We're used to thinking of the moon as a cold and unassuming lump of rock—but new research suggests that it could have been made of a strange magma mush for hundreds of millions of years before it solidified into the object we now see every night.
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Dan03eAh714/the-moon-may-have-been-made-of-magma-mush-for-million-1456661453Nike Snowboarding made this little edit of legendary skateboarder and artist Natas Kaupas. He talks about creativity, passion, enjoyment, all leading towards his delivery as art director for Nike's recent video release, Never Not.
Be sure to check out Never Not Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven't already.
Artist Perspective: Natas Kaupas from Nike Snowboarding on Vimeo.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Carol Thorbes
cthorbes@sfu.ca
778-782-3035
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University molecular biologist Lynne Quarmby's adventures in pond scum have led her and four student researchers to discover a mutation that can make cilia, the microscopic antennae on our cells, grow too long. When the antennae aren't the right size, the signals captured by them get misinterpreted. The result can be fatal.
In a newly published paper in the science journal Current Biology, the researchers discovered that the regulatory gene CNK2 is present in cilia and controls the length of these hair-like projections.
This discovery is important because cilia, or flagella, dangle from all of our cells. Their ability to propel some cells, such as sperm, and allow molecular communication in others, for example cellular responses to hormones, determines how we develop from embryos and how our bodies function in adulthood.
When cilia are too short or too long they cause various human hereditary diseases and deformities, such as too many fingers or toes, blindness and Polycystic Kidney Disease, which affects one in 600 people.
Quarmby and her doctoral student Laura Hiltonsenior and lead authors, respectively, on this paperare among the few scientists globally who study cilia-disassembly as opposed to -assembly.
A crucial part of all cells' lifecycle is their cilia's disassembly before cell division and assembly after it. The gene LF4 is a known assembly regulator, and, prior to this study, scientists thought that assembly speed controlled cilia's ultimate length or shrinkage. But Quarmby and Hilton have discovered that disassembly speed is also important, and that the regulatory gene CNK2 plays a key role in controlling it.
Similar to how a balance between water pressure and gravity determines the height of a fountain's stream, a balance of assembly and disassembly speed determines cilia's length. When growing and shrinking happen simultaneously cilia length remains constant.
Pond scum's algae make good lab models for analyzing this because they reproduce quickly, and they have cellular structure and cilia that closely parallel ours. Quarmby and Hilton have been mucking about with pond scum for years and recently started studying algae cilia with defective CNK2 and LF4 genes.
After discovering that cilia with either defective gene are abnormally long, they created an algae cell with four cilia, instead of the normal two, with two of the four engineered to glow green.
Along with two SFU undergrad students and a University of Toronto undergrad, Quarmby and Hilton watched as the fluorescent green tag began to appear at the tip of the untagged pair of cilia.
"We were able to deduce how the mutations affected the cilia's assembly and disassembly by measuring how much and how quickly green fluorescence appeared at the tip of the untagged cilia," explains Quarmby.
"We knew that we had something important when we saw that cells bearing mutations in both CNK2 and LF4 had the most extraordinarily long cilia. They were unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.
"My student Laura ran this experiment and oversaw our undergrad researchers. It gave us unique insights into the potentially key role disassembling cilia have in deciding the tails' length. Further investigation will help us understand how ciliary malfunction causes a progression of diseases."
The SFU undergrads working with Quarmby and Hilton were Kavisha Gunawardane and Marianne Schwarz. The UofT student was Joo Wan (James) Kim.
###
Simon Fraser University is Canada's top-ranked comprehensive university and one of the top 50 universities in the world under 50 years old. With campuses in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, B.C., SFU engages actively with the community in its research and teaching, delivers almost 150 programs to more than 30,000 students, and has more than 120,000 alumni in 130 countries.
Simon Fraser University: Engaging Students. Engaging Research. Engaging Communities.
