Veteran Mars Researcher Says Viking Detected Life on Mars

NASA has repeatedly stated that its new mission to Mars, Curiosity, carries no life detector.

Yet, Gilbert V. Levin, Experimenter on NASA's 1976 Viking Mission, disagrees.

He says instruments aboard Curiosity can confirm his published claim that his Labeled Release (LR) experiment detected living microorganisms on Mars.

Dr. Levin was Experimenter and Dr. Patricia Ann Straat Co-Experimenter on the experiment that produced evidence of life on Mars.

Because another Viking instrument failed to find organic matter, the stuff of life, NASA discounted the LR results. Since Viking, Mars missions have sought only evidence of habitability, not life itself.

Levin now claims the organic analyzers and the high-resolution camera on Curiosity as his "stealth life detectors."

After twenty years of analyzing the LR data, reviewing flaws in Viking's organic detector, and studying new information on life obtained from Mars and Earth, Levin finally announced his "life claim" in a 1997 publication.

today, he said that, should Curiosity detect organic matter, the last obstacle to his claim to life on Mars will vanish. Co-Experimenter Straat agrees with Levin, saying, "I look forward to Curiosity data that may confirm our life interpretation of the LR."

Levin's other "virtual experiment" is Curiosity's high-resolution camera. It might determine whether "lichen-like" colored patches Levin found on rocks at the Viking sites might be living organisms.

Patricia Straat, and JPL's William Benton assisted him in the study which subjected images of the Mars rocks and terrestrial rocks bearing lichen to the Viking Imaging System.

Visible and infrared spectral analyses found the same responses from the Mars and terrestrial images (Levin, G. V., P. A. Straat and W. D. Benton, "Color and Feature Changes at Mars Viking Lander Site," J. Theoret. Biol., 75, 381-390, 1978 - available at gillevin.com, tab "Mars Research").

Levin has now written Dr. Mike Malin, designer of Curiosity's camera, asking him to seek and take high-resolution pictures of any such patches, hoping to determine whether Viking found living organisms on the rocks.

Levin (see biog. gillevin.com) started his Mars life-seeking efforts in 1958. Funded by NASA, he began developing the LR. In 1969, NASA appointed Levin as Team Member of the IRIS experiment aboard the 1971 Mariner 9 Mars orbiter. Dr. Straat joined that effort in 1970. They sought organic gases in the Martian atmosphere.

None were found, but recent observers of Mars have claimed detecting methane, possibly of microbial origin. Following Viking, Levin was appointed Team Member of NASA's MOx experiment aboard the Russian '96 Mission to Mars, converting that soil analysis instrument to give it life detection capability. However, the spacecraft crashed after launch.

"This is a very exciting time," says Levin, now an adjunct professor at Arizona State University, Tempe, "something for which I have been waiting for years. At the very least, the Curiosity results may bring about my long-requested re-evaluation of the Viking LR results."

Glass Microbiology: Luke Jerram

Click on the picture to see the full slideshow of glass Microbiology.

These transparent glass sculptures were created to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the artificial colouring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomena.

Jerram is exploring the tension between the artworks' beauty, what they represent and their impact on humanity.

The question of pseudo-colouring in biomedicine and its use for science communicative purposes, is a vast and complex subject. If some images are coloured for scientific purposes, and others altered simply for aesthetic reasons, how can a viewer tell the difference?

How many people believe viruses are brightly coloured? Are there any colour conventions and what kind of ‘presence’ do pseudocoloured images have that ‘naturally’ coloured specimens don’t? See these examples of HIV imagery. How does the choice of different colours affect their reception?

In response to these questions, Jerram has created a series of transparent, three dimensional sculptures. Photographs of these artworks are being distributed to act as alternative representations of each virus.

Ironically in 2007 photographer David Sayer won an award from the Institute of Medical Imaging for the artificially coloured image he took of Jerrams HIV sculpture.

The sculptures were designed in consultation with virologists from the University of Bristol using a combination of different scientific photographs and models. They were made in collaboration with glassblowers Kim George, Brian Jones and Norman Veitch.

Jerram said,
"It's great to be exploring the edges of scientific understanding and visualisation of a virus. Scientists aren't able to answer many of the questions I ask them, such as how the RNA is exactly fitted within the Capsid? At the moment, camera technology can't answer these questions either. I'm also pushing the boundaries of glassblowing. Some of my designs simply can't be created in glass. Some are simply too fragile and gravity would cause them to collapse under their own weight. So there's a very careful balancing act that needs to take place, between exploring current scientific knowledge and the limitations of glassblowing techniques." ...........Read longer interview with Jerram

AIDS /HIV and Circumcision: Reduces microbial neighbourhood

A flap of foreskin isn't the only thing missing after a circumcision. Microbes that call the penis home disappear, too, which could explain why the procedure reduces a man's chance of contracting HIV.

"The microbes change dramatically," says Lance Price, a microbiologist at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Flagstaff, Arizona, whose team identified thousands of microbes on the penises of 12 HIV-negative men. All had participated in a clinical study in Uganda which showed that circumcision halves the chances of getting the virus.

The team discovered a total of 38 families of bacteria on the men's penises before circumcision, and 36 a year after. But the make-up of these communities had swung. Gone were a diverse population of bacteria intolerant of oxygen and linked with vaginal infection; now there was a more homogenous air-loving lot, more typical of other patches of skin.

Price thinks that some of the expelled bacteria provoke an immune reaction on an uncircumcised penis, causing specialised immune cells to shuttle HIV throughout the body.

More of the Article here .......

After 17,000 Years Modern Human pathogens threaten ancient cave art

HISTORIC cave paintings in France partially saved from attack by a black fungus face a new threat: bacteria that moved in following four years of spraying with fungicide.

The Lascaux cave in south-west France houses invaluable animal paintings that are between 16,000 and 17,000 years old, making them among the oldest examples of cave art ever found. Now conservationists must deal with the twin threats of the Fusarium solani fungus and the new bacterial populations.

The latest invasion came to light when a team of Spanish and French microbiologists analysed 11 swabs from the cave walls, comparing the profile of species found in Lascaux with those in undisturbed caves in Spain. Almost all the bacteria and protozoa found in Lascaux were associated with human activity.

"The Lascaux cave is now a reservoir of potential pathogenic bacteria and protozoa similar to those found in disease outbreaks linked to contaminated air-conditioning systems and cooling towers in hospitals and public buildings," says team member Cesareo Saiz-Jimenez of the Spanish Institute of Natural and Agrobiological Research in Seville.