August 3, 2011

Good Morning,

The development of a new, liquid material shows promise in repairing damaged soft body tissue. Check out the first article for all the details on the development and how it works.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Jungle plant has evolved 'bat signal'

BRISTOL, England - British scientists say a forest plant dependent on bats for pollination has evolved leaves shaped like dishes to attract bats by echoing their sounds back. University of Bristol researchers say the Cuban rainforest vine Marcgravia evenia has developed a distinctive concave leaf that resembles a dish reflector next to its flowers. Analyzing the leaf's acoustic properties, they discovered it can send back strong, multidirectional echoes with a distinctive acoustic signature perfect for revealing the location of the plant's flower to echo-locating bats, a university release said. They trained nectar-feeding bats to search for a single small feeder hidden within an artificial foliage background, recording the time the bats took to find it. A dish-shaped leaf replica like that of M. evenia placed above the feeder reduced search times by about 50 percent, they found. "This echo beacon has benefits for both the plant and the bats," researcher Marc Holderied said. "On one hand, it increases the foraging efficiency of nectar-feeding bats, which is of particular importance as they have to pay hundreds of visits to flowers each night to fulfill their energy needs. On the other hand, the M. evenia vine occurs in such low abundance that it requires highly mobile pollinators."


New material mimics human soft tissue

BALTIMORE - Reserchers in Baltimore say they're developing a new composite material that may someday restore damaged soft body tissues. The liquid material, a composite of biological and synthetic molecules, is injected under the skin and then "set" using light to form a more solid structure, a John Hopkins Medical Institutions release said Monday. One possible use for the product could be reconstructing soldiers' faces disfigured by blast injuries, the researchers said. The composite nature of the material helps the body accept it, they said. "Implanted biological materials can mimic the texture of soft tissue, but are usually broken down by the body too fast, while synthetic materials tend to be more permanent but can be rejected by the immune system and typically don't meld well with surrounding natural tissue," researcher Jennifer Elisseeff said. "Our composite material has the best of both worlds, with the biological component enhancing compatibility with the body and the synthetic component contributing to durability." The compound consists of hyaluronic acid, a natural component in skin that gives it elasticity, and polyethylene glycol, a synthetic molecule used successfully as surgical glue in operations and known not to cause severe immune reactions. The researchers cautioned that although the material is "promising," it is not yet ready for widespread clinical use. "We still have to evaluate the persistence and safety of our material in other types of human tissues, like muscle or less fatty regions under the skin of the face, so we can optimize it for specific procedures," Elisseeff said.


Spacecraft snaps close-up of asteroid

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA has released the first full-frame image of the asteroid Vesta taken by the spacecraft Dawn as it moves into the first of four intensive science orbits.
Dawn will enter an orbit around the 330-mile-diameter asteroid at a distance of 1,700 miles on Aug. 11 to begin an in-depth analysis of the asteroid, a NASA release said Monday. The Dawn team has unveiled the first full-frame image of Vesta taken on July 24. "Now that we are in orbit around one of the last unexplored worlds in the inner solar system, we can see that it's a unique and fascinating place," said Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Vesta is the brightest object in the asteroid belt as seen from Earth. "We have been calling Vesta the smallest terrestrial planet," said Chris Russell, Dawn's principal investigator at UCLA. "The latest imagery provides much justification for our expectations. "They show that a variety of processes were once at work on the surface of Vesta and provide extensive evidence for Vesta's planetary aspirations."


Radioactive decay keeps inner Earth hot

MANHATTAN, Kan. - Almost half of Earth's heat comes from naturally occurring radioactive decay of underground materials, U.S. and other scientists have calculated.
Kansas State University physics Professor Glenn Horton-Smith was part of a team making some of the most precise measurements of Earth's radioactivity ever recorded, a KSU release said Tuesday. Observations of the activity of subatomic particles -- particularly uranium, thorium and potassium -- undergoing natural fission produced close estimates of the decay's contribution to the globe's heat. "It is a high enough precision measurement that we can make a good estimate of the total amount of heat being produced by these fissions going on in naturally occurring uranium and thorium," Horton-Smith said. The measurements were made using a neutrino detector in Japan. Neutrinos are neutral elementary particles that are emitted by nuclear reactions or natural radioactive decay. By observing geoneutrinos -- neutrinos from a geological source -- they determined radioactive decay was responsible for about half the Earth's heat output of about 44 trillion watts. The other half comes from primordial sources left over when the Earth formed, said the scientists who took part in the international research collaboration and whose findings are published in the July issue of Nature Geoscience. Earth's internal heat is the mechanism behind plate movement, magnetic fields, volcanoes and seafloor spreading.

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