other, dimmer stars are only in 2D, so only sideways. These data will enable scientists to create a five-dimensional model of our galaxy, and essentially predict the Milky Way’s past and future. This could teach us a whole lot about the Milky Way’s possibly violent past, as there are indications that the Milky Way has absorbed quite a lot of smaller galaxies in the past. Which would have caused violent collisions of which we still can see traces today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Better than the ocean floors</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This galaxy-map will also help scientists understand the birth of stars better. Because with the data that will be gathered by Gaia, scientists can calculate the size and also the age of stars, which are essential for finding out how stars actually form. Another thing is that our own Milky Way is a bit like the earth’s ocean floor compared to the moon. We’ve got a better grasp of what’s happening on the moon than on what’s happening on the ocean floor. In a similar way, we know more about some other galaxies than about our own home. That is mainly because the Milky Way is so big, and we’re right in it so we can’t really take overview pictures of it. This makes getting a good, complete view of the Milky Way really hard, but Gaia is changing that. Within a few years, we’ll have the most detailed map of our galaxy yet. And we will, no doubt, have learned all new kinds of cool and interesting things about our own galaxy, thanks to Gaia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Click <a href="https://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Astronomy">here</a> to read more about astronomy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sources:</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">https://www.scientias.nl/miljard-sterren-elkaar-ziet-er-zo/</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/home</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/upcoming-galaxy-map-could-radically-transform-how-we-see-the-milky-way/</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://blogs.esa.int/gaia/files/2013/07/Gaia_mapping_the_stars_of_the_Milky_Way.jpg</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">https://cbssanfran.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/gaia_gdr1_sky_map_annotated_hd.png</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-22478887277323372702016-09-14T21:14:00.001+02:002016-09-18T00:18:01.899+02:00Ants don’t just smell and count, they also look around<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Ants are amazing navigators, they can find their homes even when their quite far away from their nests. This is really impressive, considering the small size of the ants. Scientists have finally found out how the ants can pull it off.</b></span><br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-ffd57e5e-2a19-493a-980e-06ea8a78cd58"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><br />Counting and smelling<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6lOccvcp4UIbBz-cMrUd7BTk1l3gCyntOAPQCwd3vSaHuNzFAoRYYAjeDnXatUZLG7DImsguMZzlsLWCFOxslPp4VbcJ8cpioLVL07NImFCq9NzWU5gUAxmH_0A_nbVgHTDF_anNFco/s1600/seeingantsafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6lOccvcp4UIbBz-cMrUd7BTk1l3gCyntOAPQCwd3vSaHuNzFAoRYYAjeDnXatUZLG7DImsguMZzlsLWCFOxslPp4VbcJ8cpioLVL07NImFCq9NzWU5gUAxmH_0A_nbVgHTDF_anNFco/s320/seeingantsafb2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A desert ant</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Scientists thought they knew all of the tricks ants use to find their way back home. Ants count their steps away from their nests, so they know exactly how far away they are from their home. Ants also have excellent smell, so they can smell other ants and follow them home in the case they accidentally lose count of their steps. This is also the reason ants like to move around in ‘trains’. By moving in trains, they can easily follow each other through their olfactory navigation. Though this method seems flawless, if you were to separate the front and back half of an ant train using a piece of cardboard, for example, the ants in the back half would get utterly disorientated. This would happen because they can’t smell their fellow ants anymore. If you remove the piece of cardboard, the ants will be able to smell their friends again and they can continue their journey back to their nest without any problems. However, a special species of ants called Cataglyphis desert ants are exceptionally good at navigating, better than these two methods can explain. This has left scientists puzzled over the mystery for ages, until now.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHHYSoADYvBKPKI8XQwtbGh5BC2ShPW5M6oVXBzhGzFJ_1y5r75y2yh6O1Kbfvkh1SQCjdbAhTvGo9KZwsisq_b5N0RssqKkI5rJAD9jMlxXYboEQUERc96OFJFd-Ay080qdggKZy_W7M/s1600/seeingantsafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHHYSoADYvBKPKI8XQwtbGh5BC2ShPW5M6oVXBzhGzFJ_1y5r75y2yh6O1Kbfvkh1SQCjdbAhTvGo9KZwsisq_b5N0RssqKkI5rJAD9jMlxXYboEQUERc96OFJFd-Ay080qdggKZy_W7M/s320/seeingantsafb1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How flies see the world</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</b></span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Just use your eyes!</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />The answer isn’t really weird, or even surprising, desert ants simply look around to estimate distances and find out where they are. It’s the same principle as when you’re driving a car, trying to find your cousin’s new home in a labyrinth-like neighbourhood. Although this seems like a rather obvious answer for humans, it’s somewhat strange for insects like ants since insects have notoriously low vision. The reason for this is that they have so-called facet-eyes made from numerous smaller eyes. These work together to create one big picture. The problem is, insects’ brains aren’t that efficient at putting together all the information from the small eyes. This means that insects see the world in a distorted and pixelated way, which is why you can easily swat a fly with a fly swatter. Due to the holes in the swatter, the fly simply cannot see what’s coming for it. On the other hand, the desert ants can apparently see well enough to find their way back to their nest, even when their step counting and smelling methods fail.<br /><br /><b>Can the others see too?</b><br />Since <i>Cataglyphis</i> desert ants have three different methods of navigating; counting, smelling and looking around, they are some of the best navigators in the realm of insects. This is also due to the fact that they can find their way using each of those methods separately. Scientists already knew that flying insects such as flies, wasps or bees, use their eyes to navigate, but they didn’t know that walking insects, like ants could do the same. This opens all kinds of new, interesting research about the sight of all other kinds of walking insects, for example beetles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Biology">here</a> to read more about biology.<br /><br /><b>Sources:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.aaf9754">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.aaf9754</a><br /><a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/video-blindfolded-ants-reveal-clues-insect-navigation">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/video-blindfolded-ants-reveal-clues-insect-navigation</a><br /><a href="http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos/others/desert-ant-87673.jpg">http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos/others/desert-ant-87673.jpg</a><br /><a href="http://8020.photos.jpgmag.com/2851044_245460_1a70698cf0_p.jpg">http://8020.photos.jpgmag.com/2851044_245460_1a70698cf0_p.jpg</a></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-14287243065328482582016-09-11T00:15:00.003+02:002016-09-11T20:37:26.419+02:00New giraffe species are endangered<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When you think of giraffes, you imagine the
long-necked, spotted animal we all know. But German scientists have discovered
that there are actually four species of giraffes.</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNGpKRWSLoN5KFhbmasaPeMFjnqO5pEt-5eDOnCQeYDlR2LhVTjBqPaFFqDj4FBBeioyHJVGN9nmxErHBaZ1QvuPACPFSq09ifE0XPP7N8RSV6P3i28AuzbEOgA8eN1n4J5_1M8CYoWkQ/s1600/fourgiraffeafb1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNGpKRWSLoN5KFhbmasaPeMFjnqO5pEt-5eDOnCQeYDlR2LhVTjBqPaFFqDj4FBBeioyHJVGN9nmxErHBaZ1QvuPACPFSq09ifE0XPP7N8RSV6P3i28AuzbEOgA8eN1n4J5_1M8CYoWkQ/s320/fourgiraffeafb1.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nubian giraffes</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Not nine but four<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-5ba89e39-1a06-45bc-b86c-93ec5f9e33a6"><span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We used to think that there were nine subspecies of giraffes. The difference tween the different subspecies of giraffes was mostly based on their coat pattern. The Nubian giraffe, for example, has very dark spots on its body, while the Kordofan giraffe has pale spots. These different coat patterns don’t mean that the giraffes are different species. Instead they are different subspecies of an umbrella species of giraffes. This means that, when a giraffe of one subspecies, for example a Kordofan giraffe mates with a Nubian giraffe and they get a baby, that baby giraffe is also fertile. In other words, both giraffes belong to the same species.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That’s a whole different species!<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-5ba89e39-1a06-7790-ba7c-d32e096560af"><span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But now, a team of German, American and South-African scientists have discovered that giraffes can be split into nine subspecies, but into four actual species. The scientists have split the old giraffe species into Northern Giraffes, Southern Giraffes, Masai Giraffes and Reticulated Giraffes. This doesn’t mean, however, that two giraffes from different species can’t have fertile offspring. They still can, but to the scientists’ surprise, they don’t interbreed that often in the wild. This is quite odd since giraffes can move big distances and could easily reach other groups of giraffes. And since different giraffe species don’t interbreed, this means that the four different species of giraffes are still getting more diverse. To define the different species, the team of scientists analysed the DNA of different giraffes and compared the results. They found out that some giraffes’ DNA differ even more from each other than a brown bear’s and a polar bear’s do. Those bears belong to two different species, so those two giraffes most likely belong to different species as well. After a detailed study of the DNA of a large group of giraffes in Africa, they discovered a total of four different species of giraffes. And this discovery has some important consequences for animal protection.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtKOpmn-GDhJiOOawIj_wz11TVwPIl05j9cbJhyodNTdWtQR1WcYu_JadouCcJIK4uij9HDJ-A-aZGw_e7zU-dm0S9LraJuGCRMKTSzP25Oqjt6_BDfgKTy0DgOwsO_Vn4xzTwtfmnT9Q/s1600/fourgiraffeafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtKOpmn-GDhJiOOawIj_wz11TVwPIl05j9cbJhyodNTdWtQR1WcYu_JadouCcJIK4uij9HDJ-A-aZGw_e7zU-dm0S9LraJuGCRMKTSzP25Oqjt6_BDfgKTy0DgOwsO_Vn4xzTwtfmnT9Q/s320/fourgiraffeafb2.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Last chance to see; West African Giraffes</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Save the giraffes!<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-5ba89e39-1a06-d058-3b81-325f5fd88f4e"><span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The original giraffe species was already somewhat endangered; there are only 100,000 left, where there used to be 150,000 thirty years ago. This means that giraffes aren’t as endangered as rhinos or elephants. But since giraffes can be split into four species, three of those four species are seriously threatened with extinction. Only the Southern Giraffes seem relatively safe, while the Northern Giraffes, of which there are only 4500 left, and the West African Giraffes, of which there are only 400 left are classified as endangered. This new discovery now asks for better protection of and more attention to giraffes, otherwise one or more of these newly discovered species may be gone for good soon.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Biology">here</a> to read more about biology.