Future Medicine

There are so many diseases and cancers and numerous other maladies that can be fatal and so many others that cause us lots of discomfort. What if one day we no longer had to deal with being sick again? No more colds, no more cancers, no more infections of any type! This might all be possible one day and perhaps sooner than we think.

Draco

First we have Draco which is a revolutionary way to rid ourselves of viruses.

Who likes getting a cold? I know your sitting there thinking, that its a silly question because no one likes getting sick. Well your probably right, I don't like getting sick, so why would others. That is where a newly developed treatment will one day help. Draco is an experimental protein developed to fight viruses. So far in medicine there isn't a lot your doctor can do to help you against a virus other than help ease the symptoms.

 

Picture by: George Hodan

First you need to know basically how a virus works. A virus infects a cell with the intention to reproduce, it does this by essentially using its DNA to rewrite the cells DNA which effectively turns the cell into a virus factory. So the cell goes along now building more and more of the virus, until it dies, while all the virus that it produced go and infect surrounding cells. The symptoms that we feel when infected by a virus is often due to our immune system trying to expel the virus. Another reason is that the virus has disrupted the natural function of enough cells that now cause that particular body part to no longer do its job properly. Sounds bad, time for some new medicine.

Now that you basically know what a virus does I can tell you how Draco will solve the problem. Draco basically works by detecting the DNA of a virus and then telling the cell that it has infected to die. When the cell dies the Virus that has already split to turn the cell into a virus factory dies with it. This effectively eliminates the virus and stops it from reproducing. You can learn more about Draco at Amazing New Medicine. An end to viruses is near, we just have to wait a few more years so it can go through further testing. Then we can enjoy not ever having a cold and numerous other illnesses ever again.

http://www.squidoo.com/new-medicine

My source for this was Science Illustrated Magazine and backed up by MIT News.

There also seems to be some serious campaigning to organise futher funding by a group of people that have resulted from an interview of Dr Rider back in 2011.

The Naked Mole Rat

Research on the longevity and amazing health of the Naked Mole Rat is also very promising.

The naked mole rat might hold the key to the fountain of youth so to speak. This ugly little creature although looking old and wrinkly is actually one of the healthiest known animals on the planet. Scientists have discovered that naked mole rats maintain a perfectly healthy body right up until the point they die. In fact scientists don't even know why they die, when there are is no physiological reason for their death, everything in their body still works just fine. Scientists are trying to figure out what keeps a naked mole rat so healthy. We could one day find a treatment being developed that could increase our lifespans by stopping our bodies from ageing and breaking down. Another great thing about this little creature is the lack of cancer found, It is really unusual to find animals that don't die from cancer. So do these little creatures actually fight off cancer too, It is being heavily researched as well.

A great source of information on the subject for further reading. Biologist determine how blind mole rats fight cancer.

Crocodile Immune Systems

Crocodiles have extremely powerful immune systems that save them from all sorts of infections. Crocodiles are frequently getting hurt usually in battles between themselves, often coming out of a fight with deep gashes and missing limbs. With all this bodily damage and also living in bacteria filled water it is a wonder they don't die soon after from serious infection.  Yet almost all crocodiles survive wounds such as this. 

Close-Up of an...

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This is due to their strong immune system which literally destroys bacteria as soon as it enters the body. Crocodile blood has been seen to completely destroy golden staff and other antibiotic resistant super bacteria.

Learn more about this here at Wired Science.

So let's all look forward to a very healthy future.

Will The Earth Be Hit By An Asteroid?

Will the Earth be hit by an asteroid?

Meteor Heading...
Panoramic Images...
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I certainly hope not, a large asteroid could render Earth unliveable.
Rocks are always entering earth's atmosphere, most of them burn up before hitting the ground, and most of us have seen these in the form of shooting stars.
They are not really shooting stars just a rock moving extremely fast that is burning very brightly as it melts away. Earth has definitely been struck by asteroids before as we can clearly see the evidence all over the globe such as this crater in Arizona. When an asteroid or a meteoroid have hit earth they are then called meteorites.

Meteor Crater,...
Jim Wark
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Apparently the asteroid called 99942 Apophis won't hit the Earth in 2036 after some further calculations were made.

This asteroid apparently had a 2.7% chance of hitting earth which seems like small odds but we have a lot less chance of winning the lottery.

In fact even if there was a chance of finding an object that would hit earth in our lifetimes we have ever increasingly sophisticated tracking methods,which would give us well and truly enough time to do something about it.

According to NASA there is only 1 in 1000 chance that we will discover an object that will hit earth in the next hundred years. Furthermore there is only 1 in 10,000 chance of finding an asteroid that will impact earth in the next 10 years.

Asteroid 243 Ida
Stocktrek Images
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An asteroid less than 100 metres (328 feet) in diameter would mostly burn up in the atmosphere.

