Transcript Document

The world's largest snake has been found deep in the
South American rainforest.
The monster boa is at least 13 metres long from mouth
to tail and weighs 1,135 kilograms, (2,500 pounds).
The snake named Titanoboa cerrejonensis lived around
60 million years ago in hot swamps after the extinction
of the dinosaurs.
It grew so big because the world was much
hotter then. Scientists estimate temperatures in
the rainforest could have been between 30-34C
(86-93F), 5C warmer than today.
The discovery is leading scientists to re-think
how hot the Earth has been in the past and how
animals and plants were able to survive and
grow in the intense heat.
The giant snake was found by fossil scientists in
one of the world's largest open cast coal mines,
at Cerrejon, north east Colombia.
Most everybody knows that DNA
contains the blueprint for life. The
names of Watson and Crick, the
first scientists to figure out the
structure of DNA in the 1950s, are
also widely recognized. But left
obscure in history is the name of the
chemist who first isolated the DNA
molecule itself. Johann Friedrich
Miescher, working in the late 1800s,
single-handedly separated out what
he called "nuclein" from cells.
Miescher did develop some
hypotheses about how
"nuclein" might be involved
in heredity, he ascribed to the
view at the time that any one
type of molecule would be too
simple to account for all the
variation seen within species.
It would be about 75 years
before the magnitude of
Miescher's discovery would
be fully understood.
Rubik's Cube
Two American professors have proven that the
earlier-held belief that at least 27 turns are
needed to solve the most famous Hungarian
puzzle/toy/contraption, the Rubik's Cube, is
false. Dan Kunkle and Gene Cooperman of the
University of Boston used a "super computer"
to solve the puzzle with only 26 turns.
TAU Scientists Help Discover the
Most Massive Stellar Black Hole
An international team, including astronomers from Tel Aviv University,
has uncovered the most massive stellar black hole found to date in a
binary system. The newly-discovered black hole is about 16 times the
mass of our sun and located three million light-years away in a distant
galaxy called Messier 33. The finding is unique because the black hole,
named M33 X-7, is associated with an unusually large companion star
(its binary pair), with a mass about 70 times the mass of our sun. The two
objects move one around the other in space once every 3.5 days in an
everlasting dance.
Concludes Prof. Mazeh, "Astronomical
measurements allow us to peek into the
vastness of space and discover epic events
incomparable with anything which takes place
on earth."
A stellar black hole is formed from the
collapse of the core of a massive star at the
end of its life. The collapse creates an intense
gravitational force, where not even rays of
light can escape its gravitational pull,
rendering the phenomenon invisible. Matter
transferred from the companion star into the
black hole falls into the hole’s gravitational
attraction and emits X-ray radiation that the
astronomers have detected by using special
satellites.
A team of British and
American scientists has
discovered a new method to
detect major weather events
occurring 32 km up in the
Earth's stratosphere. Cosmic
rays, detected 0.8 km beneath
the planet's surface in an
obsolete iron mine, have the
potential to identify weather
events that happen during the
Northern Hemisphere winter.
American scientists have found
human antibodies that kill a broad
range of influenza A viruses, a
discovery that raises hopes of
both better flu drugs and a more
effective, longer lasting flu shot.
The discovery of monoclonal
antibodies that target what some
researchers believe may be flu's
Achilles heel suggests medicine
finally may be able to find a way
to neutralize the virus's
maddening ability to evade the
immune system through constant
mutation.
New bird species
Scientists discovered a new bird species, but its habitat is
threatened by a dam project in a southeastern Venezuela river
basin, a British environmental organization announced
Wednesday.
Birdlife International said the new species has been named the
Carrizal Seedeater, or Amaurospina carrizalensis, after the tiny
islet in the Caura River where was discovered by researchers
Miguel Lentino and Robin Restall.
The Carrizal Seedeater is a species of the blue-flecked finch. It
has a larger bill than other finches and small plumage
differences, Birdlife International said in a statement.
TONY EASTLEY: Scientists
in the United States have made
a breakthrough that could lead
to a universal flu vaccine.
They've discovered antibodies that neutralise multiple
strains of the influenza virus,
and a so-called "pan-therapy"
or broad-spectrum vaccine
could be just five years away.
Martin Chalfie
American scientists
Martin Chalfie and Roger
Y. Tsien, and Osamu
Shimomura of Japan won
the 2008 Nobel Prize in
chemistry on Wednesday
for their discovery and
development of the green
fluorescent protein, or
GFP.
Brian Butterworth, a British
cognitive neuropsychologist
and founding editor of the
journal "Mathematical
Cognition", has summarized
several lines of evidence
pointing to the conclusion that
the normal human brain
contains a "number module" a highly specialized set of
neural circuits that enable us
to categorize small collections
of objects in terms of their socalled numerosities.
Wheat could soon take a walk on
the wild side. An ancient strain
of wild wheat found growing in
Israel has enabled a team of
Israeli and American scientists to
boost the protein, zinc and iron
content in modern wheat, an
accomplishment that could help
supply more nutritious food to
millions of people worldwide.
The next significant discovery took
place in 1820. Professor Hans Christian
Oersted was demonstrating an
experiment for students when he
accidentally discovered that a compass
needle moved when it was close to a
wire connected to a voltaic pile.
Oersted's discovery was a major
breakthrough in electrical science
because he was first to recognize that
electricity and magnetism are related.
His discovery marked the beginning of
electricity as we know it today. The
"Oersted" is the unit of magnetic
reluctance.
Andre-Marie Ampere made the next
significant discovery, establishing the
science of electrodynamics in 1823.The
properties of electromotive force in
Ampere's time were in a constant state of
interpretation and revision by many
scientists. Nevertheless, it was Ampere's
brilliant deduction that solved the
scientific riddle. Ampere experimented
with current-carrying conductors and
reasoned that electromotive force is
manifested by two kinds of effects:
electric tension and electric current. Thus,
he established the concepts of voltage and
current. The "Ampere" is the unit of
electric current.
Oersted's discovery set Faraday on
a series of experiments for 11
years. Finally, in 1831, his
experiments revealed a great truth:
Electricity could indeed be
produced by magnetism.
Nevertheless, the critical
component of his discovery was
that magnetism must be
accompanied by motion. If Oersted
had discovered the magic doorway
that would lead to the age of
electric power, it was Faraday who
unlocked that door. The "Farad" is
the unit of electrical capacitance.
In the late 1870's, the nature of electricity
was still not well known. Maxwell's
mathematical equations, electromagnetic theory
of light, and laws of electrodynamics lacked
hard experimental verification. Heinrich Hertz
became a strong deciple of Maxwell's theories,
and it was his work that proved Maxwell
correct.
-By 1888 Hertz had received world
acclaim for his exhaustive experiments of
electromagnetic wave phenomena concerning
propagation, polarization, and reflection of
waves. His discoveries opened the door to future
work in the realm of radio. The "Hertz" is the
unit for measurement of frequency.