Once again it is time to rest, relax, celebrate the day and take a shorter or a longer break from all the politics of the day while enjoying some science news. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Over the fold are some of my favorite selections the past week from a few of the many excellent science news sites around the world. Today's tidbits include water quality in orbit, reptiles stood upright after mass extinction, the effects of England's mobile ice sheet, using magnetism to turn drugs on and off, and new rabies vaccine protects humans with a single injection. Follow down the yellow brick road for one more session of science education and entertainment.
In space the quality of drinking water is of paramount importance. No one wishes to get any form of intestinal trouble in space. Today the water is brought back to earth for quality testing. A new apparatus may change all that.
The new method involves sampling space station or space shuttle galley water with syringes, forcing the water through a chemical-imbued disk-shaped membrane, and then reading the color of the membrane with a commercially available, handheld color sensor normally used to measure the color and glossiness of automobile paint.
Much easier, cheaper, and faster than some other techniques this one takes minutes and can be done in space to help insure the health of our astronauts.
The transition from sprawling to upright posture among reptiles was long believed to have occurred over some 20-30 million years or so. New evidence suggests a more rapid transition.
In a detailed study of 460 fossil tracks of reptiles from below and above the extinction boundary, Tai Kubo and Professor Mike Benton from the University of Bristol have found that before the Permian extinction all the reptiles moved with their arms and legs held sideways in a sprawling posture, just like salamanders and lizards do today.
The upright posture allows for larger animals like the dinosaurs which followed in history.
The ice sheets that covered northern England about 20,000 years ago moved in unusual ways leaving egg-shaped formations called drumlins in their wake.
As the ice sheet evolved from the coalescence of the upland ice caps, it flowed out towards the Irish Sea, eventually becoming so thick over the Solway Lowlands that it reversed its flow back up the valleys, re-adjusting the landforms it had created during earlier stages of growth.
For humans with certain chronic diseases such as diabetes the treatment is long term and intermittent. A new delivery system using magnetism combined with nanotechnology may allow drugs to be delivered more easily.
The team created a small implantable device, less than ½" in diameter, that encapsulates the drug in a specially engineered membrane, embedded with nanoparticles (approximately 1/100,000 the width of a human hair) composed of magnetite, a mineral with natural magnetic properties. When a magnetic field is switched on outside the body, near the device, the nanoparticles heat up, causing the gels in the membrane to warm and temporarily collapse. This opens up pores that allow the drug to pass through and into the body. When the magnetic force is turned off, the membranes cool and the gels re-expand, closing the pores back up and halting drug delivery. No implanted electronics are required.
A new vaccine against rabies may protect humans around the world from death or the current painful post-exposure treatment.
The current standard vaccine is made from inactivated rabies virus, whereas the experimental vaccine is made from a live rabies virus. The virus is modified by removing the M gene, thus inhibiting its spread within the vaccine recipient.
Thousands of lives may be saved around the world if use of such a vaccine were to become widespread.
Bonus Stories
Evidence at the molecular level in support of one of the key tenets of Darwin's theory of evolution.
Solving the mystery of IgE in allergy.
When nature is freakier than sci-fi.The pictures make this one worth a look.
Giant stone age axes found in African lake basin.
African origin of anthropoid primates called into question.
Sending science down the phone.
The next generation of TB drugs.
For even more science news:
General Science Collectors:
BBC News Science and Environment
Eureka Science News
LiveScience
New Scientist
PhysOrg.com
Science Daily
Scientific American
Space Daily
Blogs:
A Few Things Ill Considered Techie and Science News
Cantauri Dreams space exploration
Deep Sea News marine biology
Laelaps more vertebrate paleontology
List of Geoscience Blogs
ScienceBlogs
Space Review
Techonology Review
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Wired News
Science RSS Feed: Medworm
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe--a combination of hard science and debunking crap
Daily Kos regular series:
Daily Kos University, a regular series by plf515
This Week in Science by DarkSyde
This Week in Space by nellaselim
Overnight News Digest:Science Saturday by Neon Vincent.
The daily science story by vladislaw.
All diaries with the DK GreenRoots Tag.
NASA picture of the day. For more see the NASA image gallery.
Black Widow Nebula, NASA, Public Domain
Peace.