World's 7 fastest bikes

�7.MV Agusta F4 1000 R

�This motorcycle is manufactured by Augusta of Italy. It is powered by 4 cylinder, 16 radial valves, DOHC, liquid cooled engine. Top Speed ever reach by MV Agusta F4 1000 R is 176 mph (299 km/h). The power output that can be produced is 128 kw (174 horsepower).

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�6.Yamaha YZF R1�

This bike was a rage in 1998, the year that it was introduced and still is. The liter engine has got 16 valves with 4 cylinders and liquid cooling technology.�Not only does the Yamaha achieve a top speed of 284 kmph but it also does 0-100 kmph in 3 seconds, just 0.1 seconds off the official timing oThis bike was a rage in 1998, the year that it was introduced and still is. The liter engine has got 16 valves with 4 cylinders and liquid cooling technology.�f a Lamborghini Aventador.

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�5.Honda CBR1100XX Blackbird

Honda CBR 1100 XX Super Blackbird is a sport-touring motorcycle built by Honda. It combines big engine power, Easy operational error-tolerance with touring comfort. The Blackbird production started in 1997 and the last year of production was 2006. The Blackbird was the result of Honda�s attempt to build the world�s fastest production motorcycle, stealing the crown from Kawasaki.

�4.BMW S1000RR

It produces 193 Bhp of power at lofty 13500 rpm and its top speed is in the regions of 306 kmph. Its performance is enhanced to a great effect by its 181 kgs dry weight. Its radical styling may not win it many fans but it is the fastest stock production bike in the world as of now.

�3.Suzuki Hayabusa

Suzuki has reinvented the world of mobility with the most stylish sport bike combining� power, speed and styling and named it new 2012� Suzuki Hayabusa. The new 2012 Hayabusa is powered by a� 1340cc in-line 4-cylinder fuel injected, DOHC liquid-cooled engine with 16-valves and Twin Swirl Combustion Chambers provides phenomenal power mated with 6-speed transmission.

�2.MTT Streefighter

Streetfighter is powered by a Rolls Royce-Allison turbine that generates an awesome 320hp with 576Nm torque. If you still lust for more power, MTT can upgrade the engine to generate 420bhp and 680Nm. You may never be able to reach the top speed of 400 km/h without flying off, but having huge power to command on the bike is definitely a strong lure. The bike has 17-inch carbonfiber wheels, tubular aluminum alloy frame, computerized ignition and two-speed automatic transmission, Brembo brakes, and can run on either diesel or kerosene.

�1.Dodge Tomahawk

This reproduction of Dodge�s concept bike is considered an �automotive sculpture,� as it is not street legal in the US. Ten of these bikes were offered by Neiman Marcus in their 2003 Christmas Book. The Dodge Tomahawk V10 superbike boasts an 8.3 liter engine (505 cubic inch), and the 10 cylinders can bring the bike to a maximum speed of almost 400 mph. The 1500lb bike has an independent 4-wheel suspension and can reach 60 mph in around 2.5 seconds.

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You can't do the math without the words

Most people learn to count when they are children. Yet surprisingly, not all languages have words for numbers. A recent study published in the journal of Cognitive Science shows that a few tongues lack number words and as a result, people in these cultures have a difficult time performing common quantitative tasks. The findings add new insight to the way people acquire knowledge, perception and reasoning.

The Piraha people of the Amazon are a group of about 700 semi-nomadic people living in small villages of about 10-15 adults, along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon. According to University of Miami (UM) anthropological linguist Caleb Everett, the Piraha are surprisingly unable to represent exact amounts. Their language contains just three imprecise words for quantities: Hòi means "small size or amount," hoì, means "somewhat larger amount," and baàgiso indicates to "cause to come together, or many." Linguists refer to languages that do not have number specific words as anumeric.

"The Piraha is a really fascinating group because they are really only one or two groups in the world that are totally anumeric," says Everett, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the UM College of Arts and Sciences. "This is maybe one of the most extreme cases of language actually restricting how people think."

His study "Quantity Recognition Among speakers of an Anumeric Language" demonstrates that number words are essential tools of thought required to solve even the simplest quantitative problems, such as one-to-one correspondence.

"I'm interested in how the language you speak affects the way that you think," says Everett. "The question here is what tools like number words really allows us to do and how they change the way we think about the world."

