Month: November 2012

LOS ANGELES (TIP): After playing in the sand, the Curiosity rover is poised to trek across the Martian landscape in search of a rock to drill into, scientists reported on November 15. The six-wheel rover has been parked for more than a month at a sand dune where it has been busy scooping up soil, sniffing the atmosphere and measuring radiation levels on the surface. Its next task is to zero in on a rock and that requires driving to a new location.

Mission deputy scientist Ashwin Vasavada expected Curiosity to be on the move in the “next few days.” “It’s the bedrock which really gives you the story of ancient Mars,” said Vasavada of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission. “The soil is a little harder to interpret because we don’t know how old it is or where it came from.” The car-size rover touched down in Gale Crater, an ancient depression near the Martian equator, in August on a two-year mission to probe whether the landing site once had conditions capable of supporting microbial life.

Armed with a high-tech suite of instruments, it’s the most sophisticated spacecraft to ever land on the red planet. During the first three months, a weather station aboard Curiosity detected brief drops in air pressure, a sign of whirlwinds in the region. “These events are starting to occur more and more often,” said Manuel de la Torre Juarez of NASA JPL. “We expect to see more in the future.” Previous rovers have spotted and even recorded dust devils dancing across the Martian terrain, but scientists said Curiosity has not yet seen evidence that the swirling winds have lifted dust.

Curiosity’s ultimate destination is a 3-mile-high (5- kilometer-high) mountain rising from the center of the crater floor that’s rich in mineral deposits. Scientists had hoped to drive to the base before the end of the year, but that doesn’t look likely after the extended stay at its current spot.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Researchers have designed a new paperthin bulletproof super material which can selfassemble into alternating glassy and rubbery layers. The nanomaterial could translate into safety beyond vests.

These advancements could accelerate progress on protective coatings for satellites and even jet engine turbine blades, researchers said. A team of mechanical engineering and materials scientists from Rice University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created special materials that were able to stop bullets in the lab.

The type of material, called a structured polymer composite, can actually selfassemble into alternating glassy and rubbery layers, the Discovery News reported. While performing ballistic tests on the material at MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies , the 20-nanometrethick layers were able to stop a 9- millimetre bullet and seal the entryway behind it, according to a Rice University.

However, one of the challenges to making thinner and lighter protective gear is being able to test the materials effectively in the lab.

Researchers need to know precisely why those nanolayers are so good at dissipating energy, but analysing the polymer can take days. The MIT-Rice team also came up with an innovative testing method, where they shot tiny glass beads at the material.

Although the beads were only a millionth of a meter in size, they simulated bullet impacts. Under a scanning electron microscope the material’s layers look like corduroy so the projectile impact can be seen clearly.

The researchers deduced that a projectile hit their target 2,000 times faster than an apple falling one meter hits the ground, but with a million times less force. Because the projectile’s impact area is so concentrated, however , the impact energy is more than 760 times greater. “After the impact we can go in and cross-section the structure and see how deep the bullet got, and see what happened to these nice parallel layers,” Rice materials scientist Ned Thomas said. “They tell the story of the evolution of penetration of the projectile what mechanisms, at the nanoscale , may be taking place in order for this to be such a highperformance , lightweight protection material.”

LONDON (TIP): Early humans who roamed the African savanna three-and-a-half million years ago had a diet more like a cow than a great ape – comprising of grass and sedges, a new Oxford study has found. Researchers found that Australopithecus bahrelghazali chomped its way through rushes and grasses rather than soft fruits preferred by its chimpanzee cousins, thanks to its powerful jaws and big grinding teeth.

The study shows the ancestral human diet diverged from that of the apes much sooner than previously thought, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported. Experts analysed the amount of carbon in teeth from A bahrelghazali specimens dug up from a fossil site in Chad with the help of a laser that freed carbon from the enamel. This showed the creature’s diet would have been rich in C4 plants such as grasses and sedges.

LONDON (TIP): Researchers have discovered a new gene which they say helps explain how humans evolved from chimpanzees . The gene, called miR-941 , is carried only by humans and it appeared after humans evolved from apes and played a crucial role in human brain development and could shed light on how we learned to use tools and language.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh compared it to 11 other species of mammals, including chimpanzees, gorillas, mice and rats. This finding, published in Nature Communications , brings us closer to answering one of science’s leading questions: What makes the human body different from other mammals? A previous study that also analysed the differences between apes and humans found that the evolutionary genetic advantages that help humans live longer than apes also make them more vulnerable to diseases of ageing, including heart disease , cancer, and dementia. Scientists led by Dr Martin Taylor at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine showed that miR-941 had an important part in the development of the human brain and can even help explain how we acquire language and learn to use tools. This new gene is the first known gene to be found in humans and not in apes. According to the team, it appears to have a certain purpose in the human body.

Pigs hold clue to human diseases

Scientists have sequenced the pig’s genome, showing the swine and humans share 112 DNA mutations linked to a range of disease like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s , which may help in fighting diseases. Researchers, who undertook the largest ever study of the pig genome, found that swine are adaptable, easy to seduce with food and susceptible to domestication — much like humans.