Month: August 2013

LONDON (TIP): Stem cells obtained from urine could one day allow humans to regrow lost teeth, scientists claim. Chinese scientists used stem cells from urine to create tiny ‘tooth buds’ that when transplanted into mice grew into tooth-like structures. Stem cells — cells which can grow into any type of tissue — are popular among researchers looking for ways to grow new teeth to replace those lost with age and poor dental hygiene.

The group at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health used urine as the starting point, BBC News reported. Cells which are normally passed from the body, such as those from the lining of the body’s waterworks, are harvested in the laboratory. These collected cells are then coaxed into becoming stem cells. In the study, a mix of these cells and other material from a mouse was implanted into the animals. The researchers said that after three weeks the bundle of cells started to resemble a tooth: “The tooth-like structure contained dental pulp, dentin, enamel space and enamel organ.” However, the “teeth” were not as hard as natural teeth.

The tooth is out there Scientists used stem cells from urine to create tiny ‘tooth buds’ Cells which are normally passed from the body, such as those from the lining of the body’s waterworks, were harvested in a laboratory When transplanted These collected cells However, the “teeth” into mice, they grew into were then coaxed into were not as hard as tooth-like structures becoming stem cells natural teeth

LONDON: US department of energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have clocked the fastest-possible electrical switching in magnetite, a naturally magnetic mineral. Their results could drive innovations in the tiny transistors that control the flow of electricity across silicon chips, enabling faster , more powerful computing devices. Scientists using SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser found that it takes only 1 trillionth of a second to flip the on-off electrical switch in samples of magnetite, which is thousands of times faster than in transistors being used now.

While magnetite’s basic magnetic properties have been known for thousands of years, the experiment shows how much still can be learned about the electronic properties of magnetite. “This breakthrough research reveals for the first time the speed limit for electrical switching in this material,” said Roopali Kukreja, a materials science researcher at SLAC and Stanford University, who is a lead author of the study.The study shows how such conducting and nonconducting states can co-exist and create electrical pathways in next-generation transistors.

Scientists first hit each sample with a visiblelight laser, which fragmented the material’s electronic structure at an atomic scale, rearranging it to form the islands. The laser blast was followed closely by an ultra bright, ultra short X-ray pulse that allowed researchers to study, for the first time, the timing and details of changes in the sample excited by the initial laser strike. By slightly adjusting the interval of the X-ray pulses, they precisely measured how long it took the material to shift from a non-conducting to an electrically conducting state, and observed the structural changes during this switch.

BERLIN (TIP): Earthquakes may contribute to global warming by releasing methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, from the ocean floor, according to a new study. An international team of scientists investigated the aftermath of a magnitude 8.1 earthquake that took place in the Northern Arabian Sea in 1945. They postulated that this event caused the release of about 7.4 million cubic metres methane, into the ocean. In 2007, during a research cruise off the coast of Pakistan, the scientists obtained several sediment cores.

One of these cores contained methane hydrates, a solid ice-like structure of methane and water, just 1.6 metres below the sea floor. Investigations of these enabled the scientists to relate the 1945 earthquake to the concomitant release of methane , researchers said. Scientists from the MARUM Institute at the University of Bremen, the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven , and the ETH Zurich investigated hydrocarbon cold seeps at the Pakistani continental margin. During their expedition with the research vessel METEOR , the researchers extracted sediment core samples , which they closely investigated in the lab.

“Based on several indicators , we postulated that the earthquake led to a fracturing of the sediments, releasing the gas that had been trapped below the hydrates into the ocean,” said first author Dr David Fischer The conservative estimate of the methane released since the earthquake, not taking into account how much was discharged directly after the quake, is equivalent to roughly 7.4 cubic metres of methane gas at standard conditions at the earth’s surface, which equals 10 large gas tankers.