The work was motivated by contradictory results on the numerical performance of the Piraha. An earlier article reported the people incapable of performing simple numeric tasks with quantities greater than three, while another showed they were capable of accomplishing such tasks.

Everett repeated all the field experiments of the two previous studies. The results indicated that the Piraha could not consistently perform simple mathematical tasks. For example, one test involved 14 adults in one village that were presented with lines of spools of thread and were asked to create a matching line of empty rubber balloons. The people were not able to do the one-to-one correspondence, when the numbers were greater than two or three.

The study provides a simple explanation for the controversy. Unbeknown to other researchers, the villagers that participated in one of the previous studies had received basic numerical training by Keren Madora, an American missionary that has worked with the indigenous people of the Amazon for 33 years, and co-author of this study. "Her knowledge of what had happened in that village was crucial. I understood then why they got the results that they did," Everett says.

Madora used the Piraha language to create number words. For instance she used the words "all the sons of the hand," to indicate the number four. The introduction of number words into the village provides a reasonable explanation for the disagreement in the previous studies.

The findings support the idea that language is a key component in processes of the mind. "When they've been introduced to those words, their performance improved, so it's clearly a linguistic effect, rather than a generally cultural factor," Everett says. The study highlights the unique insight we gain about people and society by studying mother languages.

"Preservation of mother tongues is important because languages can tell us about aspects of human history, human cognition, and human culture that we would not have access to if the languages are gone," he says. "From a scientific perspective I think it's important, but it's most important from the perspective of the people, because they lose a lot of their cultural heritage when their languages die."

Provided by University of Miami

"You can't do the math without the words." February 21st, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-math-words.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Autism Speaks provides sleep strategies and dental treatment tool kits

Autism Speaks, North America's leading autism science and advocacy organization, today released the Sleep Strategies for Children with Autism: A Parent's Guide and Treating Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Tool Kit for Dental Professionals, both available for free download on Autism Speaks Tools You Can Use webpage.

Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty falling asleep and/or staying asleep through the night, so sleep experts in Autism Speaks Autism Treatment Network (ATN) and the companion Autism Intervention Research Network on Physical Health (AIR-P) have addressed how to help improve sleep for children and teens affected by ASD. The Sleep Strategies Guide helps families select ideas that have the best potential to work well with their lifestyle. It recommends that families implement their sleep plan when they have the time and energy to see if it will work, trying one small change, and then slowly incorporating other changes. With consistent routines and persistent effort, families often see changes in their child's sleep patterns over several weeks.

"If your child or teen with ASD has difficulty sleeping or staying asleep, know that you are not alone," said Autism Speaks Vice President of Clinical Programs Clara Lajonchere, Ph.D. "The goal of the 'Sleep Strategies' tool kit is to empower families with effective strategies to create less stressful, more effective and consistent routines that can significantly improve quality of life for both the child with autism and their families."

Individuals with ASD may present with dental conditions resulting from behaviors associated with ASD or diets often higher in carbohydrates which can lead to dental decay. ATN dentists and therapists developed the Tool Kit for Dental Professionals after observing that dentists, despite being well-versed in strategies for treating children, often feel unprepared for interacting with patients with the special sensitivities and medical issues often associated with autism. Recognizing the need for dental professionals to have the most up-to-date information about individuals with ASD and how to facilitate a successful office visit for children with autism, this new Tool Kit for Dental Professionals helps dentists, dental hygienists and their office staff better serve the needs of this growing patient population using behavioral approaches. The companion Dental Guide, which provides important information about oral health and dental hygiene for families, previously published by Autism Speaks is also found on the Tools You Can Use webpage.

"By bringing the Tool Kit for Dental Professionals to the attention of their family dentist, families can help dental professionals stay up to date on autism spectrum disorders and help make visiting the dentist a positive experience for their child," says ATN Medical Director Dan Coury, M.D. "Families may also find its information helpful in managing situations inside the dentist office and beyond," he adds. "The recommendations in this tool kit are for behavioral issues that can appear in a variety of situations, including going to the doctor, visiting other unfamiliar settings or simply trying to follow a certain time schedule."

