Russian Soyuz Foton-M Satellite fails to respond to commands

Soyuz engineers at Progress were trying to save a research satellite after it failed to respond to commands, which has left it in an improper orbit, Russian news agencies said.

The Foton-M satellite was launched on July 19 on a two-month mission to study the effect of weightlessness on plants and insects.

The satellite carries containers with living organisms, including five geckos, fruit flies and fungi, which are supposed to be jettisoned after two months in orbit and land in Russia.

There is no update on the status of the living cargo, since the containers are not designed to broadcast any telemetry while in space.

The mishap is the latest in series of setbacks that has plagued Russia's once-famed space programme.

Containers with biological experiment equipment being loaded into the Foton-M satellite. 

Photo by the Institute for Biomedical Problems. 

"Cheetah" the robot breaks land speed record

A robot named Cheetah has broken the speed record for four-legged robots by hitting almost 30 km/h. The previous record of 22 km/h was set in 1989.

Cheetah is being developed by Waltham, Massachusetts-based Boston Dynamics, with funding from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as part of its Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program, which aims to improve the design and mobility of robots.

You might remember Boston Dynamics' previous robots, which include the BigDog, designed as a military pack mule, and the humanoid PETMAN, capable of running on two legs and performing press ups to test the durability of military clothing.

This new robot mimics the movements of fast-moving animals in nature. It uses a short hopping gait at low speeds but increasing its stride and pace by flexing and unflexing its back with each step, much like an actual cheetah.

The current version of the robot has only been tested on a laboratory treadmill, where it is held in place to ensure it remains centred, and is powered by a remote hydraulic pump.

Boston Dynamics says that it plans to start testing a free-running prototype later this year.

EU Legislation: Millions of animals spared from chemical safety tests

Tens of millions of animals will be saved from use in chemical safety tests over the next eight years after Europe’s chemical regulator gave the go-ahead to a new streamlined study to assess the safety of substances.

European Union (EU) legislation requires companies to test the safety of the chemicals they produce in two generations of animals to assess the effects on their reproductive systems.

Toxicologists were concerned that the testing requirement would mean up to 54 million animals would be used in chemical safety studies to meet the requirements of REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) legislation introduced in 2007 (see Chemical-safety costs uncertain).

A proposed new test would allow just one generation of animals to be used, with additional tests on a second generation required only if the first round raised concerns.

The regulator, the European Chemical Agency (ECHA), based in Helsinki, had threatened to reject the test saying that there is not yet enough evidence to rely on one-generation testing (see Streamlined chemical tests rebuffed).

But on 15 February, ECHA announced it has now changed its mind in favour of Extended One-Generation Reproductive Toxicity Study (EOGRTS).

The agency says that the streamlined test will “under certain conditions” provide sufficient safety information to replace the two-generation reproductive toxicity study. It says it has already received around 230 proposals from companies to carry out the new test.

The move comes after Nature revealed that chemical companies were not providing the safety data on reproductive and developmental toxicity REACH requires of them. Nature also found that very few companies were proposing to carry out alternative non-animal tests, causing further concern that REACH would boost the number of animals used in toxicity testing.

Toxicologists say that allowing the streamlined test, which is quicker and cheaper to conduct, will encourage more companies to test their products.

Turing's Morphogen Theory: Supporting Evidence Discovered

A team of UK researchers claims to have put forth the first ever experimental evidence in support of a long-standing theory about how biological patterns such as a leopard’s spots or a tiger’s stripes are formed.

The study was the work of experts from King’s College London, and according to a February 19 press release from the school, “The findings provide evidence to support a theory first suggested in the 1950s by famous code-breaker and mathematician Alan Turing,” who championed the idea that “regular repeating patterns in biological systems are generated by a pair of morphogens that work together as an ‘activator’ and ‘inhibitor’.”

