Mighty Dons Of Science News

As­tro­no­mers have re­ported find­ing as many as six plan­ets, not many times heav­i­er than Earth, or­bit­ing two near­by Sun-like stars.
The ob­jects, which in­clude two that are about 5 and 7.5 times as heavy as Earth, are rais­ing sci­en­tists’ hopes that it will be just a few years that plan­ets very much like ours turn up.

Image from a sci­en­tists' an­i­ma­tion of the 5-Earth-mass plan­et 61 Vir B, or­bit­ing the star 61 Vir­gi­nis. This plan­et moves in a tight, 4-day or­bit around its star. Half of the plan­et sur­face is much hot­ter than the oth­er half be­cause one side al­ways faces the star. (Cour­tesy U. Hert­ford­shire)

The re­search­ers, led by Ste­ven Vogt of the Un­ivers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz, and Paul But­ler of the Car­ne­gie In­sti­tu­tion of Wash­ing­ton, said the two “super-Earths” are the first ones found around Sun-like stars.

“These de­tec­tions in­di­cate that low-mass plan­ets are quite com­mon around near­by stars. The dis­cov­ery of po­ten­tially hab­it­a­ble near­by worlds may be just a few years away,” said Vogt. As­tro­no­mers claim they’re over­com­ing past dif­fi­cul­ties in find­ing smaller plan­ets, which are more like ours in size and are con­sid­ered like­li­er to be hab­it­a­ble than large plan­ets.

The team found the new plan­et sys­tems by com­bin­ing da­ta gath­ered at the W. M. Keck Ob­serv­a­to­ry in Ha­waii and the An­glo-Aus­tral­ia Tel­e­scope in New South Wales, Aus­tral­ia. Two pa­pers de­scrib­ing the new plan­ets have been ac­cept­ed for pub­lica­t­ion in the As­t­ro­phys­i­cal Jour­nal.

Three of the new plan­ets or­bit the bright star 61 Vir­gi­nis, vis­i­ble with the na­ked eye un­der dark skies in the Spring con­stella­t­ion Vir­go. Space sci­en­tists have long been fas­ci­nat­ed with this star, which is a re­la­tive­ly close 28 light years away (a light year is the dis­tance light trav­els in a year). Among hun­dreds of our near­est stel­lar neigh­bors, 61 Vir stands out as be­ing the most nearly si­m­i­lar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and oth­er es­sen­tial prop­er­ties.

Vogt and col­leagues have found that 61 Vir hosts at least three plan­ets, weigh­ing in the range of about 5 to 25 Earths. All would be ex­treme­ly hot, though, as they are well with­in orbits equi­va­lent to that of Ve­nus.

Re­cent­ly, a sep­a­rate team of as­tro­no­mers used NASA’s Spitzer Space Tel­e­scope to dis­cov­er that 61 Vir al­so con­tains a thick ring of dust at a dis­tance roughly twice as far from 61 Vir as Plu­to is from our Sun. The dust is ap­par­ently cre­at­ed by col­li­sions of comet-like bod­ies in the cold out­er reaches of the sys­tem.

“Spitzer’s de­tec­tion of cold dust or­bit­ing 61 Vir in­di­cates that there’s a real kin­ship be­tween the Sun and 61 Vir,” said Eu­ge­nio Ri­ve­ra of the Un­ivers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz. Ri­ve­ra com­put­ed an ex­ten­sive set of sim­ula­t­ions to find that a hab­it­a­ble Earth-like world could easily ex­ist in the as-yet un­ex­plored re­gion be­tween the newly dis­cov­ered plan­ets and the out­er dust disk.

Ac­cord­ing to Vogt, the plan­etary sys­tem around 61 Vir is an ex­cel­lent can­di­date for study by the new Au­to­mat­ed Plan­et Find­er Tel­e­scope re­cently con­structed at Lick Ob­serv­a­to­ry on Mount Ham­il­ton near San Jose, Ca­lif. “Need­less to say, we’re very ex­cit­ed to con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing this sys­tem” us­ing that de­vice, said Vogt, who is the prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor for the tel­e­scope.

The sec­ond new sys­tem found by the team fea­tures a plan­et weigh­ing the equiv­a­lent of about 7.5 Earths and or­bit­ing the star HD 1461, anoth­er near per­fect twin of the Sun about 76 light-years away. The plan­et, des­ig­nat­ed HD 1461b, is about half­way be­tween Earth and Ura­nus in weight. The re­search­ers said they can­not tell yet if it’s a scaled-up ver­sion of Earth, com­posed largely of rock and iron, or wheth­er, like Ura­nus and Nep­tune, it is made mostly of wa­ter.

