Bacteria Used To Fight Malaria
Michigan State University researchers have found the transmission of malaria via mosquitoes to humans can be interrupted by using a strain of the bacteria Wolbachia in the insects. Wolbachia bacteria is used to produce insects that could pass the infection on to their offspring. Female mosquitoes that carried Wolbachia also bred with uninfected mates. So Wolbachia would act as a vaccine for mosquitoes that would protect them from malaria parasites.
New Species of Dinosaur Discovered in China
A group of researchers from George Washington University have discovered a new species of carnivorous dinosaur in northwestern China. The Aorun zhaoi dinosaur, lived more than 161 million years ago. Named after the Dragon King of the Journey to the West.
Jonah Choiniere, one of the scientists who made the discovery said:
We were able to look at microscopic details of Aorun’s bones and they showed that the animal was less than a year old when it died on the banks of a stream. Essentially, the dinosaur was a baby when it died.
IBM Creates World Smallest Movie Using Atoms
IBM researchers have created the world’s smallest movie by manipulating single atoms on a copper surface. The researchers used stop-motion animation where a few dozen carbon atoms are moved around with the tiny tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM).
Check out the video.
Robots Will Soon Have Human-skin-like Sensitivity
Researcher Zhong Lin Wang, a professor of materials science and engineering at Georgia Tech has invented a smart skin that is able to give robots mimic the sense of touch. The invention can also be used to capture electronic signatures by recording the distinctive force an individual applies while signing.
The artificial skin is made using bundles of vertical zinc oxide nanowires where the researchers built arrays consisting of about 8,000 transistors.
Russia Launches Mice Into Space
Russia launched the Soyuz-2.1A rocket-carrier with over one hundred mice into space. Other creatures are lizards, snails as well as strains of bacteria, plants and seeds. The 6,300-kg Bion-M vehicle will return to Earth on May 18 after over 70 experiments.
Water In Space Will Not Flow
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield from the ISS, shows you what happens when you wring the water from a saturated standard-issue NASA washcloth while in low-Earth orbit. Watch the video to see the results of this little experiment.
Water, in space, will not flow. Due to lack of gravity, water tends to collect in floating blobs.
First Lab Grown Kidney
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have created a functioning rat kidneys in the lab. The kidneys were made by removing the donor kidneys of their cells using detergent and putting new cells that regenerate tissue into them. The kidney would then be rebuilt with cells taken from the patient. The kidneys were tested, and urine production reached 23% of natural ones.
Iranians Invented Time Machine?
An Iranian scientist in Tehran claims to have invented the time machine called “The Aryayek Time Traveling Machine” which allow individuals to peer into the future – up to 8 years into the future. Yeah right…
The 27-year-old Ali Razeghi says that his time device can fit in a briefcase. And this device is said to make its predictions based on the touch of a user.
Human And Primate Link Found
Researchers from the University of Michigan analysed the distinctive lip-smacking sounds made by wild gelada baboons and found striking similarities to human speech. The male monkeys smack their lips to produce a distinctive call to females. And these smacking sounds follow a similar tempo to human speech. The research can be found in the journal Current Biology.
Synthetic Tissues Created Using 3D Printer
Oxford University researchers used a modified 3D printer to create synthetic material capable of performing some of the functions of living cells. The material is made up of thousands of connected water droplets, encapsulated within lipid films.
Hagan Bayley, a professor headed the research said:
We aren’t trying to make materials that faithfully resemble tissues but rather structures that can carry out the functions of tissues. The droplets can be printed with protein pores to form pathways through the network that mimic nerves and are able to transmit electrical signals from one side of a network to the other. Each droplet measures about 50 microns in diameter (0.05 millimeters), or about five times the size of living cells. At the moment we’ve created networks of up to 35,000 droplets but the size of network we can make is really only limited by time and money