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://giraffeconservation.org/giraffe-subspecies/">http://giraffeconservation.org/giraffe-subspecies/</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30787-4"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30787-4</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/surprise-there-are-four-species-giraffe-not-one"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/surprise-there-are-four-species-giraffe-not-one</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/08/researchers-discover-there-are-not-one-but-four-species-of-giraffe">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/08/researchers-discover-there-are-not-one-but-four-species-of-giraffe</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Al_Ain_Zoo_Giraffe.JPG">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Al_Ain_Zoo_Giraffe.JPG</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://thegracefulgiraffe.weebly.com/uploads/4/5/9/9/45997813/8357383_orig.jpg"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://thegracefulgiraffe.weebly.com/uploads/4/5/9/9/45997813/8357383_orig.jpg</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>In 2007, space probe Dawn was launched. And now, nine years later the probe has reached its final destination; Ceres. It has already discovered some strange, exciting things.</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigUhYkM6wQYuqUUk8cmcNoj2AtyKClNdeN8CVR-6W1B4U8wCH204PNwRHCyHoUwy455M6pEhg2-6a0IZe07oiVzwcz6s6zsocqhHK-7rCzNxY7bwY535Whj1INw714-iOsSyzzZaiGRMU/s1600/dawntwoafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigUhYkM6wQYuqUUk8cmcNoj2AtyKClNdeN8CVR-6W1B4U8wCH204PNwRHCyHoUwy455M6pEhg2-6a0IZe07oiVzwcz6s6zsocqhHK-7rCzNxY7bwY535Whj1INw714-iOsSyzzZaiGRMU/s320/dawntwoafb1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Is it salt or water?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">When Dawn started orbiting Ceres in 2015, it found strange, white spots on the dwarf-planet’s surface. Unfortunately, Ceres’ cameras couldn’t take pictures that were detailed enough for us to see what those white spots were. The NASA scientists that control the space probe then managed to get Dawn into a lower orbit around dwarf-planet Ceres. In this lower orbit, Dawn can observe the white spots more closely. Scientists discovered that the white spots are all the bottoms of craters. This made them think that the spots are either made of salt or ice. The space probe couldn't get close enough to the dwarf-planet to find out which one it is. If the white spots are ice, this means that the dwarf-planet has at least one requirement for life; water. However it’s unlikely that we’ll find aliens there, since the big rock is way too cold. And on top of that, the dwarf-planet doesn’t have an atmosphere. But Ceres isn’t the only dwarf planet space probe Dawn visited.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Two for one!</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Space probe Dawn already orbited another dwarf planet called Vesta between in 2011 and 2012. This makes Dawn the only space probe that has orbited a celestial body, studied it and travelled further to orbit and study a second celestial object. The two Voyager space probes also studied multiple celestial bodies; the gas giants of our solar system, but they never orbited them. On Vesta there were dark spots that sparked the interest of scientists. Fortunately, Dawn could zoom in enough onto those dark spots to tell what they are; craters. Craters may not sound as interesting as water and possible - though highly unlikely - alien life. Those craters can tells us something else though; we can discover a lot about what happened during Vesta’s life, and what it was like in our solar system billions of years ago. Dwarf-planets are a bit like time-capsules in this way.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE2XxOYpzu-PySv8RkF4SbXDOL1XZ7iaDPkZZSTRLfaUxtN9WGpjSLZ1XhyI2gzkb6Ci9ladriM_R4sfvYTDB9pTy1nUY_nX7s8d8-NrEnv60L1R4WrzwD_Muq0rr5v2cjE5ijdjuiQvI/s1600/dawntwoafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE2XxOYpzu-PySv8RkF4SbXDOL1XZ7iaDPkZZSTRLfaUxtN9WGpjSLZ1XhyI2gzkb6Ci9ladriM_R4sfvYTDB9pTy1nUY_nX7s8d8-NrEnv60L1R4WrzwD_Muq0rr5v2cjE5ijdjuiQvI/s320/dawntwoafb2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Philae on its comet</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Orbiting forever</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">If we want to learn more about the history of our solar system, the main thing we have to do is study asteroids better. This is also the reason that space probe Rosetta and comet lander Philae were launched. Those probes closely studied comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and even discovered the building blocks of life there. Space probe Dawn, however, isn’t going to orbit another asteroid. NASA scientists had proposed plans about sending Dawn to another asteroid, but this was cancelled. The scientists leading Dawn’s mission think that staying in orbit around Vesta can give us way more scientific data than a quick visit to another asteroid. So it was decided that Dawn will stay in Vesta’s orbit forever, and gather data until at least 2017.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Astronomy">here</a> to read more about astronomy.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwergplaneet)">https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwergplaneet)</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_(ruimtesonde)"><span lang="EN-GB">https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_(ruimtesonde)</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6303/1008"><span lang="EN-GB">http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6303/1008</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.aaf4219"><span lang="EN-GB">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.aaf4219</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/10091306-what-did-dawn-learn-at-vesta.html"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/10091306-what-did-dawn-learn-at-vesta.html</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Vesta#Observations_from_Dawn"><span lang="EN-GB">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Vesta#Observations_from_Dawn</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_(spacecraft)#Cancellation_and_Reinstatement">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_(spacecraft)#Cancellation_and_Reinstatement</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.newscientist.nl/nieuws/komeetlander-philae-is-gevonden/">https://www.newscientist.nl/nieuws/komeetlander-philae-is-gevonden/</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2016/04/nasa-dawn-asteroid-probe-after-ceres/">http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2016/04/nasa-dawn-asteroid-probe-after-ceres/</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.scientias.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dawn-954x477.jpg">https://www.scientias.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dawn-954x477.jpg</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://blogs-images.forbes.com/bridaineparnell/files/2015/06/Philae_touchdown-1940x1092.jpg"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://blogs-images.forbes.com/bridaineparnell/files/2015/06/Philae_touchdown-1940x1092.jpg</span></a></span><script>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-17980877711582063872016-09-03T02:45:00.000+02:002016-10-04T23:33:15.324+02:00Tasmanian devils got rid of their cancer<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since 1996, the population of tasmanian devils have been decimated by a contagious cancer. Recently, it has been discovered that the tasmanian devils have developed a resistance to this cancer.</span><span id="docs-internal-guid-496c3ae0-ed74-f6d5-178a-1046c4532af6"></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-496c3ae0-ed74-f6d5-178a-1046c4532af6" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Devil Facial Tumour Disease</span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-496c3ae0-ed74-f6d5-178a-1046c4532af6" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The contagious cancer affects tasmanian devils and gives them facial tumours. These tumours begin as lumps around the mouth area and can spread to the rest of the body. They can affect the devils by preventing them from eating, giving them infections or causing their organs to fail. All of these usually lead to the death of the animal within about 6 months</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="206" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/dHpcC57LSD4HWYrkTn4HDsBp85Dy2YMttuMxu4R--teh50FvqMnK0QiPMmqeGQgEi2cbUmP3HJxr4ZFSYrHg6fpGWuaHLmnDibe2fhNbD755nf3C1eTi_fLlptxdECtDCTEBnn0H" style="border: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tasmanian Devil with tumors</td></tr>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-496c3ae0-ed74-f6d5-178a-1046c4532af6" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lots of biting</span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The disease spreads when the devils bite each other. Since the disease is spread this way, it is easily propagated through a colony since they bite each other very frequently. A lot of Tasmanian devils’ social interactions are based on biting, for example when they fight. As well as this, the tasmanian devils are thought to have a very low genetic diversity which lowers their chances of resistance to disease. This means that the devils aren’t very different from each other, so if the cancer can harm one Tasmanian devil, it can harm the other devils too. This gave the disease a very easy way to make it around nearly all the colonies.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for tasmanian devil biting" height="212" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Oq5WSuYdwSv2tEo185aJOSfxcizHA_kV8L3rY2WMs1aTn2FJRAxJWfj79q6777z5k42LzytJiZKoZic-fKgwrEOLpYgI60jCLjUiTT010k1QOww91EuXZzJaPzJ5bRehRxxm0TvF" style="border: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fighting Tasmanian Devils</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Immune</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But now, because of an accidental change in the Tasmanian Devils’ DNA, their genetic code, they’re now immune to the contagious cancer. They can’t get the disease anymore. And the best thing is, when they begin to reproduce, the next generation of tasmanian devils will have the immunity as well. Over time, maybe all Tasmanian Devils will have be immune and the cancer will go extinct. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s odd...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scientists discovered this by comparing the genome of the immune tasmanian devils with that of a past tasmanian devil which existed before the tumor had begun. They realized that there was a difference in the actual genetic makeup of the tasmanian devils. This genetic change happened in seven different genes. Five of those are related to immune response against cancer in other mammals such as ourselves. But, the most amazing part of this discovery is that this immune response has happened very quickly. This entire immunity was evolved over just about five generations, which is around twenty years. This evolution can be compared to rabbits when a disease called myxomatosis began to affect Australia. The only difference is that the rabbits took much longer to become immune.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Looking into the future</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This exciting new discovery could affect the future of cancer treatment. With the new technological advances which are being made in the realm of genetics, we might soon be able to use this discovery as a cure for cancer. This could be possible since these genetics are similar in other mammals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.ca/search/label/Biology">here</a> to read more about Biology</span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-496c3ae0-ed81-a2b3-8a6b-191930f69ab7"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sources:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/108/30/12348">http://www.pnas.org/content/108/30/12348</a> <br /><a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160830/ncomms12684/full/ncomms12684.html">http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160830/ncomms12684/full/ncomms12684.html</a> <br /><a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/tasmanian-devils-are-rapidly-evolving-resistance-contagious-cancer">https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/tasmanian-devils-are-rapidly-evolving-resistance-contagious-cancer</a> <br /><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease</a> <br /><a href="http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2015/12/30/Second-form-of-contagious-cancer-found-in-Tasmanian-devils/4961451508112/">http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2015/12/30/Second-form-of-contagious-cancer-found-in-Tasmanian-devils/4961451508112/</a> <br />Di Giallonardo, F. & Holmes, E. C. Viral biocontrol: grand experiments in disease emergence and evolution. Trends Microbiol. 