MIT researchers have built a nano-scale, drug-producing factory that could provide precision cancer tumor-killing inside your body.

Drugs made of proteins are good at killing cancer tumors, but the human body in turn is good at killing foreign proteins that show up our bloodstream. So protein drugs have trouble reaching their destination. But the nanoparticle created by the MIT researchers would get around that by not synthesizing the protein until it reaches the tumor. They showed in their study, which is published in the journal Nanoletters that they could induce the particle to deploy its payload by shining an ultraviolet light on it.

"This is the first proof of concept that you can actually synthesize new compounds from inert starting materials inside the body," said Avi Schroeder a postdoc in MIT's David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and a lead author on the work.

The tiny drug factory mimics the way DNA instructs cells to build proteins. When an ultraviolet light shines on the nanoparticle, it releases a DNA sequence that instructs the creation of the protein. To prove the system works, they programmed the particles to produce green fluorescent protein and luciferase, which can both be detected easily because they glow (like in the image above).

The next step is to get the particle to produce an actual drug, and to make sure the nano-factories hit their tumor targets.

"There are lots of details left to be worked out for this to be a viable therapeutic approach, but it is a really terrific and innovative concept, and it certainly gets one's imagination going," said James Heath, a professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology who wasn't part of the research team.

The other bonus of this approach is that since the drug delivery is so targeted, it wouldn't cause side effects—like a war with no collateral damage. [ScienceBlog, Nanoletters]

Image: Avi Schroeder

When a team of biologists, physicists, and engineers at Brown University put their heads together to look at batwings, they discovered how wings on everything from military vehicles to batman could become 35 percent more efficient.

When scientists study wings on animals, they usually look at the shape of the wing and how that contributes to elevating the animal. This time they examined the flexibility of the finger-like hinges in bat wings, and how the animals use that flexibility to draw in their appendages on the upstroke. The results suggest the tucking-in technique helps bats, and some birds that flap similarly, compensate for the mass of their relatively heavy, muscular wings.

The study, which was funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, should lead to better designs for flapping vehicles—perhaps this autonomous micro air vehicle (brace yourself for dramatic voiceover), which could be used for things like searching for hidden weapons?

"If you have a vehicle that has heavy wings, it would become energetically beneficial to fold the wings on the upstroke," said Sharon Swartz, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown and a senior author on the work, which is published in the April 11 issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The team examined 1,000 frame-per-second videos of six species of 27 bats in flight. Watch one of them in action in the video below.

They tracked markers on their wings to measure how frequently they flapped, their up and down movement, and how their wing mass was distributed in motion. To measure mass, the researchers cut the wing of a deceased bat (natural causes we hope) into 32 pieces and weighed each one. They fed all that data into an algorithm that determined the difference between flapping with continually outstretched wings, and using the inward articulation method.

The results showed that even though retracting and again reaching the wings outward uses lots of energy, that loss is offset by the efficiency gained.

"Retracting your wings has an inertial cost," Atilla Bergou, an author on the study and a physicist at Brown, said in a statement. "It is significant but it is outweighed by the savings on the up and down stroke."

People who study such things always thought bats drew in their wings on the upstroke to reduce drag—which is still part of the story. But the new results add a new chapter that might help take vehicles like this to the next level.

[Proceedings of the Royal Society B via Brown University]

Image: Shutterstock/Kirsanov

Cancer researchers have found that certain types of dental X-rays significantly increased the incidence of the most common type of brain tumor in the United States: meningioma.

The study authors offer the caveat that their subjects likely received X-rays as kids that delivered a much higher dose of radiation than those used today. But the numbers are still alarming: they found that people diagnosed with meningiomas were more than twice as likely to have undergone so-called bitewing X-rays—the kind that tend to hurt like a mother when the dentist makes you bite down on a hard, pointy piece of cardboard with your molars.

Exposure to ionizing radiation via atomic bombs and radiation therapy has been previously linked to meningiomas, but Dr. Elizabeth Claus, the study's lead author and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, says dental X-rays are the most common source of exposure. Her results are similar to other, smaller dental X-ray studies.

Claus and her team looked at 1,433 people in Connecticut and the San Francisco Bay Area who had been diagnosed with intracranial meningioma between May 2006 and April 2011 when they were between 20 and 79. They compared them with 1,350 tumor-free individuals similar in age, sex and geographic location.

Those with tumors were twice as likely to report having received bitewing X-rays. Also, yearly or more frequent bitewings were associated with a 40 to 90 percent higher risk of having a brain tumor.

Another type of X-ray called "panoramic" images taken before kids were 10 increased the risk by up to five times.

Confusingly, the researchers found no association between full-mouth X-rays—which include multiple bitewings—and the tumors. Dr. Alan Lurie, president of the American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology told Reuters:

They found a small risk (from) a pair of bitewings, but not a full mouth series, which is multiple bitewings. That inconsistency is impossible to understand to me.

Still, he says patients shouldn't obediently agree to every X-ray ordered by dentists. We should always ask why exactly it's necessary to pump ionizing radiation directly into our skulls. [Cancer via Reuters via International Business Times]

Image: Shutterstock/Ragne Kabanova

If a human tried chopping wood with his head, he'd lose at least one eye and sustain permanent brain damage. But woodpeckers do it all the live long day and sustain zero headular damage. How do they do it?

Theories have included: super powerful muscles, a special injury-preventing drilling technique, or a protective placement of the brain inside the skull. But no one has systematically analyzed the mechanics of a woodpecker's skull in as much detail as Fan Yubo and his team at the Key Laboratory for Biomechanics and Mechanobiology at Beihang University in China, who published their work today in Science China Press.

