Oldest Embryonic Dinosaur Bones Discovered

Scientists digging in China have discovered the earliest fossil embryos to date. The find includes
remains from many animals at different stages of development providing a unique opportunity to investigate the embryonic development of a prehistoric species.

the fossils were discovered in a bone bed in Lufeng County that dates to the Early Jurassic between 197 million to 190 million years ago.  The site contained more than 200 various bones as well as pieces of fossilized eggshells.

To put this discovery in perspective most of the dinosaur embryos on record are concentrated in the Late Cretaceous period.  This discovery  takes a detailed record of dinosaur embryology and pushes it back over 100 million years!

From the Nature.com article:

• But it is not just the age of the fossils that is notable, the researchers say. Spectroscopic analysis of bone-tissue samples from the Chinese nesting site revealed the oldest organic material ever seen in a terrestrial vertebrate.

Meet Larry....Larry, It Seems, Has A Unique Talent

Meet Larry, a robotic head developed by the U.K.'s Health and Safety Laboratory.  Larry was invented to study the norovirus which has sickened more than a million people in the UK alone.

This particular  strain appears to be new which means that people's immune systems do not recognize the infection which equates to a surge of new infections.  

Norovirus causes a great deal of stomach distress.  Symptoms vary however stomach pain and vomiting seem to be the most common, hence the primary reason for the development of Larry the robot head.  

Norovirus, it should be noted, is incredibly robust.   It infects extremely fast and spreads equally as fast.  Plus it can live on an infected surface for an extremely long time. 

So where does robot head Larry fit in?  Well Larry can simulate a human vomiting!  "Why" you might ask?    Well it seems that Norovirus can be spread very easily through micro-particles of vomit, hence Larry the  anatomically correct "humanoid simulated vomiting system" which allows scientist to get a better idea of how far the aerosolized norovirus particles travel.

Check out the Verge artical here 

Plus the youtube video of Larry in action!

A Cure For Many Viral Infections Found?

Rhino/cold virus

From BBC News via IO9 comes the news that a drug to treat a large variety of viral infection has possibly been discovered.

MIT research scientist Todd Rider says he's developed a drug named Draco, which he says has successfully destroyed 15 different viruses in lab trials.

The reason that earlier attempts to develop a successful broad spectrum anti-viral is the fundamental difference between biologic infectious agents (germs if you will) and viral is much in how they reproduce. Microbes and their ilk can reproduce by fission by themselves. If you kill the microbe, you control the spread of infection. Viruses on the other hand invade a cell and hijack the cell's reproductive machinery to make copies of the invading virus in large quantities. So many in fact that the cell burst spreading copies of the virus, that start the process all over again. The virus is only at risk while outside a cell. Once they have invaded a cell they are virtually undetectable.

Rider's drug Draco uses this "behavior" to kill the virus. Draco consists of two proteins. One to detect a viral invader and the other to kill the cell outright so that it can not be used for reproduction. This approach should be effective from everything from a cold virus to HIV. Initial tests have been promising but there is still a long trial schedule ahead for Draco or another anti-viral.

2011's Top Science Scandals

The Scientist Magazine via Boing Boing has compiled a list of some of 2011's most deliberate fumbles in the realm of science.

How about the "link" between a mouse leukemia virus and chronic fatigue syndrome. This paper was cited in over 200 other scientific papers that was before other labs failed to recreate the findings. The paper was retracted but  when they were demanded, the author refused to hand over key lab notebooks. An assistant allegedly was ordered to take the notebooks. The author then relocated to California, only to be arrested on counts of felony theft,  jailed overnight, and is now awaiting trial.

or how about this.... A Boston University scientist's  paper identifying 19 genes associated  longevity.  Soon after publication, however critics discover that the correlation was due to an error in the sequencing chip the team used. After accounting for the error, the researchers found  that the results were ummm less impressive, and Science ultimately retracted the paper, which was cited 25 times in just a year.

Or the well cited paper on changes in the climate that was retracted when it was discovered that many passages were lifted from other sources, including Wikipedia.

And the horrific breast cancer study that was administered by Duke University that is now being sued by families of breast cancer patients who died during the study - saying that Duke fraudulently and negligently allowed a flawed cancer trial to continue. The patients were enrolled in a trial led by oncologist Anil Potti, who in 2010 admitted to pretending to be a Rhodes Scholar and to fabricating a statistical analysis of chemotherapy response in breast cancer.   

There are others equally disturbing at The Scientist web article here

Universal Speed Limit Broken?

186,282 miles per second isn't just a good idea....it's the law!

European physicists are saying that the universally accepted speed limit of the cosmos, the speed of a photo in vacuum, better known as the speed of light - may in fact not be the fastest speed possible. A European team of physicists have stated that they had measured neutrinos particles which test results show that they traveled around 3.75 miles per second faster than the velocity of light.

The neutrinos had been measured along a 454-mile trajectory between CERN labs in Switzerland and a laboratory in Italy. Under extreme peer pressure the scientists altered the experiment in a way to cancel out structures in the beam that could have affected the out come. This way the scientists could identify individual particles when they were fired and when they arrived at their destination. But once again the results were confirmed.

Of course the results still needed to pass peer review if for no other reason than the experiment appears to negate a speed that literally thousands of other scientists have tested and accept as the universal constant of speed meaning the speed of light.


Speed of light Wiki

Daily Galaxy Article