At least one and pos­sibly two ad­di­tion­al plan­ets al­so or­bit the star, the group said. Ly­ing in the con­stella­t­ion Ce­tus, HD 1461 can be seen with the na­ked eye in the early eve­ning un­der good dark-sky con­di­tions.

The Lick Car­ne­gie Exoplan­et Sur­vey Team led by Vogt and But­ler uses ve­locity mea­sure­ments from ground-based tel­e­scopes to de­tect the “wob­ble” in­duced in a star by the gravita­t­ional tug of an or­bit­ing plan­et. In the past year, im­prov­ing meth­ods have made it ev­i­dent that plan­ets or­bit­ing the Sun’s near­est neigh­bors are ex­tremely com­mon: cur­rent in­dica­t­ions are that fully half of near­by stars have a de­tectable plan­et with mass equal to or less than Nep­tune’s, But­ler said.

The Lick-Car­ne­gie Exoplan­et Sur­vey Team has de­vel­oped a pub­licly avail­a­ble tool, the Sys­tem­ic Con­sole, which en­ables mem­bers of the pub­lic to search for the sig­nals of ex­tra­so­lar plan­ets by ex­plor­ing real da­ta sets. This tool is avail­a­ble on­line at www.ok­lo.org.

De­spite pop­u­lar con­cep­tions about the hor­mone tes­tos­ter­one, in wom­en, at least, the sub­stance ac­tu­ally may pro­mote fair, con­cil­ia­to­ry be­hav­ior, re­search­ers say.

But the myths about tes­tos­ter­one are so pow­er­ful that wom­en in a study started act­ing less fairly if they thought they had re­ceived a dose of it, wheth­er they had or not.

Such are the find­ings of a study ap­pear­ing in the Dec. 8 ad­vance on­line is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Na­ture.

Test­os­terone is often called the “male” hor­mone and is po­pu­lar­ly asso­ciated with aggres­sion. Wom­en have some test­os­terone also, though.

Ernst Fehr of the Un­ivers­ity of Zu­rich, Switz­er­land, and col­leagues set up a bar­gain­ing game in which fe­male par­ti­ci­pants were giv­en a pill ei­ther of tes­tos­ter­one or of a neu­tral sub­stance, called a pla­ce­bo.

Those that re­ceived tes­tos­ter­one showed a “sub­stan­ti­al in­crease in fair bar­gain­ing be­haviour,” lead­ing to better so­cial in­ter­ac­tions, the re­search­ers wrote. But wom­en who thought that they re­ceived tes­tos­ter­one, wheth­er or not they ac­tu­ally did, “be­haved much more un­fair­ly” than those who thought that they re­ceived pla­ce­bo.

So, the neg­a­tive, an­ti­so­cial con­nota­t­ion of in­creas­ing tes­tos­ter­one lev­els seems to be strong enough to in­duce neg­a­tive so­cial be­hav­iour even when the bi­o­log­i­cal re­sult is ac­tu­ally the op­po­site, the sci­en­tists re­marked.

Ev­i­dence from an­i­mal stud­ies does show that tes­tos­ter­one causes ag­gres­sion to­ward oth­er mem­bers of the spe­cies, Fehr and col­leagues wrote. Pop­u­lar wis­dom tends to as­sume hu­mans work the same way. But it has been un­clear wheth­er this is cor­rect.

Stud­ies have in­deed found that male and fe­male pris­on­ers with vi­o­lent his­to­ries have high­er sal­i­vary tes­tos­ter­one lev­els than nonvi­o­lent pris­on­ers, the re­search­ers not­ed. But this does not show that the tes­tos­ter­one ac­tu­ally caused the vi­o­lence.

A com­pet­ing idea, they ob­served, is that tes­tos­ter­one mo­ti­vates peo­ple to seek high so­cial sta­tus. De­pend­ing on the situa­t­ion, they may try to achieve that ei­ther through vi­o­lence or through fair­ness.

In the con­text of the ex­pe­ri­men­tal bar­gain­ing game, fair­ness tended to help pro­tect so­cial sta­tus, ac­cord­ing to Fehr and col­leagues.

In the “ul­ti­ma­tum game,” as it was called, two play­ers are pre­sented with a sum of mon­ey, which they can keep if they can agree on how to split it. The catch is that just one play­er gets to pro­pose—and only on­ce—how it should be di­vid­ed. The oth­er play­er must ac­cept or re­ject that of­fer. “Fair” of­fers, such as an even split, tend to be more readily ac­cepted than “un­fair” of­fers where the pro­pos­er tries to keep most of the mon­ey. Fehr and col­leagues sug­gested that tes­tos­ter­one mo­ti­vat­ed play­ers to pro­pose “fair­er” of­fers in or­der to avoid the so­cial af­front of re­jection.

