Space Travel Alters the Shape of Your Heart

With the new possibility of sending people to Mars, scientists like James Thomas are beginning to study the effect of space on your body. The measured the change of the shape of 12 astronauts hearts before, during, and after their training. They found that the astronauts hearts became 9% rounder. In space, the heart does not need to work hard to pump the blood. This slowly causes the heart to weaken and loose muscle.

James and Thomas and his team are developing different exercises that result in the heart needing to work harder. They are  hoping that these exercises will be able to help other heart problems and conditions that happen with in the atmosphere. The goal is to be able to develop an exercise routine that will allow hearts to remain healthy for the eventual attempt to inhabit Mars.

Themes of Nature of Science:
Role of Skepticism: Many of the people are using the new evidence of heart weakness may cause the Mars trip to be called off
Role of Motivation and Curiosity: Many people want to find out if Mars is inhabitable, and many scientists could like to see if their exercises could influence other heart diseases

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Decline in Blue-Footed Booby Population

 The blue-footed booby, the majestic animal featured on the cover of our Biology textbooks, has recently been declining in population for reasons scientist aren't completely sure about just yet. In recent years, scientists have noticed a quite peculiar and substantial lack in fledgling birds. This essentially means that the birds are having a hard time reproducing. The total population has dropped by more than two-thirds since the 1960's. Scientists tentatively think that there may be a link between this population drop and the population drop of sardines in the area. Blue-footed boobies used to consume the highly nutritious fish as nearly their entire diet, but now sardines only make up about half of what they eat. The cause for the drop in population of sardines is also unknown, but some basic conjectures include overfishing and climate change. The blue-footed booby is definitely not the only animal that eats sardines, so other disruptions in the food web might show up in the near future. Back to the booby, this problem of not being able to produce enough offspring is very concerning. It needs to be fixed before the current population gets too old to reproduce so the species can thrive again.
Read the full article here.

NOS Themes:
Science is based on evidence - Researchers have been keeping track of the numbers of boobies they see over the years, which proves to be evidence towards the decline in population.
Science is subject to debate and is tentative - The article mentions that the scientists aren't conclusively sure their reasoning for the drop in population is correct.

Mysterious noise in Southern Ocean is identified

Link to the article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140423132614.htm

The source of a rhythmic sound coming from the southern ocean has been a mystery since the 1960's, when it was first heard by a submarine personnel.  It has taken 54 years, but the sound has been identified as an Arctic Minke Whale.  An international team of researchers deployed acoustic tags on these Arctic Minke Whales; this was the first time it had been successful.  No one had previously known that whales were there because of their unorganized movement throughout the high and low latitudes.  Because of this successful deployment of the tags, scientists will be able to interpret new acoustic readings better, and also understand more about the behavior of the Arctic Minke Whale.

I thought this article was very interesting because it had taken scientists so many years to find out where the noise had been coming from.  Not much is known about this particular species of whale, but now that they have been identified as the noise makers, scientists have been able to study their behavior more.  The technology that the scientists used is also very cool.  More and more is being learned about the earth and it's inhabitants every day, and this is just another piece to the puzzle of our world.

NOS themes:
Science is collaborative
Role of motivation and curiosity

Why do Zebras Have Stripes?

Why do Zebras Have Stripes

https://student.societyforscience.org/article/one-plus-wearing-stripes

              Scientist have recently done a study and discovered a possible answer to why zebras have black and white stripes. Before this study there was a lot of speculation as to why they have stripes. It was thought that they had them to hide from or confuse predators, but they saw that the stripes did not seem to affect predators very much. Also scientists thought that maybe the stripes helped them stay cool, but they tested this and found no evidence that this was true. What they did find however was that flies tend to avoid them but they land of similar animals, like asses, with no stripes. These flies can cause disease, and be fatal to zebras and horses. The flies prefer solid colors to land on and tend to avoid the zebras. This seems to be the most practical reason as to why zebras have stripes. 

NOS Themes- 

Science is collaborative- many scientists worked together on this observation.  