23, 83–90 (2015) <br />Epstein, B. et al. Rapid evolutionary response to a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils. Nat. Commun. 7:12684 doi: 10.1038/ncomms12684 (2016) <br /><a href="http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/tasmanian-devil/">http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/tasmanian-devil/</a></span>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09524218400399341756noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-78787169261274200812016-09-01T20:26:00.002+02:002016-09-01T21:57:47.901+02:00Dragonfly 44: the darkest galaxy yet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Astronomers have found a really small galaxy, which has one weird trait. It spins a lot faster than it should. Pieter van Dokkum and his team think dark matter is the explanation.</b><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><br />A dark dragon<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1PgoRBJ6K2yVA64tkJEz-j73njv0DT2TAxh8g9m4u6lnzg3A0RkUU5pqojfLamFKKSFE6FXFF1Y8lzsEvTn-9v5ssxaefWyz5-gBxSWARicvuzBFry7cUnuJCfWbW20-HHA-FReCsI9A/s1600/darkgalaxyafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1PgoRBJ6K2yVA64tkJEz-j73njv0DT2TAxh8g9m4u6lnzg3A0RkUU5pqojfLamFKKSFE6FXFF1Y8lzsEvTn-9v5ssxaefWyz5-gBxSWARicvuzBFry7cUnuJCfWbW20-HHA-FReCsI9A/s320/darkgalaxyafb1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The yellow smudge in the middle is Dragonfly 44</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The galaxy measures around 60 000 light-years across, and is about 300 million light years away. It weighs almost the same as the Milky Way, but has nowhere near the amount of stars. Dragonfly 44 consist of about two billion stars, while our galaxy has over two-hundred billion stars. What is really strange is that the Milky Way and Dragonfly 44 appear to have roughly the same mass; both the Milky Way and Dragonfly weigh about as much as a trillion suns. This means 99 percent of the Dragonfly galaxy must consist of matter we can’t observe. A team of American and Canadian scientists think that a lot of dark matter is hiding in Dragonfly 44. It was discovered last year in the Coma galaxy cluster along with other similar galaxies, which the team combined and named Ultra Diffuse Galaxies (UDGs). Dragonfly 44 is the largest out of all of them.<br /><br /><b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTmWQW6z4RL4GqyYigQ70pzaQlo8A-kU9cWe1DjdUpC3f-HVOvHsdy2AtT1SXXsqfs1eaOoU-kVJrviPT1oanTJwV2fYlzuoBn8XsXVTz35h5OBlOkW8OfYTx196GliAQKJ5Vhupm9aHc/s1600/darkgalaxyafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTmWQW6z4RL4GqyYigQ70pzaQlo8A-kU9cWe1DjdUpC3f-HVOvHsdy2AtT1SXXsqfs1eaOoU-kVJrviPT1oanTJwV2fYlzuoBn8XsXVTz35h5OBlOkW8OfYTx196GliAQKJ5Vhupm9aHc/s320/darkgalaxyafb2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What dark matter would look like if we could see it</td></tr>
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</b></span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We can’t see it, so it’s dark</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />What exactly is dark matter? Well, the truth is that we don’t really know. What we do know is that more than a quarter of the mass of the whole universe is dark matter. Overall, dark matter leaves scientists completely puzzled. The reason that it’s such a mystery is that dark matter doesn’t interact with light. That’s why it’s called dark matter - we can’t see it. We can only say it exists at all through the effects it has on its surroundings. One way we notice dark matter is in galaxies that appear to have more mass than their amount of stars can explain. An extreme case is Dragonfly 44, but our own galaxy also has quite a big mass-star misalignment. Scientists think that around 90 percent of all the matter in our galaxy is dark matter. This also means that everything you can see, your house; your food; the sun; and everything else is just a tenth of all the matter in our galaxy. <br /><br /><b>You’re spinning too fast!</b><br />If the hypothesis that Dragonfly 44 is made almost completely out of dark matter, it would explain some mysterious things about the galaxy. First of all, it spins way faster than it should. The general rule is the bigger the mass, the faster a galaxy spins. This is because more mass creates more gravitational force, which speeds up the spinning of the galaxy. If all the mass of Dragonfly 44 consisted of normal matter, stars that we can actually see, the galaxy would never reach such a fast spin. On top of that, even if it would, the galaxy would most likely tear itself apart. If the mass is low, the gravitational forces would be too weak to keep such a fast spinning galaxy together if there weren’t any dark matter around. Scientists also consider this discovery to be particularly interesting since galaxies that are almost completely made of dark matter have already been predicted by some theories, and this new discovery only helps those theories to become even more likely. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Astronomy">here</a> to read more about astronomy.<br /><br /><b>Sources:</b><br /><a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.06291v2.pdf">http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.06291v2.pdf</a><br /><a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/dark-matter-search-comes-empty">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/dark-matter-search-comes-empty</a><br /><a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/dim-nearby-galaxy-nearly-100-dark-matter">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/dim-nearby-galaxy-nearly-100-dark-matter</a><br /><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkweg_(sterrenstelsel)">https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkweg_(sterrenstelsel)</a><br /><a href="http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge3/image_4135e-Dragonfly-44.jpg">http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge3/image_4135e-Dragonfly-44.jpg</a><br /><a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PznhzHOtr_Y/maxresdefault.jpg">https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PznhzHOtr_Y/maxresdefault.jpg</a></span><script>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-26450633387055955222016-08-29T21:18:00.004+02:002016-08-29T21:42:16.690+02:00Bacteria on monkey bars<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria that can spread through the body at a high rate. The method by which it does so has recently been discovered by a team of Canadian scientists.</b><span id="docs-internal-guid-9c297e96-d77c-1931-fb47-8d3ef06a2f58"></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-9c297e96-d77c-1931-fb47-8d3ef06a2f58"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>What is Lyme disease?</b></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Vic3hkAqoQ20kT_j7_JDEbUN6c_MZVLt957nl1Kl3a3KAtMBPSXo5qAvJICJOLI_GdWZc0kZYOaA-ktwaAPe6XyyCD_vAZWUNbhAq-TiUm048r9w6cGNSam9TQZW_ORXPrzfHni_" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Vic3hkAqoQ20kT_j7_JDEbUN6c_MZVLt957nl1Kl3a3KAtMBPSXo5qAvJICJOLI_GdWZc0kZYOaA-ktwaAPe6XyyCD_vAZWUNbhAq-TiUm048r9w6cGNSam9TQZW_ORXPrzfHni_" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The red spot caused by a tick</span></td></tr>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When you get bitten by a tick that carries Lyme disease, you develop a big red spot around the place you’ve been bitten. Shortly after that, the disease cause all kinds of symptoms all over your body; headaches, stomach aches, muscles soreness and other undesirable things. Because the symptoms appear quite soon after you’ve been bitten by a tick, usually a couple of weeks, the disease spreads incredibly fast through your body. The disease can do that because the Lyme bacteria, that cause the disease, can travel through your bloodstream. But how those bacteria could actually do so, remained a mystery for quite a while. But now, Rhodaba Ebady and Tara Moriarty have found out, after closely studying the bacteria moves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Which way to go?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The weird thing is, the bacteria doesn’t just float away in a blood vessel in the direction blood is flowing in that vessel. The bacteria can also be quite stubborn and actually climb up, against the direction of the blood flow in that blood vessel. Because of this, the Lyme bacteria can spread through your body twice as fast as when the bacteria would just float around. And this also explains how the bacteria, which is called </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">B. burgorferi</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> can affect your whole body so quickly. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The green and orange stripes are Lyme bacteria, <br />the colour us in which stage in <br />their monkey bar jumping they are.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bacterial monkey bars…?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To study the odd nature of the spread of </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">B. burgdorferi</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, researchers built an artificial blood vessel which matched the workings of a normal human blood vessel. A </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">B. burgdorferi</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was placed into the fake vessel, and then the scientists observed the interactions of the bacteria and the vessel. The way this bacteria works is by attaching itself onto the wall of the vessel. It forms bonds with the wall and undergoes a cycle of breaking and making bonds. By doing so, it acts somewhat like a child swinging on monkey bars. They hold on using two bonds for a period of time. When they let go of one bond, they slingshot themselves forwards and attach themselves to the wall with another bond. By doing this continuously, they can creep through the vessels. This technique is also used by certain human immune cells called leukocytes.</span></span></div>
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<b style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Further use of this technique</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks to this study, we are learning more and more about different bacteria. This could help us learn how to cure diseases caused by these bacteria and it could even be mimicked in robotics to move against the flow of blood vessels with little to no problems.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Biology">here</a> to read more about biology.</span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sources:</b></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.lymenet.nl/info/lyme-symptomen" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.lymenet.nl/info/lyme-symptomen</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.tekenbeetziekten.nl/symptomen/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.tekenbeetziekten.nl/symptomen/</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://crosstalk.cell.com/blog/bacteria-on-the-run-an-interview-with-tara-moriarty-and-rhodaba-ebady" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://crosstalk.cell.com/blog/bacteria-on-the-run-an-interview-with-tara-moriarty-and-rhodaba-ebady</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247(16)31059-2" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247(16)31059-2</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.gezondbeterworden.nl/digitaal-tijdschrift/ziekte-van-lyme-een-natuurgeneeskundig-perspectief.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.gezondbeterworden.nl/digitaal-tijdschrift/ziekte-van-lyme-een-natuurgeneeskundig-perspectief.html</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.livescience.com/55895-lyme-disease-bacteria-spread.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.livescience.com/55895-lyme-disease-bacteria-spread.html</span></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lyme-bacteria-swap-%E2%80%98catch-bonds%E2%80%99-navigate-blood-vessels" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lyme-bacteria-swap-%E2%80%98catch-bonds%E2%80%99-navigate-blood-vessels</span></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.livescience.com/55895-lyme-disease-bacteria-spread.