Humans and mice have previously unknown and potentially critical differences in one of the genes responsible for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology have found that two major features of a key DMD gene are present in most mammals, including humans, but are specifically absent in mice and rats, calling into question the use of the mouse as the principal model animal for studying DMD.

Roland Roberts led a team of researchers from King's College London, UK, and was funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. The team made the discovery while studying α-dystrobrevin, a component of the dystrophin protein complex that is disordered in DMD. Roberts said, "Two previously unrecognized features (a gene switch or promoter and a novel binding site for the adaptor protein syntrophin) are encoded by the α-dystrobrevin gene of almost all four-legged animals except mice. We assume that this tardy recognition of key features of a gene that has been intensively studied since its discovery 13 years ago is due to the predominance of the mouse as the model organism for studying DMD and the specific destruction of these parts of the gene in the mouse."

A major consequence of these findings is that mice (and their rat and hamster relatives) are likely to be particularly poor models in which to study the effects of DMD on the brain. Roberts added, "The brain is the major site of α-dystrobrevin expression and we now know that the mouse is missing more than 50% of the brain α-dystrobrevins. The fact that there are fundamental differences between the brains of mice and humans potentially limits our understanding of the role of dystrobrevins and DMD-related complexes in this organ. In fact, almost all of our knowledge of the function of α-dystrobrevin has been gleaned from the mouse."

DMD is a fatal skeletal myopathy, causing loss of muscle tissue throughout the body. It is also associated with substantial neurological effects including learning difficulties, night blindness, defective color vision and a suggestion of personality disorders, so studying the mechanisms in the brain underlying these effects is crucial.

A chemical culprit responsible for the rapid, mysterious death of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic Ocean has been found by collaborating scientists at Rutgers University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). This same chemical may hold unexpected promise in cancer research.
A photomicrograph of an Emiliania huxleyi cell. The black spots within the cell are the virus, which contains a previously unknown lipid that is killing phytoplankton in the North Atlantic. (Credit: V. Starovoytov and A. Vardi, Rutgers University)

The team discovered a previously unknown lipid, or fatty compound, in a virus that has been attacking and killing Emiliania huxleyi, a phytoplankton that plays a major role in the global carbon cycle.

"Emiliania huxleyi is the rock star of phytoplankton," explains Kay Bidle, Rutgers assistant professor of marine science in the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. "It blooms all over the oceans, and we can easily see it by satellite. We know that these blooms are frequently infected with viruses, and this virus is specific to this phytoplankton."

"The lipids are the key ingredient in the virus that causes the phytoplankton to die," says WHOI scientist Benjamin Van Mooy. "We have a completely different lipid molecule that, as far as we know, is unknown to science."

E. huxleyi grows rapidly in the North Atlantic, "in these big blooms that you can actually see from outer space," Van Mooy says.

"But," adds Van Mooy, "they die just almost as quickly as they start out, and we're not sure why. They die after a few days."

Bidle and Assaf Vardi, a postdoctoral investigator in his laboratory and the study's lead author, had been examining the interaction between the virus and the dying phytoplankton and had developed ideas for how this process works. After Vardi heard lipid expert Van Mooy give a talk in Santa Fe, N.M., he suggested the collaboration between WHOI and Rutgers.

"I saw Ben's talk on marine microbes and lipids…[and] I ran after him," said Vardi. "We told him about our ideas" involving the virus's effect on the phytoplankton.

"They studied the viruses and I study lipids," Van Mooy said. "It seemed like a good mix."

Their paper is published in the Nov. 6 issue of Science., E. huxleyi performs photosynthesis -- "just like plants," says Van Mooy. "They suck up carbon dioxide." In doing so, they reduce the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. They form a calcium carbonate shell, also helping to regulate the carbon cycle.

If viruses are killing off phytoplankton, this can increase greenhouse emissions, Van Mooy suggests. "That's important because if viruses infect a whole bunch of cells, then they can't perform photosynthesis, they can't take up carbon dioxide."

In April 2008, Van Mooy's team visited the sites of E. huxleyi blooms during a research cruise between Woods Hole and Bermuda and collected samples for lipid analysis back in the laboratory.

They immediately recognized lipids that were just like those in virally infected E. huxleyi cells grown by the Rutgers team. Helen Fredricks, a research associate with Van Mooy, carried out the lipid analyses at WHOI. "Seeing this viral lipid appear during the course of infection was amazing, and then we found it in the ocean too. We were celebrating in the lab that day."

Adds Vardi: "Viruses are really important players in regulating phytoplankton blooms. We zoom into the bloom and try to understand the interaction between the viruses and host, which is this really important, cosmopolitan, bloom-forming species."

