An artist's rendition of the GEMS X-ray telescope. Courtesy of www.nasa.gov
I’ll admit to being one of the die-hard lunatics at the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows premiere, covered in wizard savvy accessories including an upside-down wooden spoon doubling as a wand. With all of the quizzical stares I endured that night, I could have seriously used Harry’s invisibility cloak.
Two recent developments in cancer research have caught my eye this past week. The first involves the mapping of cancer genomes (looking at the DNA sequences of mutated genes), while the second looks at the karyotypes (the arrangement of chromosomes) of cancer cells.
While humanity may fail to take the necessary actions to curb global warming, there is some hope that the world’s masses may not necessarily starve to death. U.S. Geological Survey researchers based in Seattle have found fungi that grow symbiotically in the roots of salt-tolerant coastal dunegrass can confer the same salt resistance to rice plants. Furthermore these symbiotic fungi, called endophytes, can also give rice greater resistance to other stresses such as heat, cold and droughts.
After more than six years, I can still remember quite a few lessons from my earth science class in eighth grade. One of the more fascinating topics for me was plate tectonics, which explain the movement of the earth’s continents over its extensive geologic history. While I recall that the major force driving these plates is a convection of magma underneath the earth’s crust that pulls and pushes on the plates, yet another force has been found helping to drive these plates.
Among surgeons performing emergency procedures, fatigue is endemic. Surgeon fatigue is triggered by unpredictable sleeping schedules, emotional stress, missed meals, and complicated procedures that last hours. Thus, it has been long associated with unfavorable surgical turnouts.
With the World Cup in full swing, everyone has been caught up in football fever, including physicists.
