How Plants Evolved Over Time To Withstand Cold Climates

In a study that looked into how plants evolved to withstand the low temperatures, researchers found that they developed unique characteristics that helped them bear the cold.

For the study, George Washington University reserachers constructed an evolutionary tree of more than 32,000 species of flowering plants to understand how plants evolved to withstand cold. They found that many plants acquired unique characteristics even before they encountered freezing.

Previous studies supported by plant fossil finds established that ancient plants thrived in warmer temperatures. However, due to climatic changes and shift in habitat to higher latitudes and elevations, plants evolved in such a way that they could cope with the cold. Currently, there are some plant species like the Arctic cinquefoil and three-toothed saxifrage that can survive in temperatures below -14°Celsius.

While animals fight the cold by shifting to different locations or generating heat to keep themselves warm, plants are incapable of doing any of these. The snow on the ground poses some major problems for them. Freezing temperatures result in the formation of air bubbles that block the internal water transport system in plants.

Hack the Planet? Geoengineering Research, Ethics Explored

Hacking the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming – a subject that elicits strong reactions from both sides – is the topic of a December special issue of the journal Climatic Change. A dozen research papers include the most detailed description yet of the proposed Oxford Principles to govern geoengineering research, as well as surveys on the technical hurdles, ethics and regulatory issues related to deliberately manipulating the planet’s climate.

Univ. of Washington researchers led the three-year project to gather leading thinkers and publish a snapshot of a field that they say is rapidly gaining credibility in the scientific community.

“In the past five years or so, geoengineering has moved from the realm of quackery to being the subject of scientific research,” says co-editor Rob Wood, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “We wanted to contribute to a serious intellectual discourse.”

Creating clouds over the ocean that would reflect back sunlight is the subject of a chapter by Wood, whose research is on the interaction among air pollution, clouds and climate. He and co-author Tom Ackerman, a UW atmospheric sciences professor, look at what it would take to test the idea with a field experiment.

Russian Billionaire Announces $3M Mathematics Prize

Top mathematicians will be rewarded for thinking big under a new $3 million prize announced by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Milner, a self-described “failed physicist” who made his fortune in high-tech investments, told The Guardian that he wanted the new Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics to encourage people to think more deeply about life. The prize will be awarded for the first time next year.

“If you take the largest scales possible, there are a number of scientists, individuals, who operate at that scale, they think about the whole universe. I think that we focus too much on small scales as human beings, and not enough on larger scales. That’s really the problem we’re trying to address here,” he told the paper Thursday.

The new prize was unveiled at an awards ceremony in the United States for two other multi-million-dollar research prizes established by Milner. The Fundamental Physics Prize, which he founded last year, was shared between Michael Green of Cambridge University and John Schwarz of the California Institute of Technology.

There is a class of animals that never grow old

We're born, we grow, we age, and then we die. Well, maybe not all of us, according to a new study on the animals amongst us who, while they continue to grow older, don't deteriorate with age.

A new study out of Nature takes a comparative look at the life cycles of 46 different species (us included) and finds that not all species live by this pattern of decline that we do. In fact some, the hermit crab, for instance, seem to have turned the whole process upside down. Virginia Hughes at National Geographic explains:

Some organisms are the opposite of humans, becoming more likely to reproduce and less likely to die with each passing year. Others show a spike in both fertility and mortality in old age. Still others show no change in fertility or mortality over their entire lifespan . . .
What the new study didn't find, notably, is an association between lifespan and aging. It turns out that some species with pronounced aging (meaning those with mortality rates that increase sharply over time) live a long time, whereas others don't. Same goes for the species that don't age at all. Oarweed, for example, has a near-constant level of mortality over its life and lives about eight years. In contrast, Hydra, a microscopic freshwater animal, has constant mortality and lives a whopping 1,400 years.

There's some interesting implications for both how we think about aging and evolution. You can read the whole thing here.

Source: http://io9.com/

Five Latest Nature-Inspired Robots

When it comes to smart design, nature has had a bit of a head-start, well about four billion years. It's no wonder then that scientists have decided to use cheat-codes and copy designs that are already at work.

Zoobots- robots inspired by biological organisms are being created all around the world. From creepy, crawly spider-like bots to ape-like machines, engineers are creating a whole new family of robots that can survive in all conditions.

Seriously though, some of these designs inspire more fear than awe. They look like they've been developed to scare people rather than bots designed to assist search and rescue operations.

Here is a list of zoobots that made news this year.

Flight of the RoboBee-

A tiny machine, weighing less than a tenth of a gram, recently took its first flight in a Harvard University lab, ending a decade of cutting-edge research and taking robotics to a whole new level.

The fly-inspired bot has two wafer-thin wings that flap at a rate of about 120 times per second. According to its developers, RoboBee could be used in many fields from environmental monitoring to search and rescue operations to even crop pollination.

The bot that doesn't mind crashing

This crash-happy drone can survive many collisions. Designed and built by a team in Switzerland at the Ecole Polytechnique Federerale de Lausanne, the Gimball can assist in monitoring dangerous territories.

The bot weighs about 30oz and is nearly 13 inches in length. According to Adrien Briod, co-creator of the robot, Gimball can carry weights up to 30 grams.

Consumers line up for Xbox One

Xbox One consoles loaded onto armored trucks as they head to Best Buy Theater in Times Square for the launch of Xbox One.

Eager video game players lined up at stores across the country awaiting the arrival of Microsoft's Xbox One, a week to the day after rival Sony introduced its PlayStation 4.