After isolating the viral lipids, the team found that the lipids alone were able to bring about the symptoms of viral infection in the phytoplankton. "The lipids themselves act just like the virus," says Van Mooy. "We can cause the phytoplankton to die by just giving the lipids."

This alone was enough to excite the team. "Now we have a biological marker that we can go out on a ship and look for and identify where this [infection of phytoplankton] is happening and learn how to study it better," Van Mooy says.

But there may be other, even farther-reaching implications. Both the virus and the newly found lipid deal their deadly blow by causing the upper-ocean plants to commit cellular suicide. As a major focus of their research at Rutgers, Bidle's lab has found that "programmed cell death" is an important process in the fate of marine phytoplankton and in the demise of blooms in the oceans. Bidle's group had previously found that successful infection of E. huxleyi induced, and actually required, the programmed cell death pathway.

But programmed cell death is not unique to phytoplankton. It is a common and healthy process in all kinds of cells, including human cells.

According to Vardi, "These lipids can induce programmed cell death in many organisms, including animals and plants. They also enrich in plasma membrane, and they are the port of the cell, where pathogens get in and out of the cell. This is important in viral diseases."

There is also a potential connection with cancer. If a healthy cell is stressed or damaged, usually it will kill itself with programmed cell death. But cancer cells have a defect: "They don't kill themselves," says Bidle.

"It's a critical aspect of cancer research, because cancer cells have figured out a way to turn off the programmed cell death pathway," he says. "In cancer studies, they try to figure out ways to reactivate those pathways."

The lipid may help shed light on why cancer cells are unable to commit suicide. Someday, the researchers say, it might suggest ways to correct that defect. Right now, the lipid is only known to be effective in algae, but in the future, the team is hoping to test the effectiveness of their molecule in experiments with cancer cells.

"There's a long way to go between here and curing cancer," Van Mooy says, "but the potential exists that this molecule could have therapeutic applications in the treatment of human disease, including cancer. Hopefully this paper will pique the interest of other investigators."

More immediately, scientists hope to learn more about the central role phytoplankton -- and viruses -- play in regulating climate. Bidle says this is a particularly interesting virus. "It appears that the virus has…borrowed, copied actually, the genes for this lipid from the host," he says. "Similar genes are still on the host, but the virus has figured out a way to take those genes and put them into its own genome, and alter them enough to make them more toxic."

"We find the biosynthetic pathway for this unique lipid encoded in the virus genome, not only in the host, and this has never been described before in any other virus," Vardi says. "We knew that [lipids] were important, but we were really intrigued about why the virus contained these genes. And what is the role of the pathway in the co-evolution of programmed cell death in the host and virus."

Van Mooy sees it as a struggle between two mighty forces. "The phytoplankton are at one end of the boxing ring and they're taking up carbon dioxide, and the viruses are at the other end, and they're out to kill them. And how that works out controls how much carbon dioxide is taken up.

"We're very interested in understanding what controls these phytoplankton," he says. "I didn't know that much about viruses until I started working on this project and the Rutgers researchers didn't know that much about lipids. So now we're both really onto something here. We're continuing to collaborate. "We have found other interesting lipids from these viruses," says Van Mooy.

"There are probably more out there. And who knows what kind of activities they may be involved with. They may hold a cure for a human disease or they may play unknown role in…phytoplankton.

Scripps Research Institute scientist describes a new, highly pragmatic approach to the identification of molecules that prevent a specific type of immune cells from attacking their host. The findings add a powerful new tool to the ongoing search for potential treatments for autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), as well as blood cancers, such as myeloid leukemia.

The study by Thomas Kodadek, a professor in the Chemistry and Cancer Biology Departments at Scripps Florida, and colleagues was published in the journal Chemistry & Biology.

In the new study, Kodadek and his colleagues used samples from an animal model of multiple sclerosis to screen for T cells -- a type of white blood cell that plays a central role in the immune system -- with a heightened presence in the disease. The screen also identified molecules that interfere with these T cells' "autoreactivity," in other words, their attack on the body itself rather than a foreign invader such as virus or bacteria.

"Our technique simultaneously uncovers and isolates autoreactive T cells as well as inhibitors to them," Kodadek said. "It's a double whammy. At the heart of this is a comparative screening process of normal T cells versus disease-causing T cells. While the process is technically complicated and difficult, the thinking behind it is not. We wanted to simplify the process of identifying compounds that could inhibit autoreactive T cells with exceptional specificity, and we succeeded."

The scientists used a model of MS, an autoimmune inflammatory disease affecting the brain and spinal cord, for the study. In MS, the immune system attacks the myelin sheath covering and protecting nerve cells, leading to a variety of symptoms depending on which part of the nervous system is affected. Common symptoms of the condition include fatigue; numbness; walking, balance, and coordination problems; bladder and bowel dysfunction; vision problems; dizziness and vertigo; sexual dysfunction; pain; cognitive problems; emotional changes; and spasticity.

