J147: The Anti-aging Drug

A team of researchers at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies has been looking for effective candidates for combating Alzheimer's disease for awhile now.  Recently, they began trials for a drug known as J147 to determine if any effect at all would be observed on mice with Alzheimer's.  This drug is not normally used for Alzheimer's treatment, and was used in a more unique angle of combating Alzheimer's.  Professor David Schubert, who heads the Neurobiology Laboratory at Salk Institute and is the senior author of the study, said, "While most drugs developed in the past 20 years target the amyloid plaque deposits in the brain (which are a hallmark of the disease), none have proven effective in the clinic".  Essentially, the team was looking for different ways to try and affect Alzheimer's disease; they were trying to see if targeting old age would reduce Alzheimer's.

So the overall objective was to see if mice treated with J147 would exhibit characteristics of younger mice to combat Alzheimer's.  And it basically worked.

The older mice treated with J147 performed better on memory and other tests for cognition and also displayed more robust motor movements, healthier blood vessels in the brain, and other improved physiological features.  In addition, any aspects of Alzheimer's that were in the older mice diminished within their brains.  Secondly, it was evident that gene expression and metabolism in the older mice were very similar to younger mice.  This also included markers for increased energy metabolism, which reduced brain inflammation and reduced levels of oxidized fatty acids in the brain.

Although the study did show amazing results in mice, the only way to demonstrate the clinical relevance of the work is to move J147 into human clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease.  "If proven safe and effective for Alzheimer's, the apparent anti-aging effect of J147 would be a welcome benefit," added Schubert.  The team does plan on conducting human trials by next year, and hopefully we may just have an answer to Alzheimer's and even old age.

Here's the link to the article with a paper referenced as well:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151113051134.htm

The EmDrive Thruster: How to Break Physics

So physics may be a little broken or not working as expected.

That's what a team of NASA's best at Eagleworks Laboratories are trying to determine with the new EmDrive developed by Roger Shawyer.  This drive is held in great secrecy at NASA, with little details emerging from what the thruster does in its entirety.  Yet some information has been revealed by engineer Paul March on the NASA spaceflight forum on how it works and why it breaks physics.  To say it breaks physics, exactly how does a person or something do that?  How is this controversial thruster bend physics at all?

It generates thrust from nothing.  No input of energy is required.

To explain, as March describes it, "the Eagleworks lab successfully built and installed a 2nd generation magnetic damper which helps reduce stray magnetic fields in a vacuum chamber. The addition reduced magnetic fields by an order of magnitude inside the chamber, and also decreased Lorentz force interactions."  For those of us that aren't rocket scientists, the drive basically bends microwaves into a closed conical shaped container which somehow generates thrust into the wide end of the container.  Even NASA is still puzzled as to why this generates thrust.

The initial test showed some amount of thrust, but was considered questionable due to a contamination by thermal expansion.  Essentially, they couldn't prove at first that thrust came from nothing due to heat.  However, this amount of heat is being analyzed by the research team to develop an integrated test which aims to alleviate thermally induced errors altogether.  Even though the EmDrive is still within early testing, the theory does work, and thrust is generated from seemingly nothing.

Granted, the model that was built is somewhat small, about the size of a chair.  But the possibilities are endless.  The following paragraphs are an outline of what NASA and the engineers at Eagleworks Laboratories plan to do next about the drive.

Moving forward, NASA’s short term objective is to conduct a diverse array of tests on a quantum vacuum plasma thruster (a similar propellantless engine flatter in shape than the EmDrive), in hopes of gaining independent verification and validation of the thruster. Initial IV&V testing will be supported by the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, making use of a stainless steel vacuum chamber which has the capacity to detect force at a single-digit micronewton level, called a low-thrust torsion pendulum.

After that, a similar round of low-thrust torsion pendulum tests will then be conducted at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before comparing the findings. It’s also reported that the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has contacted the lab about conducting Cavendish Balance-type testing of the IV&V shipset. Ideally, this test would allow Johns Hopkins to measure the amount of gravitational force exerted in propellantless engines.

 Granted, we are still a long ways away from self propelled space craft, or the ability to use this drive on future vehicles in space, but this is a major breakthrough in spacecraft technology.  With further refinement, microwave thrusters could drastically cut the cost of satellites and space stations, and potentially even make it possible to travel to distant planets, like Mars, in weeks rather than months or years.

