Meet The 70-Ton Titanosaur

A team member is dwarfed by a bone of the gigantic dinosaur excavated in Patagonia., Courtesy of Dr. Alejandro Otero

In January 2016, the Museum added another must-see exhibit to its world-famous fossil halls: a cast of a 122-foot-long dinosaur. This species is so new that it has not yet been formally named by the paleontologists who discovered it.Paleontologists suggest this dinosaur, a giant herbivore that belongs to a group known as titanosaurs, weighed in at around 70 tons. The species lived in the forests of today’s Patagonia about 100 to 95 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period, and is one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered. The remains were excavated in the Patagonian desert region of

Credit: American Museum of Natural History

Argentina by a team from  the Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio led by José Luis Carballido and Diego Pol, who received his Ph.D. at the American Museum of Natural History. The Titanosaur cast, which is exhibited in the Wallach Orientation Center on the fourth floor, replaced a life-sized—but, by comparison, diminutive—fleshed-out model of a juvenile Barosaurus that had been on display since the completion of the fourth floor in June 1996. The new, much larger occupant grazes the gallery’s approximately 19-foot-high ceilings, and, at 122-foot, is just a bit too long for its new home. Instead, its neck and head extend out towards the elevator banks, welcoming visitors to the “dinosaur” floor. One femur found at the excavation site will be among five original fossils on temporary view with The Titanosaur. Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/

• Contacts and sources: American Museum of Natural History.

Read More........→January 17, 2016

From science fiction to reality – a sonic tractor beam

UK researchers have invented a sonic tractor beam that can move small objects up to 40cm. Asier Marzo, PHD student and lead author, levitating a polystyrene ball with soundwaves.

Tractor beams are mysterious rays that can grab and lift objects. The concept was created by science-fiction writers, but has since come to fascinate scientists and engineers. A team of researchers at the Universities of Sussex and Bristol, in collaboration with tech firm Ultrahaptics, have demonstrated a working tractor beam that uses high-amplitude soundwaves to generate an "acoustic hologram" able to pick up and move small objects. This technique, published yesterday in Nature Communications, could be developed for a wide range of applications. For example, a sonic production line could transport delicate objects and assemble them, without any physical contact. Or a miniature version could grip and transport drug capsules or microsurgical instruments through living tissue. Sriram Subramanian, Professor of Informatics at the University of Sussex and co-founder of Ultrahaptics, explained: "In our device we manipulate objects in mid-air and seemingly defy gravity. We can individually control dozens of loudspeakers to tell us an optimal solution to generate an acoustic hologram that can manipulate multiple objects in real-time without contact." The researchers used an array of 64 miniature loudspeakers, driven at 40Khz, to create high-pitched and high-intensity sound waves to levitate a spherical bead (4mm in diameter) made of expanded polystyrene. The whole system consumes 9 Watts of power. The tractor beam works by surrounding the object with high-intensity sound, creating a force
field that keeps the objects in place. By controlling the output of the loudspeakers with extreme precision, an object can be either held in place, moved or rotated. Asier Marzo, PhD student and the lead author, said: "It was an incredible experience the first time we saw the object held in place by the tractor beam. All my hard work has paid off. It's brilliant." Bruce Drinkwater, Professor of Ultrasonics in the University of Bristol's Department of Mechanical Engineering, added: "We all know that soundwaves can have a physical effect. But here we have managed to control the sound to a degree never previously achieved." The team have shown that three different shapes of acoustic force fields work as tractor beams. The first is an acoustic force field that resembles a pair of fingers or tweezers; the second is an acoustic vortex, with objects becoming trapped at the core; the third is best described as a high-intensity cage that surrounds objects and holds them in place from all directions. Previous work on acoustic studies had to surround the object with loudspeakers, which limits the extent of movement and restricts many applications. Last year, the University of Dundee presented the concept of a tractor beam, but no objects were held in the ray. The team is now designing different variations of this system: a much bigger version with a different working principle that aims to levitate a soccer ball from a distance of 10 metres; and a smaller version, targeted at manipulating tiny particles inside the human body.From science fiction to reality – a sonic tractor beam

Read More........→November 27, 2015

First protein microfibre developed

Researchers at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering have broken new ground in the development of proteins that form specialised fibres used in medicine and nanotechnology. For as long as scientists have been able to create new proteins that are capable of self-assembling into fibres, their work has taken place on the nanoscale. For the first time, this achievement has been realised on the microscale a leap of magnitude in size that presents significant new opportunities for using engineered protein fibres. Jin Kim Montclare, an associate professor of chemical and bimolecular/engineering at the NYU School of Engineering, led a group of researchers who set out to design nanoscale proteins bound with the cancer therapeutic curcumin. They successfully created a novel, self-assembling nanoscale protein, including a hydrophobic pore capable of binding small molecules. After incubating the fibres with curcumin, the protein not only continued to assemble, but did so to a degree that the fibres crossed the diameter barrier from the nanoscale to the microscale, akin to the diameter of collagen or spider silk. “This was a surprising and thrilling achievement,” said Montclare, explaining that this kind of diameter increase in the presence of small molecules is unprecedented. “A microscale fibre that is capable of delivering a small molecule, whether it be a therapeutic compound or other material, is a major step forward,” she said. Montclare said that biomaterials embedded with small molecules could be used to construct dual-purpose scaffolds for tissue engineering or to deliver certain drugs more efficiently, especially those that are less effective in an aqueous environment. The team was able to observe the fibres in three dimensions as they used microscopy and to confirm that the curcumin, which fluoresces when bound to structural protein, was distributed homogeneously throughout the fibre. Source: The Asian Age