They spent three years studying the mechanical properties, microstructure and composition of the cranial bone and beak of the woodpecker, and compared it to that of the lark. They found that woodpeckers have developed their own amazing nanofabrication and self assembly capabilities in their cranial bone structure over millions of years of evolution.

The strength of the two types of birds' beaks is actually similar. But the woodpecker's cranial bone is much stronger than the lark's, the researchers found. That's thanks to having more "plate-like spongy bone" in its cranium, which makes it resistant to deformation. Specifically, it has a larger volume of structures called trabeculae, which are tiny spaces in the bone that form a mesh filled with bone marrow. The woodpecker's trabeculae are also spaced very close together, which helps diffuse impact. In the image, the woodpecker cranium bone is A; the lark's is B. C is the woodpecker's beak, D is the lark's.

The researchers hope their work might inspire new protective headgear for humans. I'm just happy to know this mystery of nature is solved. [Science China Press]

Image: Shutterstock/Gregory Synstelien

You've seen the reports that individuals with a lower economic and social status suffer from poor health more often than folks in higher tax brackets. Now, thanks to a multi-year study of rhesus macaques monkeys, researchers have found genetic changes caused by stressful environments are likely contributing to that poor health.

On the bright side, the results also show your genetic fate isn't permanent when you hit a rough patch. We have the power to change our genes as we manage our stress or improve our situation.

Researchers took 49 female macaques out of their family units and placed them in 10 newly-constructed groups. They used females because they almost always stay in the same group while males tend to travel. They isolated white blood cells from samples taken from the female monkeys at various points after the transition. They found lower-ranking monkeys had lower levels of a T cell that fights pathogens. They also had high levels of stress hormones in their blood.

The scientists then looked for changes in the monkeys' DNA, and found that their dominance correlated with the presence of "methyl groups," which are things that turn genes on and off.

Jenny Tung, the study's lead author and a visiting assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University told me in an email:

Because all the study subjects had been middle ranking in their original groups, we can infer that it was the new dominance ranks they adopted that explained rank-related gene expression. We think that social stress explains these effects because a great deal of research has linked lower rank to increased social stress in captive female macaques (and for primates in some other settings as well), and in fact we were able to measure stress hormone dysregulation in our study subjects indicative of chronic stress.

Tung and her team published their work the April 9 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The good news is that while rapid genetic changes happened when females found themselves at a lower status, they quickly changed again when their ranks improved. Their immune systems responded quickly when they moved from a lower social rank to a higher one—formerly low-ranking animals looked genetically like high-ranking ones in short time

So it appears that genetic changes are fluid and definitely not permanent. What does this likely mean for humans? Says Tung:

I think that this study suggests that our physiology—at least as captured by gene expression in our blood cells—may be fairly plastic in response to changes in our social environment. In other words, if you can improve your social environment (or alleviate social stress), your gene expression profile will rapidly reflect that improvement.

Of course all of the work was performed in females. It might remain to me seen whether males could handle stress as efficiently. [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences]

Images: Shutterstock/stevenku

Shopping for makeup should be fun. And it should not happen at Amazon. It's unnatural to buy your mascara at the same place where you lock in low prices for monthly toilet paper delivery. Happily, Sephora's website makeover ensures that you won't be tempted to mix eyeshadow with MP3 downloads.

The revamp has been three years in the making, and the result the best-organized search for beauty products on the web. Every one of Sephora's 15,000 products now carries 25 tags (type of product, color, skin type it's for, etc). The company has perfected its in-store app-powered scanning capabilities as well/ its iPhone and iPad apps pull up pricing, stock, and reviews. Your mobile and in-store shopping baskets, wish lists, and shopping history are now synched, and you can check the app before you head out the door to make sure they've got that Illamasqua nail polish you're coveting in "scorn."

"We finally have this mini computer in our handbags and it's really the bridge between online and offline," Julie Bornstein, senior vice president for Sephora's digital operations told me.

Another reason Sephora is a better place to shop beauty products: It has the high-end, luxurious brands other outlets don't. You'll find, for example, Dior's wonderful bronzers. Chloe has a rollerball perfume that smells, if the desription is any indication, delicious. And don't you want to know what the folks at Bremenn Research Labs have up their sleeves? Don't worry: If you impulse buy and have no clue what to do with your tangerine tango eyeliner, Sephora has a slew of new video tutorials for just such an occasion.

And the feature we've all been waiting for: You can pin every last nail file and Kabuki brush to Pinterest. [Sephora]

Why should a staircase only be for getting to the next floor? The modular and portable nature of the Elementstair, which was inspired by water slides and designed by Floris Schoonderbeek, means you can have a stairway in your home that simply gives you a new point of view. Kind of a fancy version of standing on your chair a la Dead Poets Society.

Or you could be boring and have it take you to your loft.

Modular? Yes, but better yet, it's available in literally thousands of RAL colors from Dutch retailer Weltevree. The price is "by request," so you might be buying a rather expensive point of view. But something Schoonderbeek describes as: "redolent with a palpable originality" might be worth investment, right? [Remodelista]

Image: Weltevree

Scientists have uncovered several gene mutations that sharply increase the chances of developing autism. It's the first time researchers have pinpointed a specific genetic component with the spectrum of disorders, which includes Asperger's.

They also found that the risk is higher in older parents, in particular new fathers over 35. The findings are published in three papers in the journal Nature.