The ATN tool kits were inspired by the success of the popular Autism Speaks 100 Day Kit for newly-diagnosed families. In 2011, ATN and AIR-P published the first of its tool kits to provide guidance to families and providers. Taking the Work Out of Blood Work: Helping Your Child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder – A Parent's Guide" and the companion provider's guide offer clear guidance for families and medical providers to help make necessary medical procedures less stressful. The ATN and AIR-P also produced the Medication Decision Aid Tool Kit to help families understand more of the choices and considerations involved in considering medications in collaboration with their child's doctor. These tool kits are free of charge and available to download at Tools You Can Use. Additional tool kits in development are also listed there.

Development of these tools is the product of on-going activities of the Autism Treatment Network, a funded program of Autism Speaks, and its participation as the Autism Intervention Research Network on Physical Health (AIR-P). AIR-P is supported by cooperative agreement UA3 MC 11054 through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Research Program to the Massachusetts General Hospital.

More information: http://www.autismspeaks.org/

Provided by Autism Speaks

"Autism Speaks provides sleep strategies and dental treatment tool kits." February 21st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-autism-strategies-dental-treatment-tool.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Russian Scientists Grow Pleistocene-Era Plants From Seeds Buried By Squirrels 30,000 Years Ago

By Rebecca Boyle

Ancient Plant Scientists regenerated this Sylene stenophylla plant from seeds buried by a squirrel 30,000 years ago. Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

On the frozen edge of the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia, in an ancient pantry harboring seeds and other stores, an Arctic ground squirrel burrowed into the dirt and buried a small, dark fruit from a flowering plant. The squirrel’s prize quickly froze in the cold ground and was preserved in permafrost, waiting to grow into a fully fledged flowering plant until it was unearthed again. After 30,000 years, it finally was. Scientists in Russia have now regenerated this Pleistocene plant, transplanting it into a pot in the lab. A year later, it grew forth and bore fruit.

The specimen is distinctly different from the modern-day version of Silene stenophylla, or narrow-leafed Campion. It suggests that the permafrost is a potential new source of ancient gene pools long believed to be extinct, scientists said.

The fruits were buried about 125 feet in undisturbed, never thawed permafrost sediments, nestled at roughly 19.4 degrees F (-7 C). Radiocarbon dating showed the fruits were 31,800 years old, give or take about 300 years. Seeds are incredible things, storing the embryo of a new plant and encasing it in protective material until conditions are right for it to germinate.

Scientists led by David Gilichinsky at the Russian Academy of Sciences worked with three of these fruits and took placental tissue samples. They fed the tissue cultures a cocktail of nutrients to induce root growth, and once the plants were rooted, they were transplanted into pots in a greenhouse. Just as they were supposed to, plants grew, developed flowers and fruits, and went to seed. (Gilichinksy died a few days ago, the BBC reported.)

Gilichinsky and colleagues also grew modern-day narrow-leafed Campion as a control, and noticed some key differences among the two generations — the Pleistocene version put out twice as many buds, but the modern version put out roots faster.

To ensure the ancient plants’ own new seeds were viable, the team artificially pollinated the flowers and germinated the resulting seeds. Get this: The seeds from the ancient plants fared even better than the modern ones. The regenerated ancient plants had a 100 percent germination rate, while the control plants had an 86 to 90 percent rate. The research suggests that old age and ice would not have prevent these plants from flowering again someday — if anything, it would be the radioactive cycle of the planet itself. Like anything on Earth, the plants were exposed to low levels of gamma radiation from the radioactive decay of elements in the crust. Over 30,000 years, that adds up to a fair amount of gamma radiation. The scientists calculated that the fruits got a dose of 0.07 kGy of gamma radiation, and they say this is now the maximal dose after which tissues will remain viable and seeds will still germinate. If someone finds a plant older than 30,000 years, maybe that number will go up.

All of this is interesting not just because it’s amazing to regenerate a Pleistocene plant, which of course it is, but because the permafrost may be an important new gene pool. Other ancient squirrel burrows have been found in the Yukon territory and in Alaska. That’s interesting for pure research, but also because of what may happen as the planet warms and more permafrost regions thaw. Organisms will be released from their long, cold sleep, and these ancient life forms could become part of modern ecosystems, affecting modern phenotypes and changing the landscape.

"We consider it essential to continue permafrost studies in
search of an ancient genetic pool, that of preexisting life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the Earth's surface," the authors write.

