Blow Away
A ramped-up version of the body’s cocaine-purging protein could lead to the world’s first effective medicine for combating overdoses and addictions to the illicit drug. The body can break down and inactivate cocaine with the natural blood protein butyrylcholinesterase, but this enzyme is normally too weak and ineffective for medical use. Now, with the aid of computer simulations to test molecules virtually, scientists at the University of Kentucky and their colleagues have developed a far more active form of this protein. They created it by stabilizing its reactive structures and stripping away parts that hindered its function. In laboratory studies, the mutant form of the enzyme broke down cocaine roughly 2,000 times faster than the natural version. The scientists also found that the artificial enzyme prevented convulsions and death when injected into mice that were given otherwise lethal overdoses of cocaine. Read more in the September 24 Journal of the American Chemical Society. —Charles Q. Choi

Star Making around Holes
Researchers may have figured out how the 100 or so stars around the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole could have formed. Stars emerge when clouds of hydrogen molecules coalesce under their collective gravitational attraction. The gravity around a supermassive black hole, however, should have shredded such a cloud like paint dropped on an eggbeater before it got a chance to make stars. Astrophysicists simulated the fate of a hydrogen cloud as massive as 10,000 suns that suddenly wafted near a black hole. Although much of the cloud would splatter, shock waves and other turbulence would drain the angular momentum out of the inner 10 percent. That material would take up orbit around the black hole and give time for stars to form. The August 22 Science brought the results to light. —JR Minkel

Space Suits Them
Humans can survive unprotected in space for a few minutes before the air in their lungs expands, gas bubbles out of their blood and the saliva in their mouths begins to boil. In contrast, a tiny animal, reaching 1.5 millimeters in length, can survive for days in the harsh environment. Known as tardigrades, or water bears, they are found all over the world, from the sediments on the ocean floor to the lichens on mountaintops. In an adaptation to desiccation, some tardigrades can persist for a decade without moisture. Tardigrades that went into orbit last year faced the vacuum of space for 10 days and survived. Only when they also encountered radiation did the water bears capitulate—just 10 percent made it. Much like the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, the tardigrades that survived must have some mechanism that repairs cellular damage. The researchers who describe the space-faring tardigrades in the September 9 Current Biology speculate that other creatures adapted to survive extreme dryness—such as rotifers, nematodes and brine shrimp—might share the tardigrades’ ability to endure space. —David Biello

Survival of the Luckiest
Dinosaurs might have ruled the planet out of sheer luck. The dominant status that dinosaurs enjoyed for some 135 million years had suggested there was something inherently superior about the creatures. To see why the dinosaurs rose to prominence, paleontologists investigated the first years of their existence in the late Triassic, from 230 million to 200 million years ago. The researchers discovered their main competitors at that time, the crurotarsans (ancestors to crocodiles), thrived—the fossil record shows that crurotarsans were actually twice as diverse as dinosaurs when it came to body types, diets and ways of life and that they were more abundant in many ecosystems. Hence, the scientists, from the University of Bristol in England and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, conclude that dinosaurs did not outcompete crurotarsans, which were largely wiped out by rapid climate change at the end of the Triassic. For some reason, the change did not affect the dinosaurs; the crurotarsans might have easily inherited the earth instead. Dig up more in the September 12 Science. —Charles Q. Choi

1 Comments

1. 1. socratus 01:18 AM 11/15/08

   The gravity around a supermassive black hole, however, should have shredded such a cloud like paint dropped on an eggbeater before it got a chance to make stars. Astrophysicists simulated the fate of a hydrogen cloud as massive as 10,000 suns that suddenly wafted near a black hole. Although much of the cloud would splatter, shock waves and other turbulence would drain the angular momentum out of the inner 10 percent. That material would take up orbit around the black hole and give time for stars to form. The August 22 Science brought the results to light. JR Minkel
   ========================
   Black hole and Big bang..
   1.
   A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the
   gravitational field is so powerful that nothing can escape.
   2.
   Hawking Radiation theorizes that black holes do not,
   in fact, absorb all matter absolutely; they give off some
   return matter.
   3.
   Once upon a time, 20 billions of years ago, all matter
   (all elementary particles and all quarks and their
   girlfriends- antiparticles and antiquarks, all kinds of
   waves: electromagnetic, gravitational, muons&
   gluons field &.. etc.)  was assembled in a single point
   
   The reason of this unity is gravitational force.
   4.
   How does this single point created if the matter
   can escape from any strong gravitational force?
   ==========..
   Best wishes.
   Israel Sadovnik. / Socratus.
   http://www.socratus.com
   http://www.wbabin.net
   http://www.wbabin.net/comments/sadovnik.htm
   http://www.wbabin.net/physics/sadovnik.pdf
   
   
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this