A Genetic Autism Roadmap

The mutations are rare and account for a small number of actual cases, which have reached the alarming rate of one in every 88 children, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released last week. Despite the small numbers, the discovery of the mutations is significant because it gives scientists a road map to further explore Autism's biology. Follow-up research, The New York Times reports, could uncover enough rare mutations to account for up to 20 percent of Autism spectrum cases.

Some researchers, however, were more cautious about the significance of the research:

"This is a great beginning, and I'm impressed with the work, but we don't know the cause of these rare mutations, or even their levels in the general population," said Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti of the Institute of Genetic Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, who was not involved in the studies. "I'm not saying it's not worth it to follow up these findings, but I am saying it's going to be a hard slog."

Too Rare to be Coincidence

The three teams looked at DNA taken from blood samples of families in which parents have no signs of autism, but their children developed the disorder. They focused on rare genetic glitches called de novo mutations, which aren't inherited. They happen around the time of conception, are common, and are usually harmless. But these new studies indicate that kids with autism have a slightly higher rate. One team studied 200 people with autism along with parents and siblings without it. Two unrelated children with autism had de novo mutations in the same gene. The scientists say the chances of that being a coincidence are incredibly low—and the chance of the mutations being related to autism risk are "something like 99.9999 percent." The other two teams came up with similar findings.

Older Parents

One group found that de novo mutations were four times more likely to come from DNA from dads rather than moms. They also found that it is more likely as dads get older, which jives with previous research that associates older fathers with the increase in autism cases across the country.

Overall, the implications of the study itself are minor, and developing a treatment or cure based on the findings is an extremely long way off. And it's important to keep in mind that most diseases likely have both an environmental and a genetic component.

"These low frequency genetic links do not explain the majority of the disease," said Michael Skinner, a reproductive biology professor at Washington State University. "[The study is] interesting, but suggests the majority of disease is not explained through genetic abnormalities."

Science is frustratingly incremental, but these papers at least give scientists solid ground for future work. [The New York Times, Nature]

Image: Shutterstock/Aaron Amat

One of the worst things you can hear from you doctor is that you, or a loved one, has "triple negative" breast cancer. It stubbornly refuses to respond to the best treatments available, so doctors have to resort to chemotherapy. It strikes 16 percent of breast cancer patients, most of them younger than 40. But we may finally have figured out how to beat it.

In the largest genetic analysis ever of these types of tumors, scientists have discovered we've been treating them all wrong, for years. By sequencing the DNA of 100 triple negative tumors, they've found that the tumors are vastly different. Which means doctors should be treating them vastly differently—but until now they were mostly treated basically the same way.

No two tumor genomes were even similar, let alone exactly the same.

"Seeing these tumors at a molecular level has taught us we're dealing with a continuum of different types of breast cancer here, not just one," said Steven Jones, a co-author of the study, which is published today in the journal Nature. Jones is a molecular biology and biochemistry professor who leads bioinformatics research at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. "These findings prove the importance of personalizing cancer drug treatment so that it targets the genetic make up of a particular tumour rather than presuming one therapy can treat multiple, similar-looking tumours."

Triple negative breast cancer tumors are characterized by a lack of estrogen, progesterone and herceptin receptors on the surface of their cells. It's a trio of a hormone, a steroid and a protein that's vital for a tumor's responsiveness to drug therapies, which are designed to knock out those receptors. That means doctors throw everything they've got at triple negative breasts cancer: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation: a cocktail of treatments that can be almost worse than the disease itself.

But with this new knowledge that each tumor is unique, researchers hope to tailor-make treatments that will actually work based on patients' genetic mutations, Samuel Aparicio, another co-author and researcher at the BC Cancer Research Center, told me. "This will mean sequencing patients tumors to learn their genetic makeup, initially in the context of a clinical trial of the drugs suggested by the mutations. The longer term impact is that it also provides us with a roadmap for future drug development by suggesting combinations of drugs that need to be developed." Let's hope that "longer term" isn't too far off. [Nature]

This is the study that many of us have been waiting for: exercise combined with caffeine will greatly reduce your risk of skin cancer caused by sun exposure.

Well perhaps not those of us averse to exercise. But scientists in New Jersey have found that mice who logged plenty of hamster wheel time and ingested lots of caffeine had a 62 percent lower incidence of cancer tumors than those who were lazy and remained uncaffeinated. And the volume of the tumors that did develop was 85 percent smaller.

"I believe we may extrapolate these findings to humans and anticipate that we would benefit from these combination treatments as well," said Yao-Ping Lu, an associate research professor of chemical biology and director of skin cancer prevention at the Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy in Piscataway, New Jersey, who presented the findings on Tuesday at the annual American Association for Cancer Research. He believes the key to the cancer fighting combo is that overall, it reduces inflammation.

And even those of you who'd just as soon imbibe your caffeinated beverages without getting up from the couch can take comfort in the findings. Caffeine alone reduced tumors by 27 percent and tumor size by 61 percent. Also exciting is the fact that these mice lost weight despite being fed a high-fat diet. The rodents' "parametrial fat pad" weight decreased by 30 percent without exercise.

Mice that exercised but didn't have caffeine saw 35 percent fewer tumors and 40 percent smaller ones. They also reduced their fat pad by 63 percent.

It's kind of great that we have so many studies to pick and choose from to suit our lifestyle. If you've decided to eat only red meat, relish in this study that shows it makes you happy. If you are a vegetarian, post this study that shows vegetables make you prettier on you're fridge. If you've gone all popcorn, take pleasure in the fact that it's packed with antioxidants. Something for everyone. Hooray science![American Academy of Cancer Research]

Image: Shutterstock/privilege

A new study shows that up to 25 percent of women who have harmless breast tumors undergo invasive cancer treatments anyway, because mammograms don't differentiate between agressive cancers and those that would never cause symptoms.