The paper was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[via BBC]

The Yamaha Moegi Demonstrates The Future of Fuel Efficiency

By Lawrence Ulrich

Yamaha Y125 Moegi Concept Courtesy Yamaha

Since the days of $4 gas began, the single-cylinder motorcycles and scooters that dominate international megacities have become increasingly common on American streets. Engineers at Yamaha created the Y125 Moegi concept to capitalize on that trend. They based it on the company’s first motorcycle, the 1955 125-cc YA-1, but they also included some modern touches, in particular an ultralight frame and a new cylinder design that could help make the Moegi one of the lightest and most fuel-efficient motorcycles ever.

The Y125 Moegi, which is 90 percent aluminum, weighs just 176 pounds (50 pounds less than an entry-level Vespa). Engineers molded the aluminum frame using Yamaha’s proprietary “controlled-filling” die-casting process. Controlled filling reduces air bubbles in the finished parts by 20 percent, making it possible to build strong, thin components that are 30 percent lighter.

Like the original YA-1, the Moegi runs on an air-cooled, 125-cc engine, which connects to the bike’s 20-inch rear wheel with a simple belt drive. But engineers replaced the YA-1’s lawnmower-like two-stroke with a low-friction four-stroke. They also incorporated another Yamaha invention: the DiASil cylinder, the world’s first mass-produced all-aluminum, die-cast motorcycle cylinder. The DiASil’s abrasion-resistant aluminum alloy dissipates heat at three times the rate of steel. When the engine isn’t being adequately cooled by the wind (for example, when riding uphill or stuck in traffic), there’s less power loss resulting from increased engine heat.

Yamaha hasn’t announced a horse-power rating for the Moegi engine, but 10 to 15 horsepower would be enough to propel a bike this light to 50 mph. Yamaha engineers have said, however, that the Moegi could achieve 188 mpg, which would make it nearly four times as efficient as a typical motorcycle.

Mileage: Up to 188 mpg
Weight: 176 pounds

Rare Element, Tellurium, Detected for the First Time in Ancient Stars

Periodic table detail for the element tellurium. (Credit: iStockphoto/David Freund)                                                  Science Daily  — Nearly 13.7 billion years ago, the universe was made of only hydrogen, helium and traces of lithium -- byproducts of the Big Bang. Some 300 million years later, the very first stars emerged, creating additional chemical elements throughout the universe. Since then, giant stellar explosions, or supernovas, have given rise to carbon, oxygen, iron and the rest of the 94 naturally occurring elements of the periodic table.

Today, stars and planetary bodies bear traces of these elements, having formed from the gas enriched by these supernovas over time. For the past 50 years, scientists have been analyzing stars of various ages, looking to chart the evolution of chemical elements in the universe and to identify the astrophysical phenomena that created them.

Now a team of researchers from institutions including MIT has detected the element tellurium for the first time in three ancient stars. The researchers found traces of this brittle, semiconducting element -- which is very rare on Earth -- in stars that are nearly 12 billion years old. The finding supports the theory that tellurium, along with even heavier elements in the periodic table, likely originated from a very rare type of supernova during a rapid process of nuclear fusion. The researchers published their findings online in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"We want to understand the evolution of tellurium -- and by extension any other element -- from the Big Bang to today," says Anna Frebel, an assistant professor of astrophysics at MIT and a co-author on the paper. "Here on Earth, everything's made from carbon and various other elements, and we want to understand how tellurium on Earth came about."

'In the halo of the Milky Way,' a rare element found

The team analyzed the chemical composition of three bright stars located a few thousand light-years away, "in the halo of the Milky Way," Frebel says. The researchers looked at data obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope's spectrograph, an instrument that splits light from a star into a spectrum of wavelengths. If an element is present in a star, the atoms of that element absorb starlight at specific wavelengths; scientists can observe this absorption as dips in the spectrograph's data.

Frebel and her colleagues detected dips in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum -- at a wavelength that matched tellurium's natural light absorption -- providing evidence that this element does indeed exist in space, and was likely created more than 12 billion years ago, at the time when all three stars formed.

The researchers also compared the abundance of tellurium to that of other heavy elements such as barium and strontium, finding that the ratio of elements was the same in all three stars. Frebel says the matching ratios support a theory of chemical-element synthesis: namely, that a rare type of supernova may have created the heavier elements in the bottom half of the periodic table, including tellurium.

