₦airaland Forum

There has been a lot of buzz in recent years about the possibility of mankind's big move to our nearest neighbor, Mars. Moving our species to the Red Planet also implies that we will be shipping over microorganisms, plants and maybe even animals.

But how?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA) has suggested one route to producing a life-sustaining atmosphere on Mars. They don't plan on just sending up a spacecraft full of biomatter and dumping it on the surface to see what happens. Instead, the idea is to heat, and maybe even thicken, the planet's atmosphere using a host of photosynthetic organisms, including bacteria and plants.

The probability of anyone terraforming the Red Planet, transforming it from a harsh world into a habitable green-and-blue one like Earth, is still exceptionally slim. However, at a DARPA-hosted biotech conference, the agency announced that "for the first time, we have the technological toolkit to transform not just hostile places here on Earth, but to go into space not just to visit, but to stay."” The speaker was Alicia Jackson , Deputy Director of DARPA’'s Biological Technologies Office.

The 'technological toolkit' that Jackson refers to is DTA GView. Jackson describes the software as the "“Google Maps of genomes”." This archive gives the user information about known genes in an organism, alongside their position in the genome. "“This torrent of genomic data we'’re now collecting is awesome, except they sit in databases, where they remain data, not knowledge. Very little genetic information we have is actionable,"” she said. “"With this, the goal is to, within a day, sequence and find where I can best engineer an organism.”"

Future goals include eradicating vector-borne illnesses, engineering organisms that undo environmental damage and creating organisms that can survive in harsh environments. Maybe once DARPA has perfected terraforming Earth's most uninhabitable or damaged environments, it can then set its sights on Mars.

Terraforming Mars would be difficult: It would require growing organisms on Earth, packaging them to survive the voyage to Mars, and then encouraging them to grow on the Martian landscape. Also, anything brought to Mars would have to be grown carefully and in a controlled environment, as it would be disastrous to terraform Mars into, say, an Ebola-covered planet.

This plan might be fated to stay on the drawing board for some time, but it's a bright, vibrant and imaginative drawing board.

www.iflscience.com/space/darpa-wants-terraform-mars

Kul3ger:
Does it guarantee a flight to heaven?

It doesn't need to, because there's no heaven.

Defcon1:
And you will get it

Wow, So many Two dimensional dîcks, I love it.

A new drug that stops the malaria parasite in its tracks, and could be delivered in a single dose, has researchers excited about treatment prospects for the disease.

The newly discovered synthetic compound attacks the malaria parasite at multiple stages of its life cycle. It promises an effective new mode for drug delivery that could evade the bug’s emergent resistance.

Research conducted by an international team and published in the journal Nature , showed that a single dose of the compound (called DDD107498) not only cured malarial infection caused by the Plasmodum falciparum strain of parasite in mouse models, it also prevented them from acquiring the infection.
Malaria kills more than half a million people each year and infects between one and two million, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa. Pregnant women and children under five are the most vulnerable. The World Health Organization estimates that one child dies from malaria every minute.

Malaria experts said the finding was “exciting” because of the urgent need for new treatments that are effective against the parasite’s rapid resistance.
“At the moment, we’re down to our last anti-malarial drug and we’re starting to see resistance to this drug in places of Southeast Asia, so once we lose that anti-malaria drug, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble,” said Deakin University Associate Professor Tania De-Koning Ward, who was not involved in the study.

Ian Gilbert, research leader and Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Dundee, said the new drug could evade resistance because of its alternative mode of action.

“Our compound, if it is successfully developed, would be given as a combination with another antimalarial agent to minimise the threat of resistance,” he said.

Five parasite species cause malaria in humans; the
Plasmodium falciparum is the most deadly. The parasite invades the liver cells at its first stage. But people develop symptoms of fever, headache and vomiting only at the second stage, when it has reached the red blood cells.
In the third phase, the parasite develops into female and male forms and can be picked up by other mosquitoes that spread the disease.

“Most of the drugs we use today will kill the parasite when it grows in the blood cells,” said Brendan McMorran, Associate Professor at the John Curtin School of Medical Research. He was not involved in the study.
“Some parasite species remain in the liver for long periods of time and there are specialist forms of drugs that target that … but it appears that this new drug has the potential to do everything essentially in the one treatment,” he said.

“I think it’s the only new example I know of a drug that seems to have such a wide range of activity against the parasite. It certainly does a lot more than any of the current ones used clinically.”

The compound works by blocking the translation elongation factor 2 (eEF2) molecule in the parasite, which is essential for its protein synthesis. The site of eEF2 is a molecular target for the compound and represents a potential new drug site.