It might sound weird that some cancers would never develop into full-blown disease—but harmless breast cancers apparently exist. Doctors usually recommend that women begin routine mammograms in their 40s or 50s. And it stands to reason that: better safe than sorry, right? But how early and often they should be done has become controversial in recent years because of the overdiagnosis problem. They can lead to not just an unnecessary (but natural) emotional freak out but also unwarranted chemotherapy and mastectomies.

Norwegian scientists looked at data from nearly 40,000 women with invasive breast cancer in Norway, of whom 7,793 had been diagnosed as part of a screening program that recommended mammograms. They found that between 15 to 25 percent, or between 1,169 and 1,948 women, were overdiagnosed. Based on those numbers, they estimate that for every 2,500 women screened, between 6 and 10 women will be overdiagnosed, treated with surgery, radiation therapy, and possibly chemotherapy without any benefit, and one death would be prevented. The work is published in the April 3 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Lead author Mette Kalager, a visiting scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health and a researcher at the Telemark Hospital in Norway had this to say in a statement:

Mammography might not be appropriate for use in breast cancer screening because it cannot distinguish between progressive and non-progressive cancer. Radiologists have been trained to find even the smallest of tumors in a bid to detect as many cancers as possible to be able to cure breast cancer. However, the present study adds to the increasing body of evidence that this practice has caused a problem for women-diagnosis of breast cancer that wouldn't cause symptoms or death.

They also found that overall, mammography did not reduce late-stage breast cancer cases, which the researchers say would be expected if you figure early detection prevents late-stage disease.

But then there's the study from 2010 that found women's lives could be saved by starting mammograms at 40. What's a breast-owner to do with so much conflicting information? I suppose it's up to us to get as informed as possible and decide for ourselves. And to somehow digest the fact that mammography could save our lives and it could also give us unnecessary mental distress, biopsies, surgeries, chemotherapy and hormone treatments. [Annals of Internal Medicine]

Update: The headline of this post originally read: Mammogram False Positives Lead to Needless Chemotherapy, Mastectomies, and has been updated to reflect the fact that the study was not assessing false positives but overdiagnosis of breast cancers that would have never developed into a health problem for the patient.

Image: Shutterstock/Monkey Business Images

During human (or any mammalian) fertilization, if more than one sperm manages to get inside an egg, there are typically no survivors. A violent competition between the two sperm brings the whole kit and caboodle to a tragic end.

It's called polyspermy. And how human eggs avoid it has been pretty much a mystery until now. Scientists have discovered an enzyme called ovastacin fights off would-be fertilizers when there's already one in the mix.

Polyspermy is a problem because it presents an extra set of chromosomes. So would-be embryos with more than one sperm typically die spontaneously. But if everything is working properly, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found—using mice as a model—that ovastacin kicks out the extra sperm intruder before sudden death has to happen.

The scientists publish their work in the most recent issue of the Journal of Cell Biology. It's the kind of thing that makes you realize how much there still is to discover about our own biology, let alone the rest of the universe. [Journal of Cell Biology]

Image: Burkart, A.D., et al.

Scientists have created the first genetic "atlas" of the human brain, and the result is a very pretty Skittles-esque map of the brain as a rainbow. A brainbow.

It's more than just a fun visual. The atlas reveals a whole new way of organizing the cerebral cortex—the .08-ish-inch-thick sheet of neural tissue that wraps around the brain. This thin envelope contains multiple layers of interconnected neurons with key roles in memory, attention, language, cognition, and consciousness.

Other brain maps organize the brain by differences in tissues and their function. This genetics-based depiction organizes brain activity in a new way, and it could help scientists study age-related changes in brain structure, as well as diseases and disorders associated with cognitive function.

To make the new map, the team of scientists used magnetic resonance imaging to look at the brains of 406 adult twins who were already part of the Vietnam Era Twin Registry, an ongoing study of cognitive aging. Identical twins share 100 percent of their genes and fraternal twins share 50 percent. So by comparing MRIs from sets of twins, the scientists could compare aspects of their cortical structure. They believe the same genes tend to determine the size of each portion (the colored sections), and that different genes determine the size of other portions.

The next step? Researchers will try to figure out which genetic traits are associated with which regions of the cerebral cortex. William Kremen, psychiatry professor at the University of California in San Diego and a lead author in the study, will help develop the gene association studies. The studies will look at single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), or small genetic code variations between individuals. "We'll see how the size of the different regions may be related to cognitive function and other behavioral measures," Kremen wrote in an email.

The work is published in the March 30 issue of the journal Science. [Science]

Image: UC San Diego School of Medicine

Scientists at Princeton University have developed a sensor that could be tattooed onto your tooth, diagnose an infection, and transmit that information to medical professionals.

It could come in handy for military personnel in the field to determine whether a wound has become infected, or in hospitals where patients with weakened immune systems are extra vulnerable to bacteria.

Michael McAlpine and his team at Princeton created the remote chemical sensor starting with graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of carbon. Onto that they incorporated a peptide that had to have a dual function: stick to the graphene and detect bacteria at the single cell level. They found a peptide rich in "aromatic residues," which are apparently sticky, and combined that with another one they isolated from a tropical frog that's super sensitive to three specific bacteria. An RFID incorporated into all of that can communicate alerts about an infection.