Simon Fraser University
Public Affairs/Media Relations (PAMR)
778.782.3210 http://www.sfu.ca/pamr
Contact:
Lynne Quarmby (West Van. resident), 778.782.4474, quarmby@sfu.ca
Laura Hilton (North Van. resident), 778.782.4598, lkh@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca
Photos: http://at.sfu.ca/UzEqCZ
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Carol Thorbes
cthorbes@sfu.ca
778-782-3035
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University molecular biologist Lynne Quarmby's adventures in pond scum have led her and four student researchers to discover a mutation that can make cilia, the microscopic antennae on our cells, grow too long. When the antennae aren't the right size, the signals captured by them get misinterpreted. The result can be fatal.
In a newly published paper in the science journal Current Biology, the researchers discovered that the regulatory gene CNK2 is present in cilia and controls the length of these hair-like projections.
This discovery is important because cilia, or flagella, dangle from all of our cells. Their ability to propel some cells, such as sperm, and allow molecular communication in others, for example cellular responses to hormones, determines how we develop from embryos and how our bodies function in adulthood.
When cilia are too short or too long they cause various human hereditary diseases and deformities, such as too many fingers or toes, blindness and Polycystic Kidney Disease, which affects one in 600 people.
Quarmby and her doctoral student Laura Hiltonsenior and lead authors, respectively, on this paperare among the few scientists globally who study cilia-disassembly as opposed to -assembly.
A crucial part of all cells' lifecycle is their cilia's disassembly before cell division and assembly after it. The gene LF4 is a known assembly regulator, and, prior to this study, scientists thought that assembly speed controlled cilia's ultimate length or shrinkage. But Quarmby and Hilton have discovered that disassembly speed is also important, and that the regulatory gene CNK2 plays a key role in controlling it.
Similar to how a balance between water pressure and gravity determines the height of a fountain's stream, a balance of assembly and disassembly speed determines cilia's length. When growing and shrinking happen simultaneously cilia length remains constant.
Pond scum's algae make good lab models for analyzing this because they reproduce quickly, and they have cellular structure and cilia that closely parallel ours. Quarmby and Hilton have been mucking about with pond scum for years and recently started studying algae cilia with defective CNK2 and LF4 genes.
After discovering that cilia with either defective gene are abnormally long, they created an algae cell with four cilia, instead of the normal two, with two of the four engineered to glow green.
Along with two SFU undergrad students and a University of Toronto undergrad, Quarmby and Hilton watched as the fluorescent green tag began to appear at the tip of the untagged pair of cilia.
"We were able to deduce how the mutations affected the cilia's assembly and disassembly by measuring how much and how quickly green fluorescence appeared at the tip of the untagged cilia," explains Quarmby.
"We knew that we had something important when we saw that cells bearing mutations in both CNK2 and LF4 had the most extraordinarily long cilia. They were unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.
"My student Laura ran this experiment and oversaw our undergrad researchers. It gave us unique insights into the potentially key role disassembling cilia have in deciding the tails' length. Further investigation will help us understand how ciliary malfunction causes a progression of diseases."
The SFU undergrads working with Quarmby and Hilton were Kavisha Gunawardane and Marianne Schwarz. The UofT student was Joo Wan (James) Kim.
###
Simon Fraser University is Canada's top-ranked comprehensive university and one of the top 50 universities in the world under 50 years old. With campuses in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, B.C., SFU engages actively with the community in its research and teaching, delivers almost 150 programs to more than 30,000 students, and has more than 120,000 alumni in 130 countries.
Simon Fraser University: Engaging Students. Engaging Research. Engaging Communities.
Simon Fraser University
Public Affairs/Media Relations (PAMR)
778.782.3210 http://www.sfu.ca/pamr
Contact:
Lynne Quarmby (West Van. resident), 778.782.4474, quarmby@sfu.ca
Laura Hilton (North Van. resident), 778.782.4598, lkh@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca
Photos: http://at.sfu.ca/UzEqCZ
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
How old is social media? Maybe we can date it from the birth of Facebook in February 2004. Or perhaps we can go back to 2002, to when Friendster was founded. Or even way, way, way back to digital antiquity – back to 1997, when Reid Hoffman founded the first social media website, SocialNet.
