Motor Neurone Disease: New Insight about how it works

When we imagine how research results can change society or help us make new bounds in medical science we think of proving a hypothesis or cracking a code, but sometimes research that refutes a theory can be just as beneficial, as scientists can eliminate a hypothesis from the mix and save years of wasted-time investigating dead ends and a team of German researchers has just done exactly that.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team refute a widely accepted hypothesis about a causative step in neuro-degenerative conditions.

These results deal specifically with animal models of human amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Motor Neurone Disease, but the findings also have implications for other neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Huntington's disease.

One of the ways neuro-degenerative diseases manifest themselves is in the loss of axons - essentially, the transmission lines for electrical signals in individual nerve cells - and synapses, the key sites for communication between them.

In the past, such damage has been attributed to deficits in the bi-directional transport of organelles, such as the intracellular power plants called mitochondria, along the axons of nerve cells.

The team, from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen (LMU), put these previously-held assumptions to the test in one of the most thorough tests carried out to date.

They used novel imaging techniques, with high resolution in both space and time, to observe changes in both axon morphology and organelle transport in several different animal models of ALS.

Their results show that transport deficits and axon degeneration can develop independently of each other, throwing into question the theory that one is a direct cause of the other.

They observed axonal organelle transport in living tissue in real time, and in a way that enabled them to track the movement of individual mitochondria, using a novel imaging approach that involves transgenic labelling.

They were also able to observe transport of another kind of organelle, endosome-derived vesicles. Several different animal models of ALS were investigated, all of which are based on human mutations associated with the disease.

One of the study authors, Professor Thomas Misgeld from the Institute of Neuroscience at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, comments on their findings: 'We do think these insights have implications for other studies of ALS, or even studies of other neuro-degenerative diseases.

What our experiments really say is that it is not easy to develop faithful models of neuro-degenerative diseases.

So it might be worth spending more effort to get better animal models, as this is the only way forward for mechanistic studies, while always checking them against human pathology or human-derived cellular models.

In the meantime, it is probably prudent to work with several of the available models in parallel. Moreover, in more general biological terms, our results also speak to the relationship between axonal transport disruptions and degeneration - which might not be as tight as we assumed. Here we have a lot more to understand.'

The iPSoALS project brings together researchers from France, Germany, Israel and Sweden with the aim of better understanding ALS disease mechanisms.

For more information, please visit: Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM)

Star Trek Warp Drives: Slowing Down is a Planet Killer

Fans of science fiction will have one less technology to look forward to in the future.

The ubiquitous warp drive made popular in such shows as Star Trek, could fry any planetary system it stops in.

Faster than light technology (FLT) has been a dream for many sc-fi fans and even scientists who want an easy way to travel the vast distances in space.

Warp drives also solves the problem of relativity where the brave interstellar travelers can explore galaxies without their families back on Earth ageing a hundred years.

While Star Trek's warp drive is still purely a product of Hollywood imagination there are some concepts in physics that explore FTL.

One of those concepts is the Alcubierre warp drive proposed by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.

Basically the Alcubierre warp drive proposes that a ship would be propelled to faster than light speeds by creating a bubble of negative energy around it. Spacetime is compressed in front of the bubble and expanded behind it.

The ship would ride the bubble cruising at faster than light speeds while inside the bubble no faster than light prohibition is broken.

As enticing as the Alcubierre warp drive is or any other means for travelling faster than light, there is still the problem of stopping and stopping an FTL ship is going to wreak havoc on anyone unlucky enough to be in the ship's way.

According to Brendan McMonigal, Prof Geraint Lewis and Prof Philip O'Byrne of the University of Sydney, Alcubierre didn't take into consideration that many types of cosmic particles that the warp drive spaceship would encounter on its travels.

The research team found that these particles can get swept up in the warp bubble and after the ship decelerates from superluminal speed, the particles can get released in energetic outbursts strong enough to destroy anyone at the destination in front of the ship.

"Any people at the destination," the team's paper concludes, "would be gamma ray and high energy particle blasted into oblivion due to the extreme blueshifts for forward region particles."

One piece of good news that the team did find out is that while the warp drive is beyond human technology at the moment the theory behind the Alcubierre drive makes this possible in the future.

"Einstein's General Relativity tells us that gravity is the result of warped spacetime," McMonigal told the Register. "This means that simply by being in the gravitational field of the Earth as we are now, we are experiencing warped spacetime.

"What the warp drive equations tell us is what distribution of "stuff" we would need to create the spacetime deformation which would result in a ship travelling to a distant location in a short amount of time. In fact, the question of how we would generate this distribution is the main barrier to this technology."