McAlpine hopes to commercialize the device. But in this iteration, the whole shebang would likely be scrubbed away as soon as you brushed your teeth. The scientists emphasize that we should focus on concept over functionality at this point. But in lieu of some seriously nasty breath and inevitable tooth decay, seems like this might work better embedded on a non-biological object? Though I'm sure if the researchers can pack all that into a mere tattoo, they can also figure out how to make it stay on for a spell. [Ubergizmo, RSC, Nature Communications]

Image: McAlpine Research Group

Scientists have painstakingly measured 2.7 billion-year-old raindrop fossils from South Africa. The size of the ancient droplets tells the story of how the earth was teeming with microbes when it should have been frozen solid.

Between two and four billion years ago, the sun was 30 percent dimmer than it is today, so really, the earth should have been frozen solid. But we have evidence of rivers and ocean sediments from back then, so something was making the planet warm. The ancient raindrops revealed that it was greenhouse gases—they increased atmospheric pressure, heating up our world.

Here's how the researchers figured all that out.

Hairspray, Latex and Stairwells

A scientist can't just use a barometer to measure the atmospheric pressure of a fossilized droplet. Instead, Roger Buick and Jelte Harnmeijer poured latex over the 2.7 billion-year-old raindrop impressions, which were petrified in volcanic ash found in South Africa. They shipped the latex peels to their lab at the University of Washington in Seattle. There, a high-precision laser scanner measured the droplets.

The size of raindrop impressions gets larger as the velocity of the droplet increases. Higher atmospheric pressure will slow that velocity. The composition of material onto which the raindrops fall also effects the size of the droplets. Previous research showed that raindrops on earth don't exceed a quarter inch in diameter, so the researchers figured that was the largest any of the ancient raindrops could have been, regardless of atmospheric pressure.

In today's atmosphere, the largest raindrops fall at about 30 feet per second. But if the ancient atmosphere was thicker, the speed would have been lower, and the maximum size of imprints left behind would be smaller.

To create a present-day comparison, two other researchers released water droplets of varying sizes 90 feet down an open stairwell onto volcanic ash collected from Hawaii and Iceland. Sanjay Som, lead author on the study, worked with Peter Polivka to coat the raindrop sculptures with liquid plastic and hair spray. This kept the ash molds intact, and then the laser could scan the impressions.

Comparing the two showed that, if the biggest imprints were formed by the largest raindrops, the atmospheric pressure 2.7 billion years ago could have been no more than twice what it is today. And since the largest raindrops were actually few and far between, the pressure was probably the same, or possibly lower. Without a hot sun to create the pressure and heat, they concluded, a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was keeping Earth toasty.

Life on Other Planets

If atmospheric pressure allowed life on a planet that should have been frozen, Som said in a statement, scientists could better estimate the probability of life on the exoplanets currently being discovered.

Setting limits on atmospheric pressure is the first step towards understanding what the atmospheric composition was then. Knowing this will double the known data points that we have for comparison to exoplanets that might support life. Today's Earth and the ancient Earth are like two different planets.

Sometimes it sounds really freaking fun to be a scientist. The raindrop fossil test results appear in the March 28 issue of Nature. [Nature]

Image: NASA

Here's something most of us would rather not consider: Would you rather use a flammable mattress in your child's crib, or use a flame-retardant one—which, in the process of stifling flames, can release enough toxic fumes to risk the lives of everyone else in the house?

That seems to be the quandary presented by research coming out of the American Chemical Society's 243rd national meeting in San Diego. The number one cause of the 10,000 annual fire-related deaths worldwide (and the 3,500 in the USA) is not from burns, but from inhaled toxic gases. Researchers have found that bromine, the most common flame-suppressant chemical added to electronics, carpets, furniture, plastics, crib mattresses, and airline seats, is the best source of those deadly fumes. These halogen-based bromine retardants increase the the amounts of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide released during combustion.

But not all flame-fighters are completely evil. Alternate substances don't carry deadly side effects, according to the findings of researcher Anna Stec, a chemistry lecturer in the Fire Science School of Forensic and Investigative Sciences at the University of Lancashire. Mineral-based formulas had little effect on fire toxicity. Additionally, intumescent agents, which swell when heated to form a barrier that flames can't penetrate, actually reduced the amount of toxic gases released during a fire. The problem for consumers is that most products don't come with labels indicating what chemicals are in them.

This isn't the first time halogen-based retardants have come under fire. Other studies have found them to be toxic even when they're just hanging out in your home un-ignited. Humans can carry elevated levels of these chemicals, which have been associated with learning disabilities and behavior problems. And one 2010 study associated the chemicals with fertility problems. What to do? Pray for no fire? Don't inhale inside your home? Your best bet may be this Green Science Policy Institute's buyer's guide. Three cheers for hippies. [American Chemical Society, Salon]

Image: Flickr/benwatts under Creative Commons license

Jean Paul Gaultier's retrospective of his 40-plus years of fashion design would have been breathtaking even without bizarre talking mannequins. Gaultier himself greeted guests to a press preview party of the exhibit, open at San Francisco's de Young Museum from March 24 through August 19.

But it was the mannequins—chatting, chanting, reciting poetry—that struck awe in the crowd, and not just because several were wearing the signature cone brassier that Gaultier famously fitted on Madonna during her 1990 Blond Ambition tour. Video projections cast faces onto the mannequins, which were created by Denis Marleau and Stephanie Jasmin of UBU Compagnie de Creation during the retrospective's first stop in Montreal last fall. The technology took the exhibit to another level, but it's not necessarily what drives the enfant terrible behind "The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk."

As Gaultier told Refinery 29, he's not a techie dude:

I have an iPhone, but only to send texts. I don't like that if someone is phoning me, I will be disturbed. I cannot do two things at one time. I have no iPod...I'm too distracted. Now, images are everywhere and I love it, but there are almost too many images. When I watch TV, I can just keep zapping all the time! But I don't want to be that excited. Even the Internet. It's just non-stop. I like to think alone with my brain and not over-communicate.

