Megavirus nudges out Mimivirus, the former heavyweight champion of the viral world

The virus’ DNA features 1,259,197 base pairs, which encode some parasitic bacteria-like features. Unlike a virus, bacteria is a cellular organism — a virus can only infect and replicate itself within the cells of other organisms. It even has some built-in DNA repairing enzymes which allow the virus to repair damage from ultraviolet light, chemicals, and radiation.

Mimivirus was found in 1992, lurking in an amoeba in Bradford, England. Its capsid, the protein shell housing the virus’ genetic material, was 400 nanometres wide. If that still sounds pretty tiny, most viruses fall in the range between 20 and 300 nanometres, making both Mimivirus and the new Megavirus titans of the microscopic world. Mimivirus and Megavirus are believed to have diverged from a shared viral ancestor somewhere along the evolutionary road, both developing into giant viruses in their own right.

Source: Yahoo News

Many space experts also call this as Global Superstorm where snowstorms will cover large geographical areas and will cool down the Earth’s atmosphere. The Global Superstorm will have winds at speed of 300 miles per hour and can last up to months which would practically whitewash cities and geographical areas. Experts believe that the Earth is already giving us signals about the polar shift that is going to happen and it can be seen in the tornadoes that have hit America recently. The intensity of the tornadoes and winters have gone high and that could also lead to Ice Age in many hundred years to come.

“It is good to know that nature can surprise us when we are close to giving up hope, especially amidst our planets escalating extinction crisis,” amphibian scientists Robin Moore of the Virginia-based group said.

“Amphibians are at the forefront of this tragedy, so I hope that these unique species serve as flagships for conservation, inspiring pride and hope by Malaysians and people everywhere,” he was quoted in the release.

Malaysian researcher Indraneil Das set out with his team to rediscover the Sambas Stream Toad last August, searching after dark along the rugged ridges of a mountain range in western Sarawak state.

The toad was listed as one of the “World’s Top 10 Most Wanted Lost Frogs” as part of a campaign by CI and another group to encourage scientists around the world to seek out amphibians that had not been seen in a decade or longer.

After months of combing through the jungle, the Sarawak team eventually discovered a small toad up a tree, which turned out to be the missing Sambas Stream Toad. In total, they found three individuals up three different trees.

“Thrilling discoveries like this beautiful toad, and the critical importance of amphibians to healthy ecosystems, are what fuel us to keep searching for lost species,” Das was quoted in the release.

“They remind us that nature still holds precious secrets that we are still uncovering, which is why targeted protection and conservation is so important,” he said.

Das already made headlines last year after he discovered Asia’s tiniest frog, which is the size of a pea, in a national park in Sarawak state.

Sarawak and neighbouring Sabah states make up Malaysia’s half of Borneo island, which is shared with Indonesia.

Source: MSN

The mystery hexagon on Saturn is one of its kind and it is never seen on any other object or planet in the universe. In 1979, The Voyager showed the same hexagon that sits on top of North Pole of Saturn. The hexagon is similar to Earth’s polar vortex where the winds blow in circular fashion. Since Saturn is bigger than our planet, its vortex can fit 4 Earth inside it at one given time. The Voyager also came up with images of clouds that circle around this hexagonal vortex at 200 miles per hour which is really bizarre image to see. Kevin Baines from NASA/JPL confirms that the hexagon is still a mystery even though it is there for more than two decades. Below are more photos on the mysterious hexagon on Saturn.

A top Russian astronomer predicted that humanity would encounter alien civilisations within the next two decades.

‘The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms… Life exists on other planets and we will find it within 20 years,’ Andrei Finkelstein, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Applied Astronomy Institute, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

Speaking at an international forum dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, Mr Finkelstein said 10 per cent of the known planets circling suns in the galaxy resemble Earth.

Is it actually possible to expect an impossible?

If water can be found there, then so can life, he said, adding that aliens would most likely resemble humans with two arms, two legs and a head. ‘They may have different color skin, but even we have that,’ he said.

Mr Finkelstein’s institute runs a program launched in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War space race to watch for and beam out radio signals to outer space.

‘The whole time we have been searching for extraterrestrial civilizations, we have mainly been waiting for messages from space and not the other way,’ he said. — REUTERS

Watch This before you left – Stupid Vlog about this news. Haha.

Source: Straits Times

Turmeric is a basic ingredient in most curries

The cells eventually digest themselves and die. The results of the study were published in the British Journal of Cancer on Wednesday. Curcumin gives turmeric (curcuma zangais) its orangy-yellow colour. The rhizome, a close relative of the ginger, is commonly used in Asian cooking as well as in traditional medicine.

Chinese and Ayurvedic medical practioners use turmeric as a treatment for many ailments as it has anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal properties and believed to lower cholestrol. The results of the Cork Cancer Research Centre study were published in the British Journal of Cancer on Wednesday.

Turmeric, a close relative of the ginger, is commonly used in Asian cooking as well as in traditional medicine

“These exciting results suggest that scientists can develop curcumin as a potential anti-cancer drug to treat oesophageal cancer,” said Dr Sharon McKenna who led the study.

She said scientists had known hat natural compounds had the potential to treat faulty cells that become cancerous, adding they also suspected curcumin’s possible therapeutic value.

She said medical researcher Dr Geraldine O’Sullivan-Coyne who had been looking for new ways of killing resistant oesophageal cancer cells tested curcumin on resistant cells.

“She found that they started to die using an unexpected system of cell messages.”

“Normally, faulty cells die by committing programmed suicide – or apoptosis – which occurs when proteins called caspases are ‘switched on’ in cells.”

“But these cells showed no evidence of suicide and the addition of a molecule that inhibits caspases and stops this ‘switch being flicked’, made no difference to the number of cells which died.”