Simplifying the Process

In setting up the new method to shed light on such autoimmune diseases and other disorders, Kodadek and his colleagues created a large collection of peptoids -- molecules related to, but more stable than, the peptides that make up proteins. By arranging thousands of peptoids on a microscope slide, the pattern of binding antibodies (a type of immune molecule) and peptoids can be visualized. By looking at samples from animal models of a known disease like MS, peptoids that bind to antibodies closely associated with that disease can be easily recognized.

Better still, peptoids that bind to autoreactive T cells can be identified without knowledge of the specific antigen (molecule triggering the immune attack), providing an unbiased method with which to search for potentially useful compounds.

Most autoimmune research has focused on finding the disease-causing antigens first, Kodadek said, a Quixote-like quest that has lasted more than four decades with little success to show for it.

"With our process, it doesn't really matter what the antigen is," said Kodadek, a 2006 recipient of the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award, which is designed to support individual scientists of exceptional creativity. "That was really the breakthrough. We're setting up a system that recognizes T cell receptors that are very abundant in a sick animal and at low levels in a healthy animal. Why the abundance? Because that's what making them sick."

Potential for Therapeutic Discovery

The new process creates new potential for therapeutic discovery. Molecules that target autoreactive T cells directly, while ignoring those T cells that recognize foreign antigens, could serve as the foundation for a novel drug development program aimed at eradicating autoreactive cells without affecting the normal function of the immune system.

"Almost without exception, drugs currently used to treat autoimmune conditions either inhibit something downstream of the autoimmune response itself, like inflammation, or they moderate the immune system non-selectively and that results in significant side effects," Kodadek said.

However, the new study isn't the final answer, according to Kodadek. He noted that the recent study used a model of MS triggered by a single antigen. In humans, there could be two -- or two dozen -- antigens triggering an autoimmune disease such as MS. This calls for further research. The method may be more easily applied to blood cancers, though, since the disease-causing T cells have been fully characterized and there are very few of them.

An international team of scientists that includes an astronomer from Princeton University has made the first direct observation of a planet-like object orbiting a star similar to the sun.

The finding marks the first discovery made with the world's newest planet-hunting instrument on the Hawaii-based Subaru Telescope and is the first fruit of a novel research collaboration announced by the University in January.

The object, known as GJ 758 B, could be either a large planet or a "failed star," also known as a brown dwarf. The faint companion to the sun-like star GJ 758 is estimated to be 10 to 40 times as massive as Jupiter and is a "near neighbor" in our Milky Way galaxy, hovering a mere 300 trillion miles from Earth.

"It's a groundbreaking find because one of the current goals of astronomy is to directly detect planet-like objects around stars like our sun," said Michael McElwain, a postdoctoral research fellow in Princeton's Department of Astrophysical Sciences who was part of the team that made the discovery. "It is also an important verification that the system -- the telescope and its instruments -- is working well."

This August 2009 discovery image of GJ 758 B was taken with the Subaru Telescope's HiCIAO instrument in the near infrared, which measures and records differences in heat. Without the special technique employed here (angular differential imaging), the star's glare would overwhelm the light from the planet candidates. The planet-like object, GJ 758 B, is circled as B in the lower right portion of the image. An unconfirmed companion planet or planet-like object, C, can be viewed above B. The star, GJ 758, is located at the center of the image, at the hub of the starburst. The graphic at the top compares the orbital distances of solar system planets. (Credit: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan)

Images of the object were taken in May and August during early test runs of the new observation equipment. The team has members from Princeton, the University of Hawaii, the University of Toronto, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in Tokyo. The results will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"This challenging but beautiful detection of a very low mass companion to a sun-like star reminds us again how little we truly know about the census of gas giant planets and brown dwarfs around nearby stars," said Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the research. "Observations like this will enable theorists to begin to make sense of how this hitherto unseen population of bodies was able to form and evolve."

Brown dwarfs are stars that are not massive enough to sustain fusion reactions at their core, so they burn out and cool off as they age.

Aided by new varieties of viewing techniques, scientists started finding extrasolar planets (planets beyond the solar system) in 1992 and have located more than 400 planet-like objects so far. Most, however, have not been directly observed, but inferred from viewing the star around which the planet orbits. GJ 758 B is one of the first planet-like objects to be directly seen. Of the others that have been directly viewed, most have been on larger orbits than the distance between GJ 758 B and its star, or around stars with temperatures far above the average temperature of GJ 758 or our sun.