So where do Gaultier's passions lie? Well, there's the cone bra, a motif seen throughout the exhibit. In fact, Gaultier has been making cone bras since he was six years old, starting with on for his teddy bear, Nana.

After San Francisco, the show heads to the Fundación Mapfre - Instituto de Cultura, in Madrid, Spain, for September 26 through November 18, 2012. If you're in either city, pay a visit—the show is a must-see whether you're a fashion enthusiast or you just want to hear a mannequin belt out a Gregorian chant.

Images: Kristen Philipkoski

Lab coats: they're white, mostly plain, boxy. Functional, and ultimately sartorially boring. But ask any doctor or lab tech about their lab coat and they will chat up a storm. Often about how they can't wait to ditch them—if they haven't already.

Lab coats were never meant to be pretty; doctors started wearing them around the turn of the 20th century for the scientific cred. Until then, physicians were associated with quackery, so any association with hard science was desirable.

And surprisingly enough, it works. We want cardiologists and E.R. docs to look official and brainy. It's comforting. A 2004 study showed that 56 percent of people surveyed thought doctors should wear coats.

But that doesn't necessarily means the doctors themselves agree. Dr. Robyn Heister, for example, is an emergency room physician in San Diego. She hates lab coats. "I never wear them in the E.R. because I hate the fit. But I know I should because I still get told a million times a shift that I'm too young to be a doctor (which, by the way is SO not true) or people assume I'm the nurse."

She's on the hunt for an attractive and comfortable version. She's considering Koi's Michela model. Or maybe she should look for inspiration from TV M.D. Ben Casey, who sported some interesting asymmetrical styles in the '60s (the elder doctor seems to be advocating for his more traditional coat here).

She probably won't quit them altogether, though. Not after yet another lost stethoscope. Carrying tools is, in fact, a big reason why many doctors wear lab coats. "It makes it easy to carry stuff around like a stethoscope, pens, pads, ophthalmoscope," says Dr. Melvin Ross, a cardiologist in Pembroke Pines, Florida. It also protects clothes against germy patients and whatever fluids might be hurled in his direction.

Speaking of which, the next time you visit with an MD, you might want to bring some extra Tide just in case. It's crucial that a physician regularly wash his coat (which Dr. Ross does religiously). While the American Medical Association has stopped short of banning them outright, some institutions have already exiled the white coats for being serious germ risks. The Scottish National Health Service outlawed them 2008; medical professionals there must wear color-coded scrubs. The Mayo Clinic requires business attire and forbids lab coats.

And it's not just individual hospitals or even countries; entire medical fields have done away with lab coats over the years. Remember that study that showed we want our doctors in their dress whites? Only 24 percent of doctors agreed, and only 1 in 8 actually wears them. That low number might partly be influenced by pediatricians. "Lab coats scare kids!" a pediatrician in Marin County, California, told me. So she and her fellow kid doctors never wear them.

Dentistry is another medical field where lab coat enthusiasm has waned. Nava Fathi, a dentist in Santa Clara County, California told me: "My husband and I wear scrubs to work... Lab coats are "out" in dentistry; most clinicians wear scrubs and/or wear the lab coats ONLY for consultations (they don't wear them when they're doing dentistry)."

Oh, and one last insider tip for the next time you end up in the ER: you see a doctor in a short lab coat? He or she is a medical student. Who is still a perfectly trustworthy care provider! But now you know the "secret" code: you don't graduate to a long coat until you've finished your medical training.

So what does this hidden language of lab coats teach us? Everyone, even those proclaiming to be uninterested in fashion, carefully considers their sartorial choices. Because they know that no piece of clothing is purely functional.

Uniform is a weekly column exploring the relationship between geeks, fashion and fashionable geeks.

Images: Conor Lawless/Flickr under Creative Commons license; TVAcres

You're visiting a friend out of state with your cockapoo Curly, and your pound-size chocolate bar has gone missing. Curly has a chocolate mustache and is not looking altogether well. Panic! It's OK, go ahead. Because a new app called Press Panic provides an emergency-vet-finding, one-button app.

Dr. John Porter of Kirkman Road Veterinary Clinic in Orlando, Florida, came up with the idea for Press Panic because so many vacationers in his town bring their pets along, but dont know where to go when their furry friend gets sick.

It also works for people! If you have a serious emergency, it's best to call 911. But if you need to find an ER and the situation allows you to forgo a potentially expensive ambulance ride, Press Panic will find the closest facility.

It's available on iPhone and Android; for people hospitals, the app is free; add the vet information and pay a one-time $2.00 fee. After pinpointing your location with GPS, it scans a private database of 30,000 hospitals and vets around the country and spits out the ones closest to you. It covers all 50 states plus Puerto Rico.

"Every single hospital has detailed latitude and longitude coordinates which triangulate around users' exact GPS location. One press gives you a list of hospitals, addresses, a quick-call option and a quick-directions option," Press Panic developer Austin Allen told me.

Even if you're at a park just a few miles off your regular stomping grounds, the app could shave minutes off your trip to the closest ER—and that could save lives. [PressPanic]

Image: Shutterstock/Photosani

Scientists have developed a test that detects whether the large, misshapen, mutant cells that indicate you're due for an acute myocardial infarction are circulating through your bloodstream. That's right: There's a heart attack test. And it works.

