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Search Result for: nature Cool
It's pretty interesting to see how a plant, can actually move fast enough to trap a fly. I would definitely get one of these in my home. Simply love it! Nature is always full of surprises.
This video was filmed on August 13, 2008, in San Luis Potosi. It is a really cool optical illusion of the sun, which makes the sky look like the beautiful aurora borealis! Enjoy!
One of nature's curiosities. This little plant, doesn't like to be touched. At all! When you do, the leaves, fold, like it's shy or something. Brilliant!
This little fellow makes a hunting falcon look like a first-timer. Look at it zig-zag through the grass while the falcon gets only a face full of dirt. Enjoy the action!
Funny
A tree can have a pretty negative impact on your health. That is, if it hits you when falling. Proof of concept, is this video, where 2 dudes try to down a tree. Unfortunately for them, the tree fought back hard
In America even the nature despises president Bush. This bird got the lucky chance of pooping on one of the most important men in the world.
Ouch
You really need some brains to do this! You get two of your smartest friends to sit on a tree branch with you and then, using a saw, you cut the branch
Amazing
Here's a spectacular landing of a tornado. Too bad that it wreck's a house while on the ground. But nature is both violent and beautiful.
Seeing nature at work is pretty much amazing! For example this octopus cand go through a 1 inch hole without braking a sweat! Wow!
Here's an amazing event that was cought on camera by local TV stations: two water spouts (tornados over water) formed and a helicopter was there to film them. P.s: Look at that boat how close it came to being ripped to shreds!
This video was captured by a nature research vessel south-west of the Japanese coast. The fish flew for 45 seconds, before going back in the water, surpassing the 42 seconds that was registered in the '20s by an American researcher.
It's amazing to see evolution in action! Let's drink a beer for Darwin, because he deserves it!
![]() Here's a cool phenomenon which occurred on 11/07, Wednesday, in the basin of Campos-RJ, 90Km off the coast of the beach of São Tomé. This is simply an incredible phenomenon, and you must watch this video, as it's unlikely you've seen it before
An amazing fight between lions, buffaloes and crocodiles. It all starts when the lions catch a baby buffalo. The next thing they know, their fighting over it with crocodiles. An to top it all off, even after winning the baby, the herd of buffaloes comes back to reclaim its lost son, chasing and hitting the lions. Watch nature in action!
Nature can seem very odd sometimes. But just because you're high up on the evolution scale, it doesn't guarantee that you are the same on the food chain. Really amazing!
Technology and Health News
Cancer threatens the conservation of some wild species because it represents one of the top causes of death. This was also recently featured on the Discovery Channel.
Cancer affects some animals with the same effect as in human beings, and could be the cause of extinction of some wild species. The researchers say the Society of Preservation of Fauna and Flora of New York have found an increase in cancer cases in wild animals in recent years.
According to their findings, published in Nature Reviews Cancer, the species most affected are those at risk of extinction, like the Tasmanian devil, a small marsupial carnivore, already decimated in the late nineties by a rare form of transmissible cancer (the devil facial tumor).
The cause is unknown, but it has been shown that malignant cells are able to spread among the samples and through bites during fights. To save the species, biologists are now isolating infected animals in zoos or reserves.
Denise McAloose and Alisa Newton, authors of the study, have investigated the possible causes of cancer in different species, and have found a correlation between cancer and pollution. For example, for the living beluga in the estuary of the St. Lawrence River (Canada), a form of bowel cancer is the second leading cause of death. The culprit could be an organic compound (a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon that is found in oil, but also in municipal waste), already known to be carcinogenic for our species.
Small robots that walk on water like insects? The kitchen table, the walls of a room or the arms of an armchair that are self-cleaning? Two phenomena that Xiao Cheng Zeng, a professor of chemistry at University of Nebraska in Lincoln (USA), considers possible in the near future, and based on the same characteristic: super hidrofobia.
Thanks to the computational performance of the super computer of the Riken Institute in Japan, the researcher is able to reproduce the conditions that give the area the property is to "roll" away the drops of water.
In nature this phenomenon is observed on the bristles of caterpillars or on lotus flowers, and allows insects that often are seen on ponds slip skate on water. As the authors of the study reported the caterpillars or insects skaters get the super hydrophobia surface through a "two-tier" surface which means a waxy base on which there are microscopic structures like hair, often covered in turn by smaller "hair".
These gradients decrease the surface area in contact with the drop of water. The result is that the drop rolls instead of sliding, as it would be a hydrophobic surface.
The molecule slows the proliferation of tumor cells while giving the time needed to repair the damage to their DNA. The discovery, made by Italian researchers IEA, is published in Nature.