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.livescience.com/55895-lyme-disease-bacteria-spread.html</span></a></span></div>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-86941880861220885522016-08-26T21:28:00.000+02:002016-08-27T21:17:40.367+02:00Sunlight and carbon dioxide turned into methane<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the problem of increasing carbon dioxide levels, many are trying to </span><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>find ways to change this gas into something useful. Some scientists </b></span></span><b>have <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">recently engineered bacteria to do just that.</span></b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-style: italic; line-height: 20.24px; text-indent: 48px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rhodopseudomonas palustris</span></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Make the bacteria do it!</span></b><div style="line-height: 1.38;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-174b020c-c844-7ad5-5711-c16c394aa63b" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kathryn Fixen and her team have recently engineered a bacterium, </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rhodopseudomonas palustris</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, to make methane from carbon dioxide. By tweaking the enzyme nitrogenase, which normally creates ammonia, scientists have managed to make it catalyze the reaction of carbon dioxide (CO</span><span style="vertical-align: sub; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) to methane (CH</span><span style="vertical-align: sub; white-space: pre-wrap;">4</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). They then managed to modify the R. palustris bacterium to make it mass produce the engineered nitrogenase. Since this bacteria can use sunlight as a source of energy, it is easier to create a large amount of this enzyme using natural sources. This makes it both eco-friendly and efficient.</span></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Use of methane</b></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-174b020c-c844-7ad5-5711-c16c394aa63b" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="193" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/RQ0BtLafunXz1e3ekUiYykIS4TH7CS6_AQZWP9eFVOBh7gAH2JuZ4oI5m6QV_5YJS4BNahHEz_YWndvcw7twASObB4Pog3IQCJdcebQegzVnr3SABiY31tLt4urMIn9iIkT0Fxtd" style="border: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-174b020c-c844-7ad5-5711-c16c394aa63b"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Methane is the principal component of natural gas, which can be found in large bubbles in the soil all over our planet. If you live in a cold country, you would use this to warm your house. It can also be used to make electricity and to power certain vehicles. Some people also cook on natural gas. This versatility of this gas makes it useful in many daily scenarios.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Not yet perfect</b><br />The other method whic<span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">h wo</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">uld be used to make methane would be through the use of methanogens. These microorganisms naturally produce methane and can be found in many different places including the human large intestine. The only problem with them is that they require different materials such as acetate to make methane and they can’t make it without the help of other microorganisms. This means that it requires multiple steps for the reaction to happen. With the new method though, the reaction happens in one step. As well as this, it can happen in a living organism, this means that it can happen at room temperature. Another advantage to this method is that it makes it easy to tweak since there is only one main step which needs to be changed. But, even with with all of its advantages, this engineered nitrogenase is still not as efficient at transforming compounds as the natural nitrogenase. “The normal enzyme makes about two hydrogens for every [molecule of] ammonia,” Co-author Caroline Harwood said. “The altered enzyme makes a thousand hydrogens for every molecule of methane.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Ongoing research</b><br />The research is still going on as the scientists are attempting to find a way to increase the eff<span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">icienc</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">y of the enzyme. Who knows, maybe some time in the future we will be reliant on these bacterium to create fuels for all of us to live a sustainable life.</span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-174b020c-c844-7ad5-5711-c16c394aa63b" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-174b020c-c844-7ad5-5711-c16c394aa63b" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.38; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 1.38; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Click </span><a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Biology" style="line-height: 1.38; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</a><span style="line-height: 1.38; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to read more about Biology.</span></span><br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-174b020c-c844-7ad5-5711-c16c394aa63b" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-174b020c-c844-7ad5-5711-c16c394aa63b" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
<b>Sources:</b><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/08/23/stories/1060041923" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/08/23/stories/1060041923</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/engineered-bacterium-turns-carbon-dioxide-into-methane-fuel/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/engineered-bacterium-turns-carbon-dioxide-into-methane-fuel/</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071210103934.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071210103934.htm</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/08/16/1611043113" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/08/16/1611043113</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Nitrogenase.png/220px-Nitrogenase.png" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Nitrogenase.png/220px-Nitrogenase.png</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/R._palustric_bacteria.png" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/R._palustric_bacteria.png</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.grisanik.com/static/images/51-ch4.png" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.grisanik.com/static/images/51-ch4.png</span></a></div>
<a href="http://faculty.college-prep.org/~bernie/sciproject/project/Kingdoms/Bacteria3/methanogens.gif" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://faculty.college-prep.org/~bernie/sciproject/project/Kingdoms/Bacteria3/methanogens.gif</span></a></span><script>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09524218400399341756noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-4847899998988972252016-08-24T23:46:00.001+02:002016-08-26T22:01:21.939+02:00Quantum bits times four<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Quantum bits are the building blocks of Quantum computers because they represent two numbers at the same time. Scientists have now developed a quantum bit that represent four numbers simultaneously, instead of just two.</b></span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAavdmofParmcl35y70rKqb72o1CWprkdYxbVsdWwEAY86xG7YkS1LuaPu-AfivSVnrzeWGA0AmCirOdniHceM1hf6h5tonQXL7XSTTvJZXiufNSOh5cBAVlfDpT7vy2KxGY_CrxpxKcY/s1600/fourspinafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAavdmofParmcl35y70rKqb72o1CWprkdYxbVsdWwEAY86xG7YkS1LuaPu-AfivSVnrzeWGA0AmCirOdniHceM1hf6h5tonQXL7XSTTvJZXiufNSOh5cBAVlfDpT7vy2KxGY_CrxpxKcY/s1600/fourspinafb2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A simple picture of an atom</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Fully controlled atom</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>
</b>Normal quantum bits basically consist of an electron (the really small particles that orbit atoms) trapped in certain kinds of material. This combination then starts to behave like an atom, but a very special one. We can control all the properties of this ‘artificial atom’. Normal atoms can have a few specific energy levels. These energy levels depend on the orbits of the electrons. The bigger the orbit, the higher the energy level. Since we can control all properties of ‘artificial atoms’, we can also control the energy level and keep it steady. With this advantage, we can focus on a really weird property of the atom; its spin.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b></b></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj36blL3Qnq3tGMOMUcClazI6iyJ37ksP8R6IiPo9T9hyphenhyphenlQBthX9d_6k7k3XDHh7F7GhSxx9HKc6uvQfETlcXyckFp85pCvmbwk6NOBn33COmEmuELBlkygMiP-4AqCbCvR3i75yMTYs9s/s1600/fourspinafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj36blL3Qnq3tGMOMUcClazI6iyJ37ksP8R6IiPo9T9hyphenhyphenlQBthX9d_6k7k3XDHh7F7GhSxx9HKc6uvQfETlcXyckFp85pCvmbwk6NOBn33COmEmuELBlkygMiP-4AqCbCvR3i75yMTYs9s/s320/fourspinafb1.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>
</b></span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like a spinning top spinning both ways</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />You can imagine artificial atoms to be a bit like spinning-tops. They can either spin to the right or to the left. The artificial atoms can do the same. The quantum computer then calls a spin to the right zero and a spin to the left one for example. But if you don’t look at the atom, it can actually spin both ways at the same time, and thus the artificial atom can represent both a one and a zero. But as soon as you look at it, it’s suddenly either a one or a zero. This strange property enables quantum computers to run multiple calculations at once, while normal computers can only do one at a time. Really fast, that is, but still one at the time.<br /><br /><b>Graphene is weird</b><br />But now, scientists have discovered that we can really change the properties of an artificial atom by trapping it in graphene. Instead of two types of spin, it suddenly has four. The spinning top cannot only spin to the left and to the right, but also up and down. And you can now imagine it better as a ball. The quantum computer can call the two new spins two and three, and suddenly it has two whole new numbers to play with. This can make the quantum computer even faster, since it can do even more calculations in the sameamount of time.<br /><br /><b>The atoms are picky</b><br />But there is one problem though. For the artificial atoms to actually turn into balls instead of spinning-tops, and get four possible spins, they have to be trapped in a very smooth piece of graphene. If the graphene is a bit rough on the edges, the artificial atom will refuse to turn into a ball and just keep its two spins. And graphene is notoriously hard to make since it consists of a single layer of carbon atoms. So it’s incredibly thin and delicate. This makes it really unlikely that this new discovery will be used in some new invention any time soon, since further research has to be done to make these special artificial atoms more stable.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Physics">here</a> to read more about physics</span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources: <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/electron-prisons-could-be-used-develop-quantum-technology"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/electron-prisons-could-be-used-develop-quantum-technology</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://phys.org/news/2016-08-artificial-atom-graphene.html"><span lang="EN-GB">http://phys.org/news/2016-08-artificial-atom-graphene.html</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02548"><span lang="EN-GB">http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02548</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02548"><span lang="EN-GB">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02548</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot"><span lang="EN-GB">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galliumarsenide">https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galliumarsenide</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/A_tough_gang_of_Spinning_Tops.jpg">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/A_tough_gang_of_Spinning_Tops.jpg</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/9c15428e11922a9288d1457acac7a2f805630fc9.gif"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/9c15428e11922a9288d1457acac7a2f805630fc9.gif</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-39471935258503682082016-08-22T00:01:00.000+02:002016-08-23T00:31:05.950+02:00Fighting poverty with satellites<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Governments in poor countries have to make important decisions to help their countries out of poverty. For these decisions, they need a lot of data, which is usually limited in those countries. Neal Jean and his team have found a solution.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><br />No census causes old data<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC274_sSk3DKSwdR_XkgT4za1e-lGpUVlNjtwQy0lxgDvwOuw1_1PBF5IikzTnA0yuW2qDp7D8Ic6f602Go9jTRbDXaDS1rFY_b3XrI1dHoyeA4ZhGnW7nnJav3k1DKgZ3-0wm70FprMY/s1600/povertysatafb2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="139" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC274_sSk3DKSwdR_XkgT4za1e-lGpUVlNjtwQy0lxgDvwOuw1_1PBF5IikzTnA0yuW2qDp7D8Ic6f602Go9jTRbDXaDS1rFY_b3XrI1dHoyeA4ZhGnW7nnJav3k1DKgZ3-0wm70FprMY/s320/povertysatafb2.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Surveys conducted in Africa in<br />
