Everyday Science

Irish researchers have confirmed that the mesentery — a fold of membrane that connects the intestine to the abdomen — is its own continuous organ, and not a series of fragmented parts like experts had previously thought, reports Yahoo News. So, this week, as you dream up ways to improve yourself in 2017, give yourself a pat on the back: You've already made a significant change this year, from deep within your belly. You technically gained an organ. The discovery could create a new field of "mesenteric" science and may help doctors better understand and treat abdominal diseases, said Calvin Coffey, a professor of surgery at University of Limerick's Graduate Entry Medical School, according to the report in Yahoo News. "We are now saying we have an organ in the body which hasn't been acknowledged as such to date," he said in a news release. Coffey published his peer-reviewed findings in the November issue of The Lancet Gastroenterology &

Researchers in New York and Edinburgh developed a new method to grow eggs from very early-stage cells obtained from ovary tissue, a team reported in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction. Photo: AFP Relaxnews AFP Relaxnews Scientists have grown human egg cells to full maturity in the lab in a potential breakthrough for fertility treatment, they announced in a study published Friday. Researchers in New York and Edinburgh developed a new method to grow eggs from very early-stage cells obtained from ovary tissue, a team reported in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction. The eggs were grown to the point at which they could be fertilised. This had previously been achieved with mouse egg cells, while human eggs had been successfully cultivated starting from a much later stage of development. "The latest study is the first time a human egg has been developed in the lab from its earliest stage to full maturity," said a statement from the University of

Self-driving Uber has suspended road tests of self-driving vehicles after the first pedestrian was killed by one of its vehicles operating under autonomous computer control. Proponents of self-driving vehicles claim they would be safer, as well as more energy efficient, but those safety claims will now come under heightened scrutiny. In theory, self-driving vehicles should eliminate several major driver-related causes of road traffic accidents, including excessive speed, intoxication and inattention. But there are concerns about how self-driving vehicles will interact with unpredictable human drivers and pedestrians as well as unmapped hazards such as temporary road obstructions. There are also fears about how self-driving vehicles would cope with hacking or widespread disruption of their communications systems (“Too much sun could wreak havoc on driverless cars”, Bloomberg, March 16). The accident investigation into Sunday’s crash will mark an important test of the tech

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg vowed Wednesday to “step up” to fix problems at the social media giant, as it fights a snowballing scandal over the hijacking of personal data from millions of its users. “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg said, in his first public comments on the harvesting of Facebook user data by a British firm linked to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Writing on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg announced new steps to rein in the leakage of data to outside developers and third-party apps, while giving users more control over their information through a special toolbar. “We know that this was a major violation of people’s trust, and I deeply regret that we didn’t do enough to deal with it,” Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said in a post echoing Zuckerberg’s comments. Zuckerberg said measures had been in place since 2014 to prevent the sort of abuse revealed over

Facebook Inc and the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica have been sued in the United States for obtaining information belonging to 50 million of the social media company’s users without permission. The proposed class-action complaint filed late Tuesday night by Lauren Price, a Maryland resident, is the first of what could be many lawsuits seeking damages over Facebook’s ability to protect user data, and Cambridge Analytica’s exploitation of that data to benefit president Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. “Every Facebook user has an interest in this lawsuit, and the enforcement of their privacy rights,” John Yanchunis, a lawyer for Price, said in a phone interview on Wednesday. The complaint was filed in the US District Court in San Jose, California, several hours after Facebook was blamed in a shareholder lawsuit filed in nearby San Francisco for the drop in its stock price after the data harvesting was revealed. Nearly $50 billion of market value was wiped out in two

With Facebook getting mired in its biggest-ever controversy following a massive data breach, everyone is asking one question: Where is its CEO Mark Zuckerberg? Not only Zuckerberg has remained quiet so far, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg who has been the face of the company’s PR strategy is yet to speak on the data scandal. According to a report in ReCode on Wednesday, Zuckerberg is slated to address a weekly Q&A session with employees on Friday and he may speak before that meeting. Normally, Zuckerberg or Sandberg come out with long blog posts whenever Facebook gets tangled in controversies but the silence this time is deafening. Facebook is facing the heat after Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting company, was accused of harvesting data of up to 50 million Facebook users without permission and using the data to help politicians, including US President Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign. European Union (EU) and British lawmakers have demanded that social media