Researchers from two Scripps science institutes in San Diego found that "circulating endothelial cells" taken from recent heart attack patients were big and deformed and often had multiple nuclei. They think the patients likely had the malformed cells before their cardiac episode, and that testing for them could be an urgent red flag. Dr. Eric Topol, the study's principal investigator says:

The ability to diagnose an imminent heart attack has long been considered the holy grail of cardiovascular medicine ... (it's) an important discovery that may help to change the future of cardiovascular medicine.

The researchers looked at 50 patients who had shown up in emergency rooms with heart attacks at four hospitals in San Diego. More than 2.5 million people in the United States do the same every year: Their arteries are abruptly and completely blocked by the buildup of fatty choleserol, leading to a massive heart attack and likely sudden death. It's what happened to Tim Russert in 2008 when he was only 56.

They hope the test will be available in a year or two. The trick would be knowing when you need to take it. But a positive result might be one way to get Uncle Jack to step away from the rib-eye. Though probably not. [Science Translational Medicine]

The Creators Project brought its extremely noisy, techie, and arty show to San Francisco this past weekend. The most exciting exhibit by far was the one that transformed you into a giant bird—or a flock of birds, depending on where you were standing.

Chris Milk's "The Treachery of Sanctuary" loomed at the back of the Herbst Pavillion, with three giant 16-foot by 22-foot tall screens in a triptych format showing giant birdlike shadows. Upon closer inppection it became clear the shadows were being created by people standing behind the screens, with a huge reflecting pool separating them from the screen.

Motion-sensing Kinects detected peoples' movement. In the first panel, the top part of your body appeared to decompose into a flock of birds. In the second panel, birds swooped down, tearing your shadow apart creating a sort of violent but irresistible scene. The third panel was the most impressive: waving your arms gave your shadow thrillingly huge and powerful-looking avian wings. Milk also created this awesome finale involving beach balls imbedded with specially-programmed LEDs for Arcade Fire at Coachella last year.

Check out the rest of the images from the weekend-long Creators Project event, which was a collaboration between VICE and Intel and included a giant 40-foot by 40-foot light and (very loud) sound cube called Origin (which you may have seen at Coachella last year), a short and ear-drum-busting film Life on Mars Revisited featuring outtakes from footage recorded by Mick Rock and re-imagined by Barney Clay, and performances by Zola Jesus, Shabazz Palaces and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, among others. The underlying goal of the event seem to be to find new ways of experiencing jarringly loud noises. I think by the time the Yeah Yeah Yeahs went on around 10:45, I could feel the sound shaking my kidneys.

The Treachery of Sanctuary
Image: Jason Henry

Overscan
Image: Jason Henry

Image: Bryan Derballa

Social Print Studio teamed up with engineers from Intel Labs to create a Kinect-powered real-time Instagram installation called #Creators Live. Visitors could scroll through Instagram photos projected on the wall and add their own shots to the display by tagging them #creators.
Image: Bryan Derballa

"Six Forty by Four Eighty" by Zigelbaum + Coelho The squares are 4-inch by 4-inch "pixels" that can be arranged like magnets on a refrigerator and change color when you touch them. Continue to make contact and you can transform any other pixel you touch simultaneously into that same color. You can even do it by holding hands with your friend and having them touch one.
Image: Jason Henry

"Six Forty by Four Eighty" by Zigelbaum + Coelho
Image: Jason Henry

Origin
United Visual Artist's light sculpture is the largest responsive installation built to date. Its fluid light movements, accompanied by a foreboding score by Scanner, made the work seem like a noisy beast.
Image: Bryan Derballa

People waited in a very long line in the cold San Francisco wind to be devoured by the beast like so.
Image: Bryan Derballa

The young man in this video looks like he's riding a Segway. But Yusuf Akturkoglu was paralized after falling from a horse five years ago, and he's being mobilized by an amazing device invented by Turkish scientists. It's going to change lives.

It's called the Tek Robotic Mobilization Device, and it not only allows people who can't walk get around more independently than any device has before, but it also helps them stand up on their own, which is crucial for maintaining basic health functions in people who have spinal cord injuries.

Crucial Standing Assistance

Instead of entering from the front like a normal wheelchair, people using the Tek RMD enter from the back of the device. That way they don't have to hoist themselves with a momentum that can be dangerous and is next to impossible to do alone. By attaching a thick padded strap around the hips, Yusuf maneuvers himself into the Tek RMD on his own. The device uses a suspension system that balances the weight so he can stand up with just a gentle pull. Standing for an hour or more every day is important for people who have lost movement in their legs; without the weight-bearing effect of standing, they can develop cardiovascular problems, brittle bones, pressure sores not to mention the psychological importance of eye-to-eye interpersonal contact.

Independence

In the video, Yusuf calls the device to his bedside with a remote-control, gets himself out of bed, goes grocery shopping, maneuvers around a bookstore, and even does some things in the bathroom that we thankfully don't observe to completion. But these these abilities that most of us take for granted every day are key to the emotional well-being of paraplegic people. The ability to squat down and easily come back to standing is key. And while standing, Yusef's hands are free to carry groceries or do whatever else he might need them to. Before trying out the Tek RMD, Yusuf, who was a student before his injury, rarely left his home where he lives with his parents.

Smallest Dimensions

The makers of Tek RMD says it's the most compact device of its kind, which allows Yusuf to navigate crowded grocery aisles, libraries, and who knows, Coachella, maybe? All without knocking into the people and things around him. Users still need ramps in place of stairs, but the device eliminates the need for special bathroom stalls and other facilities that allow space for bulky wheelchairs.