the past few years</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In poorer countries, it’s really hard to get detailed census data since roads and other infrastructure are generally not good so people are difficult to reach. On top of that, poor countries usually have lower literacy rates too. These two things, and other factors too, makes gathering detailed information about the people in that poor country especially hard. In Angola for example, 44 years elapsed since the last census before a recent one was conducted. In that time, the population grew from 5.6 million to 24.3 million and the country suffered a civil war. So governments have based their policies on horrible outdated data for an incredible long time. That’s mainly why this information is so important, especially there, since governments and policy-makers desperately need such information to make their countries better. Now, Neal Jean and his team have found a way to gather census-like data without actually conducting such a survey, but through the use of satellites.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b></b></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinrUVgnSnd-_0QkE_nqJdrVpiuCNQJUbQrwlwivMfFMLBxo4G1NKZ9nx7nCscQlUDJp8B36FTHSjsaMrrWmYV-Dp4S1zzbN8-VFMJHMXCXgjIpRkwXaYN-qH2YOEAe4RW9DAHUDyEgJA8/s1600/povertysatafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinrUVgnSnd-_0QkE_nqJdrVpiuCNQJUbQrwlwivMfFMLBxo4G1NKZ9nx7nCscQlUDJp8B36FTHSjsaMrrWmYV-Dp4S1zzbN8-VFMJHMXCXgjIpRkwXaYN-qH2YOEAe4RW9DAHUDyEgJA8/s320/povertysatafb1.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>
</b></span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Is it dark or really dark?</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Scientists have already used night-time satellite images to determine which regions of the world are rich or poor in the past. This seems to be a really practical method; rich regions appear bright in the picture and poorer regions appear less bright. This happens because there’s less access to electricity there and also less artificial light. However, a disadvantage to this method is that it’s hard to see the difference between poor and very poor regions. They both appear equally dark. Scientists have also tried gathering information from smartphones, which are also sold more and more in poorer countries. Scientists can quite easily find out how wealthy somebody is based on his or her mobile phone use. The problem with this is that you can’t include the poorest of the poorest, which will cause wrong data. On top of that, most mobile phone data is owned by providers, and they aren’t that keen on giving their information away. Neal Jean and his team have found a method that doesn’t face either of those problems.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Combining day and night</b><br />They have designed software that can combine night-time images and day-time images. This method eliminates the problems you face when you use only night-time images. Because their software can recognize patterns that indicate wealth and poverty on the detailed day-time images. The software is then able to link the brightness of a place to its wealth or poverty levels. It can, for example, link large villas with swimming pools to bright light and crappy sheds to darkness. With the help of its knowledge, the software can then also tell the poor and the very poor regions apart, which is impossible when you only use night images. Another advantage they have is that Jean’s software only uses images and data that’s already freely available, unlike the mobile phone data. In other words, their software can be used as a replacement for surveys in countries where it’s hard or even impossible to conduct them. And it also shows how technological advances can also help fighting poverty. Or as economist Sendhil Mullainathan put it: “Why should the financial services industry, where mere dollars are at stake, be using more advanced technologies than the aid industry, where human life is at stake?”</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Computer%20Science">here</a> to read more about computer science.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Geography">here</a> to read more about geography.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.aaf7894">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.aaf7894</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.aah5217">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.aah5217</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6301/753">http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6301/753</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/upshot/satellite-images-can-pinpoint-poverty-where-surveys-cant.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/upshot/satellite-images-can-pinpoint-poverty-where-surveys-cant.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-79523400963622535772016-08-20T12:53:00.000+02:002016-08-23T00:30:49.766+02:00Bacteria don't only make you sick<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl5Wy8aWocz1eWNiHQdzLvD9fPMR_N3ly14b_oBaqPk1BsXTMa_WAHqjPrXL0Q9V0hE54DFTrUFo_3r7FYkLkUdkYSTewY1CYBlvuGCrDavmnqSDj8jBwRe8-8mCLpL5BWNtFQn2lAcH4/s1600/bacteriawireafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl5Wy8aWocz1eWNiHQdzLvD9fPMR_N3ly14b_oBaqPk1BsXTMa_WAHqjPrXL0Q9V0hE54DFTrUFo_3r7FYkLkUdkYSTewY1CYBlvuGCrDavmnqSDj8jBwRe8-8mCLpL5BWNtFQn2lAcH4/s1600/bacteriawireafb1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The nanowire-making bacteria</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Nanowires are the future of electronics. But they usually require nasty chemicals and difficult processes the create them. Scientists in Virginia have found a way to make bacteria form nanowires.<br /><br />They’re everywhere</b><br />Nanowires are becoming more and more important parts in modern electronics. They can be found in transistors, which are important components of all devices that have chips in them; your computer, your phone, your television and even in your calculator. Nanowires also play an important role in some new innovations in solar panels. MIT scientists have designed solar panels that are both cheap and flexible, and they also use nanowires. These flexible solar panels could, for example, be used to cover the whole surface of electric cars so they could power themselves. However, the problem with nanowires is that they’re pretty hard to make. <br /><b><br />Making nano-sculptures</b><br />There are basically two methods to make the small wires. The first one consists of obtaining large block of the material from which you want to make the wire (usually a metal such as copper), and cutting away all the excess. This technique can be likened a sculptor making a sculpture. The downside of this procedure is that nanowires are one billionth of a meter wide and mistakes are easily made. The other method is done by building up the wire from scratch.This is basically the complete opposite of the first one. This is similar to building with Lego. But when building a nanowire, the Lego bricks are fifty thousand times smaller than a human hair. So again, mistakes are easily made and this makes the creation of nanowires really difficult and expensive. But now, Yang Tan and his team have modified bacteria to make nanowires for them.<br /><br /><b>Make the bacteria do the work<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0KvEVR3nwPNRT0RLbRoTs23efE1CAgOa9jo6ywFcKBqMyxgKjeMCHB8XjcXS5msRIPxn44njtoYMvWgMpvc_30Y4DG9zS0fGGWji248jhbHIdjow46u27VFx2Cm4L34S19bH8r8UXoK0/s1600/bacteriawireafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0KvEVR3nwPNRT0RLbRoTs23efE1CAgOa9jo6ywFcKBqMyxgKjeMCHB8XjcXS5msRIPxn44njtoYMvWgMpvc_30Y4DG9zS0fGGWji248jhbHIdjow46u27VFx2Cm4L34S19bH8r8UXoK0/s320/bacteriawireafb2.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The created nanowires (biowires)</td></tr>
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</b><br />They took some very common soil bacteria called Geobacter sulfurreducens. This bacteria can already make thin wires that are somewhat conductive. But with some advanced DNA modification, Yang Tan and his team implanted DNA from another bacteria into the geobacter. This new combination of DNA makes the bacteria form thinner and more conductive nanowires. This method is much easier than the older methods, since the only thing you need to do is keep the bacteria alive and wait. Another advantage of the nanowires made by bacteria is that they are really eco-friendly. Nanowires made with the older method usually have all kinds of toxic substances which can be very harmful for the environment. The bacteria-made nanowires don’t have these toxic substances in them, so it’s no problem if they end up in the environment. It might even be possible to just put your broken computer in the organic waste bin in the future.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Physics">here</a> to read more about physics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Biology">here</a> to read more about biology.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.understandingnano.com/nanowires-applications.html">http://www.understandingnano.com/nanowires-applications.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire"><span lang="EN-GB">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1002/smll.201601112"><span lang="EN-GB">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1002/smll.201601112</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160816182622.htm"><span lang="EN-GB">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160816182622.htm</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/smll.201601112/full"><span lang="EN-GB">http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/smll.201601112/full</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2016/Geobacter.aspx"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2016/Geobacter.aspx</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobacter_sulfurreducens">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobacter_sulfurreducens</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobacter_sulfurreducens#/media/File:Geobacter_sulfurreducens_2.jpg">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobacter_sulfurreducens#/media/File:Geobacter_sulfurreducens_2.jpg</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-14259607101174275042016-08-16T01:47:00.000+02:002016-08-20T13:19:06.267+02:00The LHC stays worryingly silent<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>In 2012, the Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs-particle. Since then, the LHC hasn’t discovered any new particles, although it is working better than ever before. Scientists are worried. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif_bl5mHSqYWWo4ZbTVLAR6TwMiJm21Ocxm8TgSEUjwmVwM6r44RDrb3O9hg0XgDoi6CGaWmInwuZrKqYI-TkZGwpwnw4Jt3p93K8Y5RjQ4pkHz6kyGtvXtChzLqkBEIGtesapUkAnAIg/s1600/noparticleafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif_bl5mHSqYWWo4ZbTVLAR6TwMiJm21Ocxm8TgSEUjwmVwM6r44RDrb3O9hg0XgDoi6CGaWmInwuZrKqYI-TkZGwpwnw4Jt3p93K8Y5RjQ4pkHz6kyGtvXtChzLqkBEIGtesapUkAnAIg/s320/noparticleafb1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</b></span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ehm…where are they?