The secret of immortality of cancer stem cells - those that feed it and cause relapses because they're immune to chemotherapy - was unveiled. Their strength is the p21 protein that slows the proliferation, giving them the time needed to repair damage to DNA. In practice, it is as if these cells were able to rejuvenate indefinitely: no age, and thus do not die. By blocking the production of p21, however, you can make them vulnerable and hit the tumor at the root.
The research was conducted in the laboratories of the European Institute of Oncology (IFOM-IEO) in collaboration with the universities of Milan and Perugia, and was published this week in Nature.
The cells age and die because they accumulate damage and mistakes borne of DNA during cell divisions. To understand why this does not happen in a cancerous stem cell, the researchers observed what happens to a staminale "normal" when you alter one of the genes (oncogenes) that cause cancer (in this case, the acute myeloid leukemia).
The study revealed that oncogenes stimulate the activity of another gene, called p21, and thus the production of the corresponding protein, whose effect is to slow the proliferation. In essence, these cells have much more time to repair other damaged DNA, and remain young and active, immune to chemotherapy drugs because they recognize and affect only the cells in rapid proliferation.
The switch that turns off and on to command the superconducting property of the new device is a trivial electric field. In practice, what has been done by Andrea Ankle and colleagues at the University of Geneva in the first superconducting transistors. The operation, represents a milestone of applied physics and paves the way for the development of a new generation of microchips - and therefore computers - much faster than at present.
To understand how and why the device is considered so promising it must be from another discovery, made last year by the same group of university research in Switzerland and published in Science. In one study, physicists have created a single crystal in which two metal oxides (strontium titanate and lanthanum aluminate) are separated. Between these two materials, researchers have found a layer of free electrons (electronic cloud) and 0.3 Kelvin - that is just above absolute zero - traveling without any resistance. At that temperature, the crystal becomes a superconductor.
Scientists have now discovered how to turn off and turn on the superconductivity of this crystal at will, or modules, simply by applying an electric field to the point of contact between the two oxides. The result is a version of superconductive field effect transistors (FET) devices known in applied physics, able to switch from one state to a semiconductor insulator, and basic digital information in electronics (the fact that the current can pass or not is used as a binary 1-0 to store information).
As the field effect transistors is a semiconductor, however, it always has resistance to the passage of current. This means that the speed at which you can get the electrons when the device is "on" is limited which means heat develops beyond a certain limit. This side effect is damaging the transistor.
A superconducting transistor, however, can pass electrons (and record information) much more quickly, as it does not oppose any resistance to the passage of current and, therefore, not heat. There remains the problem of extremely low temperatures required for superconductivity. A limit that research is a long time trying to overcome.
By comparing DNA of healthy and cancerous tissue of a single person, there were discovered eight new mutations linked to the disease. The study in Nature
The complete genome of a person suffering from cancer was decoded for the first time. The comparison between the DNA of normal and cancerous tissue of a woman suffering from acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has identified ten mutations in the genome of cancer cells, including eight so far unknown, which would be linked to the disease. Researchers of the Washington University School of Medicine (USA), coordinated by Richard K. Wilson, presented their findings in Nature.
Scientists have taken a sample of tissue from normal skin and a tumor tissue from bone marrow to a patient suffering from AML - cancer that affects the bone marrow cells that produce red blood cells. Subsequently they have decoded the DNA of the two tissues, comparing all three billion bases of which the genomes were composed, to go back to differences in disease characteristics of the individual.
There were ten mutations identified, two already known, eight first ever linked to the disease. Of those, three were found in genes that normally can block the growth of tumors (for example in Ptprt, the tyrosine phosphatase gene, often altered in colon cancer). Four changes instead involved genes regulate the molecular pathways that promote tumor development - particularly in a family of genes, usually expressed in embryonic stem cells, which could stimulate cell renewal. A final disturbing deterioration instead of transporting drugs into the cell. According to scientists, these mutations have occurred one after another, each adding something new to the tumor.
Npas4: This protein regulates the formation of inhibitory synapses between neurons.
The inhibitory activity of neurons is regulated by a particular switch. This is a protein involved in the formation and maintenance of synapses in regulating selectively switching the electrical signal between nerve cells. Its name is Npas4 and was discovered by researchers from the Children's Hospital in Boston this week to publish their study in Nature.
In particular, the protein in question is a transcription factor, that is a molecule that can activate or deactivate specific genes. Those which would be linked to Npas4 are more than 270. When the protein is produced in large quantities, we are seeing an increase in the number of inhibitory synapses on the surface of nerve cells.
But what induces the production of high levels of Npas4? According to the researchers this is a reaction to excitatory synaptic. "It is as if the same excitement triggers a program to rebalance the brain with inhibition," says Michael Greenberg, coordinator of the study, which continues: "The mice in which the protein is suppressed, in fact, have neurological problems: are anxious, hyperactive and more subject to seizures. " The discovery could help researchers in studying these disorders. Inhibition, in fact, plays an important role in brain development.
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