Scientists were able to spot the object even though it was hidden in the glare of the star it orbits by subtracting out that brighter light. To do this, they used the High Contrast Coronagraphic Imager with Adaptive Optics that has been attached to the Subaru Telescope. Also known as HiCIAO, it is part of a new generation of instruments specially made to detect faint objects near a bright star by masking its far more intense light. They also employed a technique known as angular differential imaging to capture the images.

"It's amazing how quickly this instrument has come online and burst into the forefront," said Marc Kuchner, an exoplanet scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who was not involved in the work. "I think this is just the beginning of what HiCIAO is going to do for the field." He added that the discovery also emphasizes that this new method of finding exoplanets -- direct detection -- is "really hitting its stride."

The planet-like object is currently at least 29 times as far from its star as the Earth is from the sun, approximately as far as Neptune is from the sun. However, further observations will be required to determine the actual size and shape of its orbit. At a temperature of only 600 F, the object is relatively "cold" for a body of its size. It is the coldest companion to a sun-like star ever recorded in an image.

The fact that such a large planet-like object appears to orbit at this location defies traditional thinking on planet formation. It is thought most larger planets are formed either closer to or farther from stars, but not in the location where GJ 758 is now. Discoveries such as this one could help theorists refine their ideas.

Telescope images also revealed a second companion to the star, which the scientists have called GJ 758 C. More observations, however, are needed to confirm whether it is nearby or just looks that way. "It looks very promising," said Christian Thalmann, one of the team's lead scientists. If it should turn out to be a second companion, he said, that would make both B and C more likely to be young planets rather than old brown dwarfs, since two brown dwarfs in such close proximity would not remain stable for such a long period of time.

Researchers from Princeton and NAOJ announced an agreement on Jan. 15 to collaborate over the next 10 years, using new equipment on the Subaru Telescope to peer into hidden corners of the nearby universe and ferret out secrets from its distant past. This research is a part of that collaboration. The HiCIAO team is led by Professor Motohide Tamura of NAOJ.

The partnership, called the NAOJ-Princeton Astrophysics Collaboration or N-PAC, provides for the exchange of scientific resources and supports a variety of long-term research projects in which the scientists from both Princeton and the Japanese astronomical community will participate on an equal basis. The collaboration builds on a decades-long tradition of scientific collaboration between Japanese and Princeton astronomers in a wide range of astronomical fields.

An important part of that partnership is the search for planets, previously hidden by the glare of stars. Finding these planets is a crucial step in answering the age-old question of the existence of extraterrestrial life.

A coating on windows or solar panels that repels grime and dirt? Expanded battery storage capacities for the next electric car? New Tel Aviv University research, just published in Nature Nanotechnology, details a breakthrough in assembling peptides at the nano-scale level that could make these futuristic visions come true in just a few years.

Operating in the range of 100 nanometers (roughly one-billionth of a meter) and even smaller, graduate student Lihi Adler-Abramovich and a team working under Prof. Ehud Gazit in TAU's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology have found a novel way to control the atoms and molecules of peptides so that they "grow" to resemble small forests of grass. These "peptide forests" repel dust and water -- a perfect self-cleaning coating for windows or solar panels which, when dirty, become far less efficient.

TAU's nanosized "forest of peptides" can be used as the basis for self-cleaning windows and more efficient batteries. (Credit: Image courtesy of American Friends of Tel Aviv University)



"This is beautiful and protean research," says Adler-Abramovich, a Ph.D. candidate. "It began as an attempt to find a new cure for Alzheimer's disease. To our surprise, it also had implications for electric cars, solar energy and construction."

 



As cheap as the sweetener in your soda

A world leader in nanotechnology research, Prof. Gazit has been developing arrays of self-assembling peptides made from proteins for the past six years. His lab, in collaboration with a group led by Prof. Gil Rosenman of TAU's Faculty of Engineering, has been working on new applications for this basic science for the last two years.

Using a variety of peptides, which are as simple and inexpensive to produce as the artificial sweetener aspartame, the researchers create their "self-assembled nano-tubules" in a vacuum under high temperatures. These nano-tubules can withstand extreme heat and are resistant to water.

"We are not manufacturing the actual material but developing a basic-science technology that could lead to self-cleaning windows and more efficient energy storage devices in just a few years," says Adler-Abramovich. "As scientists, we focus on pure research. Thanks to Prof. Gazit's work on beta amyloid proteins, we were able to develop a technique that enables short peptides to 'self-assemble,' forming an entirely new kind of coating which is also a super-capacitor."

As a capacitor with unusually high energy density, the nano-tech material could give existing electric batteries a boost -- necessary to start an electric car, go up a hill, or pass other cars and trucks on the highway. One of the limitations of the electric car is thrust, and the team thinks their research could lead to a solution to this difficult problem.