Google-owned video platform YouTube opened a ‘YouTube Space’ in Dubai, the first-of-its-kind in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Located at Dubai Studio City, the YouTube facility aims “to support the growing creator community in the MENA region by giving them access to a state-of-the-art production space,” Xinhua cited state news agency WAM as saying. The space, which is the tenth in the world, is dedicated to YouTube content creators who would have free access to high-end audio, visual and editing equipment in addition to training programmes, workshops and courses. More than 440,000 creators have visited the nine YouTube Space facilities around the world since the programme was first launched in 2012, said David Ripert, Head of YouTube Spaces in Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Creators are the heartbeat of YouTube and supporting them has long been one of our most important priorities,” Ripert was quoted as saying. “As a platform, YouTube provides a bl

In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. It introduced a new framework for all of physics and proposed new concepts of space and time. Einstein then spent 10 years trying to include acceleration in the theory and published his theory of general relativity in 1915. In it, he determined that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, which is felt as gravity. The tug of gravity Two objects exert a force of attraction on one another known as "gravity." Sir Isaac Newton quantified the gravity between two objects when he formulated his three laws of motion. The force tugging between two bodies depends on how massive each one is and how far apart the two lie. Even as the center of the Earth is pulling you toward it (keeping you firmly lodged on the ground), you

This is one in a series presenting news on technology and innovation, made possible with generous support from the Lemelson Foundation. Nature’s colors can delight the eye. But these dazzling displays can also have many practical uses. For example, some animals hide themselves from predators by changing color to blend into their surroundings. This is known as camouflage. Researchers from Europe have taken inspiration from this to develop a new material. It changes color when exposed to moisture. And the researchers can decide beforehand which colors or patterns that moisture will reveal. It all has to do with the new material’s structure. Consider a peacock’s feathers. They’re a fairly boring brown. Yet your eye doesn’t perceive them that way. The features appear vibrant and multi-colored due to what’s known as structural color. Microscopic features on a plume’s surface can reflect or scatter light in some special way. This alters the material’s apparent color. Waves

WATER WORLDS  The TRAPPIST-1 system, with seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a dwarf star, has captured the attention of scientists hunting for life outside the solar system. New estimates of the planets’ composition indicates that several are enveloped in water and ice. There’s so much water on some of TRAPPIST-1’s seven Earth-sized planets that any life lurking there might be difficult to detect. New estimates of the makeup of these potentially habitable worlds suggests that two of them are more than half water, by mass, researchers report March 19 in Nature Astronomy. Earth, by comparison, is less than 0.1 percent water. TRAPPIST-1’s planets are so wet that most of the water probably isn’t even liquid, but ice formed under high pressure, says Cayman Unterborn, an exogeologist at Arizona State University in Tempe. That would change the chemistry happening on the planet in a way that could make any signs of life tricky to distinguish from geochemical processes. TRAPPIST-1 i

TOO BIG, TOO SOON  Supermassive black holes that are actively feeding on gas and dust, like the one shown in this artist’s rendition, have been spotted in the early universe — before they should have had time to grow. The existence of supermassive black holes in the early universe has never made much sense to astronomers. Sightings since 2006 have shown that gargantuan monsters with masses of at least a billion suns were already in place when the universe was less than a billion years old – far too early for them to have formed by conventional means. One or two of these old massive objects could be dismissed as freaks, says theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University. But to date, astronomers have spotted more than 100 supermassive black holes that existed before the universe was 950 million years old. “They’re too numerous to be freaks now,” she says. “You have to have a natural explanation for how these things came to be.” The usual hypotheses are that

The common Culex mosquito is able to transmit the harmful Zika virus, Brazilian scientists have discovered. Scientists at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) in the Pernambuco state revealed that the virus can reach the insect’s salivary gland, “which is believed to indicate that Culex mosquitoes may be one of the vectors of the Zika virus”, reports Xinhua news agency. Until now it was believed that the virus was spread by the Aedes Aegypti, a less common variety of mosquito that also carries the diseases dengue and chikungunya. The team’s findings were published on Wednesday by the Nature group. Fiocruz said it will now analyse the physiological and behavioural characteristics of the Culex in its natural environment “to understand the role and the importance of this species in the transmission of the Zika virus”. While the virus is not fatal to humans, it has been linked to serious birth defects in infants born to women who were exposed to the mosquito-borne disease, ma

