pluto too cold for life as we know it
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'Pluto too cold for life as we know it'TRANSCRIPT
THE TIMES OF INDIA, PUNE SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2015 15TIMES TRENDSXIIXI
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Chicago:Cancer is much lesscommon in elephants than inhumans, even though the bo-dies of jumbos have many mo-re cells. That’s a paradoxknown among scientists, andnow researchers think theymay have an explanationwhich might lead to new waysto protect people from cancer.
Compared with just one co-py in humans, elephants’ cellscontain 20 copies of a majorcancer-suppressing gene. Thegene helps damaged cells repa-ir themselves or self-destructwhen exposed to cancer-cau-sing substances. The findingsaren’t proof that those extrap53 genes make elephants can-
cer-resistant, but if future re-search confirms it, scientistscould try to develop drugs for
humans that would mimic theeffect. Dr Joshua Schiffman, apediatric cancer specialist at
the University of Utah who ledone of the teams, began his re-search after hearing about Pe-to’s paradox, which refers tothe fact that large animals, in-cluding elephants and whales,have comparatively low can-cer rates even though they ha-ve many more cells than smal-ler species. Cancer involvesuncontrolled cell growth.
Schiffman’s patients in-clude children with incomp-lete p53 genes because of acondition called Li-Fraume-ni syndrome, which increa-ses their chances of develo-ping cancer. So, Schiffman so-ught to find clues from theblood of eight elephants.
The team compared howelephant cells reacted to radia-tion, compared with cells from10 humans and 10 patients withLi-Fraumeni syndrome.
The elephant cells self-destructed at twice the rate ofhealthy human cells and morethan five times the rate of cellsfrom patients with the syndro-me. Cells that don’t self-repairor self-destruct when exposedto carcinogens become proneto developing cancer. Whilethe research won’t lead to anyimmediate treatment for hu-mans, progress against cancercan come “from unexpected di-rections,” said Dr Ted Ganslerof American Cancer Society.
Schiffman’s team also ana-lyzed necropsy data and foundthat elephants sometimes liveas long as humans, yet onlyabout 1 in 20 die of cancer, ver-sus about 1in 4 humans.
The second group of rese-archers, working with frozenzoo specimens, looked at morethan 60 other species and fo-und only elephants and woolymammoths, their extinct rela-tives, had extra copies of thecancer-suppressing gene.They then inserted elephants’p53 genes into mouse cells andfound those cells behaved justlike elephants and self-dest-ructed when exposed to DNA-damaging drugs. AP
Disease Uncommon In Jumbos Due To Tumour-Suppressing Gene Which May Help Develop Drugs For UsElephants could hold key to cancer cure
JUMBO PROMISE: Elephants’ cells contain 20 copies of the genewhich helps damaged cells repair themselves or self-destruct whenexposed to cancer-causing substances
Theo Allofs / Radius Images
iTOONS SUNIL AGARWAL & AJIT NINAN
Mars harboured long-lasting lakes and waterstreams about 3.8 to 3.3 billion years ago,
boosting the odds that life may have onceexisted on the Red Planet, scientists, includingone of Indian-origin, have found. Using datafrom Curiosity rover, a Nasa team has deter-mined that long ago water helped depositsediment into Gale Crater, where the roverlanded more than three years ago. The sediment formed the foundation for Mount Sharp, the mountain found in the middleof the crater today. “During the traverse of Gale, we have noticed patterns in the geologywhere we saw evidence of ancient fast-movingstreams with coarser gravel, as well as places where streams appear to have emptied out into bodies of standing water,”Ashwin Vasavada, Mars Science Laboratoryproject scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California said.
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SHOW TIME: Fans in costume arrive for the 2015New York Comic Con. The 4-day festivity is thelargest pop culture event on America’s east coast
Nasa: Ancient Mars hadlong-lasting lakes, rivers
AFP
London: British scientists have for thefirst time sequenced an ancient Africangenome from a 4,500-year-old Ethiopianskull that has confirmed a massive waveof migration from Eurasia into Africaabout 3,000 years ago.
The migration into the Horn of Africahad a genetic impact on modern Africanpopulation with 25% of their DNA can betraced back to this event. “Every singleperson for which we have data in Africahas a sizeable component of Eurasian an-cestry,” said Dr Andrea Manica, who car-ried out the research.
The genome was taken from the skullof a man buried face-down 4,500 years agoin a cave called Mota in the highlands ofEthiopia.
