A step closer to theraputic cloning-- treating deseases with the patient's own cells

Science Magazine's news site, ScienceNow, reports that scientists have moved a step closer toward being able to use patients' own cells to treat their diseases. This process is referred to as therapeutic cloning. A team led by neuroscientist Lorenz Studer of the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City was able to show that mice with a Parkinson-like movement disorder significantly improved after being implanted with brain cells derived from their own tissue.

The new study is the first to show that cells from a diseased animal can be used to treat the very same animal. The researchers gave mice brain lesions to create a Parkinson-like disorder in which knocked out the use of the neurotransmitter dopamine on one side of their brains, limiting their ability to control paw movements.

To treat the Parkinson-like disorder, the researchers isolated a cell produced in a mouse's ovary called an oocyte, and transferred the nucleus of the mouse's skin cell into the ooctye. These modified cells were grown into early embryos, which were clones of the afflicted mice. Many of these cells grew into dopamine-producing neurons that the scientists could implant to treat the brains of the original donors.

The sick mice treated with their own cells showed a significant improvement in their ability to control paw movements. The improvement only occurred in mice treated with their own cells. link

You can't buy happiness for yourself

Social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver wanted to find out what kind of spending makes people happier: spending money on yourself, or spending it on others.

Dunn's researchers gave 46 UBC students envelopes containing either a $5 bill or a $20 bill and told them how to spend it. Some were told to spend it on themselves; some were told to spend it on someone else. After interviewing the students later, it turned out that those who spent it on others, as a gift or donation to charity, were happier than those who blew it on themselves.

According to Science Magazine, two more studies yielded similar results. Dunn's team polled 16 employees of a Boston company before and after they received bonuses of various sizes, and they gathered data on income, spending, and happiness from 632 people across the United States. In both groups, happiness correlated with the amount of money people spent on others rather than the absolute amount of the bonus or income.

If you bought yourself a cup of coffee or an ice cream today, and tomorrow bought one for someone else. Which would bring you more long- or short-term happiness? link

Thermoelectric materials: making electric current from heat

We make electricity from heat all the time. Burn fuel, the heat moves the piston, the piston turns the generator, and we can plug in our X-Box or our vacuum cleaner. But imagine if we could heat a wire and make electric current move through the wire just by heating it.

Thermoelectric materials are capable of absorbing heat and turning it into electric current. Today's thermoelectric materials aren't very efficient, but they are used in niche applications like in cooling certain microchips. NASA uses them on spacecraft that are too far from the sun to use solar power.

Recently, researchers at MIT and Boston College have discovered a simple way of making thermoelectric materials, and these theromelectric materials are 40 percent more efficient than normal. The process involves grinding bismuth antimony telluride into fine particles and then pressing it back together. link

If thermoelectric materials can someday be easily made in bulk, these matrials could be used to make engines or air conditioners significantly more energy efficient. A typical car engine loses roughly a third of it's energy to heat. Thermolelectric materials could someday cool the engine of a hybrid car, and take a good portion of the lost energy to power the electric drive motor. Such a vehicle would be super efficient. Another possiblity is using thermoelectric materials absorb heat from the air-- a much more efficient way of cooling a building. link

Cassini misses, Dextre's ready

In July 2005, a group of NASA scientists got very interested in Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn. At that time, the Cassini spacecraft flew over the surface of Enceladus' south pole, and discovered a dozen or so warm geysers spraying water vapor and ice crystals. That was surprising because moons as small as Enceladus, which is just 300 miles wide, do not usually generate enough internal heat to create such activity. The existence of the plumes hinted that there might be a liquid water ocean beneath the surface, and the possibility of liquid water always brings the possibility for life.