The paper’s researchers also noted that, if it successfully reached the market, the drug would cost US$1 per treatment. This would make it accessible to the majority of the infected population living in the developing world.
Pharmaceutical company Merck Serono has taken on the compound’s development and is exploring whether it is safe to test on humans. Professor Ian Gilbert estimated it could take five to six years before the drug was available on the market, “assuming it is successful in clinical trials”.

However, while the compound is a promising discovery, fighting the parasite’s proclivity for resistance will always be an ongoing battle.
“It’s going to be inevitable that every antimalarial drug that’s rolled out, the parasite will try to develop resistance, which is why there’s an ongoing need to develop a repertoire of anti-malarial drugs that have different modes of action,” said Associate Professor De Koning-Ward.


www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/new-single-dose-malaria-treatment-could-eventually-help-millions

We know that fashion often takes priority over comfort, because who needs to be able to walk properly when you can look this good? It’s not uncommon to see people strutting, or awkwardly wobbling, around in 7-inch heels, or wearing crop tops in subzero temperatures or teeny tiny shorts that really don’t leave much to the imagination (nobody wants to see your butt cheeks).

But our choices of attire sometimes do more than make locomotion generally awkward, as demonstrated by the latest “fashion victim” case, which even warranted publication in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. According to the report, squatting in skinny jeans for prolonged periods of time doesn’t just leave you at risk of that dreaded crotch tear (in the fabric, not the actual groin…), but it could actually cause nerve and muscle damage in the legs.

The latest individual to have suffered at the hands of unforgivably snug trousers is a 35-year-old woman who recently ended up in hospital experiencing severe weakness in her ankles. The day before she arrived, she had been helping a family member to move house and had spent a significant amount of time squatting to clear out cupboards. As the day progressed, the woman apparently felt her calf-hugging jeans becoming increasingly tight and uncomfortable, to the point where her feet actually started to go numb.

You may think that this would signal the need for a change in attire, stat, but the poor woman started struggling to walk and consequently fell over, and she wasn’t even able to drag herself back up. It took a few hours for her to be found, and by that time her legs were so swollen that her jeans had to be cut off. As she couldn’t feel from the lower leg down and was unable to move her feet properly, doctors decided to investigate what damage the jeans may have done.

According to the report, squatting for such extended periods of time caused compression in the legs, which ultimately damaged both muscle and nerve fibers, but the authors suggest that her jeans probably didn’t help the situation and in fact may have exacerbated the problem. They believe that the jeans could have restricted blood flow to the leg muscles, causing them to swell up and squash her nerves, a condition referred to as “compartment syndrome.” It was actually so bad that the woman was in hospital, on a drip, for four days before she could walk again without assistance.

OK, so this is one case report: there’s no need to panic and bin the contents of your trouser drawer because of it. We don’t know just how tight her drainpipes were, as there are definitely different degrees of squeeze when it comes to skinny jeans (gentlemen- there is no need to show off your testicles, we know they’re there). That being said, this isn’t the first report of problems arising as a result of wearing overly tight jeans. For example, a
survey of male skinny jean-wearers in Britain revealed that half of the respondents experienced discomfort in the groin, more than a quarter suffered bladder problems and one in five even ended up with a twisted testicle.

The take-home message here is not “don’t wear skinny jeans,” but rather “don’t suffer in your clothes just to look good.” Did we learn nothing from corsets ?


www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/don-t-squat-skinny-jeans-kids

Interstellar, again, I love this movie.

kokssy:
Omo dis one go soon die o

He's dead, saw the news today.

Nigerian bloggers and lies.

johnydon22:
Wait; Children of 14,12,14 making condoms... I cannot unsee that . . . WTF were the children doing with condoms

They had proper sex education, and used that knowledge for something good.

Abeg leave god and devil out of this, it's a snake case closed.

https://cctv-africa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CONDOM.jpg


A team of teenage inventors have revealed a condom capable of changing colour when it comes into contact with STIs.

The prescient prophylactic has a built-in indicator that alters its colour depending on what infection it picks up. It was revealed at the TeenTech Awards in London where it won the health category.

Called the S.T.EYE, the project was the creation of Daanyaal Ali, 14, Muaz Nawaz, 13 and Chirag Shah, 14.

“We created the S.T.EYE as a new way for STI detection to help the future of the next generation,” said Daanyaal Ali, 14 from Isaan Newton Academy in Illford.

“We wanted to make something that make detecting harmful STIs safer than ever before, so that people can take immediate action in the privacy of their own homes without the invasive procedures at the doctors.
“We’ve made sure we’re able to give peace of mind to users and make sure people can be even more responsible than ever before.”

Muaz Nawaz, Daanyaal Ali and Chirag Shah, inventors of the S.T.EYE meet Dr Christian Jessen from TV’s Embarrassing Bodies at the TeenTech Awards
The S.T.EYE was only one of the projects on display at the TeenTech awards, which showcases the inventions of students using science and technology to solve real problems in a range of different categories.