"Our technology may lead to a storage material with a high density," says Adler-Abramovich. "This is important when you need to generate a lot of energy in a short period of time. It could also be incorporated into today's lithium batteries," she adds.

Window Cleaner a thing of the past?

Coated with the new material, the sealed outer windows of skyscrapers may never need to be washed again -- the TAU lab's material can repel rainwater, as well as the dust and dirt it carries. The efficiency of solar energy panels could be improved as well, as a rain shower would pull away any dust that might have accumulated on the panels. It means saving money on maintenance and cleaning, which is especially a problem in dusty deserts, where most solar farms are installed today.

The lab has already been approached to develop its coating technology commercially. And Prof. Gazit has a contract with drug mega-developer Merck to continue his work on short peptides for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease -- as he had originally foreseen.

par­tic­u­larly well-known among ro­dents, rab­bits and their rel­a­tives, and—less often—dogs and apes.

The par­ticipa­t­ion of this last group has caused caused par­tic­u­lar shock among hu­man wit­nesses, not least be­cause apes are sup­posed to be our close ev­o­lu­tion­ary rel­a­tives.

But two new stud­ies may of­fer a meas­ure of com­fort. At least, such as can be found in such a dis­mal situa­t­ion.

The stud­ies sug­gest that chimps and bono­bos—the two spe­cies that are our clos­est ape rel­a­tives—eat po­o­p not for its own sa­ke, but in or­der to re­trieve hard, nu­tri­tious seeds from it.

Cop­roph­a­gy may be an “adap­tive feed­ing strat­e­gy dur­ing pe­ri­ods of food scarcity,” wrote Tet­suya Saka­maki of the Pri­ma­te Re­search In­sti­tute at Kyo­to Un­ivers­ity, Ja­pan, in a study pub­lished in the Oct. 31 ad­vance on­line is­sue of the jour­nal Pri­ma­tes.

Saka­maki re­ported that he spent a total of no less than 1,142 hours (48 days) watch­ing a group of about two doz­en wild bono­bos at the Lu­o Sci­en­tif­ic Re­serve in the Con­go. Among them, “at least five fe­males… prac­ticed cop­roph­a­gy and/or fe­cal in­spec­tion,” he wrote.

Samakaki found most of the episodes hard to see clear­ly, be­cause they oc­curred high in trees, but he came away with the im­pression that the apes were try­ing to get at seeds. In the most clearly vis­i­ble case, a young fe­male “used her lips to ex­tract Di­al­ium seeds from the fe­ces in her hand, ate the seeds, and dis­carded oth­er fi­brous parts in the fe­ces,” he wrote.

Di­alum plants are mem­bers of the leg­ume fam­i­ly.

A study in the April 2004 is­sue of the jour­nal sug­gested si­m­i­lar con­clu­sions re­gard­ing chim­panzees, not­ing that similar seed types were in­volved: “two types of Di­al­ium seeds were com­monly found in the fe­ces.”

The au­thors of this pre­vi­ous study added that stress, bore­dom or food scarcity did­n’t ap­pear to play a role in the cop­roph­a­gy. Saka­maki in the more re­cent study mostly agreed, except he wrote that cop­roph­a­gy did seem more com­mon when food was hard to find.

Which come first: the su­pe­r­mas­sive black holes that franti­c­ally de­vour mat­ter, or the huge ga­lax­ies where they re­side?

A new sce­nar­i­o has emerged to an­swer this con­ten­tious “‘chicken and egg’ ques­tion,” said Da­vid El­baz of the Cen­ter for Nu­clear Stud­ies of Saclay in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, one of the re­search­ers who de­vel­oped the mod­el.

the “black” mon­i­ker, but ac­tu­ally many black holes are thought to be easily vis­i­ble thanks to vi­o­lent ac­ti­vity go­ing on around them.





 Colour com­pos­ite im­age of qua­sar HE0450-2958, the bright­est ob­ject in the im­age. The im­age was ob­tained with the VISIR in­stru­ment on ES­O’s Very Large Tel­e­scope, the Hub­ble Space Tel­e­scope and the Ad­vanced Cam­era for Sur­veys. The qua­sar is be­lieved to be zap­ping the ob­ject to its low­er left, a gal­axy, with an en­er­get­ic beam of par­t­i­cles.

El­baz and col­leagues stud­ied a pe­cu­liar ob­ject some five bil­lion light years away, be­lieved to be a black hole with­out a home gal­axy and dubbed qua­sar HE0450-2958. A light year is the dis­tance light trav­els in a year.

It had been spec­u­lat­ed that the qua­sar’s host gal­axy was hid­den be­hind dust. The as­tro­no­mers thus used an in­stru­ment on the Eu­ro­pean South­ern Ob­ser­va­tory’s Very Large Tel­e­scope de­signed to de­tect so-called mid-infrared light, which would make dust clouds brightly vis­i­ble.