The Tek RMD comes in five sizes. and is still undergoing clinical trials. Here's hoping it's on the market stat. UPDATE: It will be on the market in Turkey this week, and the company is looking for outlets in Europe and the United States, where it will cost about $15,000. Here's hoping insurance will cover it. [Tek RMD and Reuters]

The young man in this video looks like he's riding a Segway. But Yusuf Akturkoglu was paralized after falling from a horse five years ago, and he's being mobilized by an amazing device invented by Turkish scientists. It's going to change lives.

It's called the Tek Robotic Mobilization Device, and it not only allows people who can't walk get around more independently than any device has before, but it also helps them stand up on their own, which is crucial for maintaining basic health functions in people who have spinal cord injuries.

Crucial Standing Assistance

Instead of entering from the front like a normal wheelchair, people using the Tek RMD enter from the back of the device. That way they don't have to hoist themselves with a momentum that can be dangerous and is next to impossible to do alone. By attaching a thick padded strap around the hips, Yusuf maneuvers himself into the Tek RMD on his own. The device uses a suspension system that balances the weight so he can stand up with just a gentle pull. Standing for an hour or more every day is important for people who have lost movement in their legs; without the weight-bearing effect of standing, they can develop cardiovascular problems, brittle bones, pressure sores not to mention the psychological importance of eye-to-eye interpersonal contact.

Independence

In the video, Yusuf calls the device to his bedside with a remote-control, gets himself out of bed, goes grocery shopping, maneuvers around a bookstore, and even does some things in the bathroom that we thankfully don't observe to completion. But these these abilities that most of us take for granted every day are key to the emotional well-being of paraplegic people. The ability to squat down and easily come back to standing is key. And while standing, Yusef's hands are free to carry groceries or do whatever else he might need them to. Before trying out the Tek RMD, Yusuf, who was a student before his injury, rarely left his home where he lives with his parents.

Smallest Dimensions

The makers of Tek RMD says it's the most compact device of its kind, which allows Yusuf to navigate crowded grocery aisles, libraries, and who knows, Coachella, maybe? All without knocking into the people and things around him. Users still need ramps in place of stairs, but the device eliminates the need for special bathroom stalls and other facilities that allow space for bulky wheelchairs.

The Tek RMD comes in five sizes. and is still undergoing clinical trials. Here's hoping it's on the market stat. UPDATE: It will be on the market in Turkey this week, and the company is looking for outlets in Europe and the United States, where it will cost about $15,000. Here's hoping insurance will cover it. [Tek RMD and Reuters]

Our intrepid reporter Mr. Mat Honan spent some time in Kentucky this past week, and he said the weather was incredibly, unseasonably hot. It was in the 80s in March. Not normal. What the heck?

So we asked our friends at The Weather Channel: please explain? We were hoping they'd say something reasonable, like, about ocean currents or jet streams or something that seemed scientific and vaguely comforting. Anything but "I'm scared." But that's basically what we got from Stu Ostro, senior director of weather communications at The Weather Channel:

In recent years I've documented hundreds of extreme and/or unusual weather events nationally and globally, but this one is even freaking me out with the nature of the air mass, clouds and downpours yesterday and today, and how the sky has looked so tropical, where I live in the Atlanta area – in mid-March. It's surreal.

Surreal!

But it's not just the heat that's got his lid a bit flipped. It's how early in the season it's happening, how high the temps are, how persistent it is, and how far north it's reaching. But there must be some reasonable explanation, right?

This remarkable warmth is associated with a bulging ridge of high pressure aloft that is exceptionally strong and long-lasting for March. While natural factors are contributing to this warm spell, given the nature of it and its context with other extreme weather events and patterns in recent years there is a high probability that global warming is having an influence upon its extremity.

It's a bad combination that does not seem to bode well for locations already experiencing sweltering summers.

Image: Shutterstock/Alejandro Medoza

Scientists at Clemson University have rigged an HP Deskjet 500 printer to make microscope slides full of living cells. It spits out a a special cell-packed ink from the printer's standard cartridge.

The process creates cells with temporarily permeability in the cell walls, and the holes in the cells are large enough to allow fluorescent molecules to be injected. That glowing stuffing illuminates the membranes, so researchers can get a look at what's happening inside the cells. When studying a heart, for example, the technique can be used to examine how the cardiac muscles respond to mechanical force and fluid shear.

Follow the step by step instructions in the video below, and you can do it too! You'll need a laminar flow cabinet, a sonicator and a centrifuge. Oh, and an old printer. If you happen to have access to a biology lab, you're set. But even if you don't, it's intriguing to watch the intricate MacGyver process of cleaning, prepping and completely changing the function of an HP DeskJet 500. Not to mention the adorably camera-shy scientists describing the advantages of the technique.

"We first had the idea for this method when we wanted to be able to visualize changes in the cytoskeleton arrangement due to applied forces on cells," said paper-author Dr. Delphine Dean. She said other researchers have been using this method to print cells onto slides, but that they have only recently discovered that printing the cells causes the disruption in their membranes for a few hours. Creating temporary pores allow researchers to put molecules inside of cells that wouldn't otherwise fit, and study how the cells react.

The video is part of a publication in the Journal of Visualized Experiments, A.K.A. JoVE, which is fascinating in its own right. Scientists who want to publish in JoVE must provide both text and video. Katherine Scott, director of science communications at JoVE, told me it's the only peer-reviewed, PubMed-indexed science journal to publish all of its content in both formats.

It's a powerful way to present research! Even if you may not have the degree that allows you to understand the terminology and methods completely, it's much more accessible than trying to read a scientific paper. And the explanation of contributors in the video above has so much more impact than looking at a meaningless long list of names in text. [JoVE]