Science is based on evidence- They observed and watched how the flies avoided the zebras more than non-striped horses. 

Splice Variants Reveal Connections Among Autism Genes

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has discovered a new aspect of autism, showing that some proteins involved in the disorder interact with more partners than known. These had not been found before because they involve alternately spliced forms of autism genes found in the brain.

In the study, the scientists isolated hundred of autistic genes from the brain, and screened their protein products against other proteins to identify interacting partners. Proteins produced by alternatively-spliced autism genes formed a network that produced a view of how autism genes are connected.

The total number of interactions doubled, and what was found was that the different variants of the same proteins could alter the wiring of the entire system. This is also the first time for anything like this to happen.

The new network between proteins between proteins also showed how multiple autism genes connect to one another. Scientists found that a class of mutations involved in autistic genes, known as copy number variants, involve genes that are connected closely or indirectly.

Not only did this new discovery illuminate greater knowledge on autism proteins, but the new networks represent a resource for future autism studies and also places where new drug treatments may be experimented.


Themes of Nature of Science:

• Science is collaborative
• Science is based on evidence
• Role of credibility
• Importance of repeatability
• Role of motivation and curiosity

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2014/04/11/splice_variants_reveal_connections_among_autism_genes.html

Extinct Plants Brought Back to Life

Jeff Benca, a graduate student at UC Berkley, recently submitted a paper about an extinct species of lycopod. Instead of drawing a picture, he created a detailed and incredibly accurate colored reconstruction of the plant based on a 375 million year old fossil. His reconstruction was on the cover of the March issue of the American Journal of Botany.

The centipede clubmoss, or Leclercqia scolopendra is its scientific name, lived during the Devonian Period, or "age of the fishes"and was one of few plants with leaves. Centipede clubmoss shoots were about a quarter inch thick and formed ground covering mats. Its leaves have hooks on the end, their function is unknown. Modern lycopods include club mosses, quillworts, and spikemosses.

Jeff Benca's colorful reconstruction of the Leclercqia scolopendra, featured on the cover of American Journal of Botany

Benca wrote the paper on this plant to describe a new technique that is helping botanists learn about early land plant fossils and be more confident about it. He created the model because there are not many thorough reconstructions of 375 million year old plants. "I wanted to give an impression of what they may have really looked like. There are great color reconstructions of dinosaurs, so why not a plant?" said Benca.

NOS Themes:

• Science is based on evidence
• Person's view and experience can influence data
• Role of motivation and curiosity

My link: http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2014/04/11/berkeley_graduate_student_brings_extinct_plants_to_life.html

Bulletproof Nuclei?

This article talked about nuclei of stem cells, which are the body's master cells. Stem cells are called master cells because they can change into any cell that is needed by the body. These cells have a bizarre known as auxeticity. This is means having applications as wide-ranging as soundproofing, super-absorbent sponges and bulletproof vests. This goes against usual physics saying that if you squish an object it will expand an example of this would be if you squeeze a tennis ball between your hands, the circumference around the ball gets larger, and if you stretch a material it will contract an example is if you pull on an elastic band, the elastic itself will get thinner. Using this material scientists have begun to explore auxeticity, an unusual property which has the opposite effect causing squeezing to contract, and stretching to expand. This means that auxetic materials will act as excellent shock absorbers or sponges, and will be able to have many uses.

Until this point auxeticity has only been demonstrated in manmade materials and a few types of natural sponges. However these cells are far from invincible because these auxetic properties only are found when the stem cell is changing into a tissue specific cell and goes away when this process is over. This was unexpectedly discovered at the University of Cambridge by scientists that noticed the nucleus absorbing the dye when the cell was transitioning from an embryonic cell to a tissue-specific cell. This new discovery is of great interest to material scientists and engineers and may provide clues to different methods of manufacture.

NOS Themes:
Science is based on evidence- there is evidence that the nucleus of stem cells are auxetic.
Roll of chance- It was pure chance that these researchers found this discovery.

Article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140420131808.htm


-Tyler Welder