No, social media is actually older, 2,000 years older, than Facebook, Friendster or SocialNet. That’s the view at least of Tom Standage, the digital editor of the Economist, whose new book Writing In The Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years makes the intriguing argument that social media has actually been around since the Romans. It’s the industrial top-down media of the last 150 years, Standage told me, that is the historical anomaly. Social media, he explains, “scratches a prehistorical itch” for personalized news, opinion and gossip. So rather than a waste of time or a distraction, he insists, Facebook and Twitter are actually something that satisfies us as human-beings.
Standage is too good a historian to argue that nothing about social media is new. He acknowledges, for example, that the globalized, instantaneous and searchable nature of social networks are truly new. Yet Standage’s comparisons of contemporary social media with Roman papyrus letters or hand-printed tracts of the Reformation really do suggest that social media goes a lot further back than 1997. “The only surprising things about social media,” Standage dryly concludes, “is that we are surprised by it.”
Just five days after UFC president Dana White announced a light heavyweight bout between Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Alexander Gustafsson for the promotion's return to London, England on March 8, the UFC has been forced to change its plans.
"Minotouro" has withdrawn from the fight due to a lingering back injury, sources close to the situation confirmed with MMAFighting.com before White also confirmed the news with Ariel Helwani.
White added that there are no plans for Gustafsson's next fight yet. Gustafsson's team also said it heard the news but didn't know who the Swedish fighter will draw next.
Nogueira, who is expected to be ready to fight again in May, hasn't fought since his unanimous decision victory over Rashad Evans at UFC 156 in February. During his UFC career, the Brazilian light heavyweight has pulled out of multiple bouts due to injury, cancelling matches against Rich Franklin, Mauricio Rua, as well as Gustafsson back in April 2012. The same back injury forced him out of his UFC 161 rematch against Rua.
Gustafsson vs. Nogueira was scheduled to headline the first of six events in Europe next year. The card will take place at the O2 Arena in London.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., with House GOP leaders, speaks with reporters following a Republican strategy session, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013. At left is Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio. House GOP leaders Tuesday floated a plan to fellow Republicans to counter an emerging Senate deal to reopen the government and forestall an economy-rattling default on U.S. obligations. But the plan got mixed reviews from the rank and file and it was not clear whether it could pass the chamber. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Imagine that someone asked you to name the one group of people who've earned the right to spend less time at the office next year. To just relax. Because, darn it, they've really busted their humps in 2013, and everyone is extremely pleased with the job they're doing.
We're guessing "United States Congress" wouldn't be at the top of your list.
Well, guess what? Congress, the group of esteemed lawmakers who brought you the government shutdown of 2013, has announced that they plan to be in session for fewer days next year.
The news came from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who announced the schedule on Twitter.
To be fair, members of Congress spend a considerable amount of time in their districts. As RollCall puts it, "the work doesn't end when lawmakers leave Washington."
Still, the shorter session begs the question: Why? Not to mention that the shorter session has the potential to be more bad PR for a group in the single-digit job-approval ratings and, as of early October, less popular than cockroaches.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/congress-announces-reduced-work-schedule-for-2014-212306623.htmlHouse Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., with House GOP leaders, speaks with reporters following a Republican strategy session, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013. At left is Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio. House GOP leaders Tuesday floated a plan to fellow Republicans to counter an emerging Senate deal to reopen the government and forestall an economy-rattling default on U.S. obligations. But the plan got mixed reviews from the rank and file and it was not clear whether it could pass the chamber. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Imagine that someone asked you to name the one group of people who've earned the right to spend less time at the office next year. To just relax. Because, darn it, they've really busted their humps in 2013, and everyone is extremely pleased with the job they're doing.
We're guessing "United States Congress" wouldn't be at the top of your list.
Well, guess what? Congress, the group of esteemed lawmakers who brought you the government shutdown of 2013, has announced that they plan to be in session for fewer days next year.
The news came from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who announced the schedule on Twitter.
To be fair, members of Congress spend a considerable amount of time in their districts. As RollCall puts it, "the work doesn't end when lawmakers leave Washington."
Still, the shorter session begs the question: Why? Not to mention that the shorter session has the potential to be more bad PR for a group in the single-digit job-approval ratings and, as of early October, less popular than cockroaches.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/congress-announces-reduced-work-schedule-for-2014-212306623.html