</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />At the LHC in Geneve, scientists make protons, one of the building blocks of atoms, collide which each other at very high speeds. And when you make things collide, they’ll break. Just like cars in a car crash. And when the cars break, you can see what’s inside of them. The LHC does pretty much the same thing. When the protons collide, we can see what’s inside of those too. With very advanced detectors, researchers can detect all kinds of fundamental particles that can teach us many new things about our universe. But the last major discovery was four years ago; the Higgs-particle. About a year after that, the LHC was closed for maintenance and an upgrade. Last year, the LHC was opened again, and now the particle accelerator works better than ever. It can accelerate the protons to higher speeds, which means bigger collisions. The researchers thought that would mean that they would discover more new particles. Except that they haven’t. And scientists are thinking there might not be any particles left to discover by the LHC anymore.<br /><br /><b>Protonic car crash times 400 trillion</b><br />After the upgrade, around 400 million-million protons have collided with each other in the LHC. And it hasn’t shown us any new particles yet. Scientists have a couple of explanations. The first one is of course quite simple; it’s an accident. We haven’t discovered a new particle, but the LHC can still find them and we just have to wait. “We could find something by the end of the year. You never know.” says Maria Spiropulu from CalTech. The second explanation is that the particles we’re looking for are actually way too heavy for the LHC to detect. Which means that the researchers working at the LHC will have to do very detailed measurements of the known particles, and from that they may be able to find clues those new, heavier particles. Whatever will be the case, the LHC will probably switch over to precision work, instead of the quite random proton-smashing that happens now, somewhere in 2018. <br /><br /><b>Don’t forget gravity<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglL9u24HUR1woTl2xN10UKbvYEvudRTkzisj9Z2p9xUpD4GPyjo_Gq7YcCXGtR-RIJ37OxJ8XKWjZejfANJPj-MHPHLSzk6Sx10VcqiHLMwEuXV8C528lz9LgDj9k0vTtJYX4aySs2PqU/s1600/noparticleafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglL9u24HUR1woTl2xN10UKbvYEvudRTkzisj9Z2p9xUpD4GPyjo_Gq7YcCXGtR-RIJ37OxJ8XKWjZejfANJPj-MHPHLSzk6Sx10VcqiHLMwEuXV8C528lz9LgDj9k0vTtJYX4aySs2PqU/s320/noparticleafb2.jpg" width="319" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Standard Model</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The reason that scientists are convinced that there must be more particles, and that we don’t have just discovered all of them, is the Standard Model. In this model, we can fit all the particles, which can together explain all forces of nature. Except for gravity. So scientists are sure there must be one or more particles that are responsible for gravity out there. We just can’t find them. With even more improvements and upgrades to the LHC and its detectors, and with new precision measures of the well-known particles, we can find new clues to those hiding particles. Or maybe we just have to wait.</span><div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Physics">here</a> to read more about physics.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.353.6300.635">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1126/science.353.6300.635</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-cern-hadron-collider-restarts-two-year.html"><span lang="NL">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-cern-hadron-collider-restarts-two-year.html</span></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://writing-guidelines.web.cern.ch/entries/inverse-femtobarn"><span lang="NL">http://writing-guidelines.web.cern.ch/entries/inverse-femtobarn</span></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_Technology"><span lang="NL">https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_Technology</span></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://home.cern/sites/home.web.cern.ch/files/image/inline-images/old/lhc_long_1.jpg"><span lang="NL">https://home.cern/sites/home.web.cern.ch/files/image/inline-images/old/lhc_long_1.jpg</span></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/standard-model/images/standard_model_ai.png"><span lang="NL"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/standard-model/images/standard_model_ai.png</span></span></a></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-87665359041907489442016-08-13T00:34:00.000+02:002016-08-27T21:14:02.245+02:00Monitoring your nervous system with dust<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>A Fitbit is a handy gadget to keep track of your health. But what if you could have nanotechnology in your brain to monitor your health? This science-fiction is becoming real in a lab in California.<br /><br />Tracking impulses</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN1lzaCCMfpvKOAx358SXLD0d2Gy4KeLivkIJonlNdtsnm-AqDi1l_s2oel9XHG0obkl5Sk5LZ4UwRuVWycJ9uDmxibN1BaEi6ypOgjipuyInOFInzWxfC9hZ6xG1U4XZgP3ZUIa5-OHo/s1600/nanonerveafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN1lzaCCMfpvKOAx358SXLD0d2Gy4KeLivkIJonlNdtsnm-AqDi1l_s2oel9XHG0obkl5Sk5LZ4UwRuVWycJ9uDmxibN1BaEi6ypOgjipuyInOFInzWxfC9hZ6xG1U4XZgP3ZUIa5-OHo/s320/nanonerveafb2.jpg" width="257" /></a></b></span></div>
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</b>Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz recently developed nanotechnology that can be implanted into your nervous system where the tiny devices can track the activity of the specific nerve they are implanted in. If such a nano device would be implanted in one of your leg nerves, you would be able to track when and how long you walk. This would be possible since your leg nerves fire impulses, which the nanotechnology can detect when you walk. But don’t run to your doctor to get some nano devices implanted yet, because Carmena and Maharbiz have only tested their technology on anesthetized rats, and lots of testing must be done before we can use this technology for humans. But how does this new nanotechnology, which the developers call neural dust, actually work?<br /><br /><b>It’s too small!</b><br />Carmena and Maharbiz faced a couple of challenges when designing their neural dust, which they named this way because the tiny devices are implanted in the nerves or neurons and they are almost as small as little specks of dust. Firstly, the nanotechnology is so small that there isn’t any space for a battery or to store the information the tiny Fitbit gathered. The energy problem could be solved with wireless charging. This technology can already be found in some smartphones. The information problem could be solved by simply beaming all the information straight away. But this is impossible. The neural dust is so small that the communication systems we normally use for these kinds of things are much too imprecise. The signals would simply miss the tiny devices. They wouldn’t get charged and we wouldn’t get their information. We have other ways to transmit energy and information, but those are really harmful to our bodies since they can cause cancer. That being said, the scientists couldn’t use that either. But, fortunately, they found another way to communicate with and charge the nano devices; ultrasound. Doctors also use ultrasound to look at unborn babies, so it’s super safe and it’s also precise enough for the neural dust. But how are we going to use it?</span><div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A spec of neural dust attached to a rat's nerve</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Helping the ill</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Carmena and Maharbiz can see their neural dust being used for all kinds of things in the future, since they’re not only developing nano devices that can monitor our nerves, they also want to add a stimulating function to them. This can really help paraplegic people, people who have paralysed legs, for example. Earlier studies with similar devices have already shown that they can help those people control their bladder again. And similar devices have also helped people with sleep apnea. Scientists think they can also help people with diabetes and arthritis. With this new development, which has made the devices even smaller, we could also help people with diseases that require even more precise treatment. An example would be some bowel diseases. But, this will have to wait until all the testing is done, and the neural dust is safe for humans and not just for blacked out rats.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Biology">here</a> to read more about biology. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(16)30344-0">http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(16)30344-0</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neural-dust-could-enable-a-fitbit-for-the-nervous-system/"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neural-dust-could-enable-a-fitbit-for-the-nervous-system/</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://universityofcalifornia.edu/news/neural-dust-could-treat-body-inside"><span lang="EN-GB">http://universityofcalifornia.edu/news/neural-dust-could-treat-body-inside</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/default/files/nerve-sensor-image-uc-berkeley.jpg"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/default/files/nerve-sensor-image-uc-berkeley.jpg</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-40521711123673345252016-08-06T20:59:00.003+02:002016-08-08T23:10:58.783+02:00Refuelling with carbon dioxide<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>What if we could turn CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> into fuel? We would solve the global warming problem and the fuel problem. Scientists from the University of Toronto have done just that.</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1qa2f6u6yDqdOLVBTsyFuyDGklvVFRxlU4GkktgjjJnE8rEMpv-DHtz1txd6NFq0lLQGh3DAvR-0QuE9ZdAZOHgqB6SKLoynz_vFsEFSpiXB6fMY4opqYx7iy3pZMeHpMsC6GYP1etQM/s1600/fuelco2afb2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1qa2f6u6yDqdOLVBTsyFuyDGklvVFRxlU4GkktgjjJnE8rEMpv-DHtz1txd6NFq0lLQGh3DAvR-0QuE9ZdAZOHgqB6SKLoynz_vFsEFSpiXB6fMY4opqYx7iy3pZMeHpMsC6GYP1etQM/s320/fuelco2afb2.png" width="320" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>It’s too hot!</b><br />Carbon dioxide (CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span>), water vapour and methane are the three main gases responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect which causes the climate to change. CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> is responsible for between nine and twenty-six percent of the greenhouse effect. Therefore, if we can decrease the concentration of CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> in the atmosphere, we would be able to reduce the negative consequences of the enhanced greenhouse effect and global warming. And the good news is: we can do that now! With the new technology, developed by Min Liu and Yuanjie Pang from the University of Toronto, we can change excess CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 </span>into the building blocks of fuels. But, it’s important that we only convert the excess CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span>, and that we still leave a little in our atmosphere because CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> is super important for us and all life on earth. Without CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> and the greenhouse effect, the earth’s average temperature would be a chilling -18°C (-0.4°F) instead of a pleasant 15°C (59°F). But how does this new technology work?<br /><br /><b><br /><br /></b></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>But the CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> has to want to change<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLTLlJawjC7OgpW9DnHS_QSbTZM1TUGIgR24O0kDsaKXigXIZKuq6SpAAUZLRwhKLvUOcXoWXwfoQcaUtTYWGgzemK2_y3lW18sP0duzo5lPDRB0b-4HcZ4Q5ykcs6TXP_70eDdF9R4yg/s1600/fuelco2afb1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLTLlJawjC7OgpW9DnHS_QSbTZM1TUGIgR24O0kDsaKXigXIZKuq6SpAAUZLRwhKLvUOcXoWXwfoQcaUtTYWGgzemK2_y3lW18sP0duzo5lPDRB0b-4HcZ4Q5ykcs6TXP_70eDdF9R4yg/s320/fuelco2afb1.png" width="320" /></a></div>