Asteroids 100 metres (328 feet) and larger would cause local devastation, leaving a sizable crater.

The really scary asteroids 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) and more in diameter could cause extinction level events such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.

It really doesn't seem like something we should be worried about.

If you want to learn more about the groups that are watching and tracking these civilization destroyers then have a look through the links below.

Near Earth Asteroid Tracking

Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards

Spacewatch

If you are interested in finding some significant impact craters on earth check out this list on Wikipedia. This list tells you how old they are, the name and the coordinates, so you can actually go find them if you want. I would start with Google earth.

List of impact craters on Earth


Want your own piece of Meteorite?

Genuine Meteorite

What Causes Lightning?

What an interesting question, well what do we know about lightning so far, We know that it is Electricity and that it is also shoots from the clouds. Why is this So? I am about to tell you but first we need to understand that we don't actually fully understand this powerful phenomenon, yet we have a fair idea. Want to know all about lightning? We discover the process of lightning creation further down the page.

You can teach your kids about weather and lightning with the lightning lab.

Poof Slinky Lightning Lab

Well the funny thing is lightning is still being heavily studied and at this point in time it is still not completely understood. For the ease of explanation lets look at cloud to ground lightning.

Lightning Storm...
Orien Harvey
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What has been figured out so far is that the charge builds up through a process called polarization. This happens in the clouds by another process similar to frictional charging, caused by the collision of water and ice particles.  Now the electrical polarity of the clouds tends to be negative at the bottom and positive towards the top of the clouds.

Now that the clouds have started to polarize it builds an electrical field which in turn affects the charge of the earth in a localised area. The negative charge at the bottom of the clouds repels the electrons in the earth to create a positive charge at the surface. As the charge in the clouds increase it reaches a point where the water vapour can no longer hold any more charge, this is called the dielectric constant. This is the point where the cloud will discharge in the form of a bolt of lightning.

Lightening...
Fadil
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Normally air is a great insulator of electricity and it is relatively difficult to get a strong arc through the air, especially when you’re talking about distances that lightning travels. In this case though the air becomes a lot more conductive due to the strong electric field which is strong enough to ionize the air. The lightning bolt starts off as a step leader which is the excess electrons that have built up making their way through the polarised and now conducting air.
The electrons at this stage are travelling at about 95 km (60 miles) per second, which is nothing compared to the speed of the lightning bolt itself. Now is when we start to get a positive charge moving up from the ground to meet the descending leader. Often the positive charge will move up through buildings, trees and even people. When the positive charge starts ascending it is called a streamer. When the Streamer and Leader meet the connection point is normally pretty close to the ground sometimes up to 100 metres (300 foot) high. Now that a complete conductive pathway has been established the discharge starts and you have lightning.

 

Lightning (Nature in Action)

The lightning also superheats the air immediately surrounding the bolt so rapidly that it expands violently and causes large shockwaves which are heard as thunder. The continuous rumbling that can be heard is the shockwave echoing off the ground and clouds as it moves towards you.

Brooklyn Bridge

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A few Interesting Facts about Lightning:

- Lightning raises the temperature of the air immediately around it up to 27,000 degrees Celsius (50,000 F). Which is about 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun.

- The odds of being struck by a bolt of lightning in your lifetime are approximately 3,000 to 1.

- In the Last 50 years there have been nearly 4,000 people killed by lightning strikes.

- The average lightning bolt has about 10000 Amps at 100 million Volts.

- Normally a bolt of lightning actually consists of 3 - 4 discharges or separate strikes.

- Most lightning strikes are a negative charge discharging to the positive ground.

- There is also positive charge lightning strikes which make up about 10% of all lightning strikes, these positive lightning bolts are also 10 times more powerful than the average negative lightning bolt.
Get your kids into science with the great range of kits from the Magic School Bus.

The Magic School Bus - Jumping Into Electricity

For other fun facts about science visit Fun Science Facts.

Feel free to leave any questions or comments you have here. Remember to never stop asking questions!

Why Do Fingers Wrinkle In Water?

I am sure that you have probably asked why fingers wrinkle in water. I know when I was a kid I asked my parents. I got told that "it is your fingers getting tired of being soaked in water". Even as a kid I wasn't entirely convinced that the answer I was given was correct.

Now I have found out that there are a couple of different theories as to how and why water wrinkles fingers. So let's have a look at two of the more popular theories and perhaps decide which one we think makes more sense.

Theory Number One: Water Absorption.

This theory is the more generally accepted one and looks at the ability of the outer layer of your skin to absorb water. The skin on your body is the thickest on your fingers, palms and feet. The outer layer of skin actually has a protein called Keratin in the form of fibrous filaments which weave in a complex structure with dead cells called corneocytes. This complex structure allows the skin to absorb a lot of water instead of just dissolving. As the skin cells swell the outer layer triples in size and buckles, forming the wrinkles that are so familiar to all of us.