As a prize for winning the health category Daanyaal, Muaz and Chirag will be invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace in the autumn.
“We encourage students to take their ideas out of the classroom by putting them face-to-face with industry professionals, helping to open their eyes to the real potential of their ideas,” said TeenTech’s founder and CEO, Maggie Philbin.

Other inventions on show at the awards included shoes that use the energy of walking to charge devices while on the go and wi-fi hair accessories that match the colour of clothing.

Another invention called the eWaterTap is a device to be used in rural Africa to help communities manage their water systems.


http://cctv-africa.com/2015/06/23/condom-that-changes-colour-when-it-detects-sti-wins-award/

For the dog lovers.


https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aLBQD96_460s_v1.jpg

Nawa this isn't mere ugliness, it's a deformity that's why his kids look normal.

Humans are never satisfied.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vadr6kP5kj4

Take note bleachers.

benergy:
Why don't you subscribe to the 5k 12gb a month plan, instead of the 4.5gb twice a month. Just not economical subscribing twice a month on that package.

Funny enough I'd already decided to subscribe for the 8k for 24gb next month in other to update to windows 10 finishing my data.

She looks goood! Also when will the QoE honor all the guys that spend their school fees on olosho babes? They're the real philanthropists.

xhamel88:
I dont use less than 14gb a day. That is even just night after i return from work.

What isp, plan or even cheat do you use? because for us that use mobile networks we have to make do with what they give us or empty our bank accounts on data subscriptions.

bettercreature:
I bet you can not finish glo 1GB data in 15days,you will be fraustrated with bad network until you abandon it

Glo is fast in both UYO and Onitsha, I subscribe for their 2500 for 4.5gb like 2 times a month and supplement with MTN simple server.

https://www.iflscience.com/sites/www.iflscience.com/files/styles/ifls_large/public/blog/%5Bnid%5D/shutterstock_150798098.jpg



New research has found that types of empathy can be predicted by looking at physical differences in the brain. This raises the fascinating possibility that some kinds of empathy might be able to be increased by training or that it might be possible for people to lose their empathy over time.

A team of scientists, from Monash University, found that people who have what’s termed “affective” empathy, where they have a strong emotional response to what someone might be feeling or thinking, have denser grey matter in a certain region of the brain compared with those who have “cognitive” empathy, or people who have a more logical response to another’s emotional state.

“People who are high on affective empathy are often those who get quite fearful when watching a scary movie, or start crying during a sad scene,” explained Robert Eres, who co-authored the study. “Those who have high cognitive empathy are those who are more rational, for example a clinical psychologist counselling a client.”

The researchers looked at 176 people and used data from a neuroimaging technique known as a “voxel-based morphometry,” which analyzes the density of a type of brain tissue called grey matter. The team wanted to know whether this could be predictive of how they would score on a test that rated them on a scale of affective to cognitive empathy.

They found that those who had high effective empathy also had denser grey matter in a region called the “insular cortex,” which is folded into the center of the brain. Conversely, they found that people who scored highly for cognitive empathy had denser grey matter in the “midcingulate cortex,” a region found just above the connection between the two hemispheres.

“Taken together, these results provide validation for empathy being a multi-component construct, suggesting that affective and cognitive empathy are differentially represented in brain morphometry," claim the researchers in their paper , published in the journal NeuroImage . Additionally, the authors say this could provide evidentiary support that empathy is represented by different structures and brain cell populations.

According to the scientists, the finding that empathy can be linked to differences in the brain's physiology raises the question of whether changes in those regions alter people’s capacity to understand how others feel. It might also suggest that empathy could be lost if those regions aren’t used regularly enough.

“In the future we want to investigate causation by testing whether training people on empathy related tasks can lead to changes in these brain structures and investigate if damage to these brain structures, as a result of a stroke for example, can lead to empathy impairments,” says Eres.



www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-find-physical-differences-empathetic-peoples-brains

.

OP more! I demand more!

johnydon22:
Yeap Anubis gat swagger, Osiris basically is the boss man but i just like Anubis looks. . . Horus is a wacked up kiddo

Hahahaha, this guy sef, make Horus catch you 1st.

johnydon22:
Anubis is one of my favourite Egyptian god, his looks and swaggs is just right. . .

lol, swag?

https://www.iflscience.com/sites/www.iflscience.com/files/styles/ifls_large/public/blog/%5Bnid%5D/TOP%20ANUBIS.jpg



Archaeologists have discovered nearly eight million canine mummies -- from hours-old puppies to adult dogs -- in the dark, spectacular catacombs next to a temple of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of death, Live Science reports.
While animal cults are a widely recognized feature of ancient Egypt, not a whole lot is known about the nature of the catacombs and mummies associated with temples dedicated to animal gods. A new study, published in
Antiquity this month, chronicles the catacombs of Anubis at North Saqqara: from their heyday during the Late Period (664 to 332 B.C.E.) to their exploitation for raw materials during modern times, where mummies may have been used as fertilizer.

