Science Addict

In a macabre discovery fit for Indiana Jones, archaeologists in Spain unearthed a 14th century brick oven with a unique role — to bake bones. Scientists report that the animal bones were burnt in the oven and mixed with other materials to produce a protective coating to strengthen the grand medieval walls of what is today Granada, Spain. Scientists now describe how they found these materials thanks to a powerful new testing method.

Carolina Cardell and colleagues point out that ancient decorative and protective layers, or patinas, covering the outside of very old buildings have been subject of many analyses in archaeology, conservation and chemistry. Patinas have been a popular finishing for building exteriors and walls for aesthetic and protective reasons since ancient times. “However, the results of this work are significant for archaeologists since this is the first report of burnt bones in a patina on a Muslim monument, as well as the archaeological artifacts — the oven and raw materials — used to produce them,” says Cardell. Continue Reading…

Big day for some scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine and UC-San Francisco who have managed to succeed in isolating stem cells from human testes. That means, they can differentiate into each of the three main types of tissues of the body.

According to the study, the testes stem cells have different patterns of gene expression and regulation and they do not proliferate and differentiate as aggressively as human embryonic stem cells.

The findings, published in the January issue of the journal Stem Cells, are in contrast to those reported in a recent Nature paper, which concluded that the cells were, in fact, as pluripotent as embryonic stem cells. Pluripotent cells can become any cell in the body and form tumors called teratomas when transplanted into mice. Continue Reading…

A report from the US Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts severe bleaching for parts of the Coral Sea, which lies adjacent to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and the Coral Triangle, a 5.4 million square kilometre expanse of ocean in the Indo-Pacific which is considered the centre of the world’s marine life.

“This forecast bleaching episode will be caused by increased water temperatures and is the kind of event we can expect on a regular basis if average global temperatures rise above 2 degrees,” said Richard Leck, Climate Change Strategy Leader for WWF’s Coral Triangle Program.

The bleaching, predicted to occur between now and February, could have a devastating impact on coral reef ecosystems, killing coral and destroying food chains. There would be severe impacts for communities in Australia and the region, who depend on the oceans for their livelihoods.

The Coral Triangle, stretching from the Philippines to Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, is home to 75 per cent of all known coral species. More than 120 million people rely on its marine resources.

“Regular bleaching episodes in this part of the world will have a massive impact on the region’s ability to sustain local communities,” said Leck. “In the Pacific many of the Small Island Developing States, such as the Solomon Islands, rely largely on the coast and coastal environments such as coral reefs for food supply. This is a region where alternative sources of income and food are limited. Continue Reading…

Marine archaeologists have found the remains of a slave ship wrecked off the Turks and Caicos Islands in 1841, an accident that set free the ancestors of many current residents of those islands. Some 192 Africans survived the sinking of the Spanish ship Trouvadore off the British-ruled islands, where the slave trade was banned.

Over the years the ship had been forgotten, said researcher Don Keith, so when the discovery connected the ship to current residents the first response “was a kind of shock, a lack of comprehension,” he explained in a briefing organized by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Continue Reading…

A team of scientists from Caltech (California Institute of Technology) have developed a “barcode chip” that represents e new milestone in diagnostic medical testing. This chip uses very little blood to calculate the concentrations for dozens of proteins. Among these proteins, the ones that mark presence of heart diseases and cancer are measured. And all this in only ten minutes.

As it is published Nature Biotechnology, the barcode chip (also called IBBC) is as small as a microscope slide and has a glass base with a silicone rubber coating. It’s surface contains a microfluidics circuit. That microfluidics circuit is a system of small channels trough which the blood is introduced. The chip separates the protein-rich blood plasma and then uses it to measures a wide panel of proteins.

In hospitals and diagnostic centers of the present, whole vials of blood are taken from the patient, then centrifuged to obtain the plasma and then the plasma is searched for specific proteins (usually one at the time). Continue Reading…