science – Page 3 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on July 24, 2012 by MOTW Admin

‘FRANKEN-JELLY’ THE JELLYFISH MADE FROM THE HEART CELLS OF A RAT

This 'jellyfish' was created using the heart cells of a rat.

This is just incredible.

Scientists and researchers are creating new things all the time to help us better understand the way our world works but two guys in-particular, bioengineers John Dabiri and Kevin Kit Parker, have made something pretty unique using only the heart cells from a rat, some silicon and, with just a dash of electricity, have birthed a creation they’ve dubbed “Franken-jelly”.

Watch it in action below:

Wired Science writes:

Now Frankenstein can have a pet jellyfish. A team of scientists has taken the heart cells of a rat, arranged them on a piece of rubbery silicon, added a jolt of electricity, and created a “Franken-jelly.” Just like a real jellyfish, the artificial jelly swims around by pumping water in and out of its bell-shaped body. Researchers hope the advance can someday help engineers design better artificial hearts and other muscular organs.

Young moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita), which are usually between 10 and 12 cm wide, swim rhythmically. First, they flex their muscles quickly and all at once, expelling water as they take on a dome shape. Then, slowly, their body relaxes and flattens, triggering another round of muscle contractions. Researchers knew which cells helped jellyfish move, and how they work together to push and pull water. What they wanted to find out was how best to recreate this behavior using materials available in the lab.

Bioengineers John Dabiri from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and Kevin Kit Parker from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University adopted a motto: Copy nature, but not too much. “Some engineers build things out of concrete, copper and steel—we build things out of cells,” says Parker.

The duo and their colleagues stenciled out the ideal jellyfish shape on silicon, a material that would be sturdy but flexible, much like the jellyfish itself. They then coached rat muscle cells to grow in parallel bands on the silicon and encased the cells with a stretchy material called elastomer. To get their artificial jellyfish, or medusoid, swimming, the researchers submerged it in a salty solution and ran an electric current through the water, jump-starting the rat cells. The mimic propelled itself rapidly in the water,swimming as effectively as a real jellyfish, the researchers report online today in Nature Biotechnology.

IS TIME TRAVEL CLOSE TO A REALITY?

Have we discovered the key to time travel?

I mention all the time how the scientists of Earth are making major breakthroughs and discoveries daily, well today is no exception!

A NASA-funded researcher at the University of Iowa has found in the Earth’s atmosphere what can only be described as ‘portals’, and they may actually have the ability to allow humans to travel through space AND time!

NASA writes:

A favorite theme of science fiction is “the portal”–an extraordinary opening in space or time that connects travelers to distant realms. A good portal is a shortcut, a guide, a door into the unknown. If only they actually existed….

It turns out that they do, sort of, and a NASA-funded researcher at the University of Iowa has figured out how to find them.

“We call them X-points or electron diffusion regions,” explains plasma physicist Jack Scudder of the University of Iowa. “They’re places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, creating an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the sun’s atmosphere 93 million miles away.”

Observations by NASA’s THEMIS spacecraft and Europe’s Cluster probes suggest that these magnetic portals open and close dozens of times each day. They’re typically located a few tens of thousands of kilometers from Earth where the geomagnetic field meets the onrushing solar wind. Most portals are small and short-lived; others are yawning, vast, and sustained. Tons of energetic particles can flow through the openings, heating Earth’s upper atmosphere, sparking geomagnetic storms, and igniting bright polar auroras.

NASA is planning a mission called “MMS,” short for Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, due to launch in 2014, to study the phenomenon. Bristling with energetic particle detectors and magnetic sensors, the four spacecraft of MMS will spread out in Earth’s magnetosphere and surround the portals to observe how they work.

Just one problem: Finding them. Magnetic portals are invisible, unstable, and elusive. They open and close without warning “and there are no signposts to guide us in,” notes Scudder.

Actually, there are signposts, and Scudder has found them.

Read more and watch a video explanation at NASA.gov

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Guest Blogger

CHICKEN BORN WITHOUT EGG!

This story flips science, and the age old question of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” right on it’s head!

The chick shown above was born out of its’ mother alive and hopping around, not inside an egg which, as we all know, is not how chickens are supposed to be born.

BBC news writes:

A Sri Lanka hen has given birth to a chick without an egg, in a new twist on the age-old question of whether the chicken or the egg came first.

Instead of passing out of the hen’s body and being incubated outside, the egg was incubated in the hen for 21 days and then hatched inside the hen.

The chick is fully formed and healthy, although the mother has died.

The government veterinary officer in the area said he had never seen anything like it before.

PR Yapa, the chief veterinary officer of Welimada, where it took place, examined the hen’s carcass.

He found that the fertilised egg had developed within the hen’s reproductive system, but stayed inside the hen’s body until it hatched.

1ST EVER ANIMAL W/ ARTIFICIAL DNA!

Everyday we take just one step closer to being gods.

Today is no exception.

The BBC writes:

Researchers say they have created the first ever animal with artificial information in its genetic code.

The technique, they say, could give biologists “atom-by-atom control” over the molecules in living organisms.

One expert the BBC spoke to agrees, saying the technique would be seized upon by “the entire biology community”.

The work by a Cambridge team, which used nematode worms, appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The worms – from the species Caenorhabditis elegans – are 1mm long, with just a thousand cells in their transparent bodies.

What makes the newly created animals different is that their genetic code has been extended to create biological molecules not known in the natural world.