The temple is in the country's ancient capital of Memphis. "When you go to Saqqara now, you see an area of attractive desert with the pyramids sticking up and one or two of the prominent monuments" associated with animal cults, Cardiff University’s Paul Nicholson tells Live Science. But during the Late Period, "it would have been a busy place... a permanent community of people living there supported by the animal cults." These would have included priests, merchants, and tour guides, as well as people breeding animals that will later be mummified as expressions of gratitude for the gods.

The canine catacombs were first documented in 1897, but it wasn’t until 2011 that Nicholson and colleagues began conducting a full excavation of its long series of dark tunnels. The center passageway stretched for 173 meters (568 feet), with the corridors branching from it reaching a width of up to 140 meters (459 feet). These catacombs were constructed from Lower Eocene stones dating back some 50 million years, and the catacombs themselves were built in the fourth century B.C.E, In fact, the ceiling even contained the 48-million-year-old fossil of an extinct marine vertebrate -- likely the relative of today’s manatees.

Many of the mummies have disintegrated over the centuries, and other were disrupted by graverobbers and quarrymen. Still, it was clear that this animal cult was a big part of the economy. Some of the older dogs that had more elaborate burials may have lived at the temple. But many of the dogs were just days, even hours, old when they were mummified: They were likely separated from their mothers and died from dehydration or starvation. "They probably weren't killed by physical action,”
Nicholson says. “We don't have evidence of broken necks that you get with cat burials."

While 92% of the mummified remains belonged to dogs, the team also found jackals, foxes, falcons, cats, and mongooses. They’re not sure why these other animals were there: Maybe the dog-looking animals were interchangeable, and there might be a mythological rationale behind the cats and birds.


www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/millions-dog-mummies-discovered-catacombs-anubis

In need of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for PC.

Each device needs a specific exploit, it's not one size fits all.

https://www.iflscience.com/sites/www.iflscience.com/files/styles/ifls_large/public/blog/%5Bnid%5D/2_normal_0.jpg
photo credit: Shanghai Jiao Tong University




As one of the most loathed creatures on the planet, you’re probably not going to jump on the phone to PETA and cry “animal cruelty!” after finding out that students in China have developed a system that allows them to govern the creepy crawlie’s movements using their own thoughts. Effectively, what they claim to have done is turn the bug into a controllable, living “machine animal.” Sorry, roaches; we are your overlords now (cue dramatic “Mwahahhahhah”).
This isn’t actually the first time that scientists have tinkered with cockroach brains. Last November, a team from North Carolina State University created “ cyborg cockroaches”, which were fitted with tiny backpacks that picked up and directed the animals toward certain sounds, such as the screams of someone trapped by an earthquake. Then, in March, Texas A&M University trumped their innovation by designing a hybrid system that allowed researchers to remotely stimulate the bug’s brain and thus steer it from a distance. Both were designed to be life-saving tools to be employed in the event of disasters.

Now, inspired by the “brain–brain interface” system that features in the movie Avatar, a bunch of engineering students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University have gone and created their own version , allowing a human user to guide a cockroach subject using their mind. And it was deemed so impressive that it won second prize in this year’s IEEE RAS students’ video contest.

To join up the two brains, a cockroach first undergoes brain surgery, whereby a tiny electrode is inserted into a nerve that picks up information from the antennae. A human user is then fitted with a headset that picks up and records their brain waves. After specifically thinking about the intention to move, which is helped along with some visual stimulation, a computer decodes the patterns of electrical brain activity and recognizes the user’s intended direction of movement.

Following translation, the signals are wirelessly transmitted to an electronic backpack fitted onto the cockroach, causing the microelectrode to send out a stimulating electrical impulse to the antennal nerve. And hey presto, the little bug moves in the intended direction. So far, the students have managed to guide individual cockroaches to walk in both s- and z-shaped paths, but their work isn’t over yet. With further fine-tuning, the team hopes to be able to control multiple insects at the same time. Ultimately, the students believe that these mind-controlled roaches could also be employed in search-and-rescue missions.


source: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/brain-brain-interface-allows-humans-control-cockroaches-their-minds

Generalkorex:
half a loaf is better than none. And some heavy internet user will finish dat 1gb in a month.

1gb a month? it'll last 3 days if I manage it.

Beautiful images.