Their work “not only demonstrates a mechanism which is likely to be widely relevant in vertebrate development, but also provides confidence that chemicals called morphogens, which control these patterns, can be used in regenerative medicine to differentiate stem cells into tissue,” the college added.

To test their theory, the King’s College London researchers analyzed the development of regularly-spaced ridges that can be found in the mouths of mice.

Alan Turing

By conducting experiments using embryos of the rodents, they were able to discover the pair of morphogens that work together to help determine where each of the ridges will be formed.

Each chemical influenced the other, the university said, alternately activating or inhibiting production in order to control the creation of the ridge pattern on the roof of a mouse’s mouth.

The morphogens involved in the process were identified by the scientists as Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF) and Sonic Hedgehog (Shh), and by studying them, they learned that when each chemical’s activity is increased or decreased, it affected the pattern of the ridges in the mouth in the same way that Turing’s equations had predicted they would.

“For the first time the actual morphogens involved in this process have been identified and the team were able to see exactly the effects predicted by Turing’s 60-year-old speculative theory,” the college press release stated.

“Regularly spaced structures, from vertebrae and hair follicles to the stripes on a tiger or zebrafish, are a fundamental motif in biology.

There are several theories about how patterns in nature are formed, but until now there was only circumstantial evidence for Turing’s mechanism.

Dr Jeremy Green

Our study provides the first experimental identification of an activator-inhibitor system at work in the generation of stripes – in this case, in the ridges of the mouth palate,” Dr. Jeremy Green from the Department of Craniofacial Development at King’s Dental Institute added in a statement.

While Green admitted that the discovery was “not of great medical significance,” he said that they are “extremely valuable” in validating Turing’s theories from the 1950s.

He also says that their discovery has made them confident that these morphogen chemicals could be used in the future to create regenerative medicine to heal or recreate structures and/or patterns when turning stem cells into other types of tissues.

The research was funded by the Medical Research Council and is published online in the journal Nature Genetics.

Tasmanian Devil Cancer Originated from a Single Female?

Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have discovered the root cause of Tasmanian devil's cancer.

The Tasmanian devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial, a mammal that has its babies in its pouch like the kangaroo. They are usually found in Australia.

The researchers took genomes from the Tasmanian devils that were suffering from cancer. They discovered that cancer was spreading among animals by bites.

They found the cancer cells had aroused from the cells of a single female Tasmanian devil that had died more than 15 years ago. Her DNA is living on in the contagious cancer cell line that she spawned.

The cancer causes the appearance of tumours on the face of the affected Tasmanian devils which grow rapidly and cause death within months.

According to the researchers, the spread of cancer between individuals is normally prevented by the immune system but the devil cancer may outwit the immune system. However, future studies will be required to explain how cancer escapes the immune destruction.

Read more of this article here

Kalaweit Sanctuary, Borneo: Live Crocodile Rescue Video

En Juin 2009, le sorcier du village Tumbang Samba donnait son crocodile (élevé pendant 17 ans), à Kalaweit… La réception de ce reptile par Kalaweit avait été vécue comme un symbole par les habitants de cette localité, car ce crocodile était connu de tous...

Aujourd’hui le sorcier et sa famille portent le message de Kalaweit. Hier nous avons récupéré un gibbon (« Robin »), à Tumbang Samba, sauvé grâce au soutien de ce vieil homme et de sa famille.



For more information on Chanee's excellent work go to his blog here

Bobi, The proboscis Monkey / Le Nasique - Kalaweit

Bobi, Le nasique
Geüpload door kalaweitprogram

Bobi arrived at the Kalaweit Rescue centre with 2 severly damaged legs. Unable to walk, he could only drag himself along the ground to hunt for scraps of food.

Now he is fully recovered and spends his time in the tree tops where he belongs. Soon he can be released back into the wild.

Another great success story for a dedicated team of animal rescuers, working under extreme pressures of poverty and threats to their safety. Can you offer them some help?

National Geographic: Crittercam - Swim with the Penguins