Check out the details of this story at the following links:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/researchers-conduct-successful-new-tests-of-emdrive/  

http://www.inquisitr.com/2541109/nasas-em-drive-test-warp-drive-engine-emdrive-isaac-newton-laws-of-physics/ 

The New Way to Combat Memory Loss

We all wonder how to do it.  Whether it be for exams or anything else, we all want to try and figure out how to remember things easier and to not forget them.  Well, a research team located within The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System (VA) and University of California (UC) San Diego School of Medicine recently discovered that by increasing a crucial cholesterol-binding membrane protein in nerve cells within the brain, learning and memory functions were greatly improved within mice.

Granted this is mice that were used in this study.  However, mice and humans do share similar molecular structure and function to one another.  If anything, testing on mice can provide a fantastic outlook on what a drug or a medical technique would do to a human.  Therefore, it could become way easier to remember all kinds of things in the future, including your girlfriend's or wife's anniversary (heaven forbid that you forget that date).

"By bringing back this protein, you're actually bringing cholesterol back to the cell membrane, which is very important for forming new synaptic contacts" said author Brian Head, a research scientist with the VA and associate professor at UC San Diego.  By doing so, scientists have a much greater understanding of neuroplasticity (the ability of neural pathways to grow in response to new stimuli).  This was all observed when the membrane protein called caveolin-1 (Cav-1) was injected directly into a region of the brain known as the hippocampus in adult and "aged" mice (older mice).  As a result, there was improved neuron growth within the mice and a better retrieval of contextual memories (responding to past stimuli like freezing in place in fear in a location where they had received electrical shocks before).  As a result, the scientists are also looking into other ways that Cav-1 could be used.  "We're very interested in studying whether we can manipulate Cav-1 in other areas of the brain," Mandyam, associate professor at TSRI and co-first author of the study with Jan M. Schilling of UC San Diego and the VA, said.

So above all, be on the lookout for a new drug on the shelves in your local CVS hopefully within the next decade or so, cause Cav-1 looks like it really works.  Just think, improved memory and learning all through the injection of Cav-1 into your brain.

Check out the story at this link below:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/sri-sdt102015.php

The Weirdest Star in the Galaxy

Between two constellations in the sky, there's an old star that we cannot see with a naked eye.  It lies between the constellations of "Cygnus the swan" and Lyra "the harp".  Now where it sits, there normally isn't a lot going on in terms of other stars, events in the galaxy, or really anything.  In addition, this is one of the many stars that the Kepler Space Telescope (which has been viewing this star for the past 4 years) has been watching to view tiny dips in the light emitted by this star, indicating that a planet had transitioned in front of this star.  However, over the past couple of years, one particular star has been emitting some strange light patterns.  Not necessarily one dip of light, or two.  Or ten.  Or a hundred.  In fact, it would seem that this star has in its orbit a massive collection of objects, constantly circling the star.  Now this pattern is completely normal for a young star, as it would have dust and debris spinning around the star while it is forming.  There's just one problem about this situation.

The star under question, is an old mature star, not a young one.

And no other star viewed by the Kepler Space Telescope, out of the 150,000 stars viewed, has experienced the same event.

This amount of material orbiting around the star is large enough to block out numerous photons that the telescope could see, meaning they aren't small objects at all.  And what's more interesting, is that if nature just blindly set the mass around the star, it would have consolidated by now.  Unless this is a recent event, gravity normally would have condensed the material by pulling it into the star.  Since the materials are there, and this is a mature star, something doesn't add up. 

Scientists have been trying to come up with theories and explanations as to why this is happening, or what is causing this event.  One theory, for example, is that the debris could be the remains of comets dragged into that star's area by another star that came exceptionally close, according to researchers.  Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, has been working recently on this extraordinary event.  Wright and his co-authors say the unusual star’s light pattern is consistent with a “swarm of megastructures,” perhaps stellar-light collectors, technology designed to catch energy from the star.  “When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked,” Wright told me. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”

Does this not sound like a completely bizarre circumstance?