In other words the drive is possible but researchers will have to figure how to stop the destination of the ship from disintegrating upon arrival.

NASA MODIS: Antarctic Algae Bloom Can be Seen from Space

A field of bright green algae in Antarctica could be seen from space.

Australian scientists spotted the algae captured in satellite pictures.

The scientists believe that the growth has been caused by a build-up of iron, most likely caused by snow that blew into the waters.

The algae bloom, which is about 200 kilometres wide and 100 kilometres long, was photographed from the Modis instrument on Nasa's Terra Satellite, at least 650 kms from the Earth.

Mark Curran from the Australian Antarctic Division reported that Antarctica's snow contained small amount of iron.

He said during summer, Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica had experienced strong winds which would have blown the snow into the ocean.

"Very, very tiny amounts of iron act as a nutrient," he said.

"Usually algae in this region are iron limited and so when they get a small amount of iron and they have everything else they need, that's enough for them to bloom," he added.

The scientists said that the algae had been there for more than three weeks and would not cause any damage to the environment.

They said it would disappear automatically.

"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.

NASA Kepler Planet Candidates by Size

The histogram summarises the findings in the Feb. 27, 2012 Kepler Planet Candidate catalogue release. 

The catalogue contains 2,321 planet candidates identified during the first 16 months of observation conducted May 2009 to September 2010. 

Of the 46 planet candidates found in the habitable zone, the region in the planetary system where liquid water could exist, ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size.

Credit: NASA Ames/Wendy Stenzel

Since science operations began in May 2009, the Kepler team has released two catalogues of transiting planet candidates.

The first catalogue (Borucki et al, 2010), released in June 2010, contains 312 candidates identified in the first 43 days of Kepler data. The second catalogue (Borucki et al, 2011), released in February 2011, is a cumulative catalog containing 1,235 candidates identified in the first 13 months of data.

Wendy Stenzel

Today the team presents the third catalogue containing 1,091 new planet candidates identified in the first 16 months of observation conducted May 2009 to September 2010.


These are the same candidates that the team discussed at the Kepler Science Conference held at NASA Ames Research Center in December 2011.

Here are the highlights of the new catalogue:

• Planet candidates smaller than twice the size of Earth increased by 197 percent, compared to 52 percent for candidates larger than twice the size of Earth.
• Planet candidates with orbital periods longer than 50 days increased by 123 percent, compared to 85 percent for candidates with orbital periods shorter than 50 days.

Since the last catalog was released in February 2011, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler has increased by 88 percent and now totals 2,321 transiting 1,790 stars.

The cumulative catalog now contains well over 200 Earth-size planet candidates and more than 900 that are smaller than twice Earth-size. Of the 46 planet candidates found in the habitable zone, the region in the planetary system where liquid water could exist, ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size.

The number of planetary systems found with more than one planet candidate also has increased. Last year, 17 percent, or 170 stars, had more than one transiting planet candidate. Today, 20 percent, or 365, stars have more than one.

"With each new catalog release a clear progression toward smaller planets at longer orbital periods is emerging, " said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at San Jose State University in California.

"This suggests that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone are forthcoming if, indeed, such planets are abundant."

Nearly 5,000 periodic transit-like signals were analyzed with known spacecraft instrumentation and astrophysical phenomena that could masquerade as transits, which can produce false positives.

The most common false positive signatures are associated with eclipsing binary stars- a pair of orbiting stars that eclipse each other from the vantage point of the spacecraft.

The Kepler space telescope identifies planet candidates by repeatedly measuring the change in brightness of more than 150,000 stars in search of planets that pass in front, or "transit," their host star. Kepler must record at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet.

The findings are published in the "Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler III: Analysis of the First 16 Months of Data". The catalogue is available at the Kepler data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute and can be downloaded from the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

For information about the Kepler Mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

ESA Human Spaceflight and Exploration - Astrium's Lunar lander firing up for touchdown

A test firing of Lunar Lander’s 220 N thrusters in Astrium’s specialised test facility in Lampoldshausen, Germany. 

The engines will guide Lunar Lander to a safe touchdown on the Moon. 

The thrusters have already flown on ESA’s series of Automated Transfer Vehicles. Tested for their new lunar role, they demonstrated excellent performance.

Credits: Astrium

Paul Snelgrove at TED: A census of the ocean

Oceanographer Paul Snelgrove shares the results of a ten-year project with one goal: to take a census of all the life in the oceans. He shares amazing photos of some of the surprising finds of the Census of Marine Life.

Paul Snelgrove led the group that pulled together the findings of the Census of Marine Life -- synthesizing 10 years and 540 expeditions into a book of wonders. Full bio »