</b>Min Liu and Yuanjie Pang created nanoneedles, with tips ten thousand times thinner than hair. These needles conduct electricity, and this electricity attracts CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span>. This is necessary because the concentration of CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> in the air is still pretty low. Only four out of every 10000 air particles are CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> molecules. Another problem we face when we try to alter CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> is that it doesn’t want to change. It’s an inert molecule, which means that it takes a lot of effort to make it react with another substance and change. But, when you can bring a lot of CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> and energy together, which the scientists in Toronto did with their newly developed device, this greenhouse gas will react more readily. Min Liu and Yuanjie Pang managed to change CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> into carbon monoxide (CO), which is actually a poisonous gas, but also a building block of fuel. <br /><br /><b>Two flies with one hit</b><br />That’s another advantage of their invention, it can not only remove CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> from our atmosphere, it can also create a substance which can be used to create all kinds of fuels and other useful chemicals. Pang describes their invention as “we're killing two birds with one stone” to Science Daily. Their invention can also provide us with a solution for the growing global energy problem and oil shortage. This could be done since we would not rely as heavily on oil or any fossil fuels if we can make fuels from CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> on a large scale. That’s the main challenge for now, to make Liu and Pang’s invention truly useful we have to apply it on a really large scale. And that’s a long way of research away.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Chemistry">here</a> to read more about chemistry.</span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/view_chapter.asp?id=21&">http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/view_chapter.asp?id=21&</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160803140144.htm"><span lang="EN-GB">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160803140144.htm</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1038/nature19060"><span lang="EN-GB">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1038/nature19060</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature19060.html"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature19060.html</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.scientias.nl/meteorologen-meten-voor-het-eerst-meer-dan-400-ppm-koolstofdioxide-in-de-lucht/">https://www.scientias.nl/meteorologen-meten-voor-het-eerst-meer-dan-400-ppm-koolstofdioxide-in-de-lucht/</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#Greenhouse_gases">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#Greenhouse_gases</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://news.engineering.utoronto.ca/recycling-carbon-dioxide-u-t-researchers-efficiently-reduce-climate-warming-co2-building-blocks-fuels/">http://news.engineering.utoronto.ca/recycling-carbon-dioxide-u-t-researchers-efficiently-reduce-climate-warming-co2-building-blocks-fuels/</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.driving-dutchman.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CO2-molecuul-600x426.png">http://www.driving-dutchman.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CO2-molecuul-600x426.png</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-73375603132269047512016-08-04T23:55:00.002+02:002016-08-05T23:10:24.860+02:00Where did the mammoths go?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Most woolly mammoths went extinct twelve thousand years ago, but a few managed to survive on an island close to Siberia until 3700 years ago. But what killed those last survivors?<br /><br /></b></span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivATYgaJDH1n1eEmbDVFWI9vLEylO9ivqurwVRou-HaOs4c24yK3lcS0WGAVdh8zYErbsGWRPUqWjPnxJNgeaLYD-Bxz-xDwcjz7xLmg_OivB4F76_weepYEFCcuhO0tXOtciXY-rxsVo/s1600/lastmammothafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivATYgaJDH1n1eEmbDVFWI9vLEylO9ivqurwVRou-HaOs4c24yK3lcS0WGAVdh8zYErbsGWRPUqWjPnxJNgeaLYD-Bxz-xDwcjz7xLmg_OivB4F76_weepYEFCcuhO0tXOtciXY-rxsVo/s320/lastmammothafb1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Saint Paul Island</span></td></tr>
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<b style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s too hot!</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The main reason that woolly mammoths went extinct thousands of years ago was climate change. Mammoths were completely adapted to cold climates, with their long, woolly coats and layer of fat. Because of this, when temperatures rose at the end of the last ice age, the mammoths practically sweat to death. Also, humans hunted mammoths for their fur, meat and teeth, which didn’t help the mammoths either. They retreated further and further away from Europe towards Asia, until there were only a couple of mammoths left in Siberia. This happened because Siberia was still really cold and not many people lived there. But, the mammoths couldn’t survive for long there either, and in the end only a few small groups were left on small islands, one of them was Saint Paul Island, close to Alaska. On that island, the last mammoth died 3750 years ago. Back then the Egyptians had already built their pyramids. But, even nowadays, it’s cold enough for mammoths to survive on Saint Paul Island, and there weren’t any people on the island until 1787. So what killed those last mammoths?<br /><br /><b>What else?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</b>That’s exactly what Russell Graham and his team asked themselves. This question was a difficult one because the reasons that caused the mammoths on the mainland to go extinct didn’t apply to these ones. There were no people around to hunt them. And the plants didn’t suddenly disappear or change, which would have left the mammoths without food. The island also didn’t heat up dramatically. Then what caused the mammoths to die out? Graham thinks is has a lot to do with the amount of freshwater on the island. Because of local climate change, the sea level rose and the island got smaller. A side effect of this was that the amount of freshwater decreased dramatically. The mammoths couldn’t find enough water anymore and eventually died of thirst. <br /><b><br />So small and yet so powerful</b><br />What Russell Graham and his team found particularly interesting about their discovery was that a relatively small climate change can mean the end for such large and seemingly powerful animals. They found this especially interesting since there weren’t any people around to give mammoths the last push into extinction, like there were on the mainland. But, this new discovery can also tell us some interesting things about our future.<br /><br /><b>Save our mammoths!</b><br />The mammoths on Saint Paul Island died because of a relatively small, local change in climate, which cause a relatively small rise of the sea level. Right now, we’re facing global climate change, which will cause global rise of the sea level. Although the mammoths on Saint Paul Island already were severely endangered, many species today are in the same situation. This means we should definitely do something to curb our CO2 emissions to save many species. </span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Biology">here</a> to read more about biology.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Geography">here</a> to read more about geography.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://wikikids.nl/Wolharige_mammoet">http://wikikids.nl/Wolharige_mammoet</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/07/27/1604903113">http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/07/27/1604903113</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul_Island_(Alaska)#Natural_history">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul_Island_(Alaska)#Natural_history</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.stpaulisland.net/stpauls-n.jpg">http://www.stpaulisland.net/stpauls-n.jpg</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.cecwisc.org/Content/files/2014/WoollyMammoth-1.jpg"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://www.cecwisc.org/Content/files/2014/WoollyMammoth-1.jpg</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-78893167555519303122016-08-04T00:27:00.001+02:002016-08-04T10:47:02.368+02:00Salty oxygen surprises scientists<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Studying how the atmosphere was millions of years ago can tell us a lot about early life on earth. But that air is long gone. Nigel Blamey and his team have found a salty solution.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimLyCgn3VyIUT5OqlpYxVx1sdKjq0VUgqrWCvtIC93-T7OWbtaRXItuRL45WpYFtO5s2k54kiaIYQkd9uu0wQxom73pByWVI-NSzNnixtNuw4AnYoTc7CeMlZOkOaISMjpldwP_qDIy4U/s1600/saltyoxyafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimLyCgn3VyIUT5OqlpYxVx1sdKjq0VUgqrWCvtIC93-T7OWbtaRXItuRL45WpYFtO5s2k54kiaIYQkd9uu0wQxom73pByWVI-NSzNnixtNuw4AnYoTc7CeMlZOkOaISMjpldwP_qDIy4U/s320/saltyoxyafb1.jpg" width="201" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Air tight enclosed in salt</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Blamey and his team have closely analysed ancient salt crystals. Salt crystals have tiny pockets of air in them and Blamey managed to extract these pockets out of the crystals in order to analyse them. They drilled up 815-million-year-old salt crystals from Australia’s soil and with a special device, they were able to crush the crystals and then capture the old gases that come out of the crystals. They then analysed those gases and made a really interesting discovery.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>That’s weird…</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Blamey and his team discovered that 815 million years ago, there was twice as much oxygen in the air as we used to think. Scientists used to think that there was only around 5 percent oxygen in the atmosphere that long ago. They also used to think that it was the reason for the lack of any complex life back then. The first complex life arose between 100 and 200 million years later, in a period called the Cambrian explosion. This explosion of complex life marked the beginning of the geological period called the Cambrian. During the Cambrian explosion all major ‘branches’ of the tree of life evolved. For a long time, scientists thought that complex life was made possible by the sudden increase of oxygen in the atmosphere. But now, Nigel Blamey and his team have discovered that the oxygen levels were already high enough for such an explosion millions of years earlier. So the Cambrian explosion must have had another reason.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>No idea</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Well, scientists haven’t found a reason yet. This discovery is so recent that scientists haven’t been able to adapt their theories yet. But Blamey and his team have found other interesting uses for their new machine that can extract gases from ancient salt crystals. For starters, they can analyse different salt crystals from other time periods. Through this, we can learn more about the history of our atmosphere. And with these future experiments, we may also be able to predict the future of our atmosphere. This would be very helpful to scientists doing research about climate change. But Nigel Blamey and his team also see another use for their new technique which is out of this world.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdUzU2ZpaPdJ6LjFFeYh2XflEEQiA94d7_Giq8wAmYeNxtoedwFW1lM4L_3xgtaiNjcrpG7qgk7NZCBfhgfQovwsNDLpnOVf8Pk_O60vlAw8jXtsj9-ctAWAi5UGeDVmO3WtEQa3Ivy2A/s1600/saltyoxyafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdUzU2ZpaPdJ6LjFFeYh2XflEEQiA94d7_Giq8wAmYeNxtoedwFW1lM4L_3xgtaiNjcrpG7qgk7NZCBfhgfQovwsNDLpnOVf8Pk_O60vlAw8jXtsj9-ctAWAi5UGeDVmO3WtEQa3Ivy2A/s320/saltyoxyafb2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Maybe check out Mars too</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Blamey and his team also see their technique being used on Mars. Since you can also find salt crystals that contain air pockets there, we could learn a lot more about Mars’s ancient atmosphere. This could be done by equipping future Mars rovers with the device Blamey and his team made. Analysing the planet’s salt crystals could prove that Mars’ atmosphere contained a lot of oxygen in the distant past, which could help us with finding out if life ever arose on Mars, or if it was possible. This shows that one invention can teach us about both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial life. </span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Chemistry">here</a> to read more about chemistry.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Geography">here</a> to read more about geograpgy.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Astronomy">here</a> to read more about astronomy.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; tab-stops: center 8.0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1130/G37937.1">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1130/G37937.1</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.geek.com/science/billion-year-old-air-has-five-times-more-oxygen-than-expected-1664063/"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.geek.com/science/billion-year-old-air-has-five-times-more-oxygen-than-expected-1664063/</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota"><span lang="EN-GB">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion"><span lang="EN-GB">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/explorationzone2015/pdf/1039.pdf">http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/explorationzone2015/pdf/1039.pdf</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Halite-249324.jpg">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Halite-249324.jpg</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/16/07/1600x800/landscape-1455662627-mars-surface-web.jpg"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/16/07/1600x800/landscape-1455662627-mars-surface-web.jpg</span></a></span><script>