Marcos Gallego Llorente, the first au-thor of the paper from Cambridge’s de-partment of Zoology, told TOI, “ This mi-gration affected the genetic makeup ofthe African continent, reaching western,central and southern African popula-tions, such as the Yoruba and Mbuti,which were previously thought to be rela-tively unadmixed, who harbor 6-7% Eur-asian ancestry”.
“About the origins of modern man, thefinding doesn’t say much, as we are talk-ing about a migration in the last 4,000years. Men left Africa for first time at least60,000 years ago. This exemplifies that theworld has been a very large melting pot ofgenes - populations have always moved,and now we’ve seen an example of a verydramatic one,” Llorente said.
4,500-yr-old skullreveals African
migration historyLondon: Three British companies have joint-ly created the world’s first drone freezing gun.
The Anti-UAV Defence System (Auds),which has a range upto 8km, works by covertlyjamming a drone’s signal, making it unre-sponsive and deterring them from enteringsensitive areas. The technology passed withflying colours in March 2015, when the Audsteam took part in French government trials,with the counter UAV system detecting andneutralising a variety of fixed and rotarywing micro, compact and standard UAVs.
Blighter Surveillance Systems, Chess Dy-namics and Enterprise Control Systemsjoined hands to create this gun in light of thegrowing use of drones over the past few years.
Mark Radford, CEO, Blighter SurveillanceSystems, said “We formed the team in 2014 aswe were aware of the urgent operational re-quirement from our customers for an effectiveand affordable anti-UAV system”.
The gun’s fully electronic scanning radartechnology with Doppler processing allows allweather, 24-hour detection of both fast and slowmoving micro and mini UAV targets with un-surpassed ground clutter suppression for nearhorizon operations. The accurate stabilised tiltdirector combined with the latest electro-opticinfrared day and night cameras and state-of-the-art digital video tracking technology can auto-matically track the UAV and classify the target.
UK firms create world’sfirst drone-freezing gun
The Anti-UAV Defence System works by covertlyjamming a drone’s signal, making it unresponsive
© Viaframe/Corbis
London: Chief investigatorof Nasa’s Pluto ExplorationProgramme Alan Stern onFriday said the biggest find-ing till date on the planet isthe dwarf planet being geo-logically active after overfour billion years.
The first colour imagesof Pluto’s atmosphere re-turned by Nasa’s New Hori-zons spacecraft last weekhas revealed a blue haze,while a second handout hasdetected numerous small,exposed regions of waterice. However, the reason whywater was found exactly inthose places and not in otherareas is a challenge Nasastill has to come out with.
“Who would have expect-ed a blue sky in the KuiperBelt? It’s gorgeous,” saidAlan Stern, in an exclusiveinterview to TOI. Scientistssay a blue sky often resultsfrom scattering of sunlightby very small particles. On
Earth, those particles are ve-ry tiny nitrogen molecules.On Pluto they appear to belarger — but still relativelysmall — soot-like particlesNasa calls tholins.
Stren said, “The findingconfirms our notions aboutwater-ice being the dom-inant constructional materi-al for Pluto’s mountains andother geology. The blue hazetells us that the particles inthe haze are very small.”
But does this mean Plutohave had life once? “Doubt-ful. It’s minus 400 degree Fah-renheit and so too cold for lifeas we know it,” Stern said.
‘Pluto too cold forlife as we know it’
Washington: Walking atvarying speeds can burn upto 20% more calories compa-red to maintaining a steadypace, Indian-origin scientistshave found.
“Measuring the metaboliccost of changing speeds is ve-ry important because peopledon’t live their lives on tread-mills and do not walk at cons-
tant speeds. We found thatchanging speeds can increasethe cost of walking substanti-ally,” said Manoj Srinivasan,co-author of the study.
The researchers foundthat by using traditional met-hods, people may be underes-timating the number of calo-ries burned while walking indaily life or playing sports.
of the person requires morework from the legs and thatprocess burns more energy,”said Nidhi Seethapathi, firstauthor of the study.
The study also confirmedthe researchers’ predictionthat people walk slower whencovering shorter distancesand increase their pace asdistance increases. PTI
The researchers foundthat up to 8% of the energy weuse during normal daily wal-king could be due to the ener-gy needed to start and stopwalking.
“Walking at any speedcosts some energy, but whenyou’re changing the speed,you’re pressing the gas pedal.Changing the kinetic energy
To shed those extra kilos, change your walking speed
An image captured by Nasa’s NewHorizons spacecraft shows Pluto’shaze layer which is blue in colour
Reuters
© MM Productions/Corbis
HEALTHY HABIT
Times of India, Pune, October 10, 2015 Pp.15