Can anyone claim the red planet or natural resources on asteroids? Business leaders and legal experts say the question has become more than philosophical as a growing number of firms, often backed by capital and technology from Silicon Valley, have set their sights on the resources of outer space asteroids and Mars. In order to avoid conflicts between competing companies and countries over outer space resources, more work needs to be done on Earth to determine who owns commodities taken from celestial bodies, analysts said. “There is a huge debate on whether companies can simply travel to space and extract its resources,” said Barry Kellman, a law professor who studies space governance at DePaul University in Chicago. “There is no way to answer the question until someone does it,” Kellman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. ASTEROID WATER FOR SALE U.S.-based Planetary Resources, a firm backed by Google founder Larry Page and Virgin Group’s Richard Branson, expects to

Japan scientists grow drugs in chicken eggs Japanese researchers have genetically engineered hens whose eggs contain drugs that can fight serious diseases including cancer, in a bid to dramatically reduce the cost of treatment, a report said Monday. If the scientists are able to safely produce "interferon beta", a type of protein used to treat illnesses including multiple sclerosis and hepatitis, by rearing the hens, the price of the drug -- currently up to 100,000 yen ($888) for a few microgrammes -- could fall significantly, said the English edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun. Researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in the Kansai region kicked off the process by introducing genes that produce interferon beta into cells which are precursors of chicken sperm, the newspaper reported. They then used these cells to fertilise eggs and create hens which inherited those genes, meaning the birds were able to lay eggs containi

Stargazers are in for a treat as Google has announced that one can now virtually visit all planets and moons in our solar system using Google Maps. Google Maps now enables a visit to Saturn's natural satellites such as Enceladus, Dione or Iapetus, Rhea and Mimas as well as Jupiter's Europa and Ganymede. "Explore the icy plains of Enceladus, where Cassini discovered water beneath the moon's crust-suggesting signs of life. Peer beneath the thick clouds of Titan to see methane lakes," Stafford Marquardt, Product Manager at Google, said in a blogpost on Monday. Google has also added to its lineup imagery of Pluto, Venus and several moons as well as made it easier to find them in Maps. "We've added Pluto, Venus, and several other moons for a total of 12 new worlds for you to explore," Marquardt added. To access the new imagery, one can just zoom out from terrestrial Google Maps view until you hit outer space. One can also visit the Internat

Patients infected with Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) may get much better and more effective treatment than ever before. An advanced prescription medicine, developed by two Bangladeshi researchers, is set to hit local drugstores early next year after getting approval from the drug administration. The two Bangladeshi researchers, also physicians, have developed the breakthrough medicine for treating HBV while a leading pharmaceutical company of the county will manufacture and release the drug in the local market, making it cheaper and available at major drugstores across the country. "The therapeutic medicine named NASVAC may not be a magic drug, but it has shown a positive response rate of about 50.0 per cent in case of patients infected with Hepatitis B and 100.0 per cent in curing liver inflammation", Mamun Al Mahtab, the principal investigator for clinical trials of this drug, told BSS recently. Mahtab, an associate professor of Department of Hepatology at Bangabandh

A new technology promises to speed up slow internet at home, say researchers, adding that the new hardware can enable speed up to 10,000 megabits-per-second (Mbps) or 10 gigabits-per-second (Gbps). For a super-fast yet low-cost broadband connection at home in Britain, the new receiver technology can enable dedicated data rates at more than 10,000 Mbps from the current 36 Mbps, noted researchers from the University College London. "Although 300 Mb/s may be available to some, average UK speeds are currently 36 Mb/s. By 2025, average speeds over 100 times faster will be required to meet increased demands for bandwidth-hungry applications such as ultra-high definition video, online gaming and the Internet of Things (IoT)," explained lead researcher Sezer Erkilinc. "The future growth in the number of mobile devices, coupled with the promise of 5G to enable new services via smart devices, means we are likely to experience bandwidth restrictions; our new optical receiv

An artist`s rendition of the huge planet NGTS-1b, left, with its neighbouring sun -- a discovery that challenges existing theories on how planets are created. Photo: Yahoo. A "monster" planet, which should in theory not exist, has been discovered orbiting a faint dwarf star far, far away, surprised astronomers said Tuesday. The existence of the gassy giant challenges long-standing theories that such a big planet -- about the size of Jupiter -- cannot be formed around a star so small. The star has a radius and mass about half that of the sun. Theory had predicted that small stars can form rocky planets, "but do not gather enough material together to form Jupiter-sized planets," Britain's Royal Astronomical Society said in a statement. Planets are thought to form as gas and dust left over from massive galactic explosions, and swirling in disks around newborn stars, clump together to form bodies. The planet was discovered by the Next-Generation