Last Wednesday, the Cassini spacecraft flew into the mysterious icy plumes erupting from Enceladus. The flyby, however, turned out to be a bust. Passing only 125 miles from the base of the plume, an "unexplained software hiccup" prevented the spacecraft's Cosmic Dust Analyzer from transmitting data to the onboard computer. Flybys planned for later in 2008 may be able to repeat the plume fly-through to try to collect the observations missed this time around. link

Much closer to Earth, in the International Space Station, astronauts have just completed assembling Dextre, a special purpose dexterous manipulator (SPDM). Dextre is a robot with two large arms that will allow it to transport objects, use tools, and install and remove equipment on the outside of space station. Sensors allow Dextre to "feel" objects and automatically react to movements or changes. Astronauts will operate Dextre from inside the space station, looking through Dextre's four mounted cameras. The robot is designed to function with spacewalking astronauts, or to work independently on tasks that previously would have required a spacewalk. link

Struggling against greenhouse gases

There is strong support to the idea that the use of plug-in electric cars, cars that recharge overnight, would greatly aid the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Research from the University of Texas, to be published in the June issue of Environmental Science & Technology, suggests that electric cars would would aid drought. Accorcing to the report, filling the road with 10-million plug-in electric cars by 2015 would require an additional 1.1 percent or so of water used by electric power plants. Nonetheless, I don't think that kills the whole electric car idea. link

But here's some real bad news. Using data provided by the Chinese government, researchers at the University of California have calculated China's greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. The results are that within two years, Chinese emissions of greenhouse gases will have vastly outstripped the reductions achieved by all the countries that have signed up to the Kyoto protocol combined.

Chinese greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to be between 600- and 1,200-million metric tons greater than they were in 2000. Even the minimum figure is five times as large as the 115.90 million metric ton in reductions which the US Energy Information Agency estimates will have been achieved by signatories of the Kyoto protocol by 2010.

"The emissions growth rate is surpassing our worst expectations, and that means the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 is going to be much, much harder to achieve," says Maximillian Auffhammer of the University of California, Berkeley. link

Jupiter Probe confirms ideas about Earth's Van Allen Belts

The first thing you have to know is that the Earth is submerged in the center of doughnut-shaped belts made of energetic charged particles. We call this the Van Allen Belts, after James Van Allen who discovered the Earth's radiation belts 50 years ago using the first US satellite, Explorer I.

Within the Van Allen belts, we observe occasional flurries of high-energy electrons that are known to mess with the electronics inside communication and other types of satellites. It has been theorized that these high-energy electrons are accelerated by very low-frequency radiowaves. Understanding these high-energy electrons is key in being able to predict their behavior, and make the Van Allen belts safer for satellites.

Using data collected at Jupiter by the Galileo spacecraft, Dr Richard Horne of British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and colleagues from UCLA, and the University of Iowa found that a special type of very low frequency radio wave is strong enough to accelerate electrons up to very high energies inside Jupiter's magnetic field.

According to Dr Horne, "We've shown before that very low frequency radio waves can accelerate electrons in the Earth's magnetic field, but we have now shown that exactly the same theory works on Jupiter, where the magnetic field is 20,000 times stronger than the Earth's and the composition of the atmosphere is very different. This is the ultimate test of our theory." link

Japan and Korea go to space

Space Shuttle Endeavour left Cape Canaveral today to deliver part of a Japanese space laboratory and a Canadian-built robotic arm system to the International Space Station (ISS). With the arrival of Japan's lab, all 15 partner countries in the ISS are represented in orbit.

The $100-billion space station is 60% complete after a decade of construction and must be finished by the time the space shuttle program is retired in 2010. Endeavour is carrying the first part of an elaborate Japanese space laboratory, which the Japanese have been working on for over 20 years. About the size of a double-decker bus, it will be the station's largest laboratory and will have facilities for art and "orbital dance", along with experiment racks for biomedical studies, fluid physics research and life science. link

It was announced yesterday that the first South Korean astronaut will be a woman. Yi So-yeon, 29, is a biotechnology engineer who is finishing her doctorate. Yi will serve as a payload specialist with two Russian cosmonauts for a seven- or eight-day mission to the International Space Station. The man intended to be the first South Korean in space has been grounded for violating security protocol. link