No ordinary supernova

According to theoretical predictions, elements heavier than iron may have formed as part of the collapsing core of a supernova, when atomic nuclei collided with huge amounts of neutrons in a nuclear fusion process. For 50 years, astronomers and nuclear physicists have modeled this rapid process, named the r-process, in order to unravel the cosmic history of the elements.

Frebel's team found that the ratios of heavy elements observed in the three stars matched the ratios predicted by these theoretical models. The findings, she says, confirm the theory that heavier elements likely formed from a rare, extremely rapid supernova.

"You can make iron and nickel in any ordinary supernova, anywhere in the universe," Frebel says. "But these heavy elements seem to only be made in specialized supernovas. Adding more elements to the observed elemental patterns will help us understand the astrophysical and environmental conditions needed for this process to operate."

Jennifer Johnson, an associate professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, says tellurium has been a "tough" element to detect, since it absorbs light in the ultraviolet spectrum, which is impossible for ground-based telescopes to spot. The team's findings, she says, are a first step in identifying some of the most elusive elements in the universe.

"If you look at the periodic table, tellurium is right in the middle of these elements that are hard for us to measure," Johnson says. "If we need to understand how [the r-process] works in the universe, we really have to measure this part of the periodic table. It's really cool that they got this element in this sea of unknown-ness."

Frebel is continuing the search for heavy elements in space. For example, selenium -- which is similar to tellurium -- has yet to be detected in the universe. Tin, Frebel says, is also a difficult element to spot, as are many elements along the same row as tellurium in the periodic table.

"There are still quite a few holes," Frebel says. "Every now and then, we can add an element, and it adds another data point that makes our work easier."

Hubble Reveals a New Class of Extrasolar Planet

GJ1214b, shown in this artist’s view, is a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth. New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show that it is a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. GJ 1214b represents a new type of planet, like nothing seen in the Solar System or any other planetary system currently known. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Aguilar (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics))                                          Science Daily  — Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have come up with a new class of planet, a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. It's smaller than Uranus but larger than Earth.

An international team of astronomers led by Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) made the observations of the planet GJ 1214b.

"GJ 1214b is like no planet we know of," Berta said. "A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water."

The ground-based MEarth Project, led by CfA's David Charbonneau, discovered GJ 1214b in 2009. This super-Earth is about 2.7 times Earth's diameter and weighs almost seven times as much. It orbits a red-dwarf star every 38 hours at a distance of 2 million kilometres, giving it an estimated temperature of 230 degrees Celsius.

In 2010, CfA scientist Jacob Bean and colleagues reported that they had measured the atmosphere of GJ 1214b, finding it likely that it was composed mainly of water. However, their observations could also be explained by the presence of a planet-enshrouding haze in GJ 1214b's atmosphere.

Berta and his co-authors, who include Derek Homeier of ENS Lyon, France, used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to study GJ 1214b when it crossed in front of its host star. During such a transit, the star's light is filtered through the planet's atmosphere, giving clues to the mix of gases.

"We're using Hubble to measure the infrared colour of sunset on this world," Berta explained.

Hazes are more transparent to infrared light than to visible light, so the Hubble observations help to tell the difference between a steamy and a hazy atmosphere.

They found the spectrum of GJ 1214b to be featureless over a wide range of wavelengths, or colours. The atmospheric model most consistent with the Hubble data is a dense atmosphere of water vapour.

"The Hubble measurements really tip the balance in favour of a steamy atmosphere," Berta said.

Since the planet's mass and size are known, astronomers can calculate the density, of only about 2 grams per cubic centimetre. Water has a density of 1 gram per cubic centimetre, while Earth's average density is 5.5 grams per cubic centimetre. This suggests that GJ 1214b has much more water than Earth does, and much less rock.

As a result, the internal structure of GJ 1214b would be extraordinarily different from that of our world.

"The high temperatures and high pressures would form exotic materials like 'hot ice' or 'superfluid water', substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience," Berta said.

Theorists expect that GJ 1214b formed further out from its star, where water ice was plentiful, and migrated inward early in the system's history. In the process, it would have passed through the star's habitable zone, where surface temperatures would be similar to Earth's. How long it lingered there is unknown.