Now I'm not saying aliens are real or are not real, we have no idea what is going on at this star.  The next step in this endeavor is to determine if any other signals are being emitted from the star or the objects, like a radio signal.  In fact, the researchers want to point a massive radio dish at the unusual star around January, to see if it emits radio waves at frequencies associated with technological activity.  If anything crazy or unknown happens, a follow-up would happen almost instantly on the event.  “If we saw something exciting, we could ask the director for special allotted time on the VLA,” Wright told me. “And in that case, we’d be asking to go on right away.”  For now, however, we are left to look at the stars and wonder what mystery awaits at this unusual star.

For more information, check out the story at this link:

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-most-interesting-star-in-our-galaxy/410023/

Water on Mars Confirmed!

"What we are going to announce today, Mars is not the dry arid planet that we thought of in the past.  Today, we are going to announce that under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars." - Jim Green, Director of planetary science at NASA headquarters

As of today, strong evidence has been found on Mars to support that liquid water can exist and does exist on the Martian surface.  Specifically, salty water (water containing perchlorates) has been found on Mars creating dark streaks along the surface.

As of this moment, this is a brand new story so not a whole lot is known about what exactly is going on on Mars.  As far as we know, the water only happens occasionally on the surface in regards to the distance from the Sun and other factors.  "Nevertheless," as Stuart Clark says on CNN, "the news that there is (occasionally) flowing water on the surface of Mars boosts the chances of using it to support astronauts when we launch a crewed mission to the Red Planet."

In addition, this opens up the possibility of some sort of microbe or form of life that could exist on Mars.  Could there be microbes in the water, or microbes that use the water as a source of nutrients and energy that exist on the surface?  Or could there be a different life form that uses the water on Mars?  The questions are endless, the possibilities immense, but we now know in almost certainty: WATER EXISTS ON MARS.

Here are the links to the CNN story and video:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/live/2015/sep/28/water-on-mars-buildup-to-nasa-mystery-solved-announcement-live

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/28/us/mars-nasa-announcement

Wasp Venom Kills Cancer Cells

Now wait a minute, who thought to try and see if this worked?

Well it does!  The Brazilian wasp Polybia paulista protects itself from predators by secreting a venom that contains the toxin MP1.  This toxin selectively kills cancer cells while leaving the normal cells completely alone.  The toxin basically accomplishes this by disrupting the cell membrane in cancerous cells, causing the cells to lyse (basically create holes in the cell membrane that erupt the cell's inner guts out of the cell membrane) and die.  Interestingly, the host's normal cells are left intact, indicating that there may be a property in cancerous cell membranes that may differ slightly from a normal cell, allowing MP1 to act on the cell membrane. 

Unfortunately, that's about what the scientists know at this point.  They are currently working to create model membranes and expose certain lipids and components of the membranes to MP1, and figure out just how exactly the wasp's toxin selectively kills cancer cells.  In addition, more information can be found here:

http://phys.org/news/2015-09-brazilian-wasp-venom-cancer-cells.html

Now I'm not suggesting that one go to Brazil, and sit outside until a Brazilian wasp stings him or her.  Please don't do that, I never said that was a good idea.  But, maybe someday, we can use the toxin MP1 to formulate a combatant against cancer cells.

Giant Viruses in Siberia?

A group of french scientists are working on reanimating a prehistoric virus from underground deep within Siberia, a giant virus from almost 30,000 years ago!

The virus, known as Mollivirus sibericum, is a giant virus.  The average size of a normal virus is about 250–400 nm, while Mollivirus sibericum measures about over half of a micron.  Now to us, this doesn't seem very big.  When looking under a light microscope (microscopes found in everyday labs), you can't really see any viruses.  But with these giant viruses, you actually can see them through a light microscope using a high powered lens.

Now the nature of this virus is unknown.  We don't exactly know what it will do to us humans, animals, or plants quite yet.  And don't worry, as the article states, they will only reanimate the virus if they are absolutely sure that the virus won't harm animals or humans.  The article and links to the research papers and data can be found here:

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-are-reawakening-a-giant-virus-frozen-in-the-siberian-wilderness

It will be interesting to see what these giant prehistoric viruses do and how they interact with our world now.  As more and more companies and groups of researchers dive deeper into the ice to tap into mineral deposits, many interesting microorganisms, some from long ago, could be discovered.  The risks of that, however, should be kept in mind.  As Jean-Michel Claverie said when she talked to Science Alert, "If we are not careful, and we industrialise these areas without putting safeguards in place, we run the risk of one day waking up viruses such as small pox that we thought were eradicated.”