The most genetically modified animals in existence have been created to help end a shortage of organs for transplant, say US researchers. The scientists successfully rid 37 pigs of viruses hiding in their DNA, overcoming one of the big barriers to transplanting pig organs to people.
The team at eGenesis admits preventing pig organs from being rejected by the human body remains a huge challenge
But experts said it was a promising and exciting first step. The study, published in the journal Science, started with skin cells from a pig. Tests identified 25 Pervs – porcine endogenous retroviruses – hidden in the pig’s genetic code.
Scientists have decoded the secrets behind a goldfish’s ability to survive in ice-covered lakes. They’ve worked out how and why the fish turn lactic acid in their bodies into alcohol, as a means of staying alive. Some goldfish were found to have levels well above legal drink-driving limits in many countries.
The researchers say the work may help with the study of some alcohol impacts in humans. Scientists have known about the peculiar survival abilities of goldfish and their wild relatives, crucian carp, since the 1980s. While humans and most vertebrates die in a few minutes without oxygen, these fish are able to survive for months in icy conditions in ponds and lakes in northern Europe.
The Cassini probe has begun the final phase of its mission to Saturn. The satellite has executed the first of five ultra-close passes of the giant world, dipping down far enough to brush through the top of the atmosphere.
It promises unprecedented data on the chemical composition of Saturn. It also sets the stage for the probe’s dramatic end-manoeuvre next month when it will plunge to destruction in the planet’s atmosphere.
After 31 years working for E.I. DuPont de Nemours here is my understanding about “ozone depletion” — the warm-up act for anthropogenic CO2-induced “global warming”. Even the proponents of human-induced “ozone depletion” are starting to realize that the thinning of the ozone layer is a natural phenomenon that just waxes and wanes.
Ozone (O3) is produced in the stratosphere by the intense solar radiation causing photo-dissociation of the di-atomic oxygen molecule (O2). The oxygen singlet (- O) is a powerful oxidizing agent and readily reacts with another O2 molecule to yield ozone. Ozone is not produced during the dark polar winters and its lowest point is in the early spring. The ozone layer is renewed by the sunlit polar summers.
The intended audience of this article is really Germans, who suffer from Stefan Rahmstorf, but I (Dr. Duane Thresher) think Americans and the rest of the world will find it fascinating as well.
Full disclosure: Dr. Claudia Kubatzki is coauthor on several papers with Stefan Rahmstorf and was also at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) with him.
Science writer and researcher, Edsel Chromie, urges space scientists to recognise the increasing empirical evidence pointing to electromagnetism rather than gravity as the more dominant galactic force. Like many researchers increasingly persuaded that modern cosmology has taken a wrong turn. Chromie tells Principia Scientific International:
“The common denominator of many of the many mysteries that have been studied for the last 100 years and that remain unresolved is that they all occur in an abnormally intense area of magnetic field energy. And the one thing the science community has adamantly refused to consider is the magnetic field energy factor in the creation or involvement of these phenomena. They do this because they stubbornly believe it to be too weak to be relevant.”
On the many lakes covering the continental Granite Shield, the Common Loon is a regular sight that everyone enjoys. Typically you’ll only see one pair in any one lake or embayment.
Scientists have helped solve the mystery of what lies beneath the surface of Neptune – the most distant planet in our solar system. A new study sheds light on the chemical makeup of the planet, which lies around 4.5 billion kilometers from the sun.
Federal researchers studying critically endangered North Pacific right whales sometimes go years without finding their subjects. Over the weekend they got lucky.
When SpaceX’s rocket takes off on August 14th, it will be carrying a machine that could make things a lot easier for future astronauts embarking on deep space missions.
The increasingly corroborated atmospheric mass pressure (gravity) explanation for variances in planetary temperatures – which precludes a significant role for CO2 concentration changes – has now advanced from peer-reviewed scientific journals to university-level textbooks.
On Wednesday night, Tucker Carlson grilled climate activist Joe Romm about Bill Nye’s comments that older scientists needed to “die out” so climate science could progress.
Romm runs the progressive website Think Progress, which is funded by the Center for American Progress.
The universe is incomprehensibly vast, with billions of other planets circling billions of other stars. The potential for intelligent life to exist somewhere out there should be enormous.
Science is fascinating to many, but sentences that are full of expert-level terms and description can scare away even the most passionate readers. Can scientists learn to talk about their research without using too many technical terms? One of the obstacles to avoiding jargon is that scientists suffer from “the curse of knowledge” – they simply do not remember not knowing what they now know as experts.
Writing as background for their work, Poulton et al. (2017)* state that “ocean acidification is predicted to reduce the ocean’s capacity to absorb low-frequency sounds produced by human activities.” As a result, they hypothesize that “anthropogenic noise could propagate further under an increasingly acidic ocean” and alter certain behavioral and physiological traits of marine life. One important concern in this regard is that such noise will impair the startle response of fish to predatory strikes.