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</script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13111151778337565943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485317929365904796.post-84427396991829628402016-08-01T01:34:00.001+02:002016-08-01T22:55:50.198+02:00A red window into Jupiter<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jupiter is way hotter than it should be. And the planet has the biggest storm in the solar system. James O’Donoghue and his team found a relation between these things.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghgBtmURf_MWMR8WDAOAMfmwlCJFZoQoUZWZGkKph8RuHvHNYg1faK9K-FNT5KTcWhUshIgqEGUHXip3Oxsg0eg3TqOdVlSZUKeOaDRUDNxsvLaYG1ITrIJWlX1N6vDNu2bYvkCKy3lF4/s1600/juphotafb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghgBtmURf_MWMR8WDAOAMfmwlCJFZoQoUZWZGkKph8RuHvHNYg1faK9K-FNT5KTcWhUshIgqEGUHXip3Oxsg0eg3TqOdVlSZUKeOaDRUDNxsvLaYG1ITrIJWlX1N6vDNu2bYvkCKy3lF4/s320/juphotafb1.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Earth compared to the Red Spot</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">An old pimple</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This big storm is called the Great Red Spot, because it’s a big red spot. This spot is in fact a giant cyclone in Jupiter’s atmosphere. But it’s not just a normal cyclone, it’s an anticyclone, which means that it turns in the opposite direction of all the other gases in Jupiter’s atmosphere. This creates a rather pretty pattern on Jupiter. It’s so huge because Jupiter is a gas planet, so it has no rocky surface like earth does. There is therefore less friction and cyclone is not slowed, thus keeping its size. This is also the reason why the Great Red Spot has been around for so long. The spot has been around for at least 186 years, but Robert Hooke, a 17th century scientist, also claimed to have seen the spot 351 years ago. But now, the Great Red Spot also appears to do something else, and it’s pretty warm.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Where does that heat come from?</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Scientists discovered a really weird thing about Jupiter. The planet is a couple of hundreds of degrees Celsius hotter than the planet is supposed to be if it was heated only by the sun. Scientists proposed to explain this by saying that Jupiter was heated up by its polar light, but computer models showed that the heat created by polar light would just stay around the poles, and not spread to lower latitudes. But now scientists have a new theory. The Great Red Spot is one of the hottest objects in Jupiter’s atmosphere. James O’Donoghue and his team measured temperatures above the Great Red Spot that were 370 degrees Celsius higher than the surrounding atmosphere. And now they think the Red Spot is actually giving us a little sneak peek into Jupiter’s lower atmosphere, which we cannot usually see due to the high number of thunderstorms taking place. O’Donoghue and his team now think that these thunderstorms can actually heat up the whole planet, and especially the lower regions of the atmosphere, to the point that it is way hotter than it’s supposed to be. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfUHXxFeHJr5wXgZKD3kshyphenhyphengIjbagid9QnWmukxjDAzhmXR90_kC8q2J1QeRRCKWQYzkCRfH9A2o1UM8gCKC9sNvq_c3PAVonfGynD3tAU9LvwyQDWziIyRbu3EHWKYqtPekMATyJZVkc/s1600/juphotafb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfUHXxFeHJr5wXgZKD3kshyphenhyphengIjbagid9QnWmukxjDAzhmXR90_kC8q2J1QeRRCKWQYzkCRfH9A2o1UM8gCKC9sNvq_c3PAVonfGynD3tAU9LvwyQDWziIyRbu3EHWKYqtPekMATyJZVkc/s320/juphotafb2.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All mixed up</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The reason that there’s so much heat above the Great Red Spot, and not so much above other parts of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, is that both layers of the atmosphere get mixed together by that giant storm, and with that their temperatures also mix. In the Red Spot, a lot of this heat ends up in the higher part of Jupiter’s atmosphere, and not just in the lower atmosphere. Meanwhile, in the rest of Jupiter’s atmosphere, the upper atmosphere is only heated from below, by the extremely hot lower atmosphere, and both layers don’t really get mixed. Because of this, the rest of Jupiter’s top layer isn’t as hot as the Red Spot, but still way hotter than the sun would make the planet. This shows how a huge spot can give us a huge insight into a huge planet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Astronomy">here</a> if you want to read more about astronomy.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/10.1038/nature18940"><span lang="EN-GB">http://sci-hub.bz/10.1038/nature18940</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Red_Spot"><span lang="EN-GB">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Red_Spot</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke#Science">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke#Science</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.space.com/33551-jupiter-heats-up-great-red-spot.html">http://www.space.com/33551-jupiter-heats-up-great-red-spot.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://sci-hub.bz/doi/10.1002/2014JA020457">http://sci-hub.bz/doi/10.1002/2014JA020457</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/RedSpotEarth.jpg">http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/RedSpotEarth.jpg</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cJLNYj_hTek/hqdefault.jpg"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cJLNYj_hTek/hqdefault.jpg</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twenty years ago, scientists managed to clone a mammal for the first time; Dolly. The problem was, Dolly died only six years later, from what scientists thought were side-effects of cloning. Kevin Sinclair has discovered that this wasn’t the case.</span></b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Dolly</span></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Cloning some sheep</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But how do you actually clone a mammal, or to be more specific, a sheep? To create Dolly the sheep, scientists did the following. First, they took a few cells from an adult sheep. Through some complicated processes, they managed to change those cells into stem cells. This is very important, because stem cells can evolve into all types of cells. Whilst they can become skin cells, liver cells or bone cells, the cells the scientists took from the adult sheep could only stay what they already were; udder cells in this case. Not wanting a sheep entirely made out of udder, you would need to start with a stem cell. But, since the stem cells were made from cells from the adult sheep, Dolly had the exact same genes as that adult sheep and therefore looked exactly the same. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Poor Dolly</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stem cells also seem to have a downside. When you take the cell from a four-year-old sheep, the stem cells will also be four years old. Because of this, the new sheep will already be four years old when it is born. Because of this, the sheep will age much faster and die at a young age, like Dolly did. She died when she was six years old, while sheep can normally live for fifteen to twenty years. But now, Kevin Sinclair and his team have discovered that Dolly didn’t die of old age caused by cloning.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcV-9oJlu9j9d-T4tHUw3R7b1Pjt186eqE2_GJHc-Qh2FDW_f7fSFPsq3TP1CuVERnpHK0kgwFkP-Lb7qiXN3ACk3FCOPwN_FKurHFM6XkEyK3yrSvyj_DhhW4uu-geReafMgY0VQTM84/s1600/cloneallrightafb2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcV-9oJlu9j9d-T4tHUw3R7b1Pjt186eqE2_GJHc-Qh2FDW_f7fSFPsq3TP1CuVERnpHK0kgwFkP-Lb7qiXN3ACk3FCOPwN_FKurHFM6XkEyK3yrSvyj_DhhW4uu-geReafMgY0VQTM84/s320/cloneallrightafb2.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But they’re all right!</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The method they used to find this out was actually quite simple. They made four more clones from the same stem cells Dolly was made from. This way, these four sheep were clones of the original adult sheep, but also of Dolly. They did this about eight years ago, so now the sheep are eight years old. Unlike Dolly, they didn’t die of old age early, defying the expectations of the scientists. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with them. The scientists checked the sheep’s blood pressure, their joints and bones and other things. They didn’t seem to find anything that indicated that the sheep were aging faster than normal (not cloned) sheep. This means that Dolly probably didn’t die because she was cloned, but because of other reasons.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What went wrong?</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But why did Dolly die? Scientists aren’t completely sure yet, but they have theories. It may be possible that something went wrong with Dolly when she was still in her mother’s womb, which caused Dolly to age really fast, but this new research has proven that this doesn’t need to happen when you clone a sheep. This means that cloning is much safer than we thought and this discovery has cleared the way for further research about cloning. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Click <a href="http://thisweeksdiscoveries.blogspot.nl/search/label/Biology">here</a> to read more about biology.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(schaap)">https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(schaap)</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schaap_(dier)"><span lang="EN-GB">https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schaap_(dier)</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spry-dolly-siblings-could-make-clone-skeptics-sheepish/"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spry-dolly-siblings-could-make-clone-skeptics-sheepish/</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160726/ncomms12359/full/ncomms12359.html"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160726/ncomms12359/full/ncomms12359.html</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/07/27/dolly-the-sheep-died-young-but-her-clones-just-turned-nine.html">https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/07/27/dolly-the-sheep-died-young-but-her-clones-just-turned-nine.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160726/ncomms12359/fig_tab/ncomms12359_F1.html">http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160726/ncomms12359/fig_tab/ncomms12359_F1.html</a></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Dollyscotland.JPG/350px-Dollyscotland.JPG"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Dollyscotland.JPG/350px-Dollyscotland.JPG</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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