“This suggested that curcumin attacked cancer cells using an alternative cell signalling system,” she added.

Oesophagus cancer kill more than half a million people in the world each year. The cancers are exceptionally deadly, with five-year survival rates of between 12 and 31 per cent.

The number of oesophageal cancer cases have gone up tremendously since the 70s and this is thought to be linked to rising rates of obesity, alcohol intake and reflux disease.

Source: Cancer Research UK | Published Oct 29 2009 via Dailychili

Alignment of Earth and Jupiter as seen from Mars

Because Jupiter is over 5 times farther from the Sun than Earth, two different exposures were needed to image the two planets. The composite has been highly contrast-enhanced and “colorized” to show both planets and their satellites. The MGS MOC high resolution camera only takes grayscale (black-and-white) images; the color was derived from Mariner 10 and Cassini pictures of Earth/Moon and Jupiter, respectively.

Earth/Moon: This is the first image of Earth ever taken from another planet that actually shows our home as a planetary disk. Because Earth and the Moon are closer to the Sun than Mars, they exhibit phases, just as the Moon, Venus, and Mercury do when viewed from Earth. As seen from Mars by MGS on 8 May 2003 at 13:00 GMT (6:00 AM PDT), Earth and the Moon appeared in the evening sky. The MOC Earth/Moon image has been specially processed to allow both Earth (with an apparent magnitude of -2.5) and the much darker Moon (with an apparent magnitude of +0.9) to be visible together. The bright area at the top of the image of Earth is cloud cover over central and eastern North America. Below that, a darker area includes Central America and the Gulf of Mexico. The bright feature near the center-right of the crescent Earth consists of clouds over northern South America. The image also shows the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon, since the Moon was on the far side of Earth as viewed from Mars. The slightly lighter tone of the lower portion of the image of the Moon results from the large and conspicuous ray system associated with the crater Tycho.

Jupiter/Galilean Satellites: When Galileo first turned his telescope toward Jupiter four centuries ago, he saw that the giant planet had four large satellites, or moons. These, the largest of dozens of moons that orbit Jupiter, later became known as the Galilean satellites. The larger two, Callisto and Ganymede, are roughly the size of the planet Mercury; the smallest, Io and Europa, are approximately the size of Earth’s Moon. This MGS MOC image, obtained from Mars orbit on 8 May 2003, shows Jupiter and three of the four Galilean satellites: Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa. At the time, Io was behind Jupiter as seen from Mars, and Jupiter’s giant red spot had rotated out of view. This image has been specially processed to show both Jupiter and its satellites, since Jupiter, at an apparent magnitude of -1.8, was much brighter than the three satellites.

Ultimately, to answer the question What does Earth, Jupiter and their moons, look like when viewed from Mars? Mosaiced together, the images are shown below | Click to Enlarge :O

Source: MSSS

French drugs group Sanofi said on Friday that its vaccine against dengue, a mosquito-borne infection that kills thousands of people around the world each year, could be launched in about four years. — PHOTO: AP

BANGKOK – FRENCH drugs group Sanofi said on Friday that its vaccine against dengue, a mosquito-borne infection that kills thousands of people around the world each year, could be launched in about four years. ‘The vaccine could be available… around 2015,’ Jean Lang, head of vaccine development at the group’s subsidiary Sanofi-Pasteur, told reporters in Bangkok.

The launch date is dependent on regulatory approval in each country based on the results of trials. The vaccine is the first for dengue to undergo advanced ‘Phase III’ clinical trials – the final stage before the results are submitted for regulatory approval.

About 4,000 children in the central Thai province of Ratchaburi, one of the worst affected areas in the country, are participating in a study that aims to establish the efficacy of the vaccine. Dengue causes severe, flu-like symptoms in about 50 million people every year, mainly in developing countries. There are four strains, one of which is a potentially lethal type. — AFP

Source: Straits Times

How Did They Excavate

Scientists used their brains and got the success in finding the ant colonies. They dug out 10 tonnes of cement down under the tubes or a hole made by ants into the mud. After a month with the help of scientist Louis Fortune, they discovered some giant and complex structures made by ant which seems to be a masterpiece amongst all. With the help of digging machines, loads and tonnes of earth’s soil was dug and they found subterranean highways connected to the main chambers and some fungus gardens too. This design was provided shortest path of transporting with great excellence and ventilation facility.

Everything seems to be truly designed by an architect. This Ant colony was a little complex owing to the fact that this was of 50 square meters in structure and 8 meters deep into the earth.

Purpose and Reason – The Giant colony of Ants is so huge for the size of the creature that it seems to be equivalent to the building of Great Wall of China. Although it can’t be seen from moon as the Great Wall of China, it can be easily called as one of the wonders of the world. The video shows that though ants are too small in size, their power cannot be underestimated when they work in unity. They have had known to achieve great things despite their small size.

Summary of the Video

The video talks about the effort spent by the scientists in the excavation process. The amount of cement removed was huge before the excavation work could be started. The scientists removed tonnes of earth with the help of special machines and diggers. The site is located on a side route coming from the main route. Tunnels are designed in such a way so as to provide quick transportation and adequate ventilation facility. The superb structure looks as if it were designed by a professional architect. However it has been made possible by the will power and hard work of none other than the smallest creature on earth-the ant.

The caps can grow to as large as 2 cm (about 1 inch) in diameter, but because the mushrooms are prone to dehydration, they only have a few days to live once the rain stops. The tiny mushroom is one of seven new species of glow-in-the-dark fungi found around the world, bringing the total known to 71. Just goes to show you that the curiosities of the world never cease! Time to explore the world!

Source: National Geography via Slightlywarped