GJ 1214b is located in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer), and just 40 light-years from Earth. Therefore, it's a prime candidate for study by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, planned for launch later this decade.

Origin of Photosynthesis Revealed: Genome Analysis of 'Living Fossil' Sheds Light On the Evolution of Plants

                                                         Science Daily — Atmospheric oxygen really took off on our planet about 2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxygenation Event. At this key juncture of our planet's evolution, species had either to learn to cope with this poison that was produced by photosynthesizing cyanobacteria or they went extinct. It now seems strange to think that the gas that sustains much of modern life had such a distasteful beginning.

So how and when did the ability to produce oxygen by harnessing sunlight enter the eukaryotic domain, that includes humans, plants, and most recognizable, multicellular life forms? One of the fundamental steps in the evolution of our planet was the development of photosynthesis in eukaryotes through the process of endosymbiosis.

This crucial step forward occurred about 1.6 billion years ago when a single-celled protist captured and retained a formerly free-living cyanobacterium. This process, termed primary endosymbiosis, gave rise to the plastid, which is the specialized compartment where photosynthesis takes place in cells. Endosymbiosis is now a well substantiated theory that explains how cells gained their great complexity and was made famous most recently by the work of the late biologist Lynn Margulis, best known for her theory on the origin of eukaryotic organelles.

In a paper "Cyanophora paradoxa genome elucidates origin of photosynthesis in algae and plants" that appeared this week in the journal Science, an international team led by evolutionary biologist and Rutgers University professor Debashish Bhattacharya has shed light on the early events leading to photosynthesis, the result of the sequencing of 70 million base pair nuclear genome of the one-celled alga Cyanophora.

In the world of plants, "Cyanophora is the equivalent to the lung fish, in that it maintains some primitive characteristics that make it an ideal candidate for genome sequencing," said Bhattacharya.

Bhattacharya and colleagues consider this study "the final piece of the puzzle to understand the origin of photosynthesis in eukaryotes." Basic understanding of much of the subsequent evolution of eukaryotes, including the rise of plants and animals, is emerging from the sequencing of theCyanophora paradoxa genome, a function-rich species that retains much of the ancestral gene diversity shared by algae and plants.

For those unfamiliar with algae, they include the ubiquitious diatoms that are some of the most prodigious primary producers on our planet, accounting for up to 40% of the annual fixed carbon in the marine environment.

Bhattacharya leads the Rutgers Genome Cooperative that has spread the use of genome methods among university faculty. Using data generated by the Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx in his lab, Bhattacharya, his lab members Dana C. Price, Cheong Xin Chan, Jeferson Gross, Divino Rajah and collaborators from the U.S., Europe and Canada provided conclusive evidence that all plastids trace their origin to a single primary endosymbiosis.

Now that the blueprint of eukaryotic photosynthesis has come more clearly in sight, researchers will be able to figure out not only what unites all algae as plants but also what key features make them different from each other and the genes underlying these functions.

Injectable Gel Could Repair Tissue Damaged by Heart Attack

Tissue spins in a beaker at the end of the cleansing process that removes all of the cells. The process retains the tissue’s structural proteins, a key component of the hydrogel. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California, San Diego)

Science Daily  — University of California, San Diego researchers have developed a new injectable hydrogel that could be an effective and safe treatment for tissue damage caused by heart attacks.

The study by Karen Christman and colleagues appears in the Feb. 21 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Christman is a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and has co-founded a company, Ventrix, Inc., to bring the gel to clinical trials within the next year.

Therapies like the hydrogel would be a welcome development, Christman explained, since there are an estimated 785,000 new heart attack cases in the United States each year, with no established treatment for repairing the resulting damage to cardiac tissue.

The hydrogel is made from cardiac connective tissue that is stripped of heart muscle cells through a cleansing process, freeze-dried and milled into powder form, and then liquefied into a fluid that can be easily injected into the heart. Once it hits body temperature, the liquid turns into a semi-solid, porous gel that encourages cells to repopulate areas of damaged cardiac tissue and to preserve heart function, according to Christman. The hydrogel forms a scaffold to repair the tissue and possibly provides biochemical signals that prevent further deterioration in the surrounding tissues.

"It helps to promote a positive remodeling-type response, not a pro-inflammatory one in the damaged heart," Christman said.