Yet no dust ap­peared, in­di­cat­ing there was no home gal­axy, said Knud Jahnke of the Max Planck In­sti­tute for As­tron­o­my in Hei­del­berg, Germany, who led the ob­serva­t­ions. “In­stead we dis­cov­ered that an ap­par­ently un­re­lat­ed gal­axy in the qua­sar’s im­me­di­ate neigh­bour­hood is pro­duc­ing stars at a frantic rate,” he said, the equiv­a­lent of about 350 Suns yearly.

Ear­li­er ob­serva­t­ions had shown that the com­pan­ion gal­axy is, in fact, un­der fire: the qua­sar is spew­ing a je­t of en­er­get­ic par­t­i­cles to­wards its com­pan­ion, ac­com­pa­nied by a stream of fast-mov­ing gas. The in­jec­tion in­di­cates that the qua­sar it­self might be in­duc­ing the forma­t­ion of stars and there­by cre­at­ing its own host gal­axy, ac­cord­ing to El­baz and col­leagues. In such a sce­nar­i­o, ga­lax­ies would have evolved from clouds of gas hit by the en­er­get­ic je­ts emerg­ing from qua­sars, or giant black holes.

“The two ob­jects are bound to merge in the fu­ture: the qua­sar is mov­ing at a speed of only a few tens of thou­sands of kilo­me­ters [or miles] per hour with re­spect to the com­pan­ion gal­axy and their separa­t­ion is only about 22,000 light-years,” said El­baz. “Although the qua­sar is still ‘naked’, it will even­tu­ally be ‘dressed’ when it merges with its star-rich com­pan­ion. It will then fi­nally re­side in­side a host gal­axy like all oth­er qua­sars.”

The find­ings may al­so rep­re­sent the long-sought mis­sing link to un­der­stand­ing why the mass of black holes is larg­er in ga­lax­ies that con­tain more stars, the re­search­ers added. “A nat­u­ral ex­ten­sion of our work is to search for si­m­i­lar ob­jects in oth­er sys­tems,” said Jahnke.

The findings are being pre­sented in new pa­pers pub­lished in the jour­nals Astro­nomy & Astro­physics and Astro­phys­ical Jour­nal.

Af­ter a year of trou­bles, the Large Had­ron Col­lider has be­come the world’s high­est en­er­gy par­t­i­cle ac­cel­er­a­tor, hav­ing ac­cel­er­ated its twin beams of pro­tons to an en­er­gy about 20 pe­r­cent high­er than the pre­vi­ous world rec­ord, sci­en­tists say.

“We are still com­ing to terms with just how smooth­ly” it is work­ing, said Rolf Heuer, Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of CERN, the Eu­ro­pe­an Or­ga­niz­a­t­ion for Nu­clear Re­search near Ge­ne­va, Switz­er­land, which runs the ma­chine.

 
A work­er in­spects dam­age of the Large Had­ron Col­lider mag­nets  that oc­curred on Sept. 19, 2008. (Cour­te­sy CERN)


 It’s “fan­tas­tic,”  he added, but “there is still a lot to do be­fore we start phys­ics in 2010. I’m keep­ing my cham­pagne on ice un­til then.”
 The rec­ord-breaking pro­ton beam en­er­gy was meas­ured at 1.18 tril­lion elec­tron volts.

The de­vel­op­ments come just 10 days af­ter the par­t­i­cle smash­er restarted af­ter a year of dif­fi­cul­ties , which be­gan when the ma­chine broke down in Sep­tem­ber of last year.
First beams of pro­tons, co­re com­po­nents of atoms, were in­jected in­to the col­lider on Nov. 20, re­search­ers said. Over the fol­low­ing days, the ma­chine’s ope­r­a­tors cir­cu­lat­ed beams around the ring al­ter­nate­ly in one di­rec­tion and then the oth­er, grad­u­ally in­creas­ing the beam life­time to around 10 hours. Three days lat­er, two beams cir­cu­lat­ed to­geth­er for the first time, and the four big de­tec­tors rec­orded their first col­li­sion da­ta.

“I was here 20 years ago when we switched on CERN’s last ma­jor par­t­i­cle ac­cel­er­a­tor,” the Large Electron-Positron Col­lider, said CER­N Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy Di­rec­tor Steve My­ers. “I thought that was a great ma­chine to op­er­ate, but this is some­thing else. What took us days or weeks with LEP, we’re do­ing in hours.”

The first phys­ics re­search at the LHC is sched­uled for the first quar­ter of 2010, at a col­li­sion en­er­gy of 7 tril­lion elec­tron volts (3.5 tril­lion elec­tron volts per beam).