Read More........→November 19, 2014

Customized 3D Printer now able to print synthetic tissues

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Tissue replication has now become a reality. Scientists from Oxford University built a programmable printer which can print out synthetic tissues. The fuel that creates the tissues is formulated by water droplets that are held in a liquid type film, and then take on the characteristics of a living cell. Looking at the artificial tissue, even though their properties are the similar, their appearance is not the same as an actual tissue.

Patients who are in need of new tissue can now turn to this 3D invention, and have their body repaired using this device. The printed tissues have no genetic components, so it can’t copy itself however this will make imitation tissue synthesis an easier matter to deal with. "We aren't trying to make materials that faithfully resemble tissues but rather structures that can carry out the functions of tissues. We've shown that it is possible to create networks of tens of thousands connected droplets. The droplets can be printed with protein pores to form pathways through the network that mimic nerves and are able to transmit electrical signals from one side of a network to the other," said professor Hagan Bayley of Oxford University's Department of Chemistry, and one of the authors of the study, in a press release. Water droplets, which come from the one of a kind printer, built at Oxford University, can actually be programmed to fold on their own. Although droplets are 5 times larger than a cell, researchers made it clear that smaller ones could be in existence later on. Voice of Russia, Nature World News, Source: Voice Of Russia

Read More........→September 18, 2014

Russian scientists break ground in new asteroid discovery

A new name has appeared in the registry of minor planets. Researchers at the Ussuriysky Astrophysics Observatory of the Far Eastern chapter of the Russian Academy of Scientists have discovered a new asteroid. The Russian scientists claim that they were lucky to have found such a discovery. The unique discovery was made possible thanks to the Hamilton system telescope, the most powerful in the Far East. That equipment was installed at the observatory last fall. For the Ussuriysky scientists the discovery of the asteroid is a real joy, as it was the first time that specialists of that observatory have discovered a new space object among other objects in the Asteroid Belt. "We studied the space guest for several nights before coming to the sensational conclusion that that asteroid was unknown to the world", said Alexey Matkin, one of the authors of the discovery, in his interview to the Voice of Russia. "An asteroid is a common object which poses no threat to our civilization. At present time the orbital data regarding that asteroid is being studied in order to map a more precise orbit. It is the first asteroid to be discovered in the Far East and specifically at our astrophysics observatory". The size of the new asteroid does not exceed hundreds of meters. The Harvard International Minor Planet Center has already confirmed its discovery. The space stranger has received its own number in the catalogue, which has a registry of four and a half thousand minor space objects. Based on the unique number which contains numbers and letters of the Latin alphabet, one can easily determine when this or that asteroid was discovered, explains Sergey Smirnov, a researcher at the main astronomical observatory in Pulkovo and vice-president of the Astro-geodetic Union of Russia. "First of all a preliminary serial number is obtained. Its first four digits represent the calendar year. In our case it is 2014. Then follow Latin letters that reflect a two-week period during the year. The entire year is divided into 24 such time intervals. That is followed by digits that reflect the serial number inside that time interval. Only after this preliminary serial number an asteroid is assigned its permanent name. By that time a few decades can pass by. The majority of asteroids only have preliminary serial numbers and have no permanent name". Today, scientists discover up to 200 minor planets per year and only a small fraction of those discoveries are made by Russian researchers. The fact that the discovery was made in the Ussuriysky observatory is somewhat unexpected. Until recently the researchers at the observatory dealt with completely different issues, continues Sergey Smirnov. "The Ussuriysky observatory was initially set up to observe the sun and the influence of the solar radiation on life on our planet. It is good that the subjects covered by the observatory were extended and astro-metric research was added. That was why the fact that it was at that observatory that the new asteroid was discovered is such a big joy for our entire scientific community". The new asteroid could possibly allow us to solve more mysteries of our Universe. The Russian scientist believes that it is necessary to determine what family that specific asteroid belongs to. "Sometimes asteroid families are formed as a result of space catastrophes when various objects of the solar system clash with each other. Otherwise, if an asteroid passes closely to a large space object, such as Jupiter or Mars, dramatic changes in the orbit or even destruction can take place. In the distant past, billions of years ago in the early days of the history of our Solar system, such formation of asteroid families was especially powerful. But today we can often see the details of that stone-crushing in the gradual drifting apart of the objects of the same family". By the way, today the world astrophysics community is fighting to resolve another space mystery. The astronomers of the European Southern Observatory have managed to literally dissect the body of the Itokawa asteroid discovered in 1998. Thanks to extra-precise measurements the scientists have discovered that its various segments have different a density and structure. Despite the fact that the research continues, very few discoveries still have a great practical meaning, including the issue of fighting a potential asteroid threat. Milena Faustova, Source: Article

Read More........→March 19, 2014