What's more, the researchers' experiments show that the gel also can be injected through a catheter, a method that is minimally invasive and does not require surgery or general anesthesia.

New, unpublished work by her research team suggests that the gel can improve heart function in pigs with cardiac damage, which brings this potential therapy one step closer to humans, said Christman.

There are few injectable cardiac therapies in development designed to be used in large animals such as pigs, which have a heart that is similar in size and anatomy to the human heart, Christman explained. "Most of the materials that people have looked at have been tested in rats or mice, and they are injectable via a needle and syringe. However, almost all of them are not compatible with catheter delivery and would gel too quickly, clogging the catheter during the procedure.

In experiments with rats, the gel was not rejected by the body and did not trigger arrhythmic heart beating, providing some assurance that the gel will be similarly safe for humans, the researchers note.

Christman has an equity interest in Ventrix, Inc., a company that may potentially benefit from the research results, and also serves on the company's Scientific Advisory Board. The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by the University of California, San Diego in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.

The study's co-authors include Jennifer Singelyn, Priya Sundaramurthy, Todd Johnson, Pamela Schup-Magoffin, Diane Hu, Denver Faulk, Jean Wang, and Kristine M. Mayle in the Department of Bioengineering; Kendra Bartels, Anthony N. DeMaria, and Nabil Dib of the UC San Diego School of Medicine; and Michael Salvatore and Adam M. Kinsey of Ventrix, Inc. The research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award Program (part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research), the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Mapping proteins key to human health and immune system

 by Biomechanism 

Proteins, the building block for all living organisms, are the ultimate transformers – able to splice and switch roles and functions within the human body. But when these changes go wrong, diseases such as cancers and arthritis may result, says University of British Columbia researcher Chris Overall. 

“Scientists have made great advances since mapping the human genome 10 years ago, but our next frontier is mapping and understanding the function of all proteins in the human body,” says Dr. Overall, Canada Research Chair in Metalloproteinase Proteomics and Systems Biology and professor in the Dept. of Oral Biological and Medical Sciences at the Faculty of Dentistry.

He points to the “Human Proteome Project,” a global initiative to unravel the “protein code of life.” “The task is immense – 20,244 human genes hold the instructions for up to 5,000,000 protein forms in man!”

---

[N.B. This is a backgrounder for Dr. Chris Overall who will be speaking on his research at AAAS. See below for details.]

Overall’s groundbreaking research has led to a seismic shift in the understanding of immune response. All innate immunity – or the body’s first response to injury or disease – is controlled by a family of enzymes called metalloproteinase.

Overall and his team discovered a protein that acts like a molecular beacon or a green traffic light capable of directing white blood cells – or leukocytes – to the site of injury or bacterial infection, such as gingivitis or periodontitis.

In the process, they found that instead of just chewing up and destroying the collagen matrix, these enzymes were also cutting the protein, “biting off” the first four amino acids at the end of the molecule.

This resulted in a profound change in the behaviour of the protein, effectively turning the green traffic signal to red, and stopping the cascade of leukocytes to the site of inflammation.

“What we discovered was the off signal for inflammation,” Overall explains. “Without this off signal, inflammation becomes chronic and causes destruction of cells and tissues.”

Overall has also shed light on “moonlighting” proteins. These proteins show up in unexpected places within a cell, or are intracellular proteins that venture outside a cell, but take on completely different functions depending on their new homes.

What causes these proteins to suddenly change roles can be traced to their start and end points, or their “termini,’” says Overall. He explains that specialized proteins – enzymes called proteases – have the job of precisely cutting into proteins. In so doing, new termini are generated and often start to perform new functions depending on the nature of their new ends.

“The termini at each end of a protein can have distinct jobs that are often critical for the function of the whole protein,” notes Overall.

The Human Proteome Project 

Dr. Chris Overall and his team are taking part in the Human Proteome Project, launched in 2010 – a decade after the Human Genome Project was completed.

The international collaboration aims to map all the proteins in the human body, dividing the challenge into 24 chapters on for each of the 22 pairs of chromosomes plus X and Y. Researchers will identify the proteins coded by each of the genes on each chromosome, deciphering their role in cells and tissues.

Each country will be tackling a certain number of proteins on a specific chromosome. Canadian investigator teams have selected chromosomes 6 and 21, and are seeking funds to proceed with the work.

-Health Research News 

Child Ramji