The console, available for sale tonight at 12:01 a.m. ET, is Microsoft's first video game console since launching the Xbox 360 in 2005.

The device features an upgraded Kinect sensor, which allows users to control the Xbox by using their voice. Users can also plug the console directly into their cable or satellite set-top box to take control of their televisions.

Consumers across the country lined up to snag an Xbox One, available in limited quantities at retailers including Best Buy and Target. Like the PS4, the Xbox One is expected to be in short supply. The consoles are unavailable to purchase on the websites of Amazon, Best Buy and Target.

Microsoft is hosting an event at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square to kick off the console's launch and allow consumers to bring home the console.

"We're really gratified and humbled about the amazing interest there has been," says Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft senior vice president of interactive entertainment. "We've done everything we could to build as many units as possible. That said, there is a decent chance in the early weeks that we may be sold out in spite of the number we have built, which is the largest we have ever built."

At a Best Buy in Brentwood, Tenn., about three dozen people had already lined up by 7:45 p.m. ET on Thursday for the latest Xbox. Four people showed up before 10 a.m. to begin waiting. Some paid friends to secure early spots.

Ryan Brazzell, 23, of Brentwood, was one of them. He paid a friend $40 to wait in line starting at 10 a.m. He showed up at 5 p.m. to for the chance to buy the latest model.

He does not plan on playing games right away at midnight, but says securing one early was still important.

"I am excited to have this one," he said. "It is a new thing. It is family oriented."

Brian West, 36, of Nashville, Tenn., also secured a prime spot in the line. He first showed up during his lunch break.

"The main thing that sold me was to be able to play a game and watch TV on the same screen," West said. "I am tired of switching."

Will Solari, 17, of Lincoln, Calif., camped out at a Best Buy in Roseville starting at 10 p.m. Wednesday night to be the first in line to secure the next Xbox.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL INVADERS crash land on Earth's South Pole

No oxide, just neutrino ... The particle-catching lab in Antarctica

Dozens travelled here almost at warp speed to hit our snow slopes

Scientists at the South Pole have detected a collection of neutrinos from outer space that could help explain the origins of the universe.

A team from the IceCube telescope laboratory in Antarctica will reveal their findings in tomorrow's Science journal.

The experts believe that their 28 intergalactic subatomic particles, which were embedded within a cubic kilometre of polar ice, originated from outside the Solar System, and likely from outside our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Having identified the particles, the boffins believe that they can gain new insight into the workings of black holes, pulsars and other wonders of space that emit the subatomic particles.

The equipment is able to differentiate between neutrinos from outside the Solar System with those that may have originated from the Sun or the Earth's own atmosphere, which could reveal more about astrophysical phenomena billions of light-years from our home world. The extraterrestrial neutrinos screamed through the void almost at the speed of light before smashing in the Earth's snow.

Long-term use of birth control pills may increase risk of glaucoma

Women who use birth control pills for three years or longer could have an increased risk of developing glaucoma, one of the leading causes of blindness, DailyRx News reported.

In a study presented at the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, researchers examined data from more than 3,400 women aged 40 and older in the United States, who had completed questionnaires regarding their reproductive care and eye health.

Overall, women who took the pill for three years or more had double the risk of developing glaucoma, compared to women who used the pill for a shorter period of time or who never used the pill at all.

"We believe at this point, by analyzing the data, there is an association between long-term birth control use and glaucoma," study author Elaine Wang, of Duke University, told CNN. "Why? We're not sure. The next step is to examine the eyes carefully and look at exactly what is happening to a woman's vision when she's on birth control pills. We need to verify these findings."

Additionally, researchers found that other factors such as age, race, eye health history and age of first menstrual period were associated with increased odds of glaucoma.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com

Can a Creature Ever be 'Perfect'? Bacteria Mutating Since 1988 Still Improving in Simple Environment (VIDEO)

Evolution may never reach an ultimate phase of perfection, but continue to make small improvements throughout time.

Richard Lenski of Michigan State University started growing cultures of the Escherichia colibacteria back in 1988. Since then, over 58,000 generations of bacteria were born on the simple nutrient medium, a Michigan State University news release reported.

"When hiking, it's easy to start climbing toward what seems to be a peak, only to discover that the real peak is far off in the distance," Michael Wiser, lead author and MSU graduate student in Lenski's lab, said. "Now imagine you've been climbing for 25 years, and you're still nowhere near the peak."

The metaphorical "peak" the researcher was talking about refers to what is known as a "fitness peak." The peak occurs when a population finds such a great set of mutations that any new mutations would cause a decline in the strength and quality of the species as opposed to an improvement.

Linky's bacteria have not reached that point, even after living in a simple environment for about a quarter of a century.

Most species are exposed to changing environments which forces them to keep finding new mutations in order to adapt, but researchers had believed organisms would eventually reach a state of "perfection" if kept in the same environment.

Scientists create another invisibility cloak

A clocking device is created

Who didn’t wish he/she had an invisibility cloak after reading Harry Potter evade Professor Snape’s detection in precarious situations? Well, that cloak remains in fantasy books, but scientists are closer to making it a reality with a “broadband” invisibility cloak capable of hiding object over a wide range of frequencies.

Not as wide reaching and far more plausible than the Harry Potter’s cloak, the old models of cloaks work by bending microwaves around objects. The first successful one in 2006 concealed a small copper cylinder.

The best designs so far are only capable of hiding objects under specific wavelengths of microwaves and light. According to some US physicists those invisibility cloaks even make objects even more visible under different frequencies.

So these physicists devised a new ultra-thin electronic system, explained in Physical Review Letters.