Theory Number Two: Adaptive Evolution.

This theory is relatively new and is all about fingers wrinkling in water for the purpose of increasing our grip on wet and slippery objects. It is theorised that the deep wrinkles on a water soaked finger act as drainage channels to help increase grip on objects when wet. It is said that Primates developed this adaption to help with climbing wet trees. Fingers have been studies and it has been found that the wrinkles that run vertically and stem from the tip of the finger closely resemble drainage networks in mountain ranges. It is said that due to the structure of the wrinkles as a fingertip presses down the water flows along the channels and enables the skin of the finger to fully contact the surface.

Human Skin Anatomy Model

So what do you think the real answer is?

I am a firm believer in evolution and believe that it could be possible that in the past we may have used the wrinkling of our fingers to our advantage. Yet I can't see there being enough selective pressure put on our ancestors to enable something like wrinkly fingers evolve as a necessary feature. The way I see it a bit of extra forearm strength which enhances the gripping power of the hands would be a more likely contender in helping arboreal creatures keep a better grip. For natural selection to work in favour of wrinkly fingers all the ancestors that had non wrinkling fingers would need to be at a significant disadvantage and more likely to come to harm before reaching breeding age. To me something like extra gripping strength would have given a bigger advantage over extra traction, which would have over taken in a selective way and made the wrinkling fingers for traction redundant.

So that is my opinion on the evolution theory and I believe that the fact water is absorbed into our skin and buckles due to extra volume is most accurate and I don't think that our bodies adapted to have wet wrinkly fingers for the specific purpose of better grip in the wet.

The first theory is more of a how fingers go wrinkly in water and the second theory is more of a why they go wrinkly in water. I certainly agree with theory 1 and think theory 2 is theoretically possible but probably not very likely. What do you think?

Be sure to comment and let me know what you think of these two theories.

Understanding Skin Flip Chart

Source for Water Absorption: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/08/20/3570437.htm
Source for Adaptive Evolution: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/07/wrinkled-when-wet-accidental-or-adaptive.html

Why is the Sun Yellow?

Ever wondered why the sun appears to have a yellowish tinge to it and as it gets closer to the horizon it looks more and more orange?

Sunset on the...
Robert Francis
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Well the light from the sun is actually white, which is how it would appear in space. Here on earth underneath our blanket of atmospheric gases it appears yellow. This is because of the Rayleigh scattering effect. Rayleigh scattering is the scattering of the shorter wavelengths like blue. When the blue wavelengths are scattered this causes the sky to appear blue. It is also why the sun is yellow, because the blue has been filtered from the direct beam of light and scattered to come at us from different angles. So once the blue, Indigo and Violet have been "mostly" scattered we have the left over colours still together which appear as yellow.

Teach your kids all about the Science of colour with a great science kit:

Science Kit - Junior Genius Blast of Color Lab - Over 15 Different Fun Activities

You might ask next, why isn't the sky violet or indigo if they are also scattered. Well as the light spectrum passes violet our eyes stop seeing the wavelengths that are shorter. We see violet and indigo but our eyes are more sensitve to the middle of the visible spectrum so the scattered Blue is seen more easily by our eyes.

As the sun moves closer to the horizon in the afternoon you may notice that it turns more orange and sometimes gets close to being red. This is because now the light from the sun has to travel through a lot more of the atmosphere before it reaches you. This allows "all" of the short wavelengths of light to be scattered and the leaves the remaining colours in the visible spectrum to appear increasingly more red as the sun gets lower.

Light Experiment Kit

What Is A Rainbow?

A rainbow is an awesome display of light and water droplets that form the colourful shape of an arch in the sky...... But how?

A Double Rainbow...

Randy Olson

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Rainbows are formed by the light from the sun being refracted or bent as it enters the droplet, then reflected or bounced off the inside and then refracted again on its way out. This process splits the white light from the sun into the base colours that make it up. Just like the Prism pictured below.

Light Beam...
Matthias Kulka
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The base colours of a rainbow are; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. An easy way to remember this is by using the initials of the colours and making a man's name with it, Roy G Biv.
ROYGBIV is a good way of being able to remember the order of the colours of the rainbow.

You actually have to be properly positioned to be able to see a rainbow. You have to be between the Sun and the water droplets. The other factor that also need to be in place is the position of the sun in the sky. The sun needs to be low enough in the sky to make a line from the sun to your eyes to the water droplets, this makes late afternoon or earl morning the best times for seeing rainbows.. So with the sun low in the sky, at your back and the water droplets in front of you, you should be able to see a rainbow.

If you are interested in finding more about rainbows check out the rainbow discovery kit by The Magic School Bus below.

Discover The Mysteries of Rainbows

You can also find more information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow