Scientists from the University of Colorado have made a surprising find, that if true, will help rewrite the history of life on ancient (pre-biotic) Earth. Published in the April 7 issue of Science Express by doctoral student Feng Tian and associates at the university's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics with Hans De Sterck of the University of Waterloo, the paper suggests that the amount of hydrogen in early Earth was higher than currently thought. The study concludes that the traditional models estimating hydrogen escape from Earth's atmosphere several billions of years ago are flawed, and about 40 percent of the early atmosphere was hydrogen, implying a more favorable climate for the production of pre-biotic organic compounds like amino acids, and ultimately, life.

Early Earth Mural (Courtesy: AMNH)If true, this has a lot of implications. In a hydrogen-poor atmosphere, it is harder for amino acids (constituents of proteins) to be created. This has led scientists to believe that life first started near the under-sea hydrothermal vents, where the concentration of hydrogen (from water and hydrogen sulfide) is relatively high. But with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, with or without a lot of carbon dioxide, the production of organic compounds with the help of electrical discharge or photochemical reactions may have been efficient. Once formed on land, the amino acids might have accumulated in the oceans or in bays, lakes and swamps, enhancing potential birthplaces for life.
The study suggests that the carbon dioxide-rich, hydrogen-poor Mars and Venus-like model of Earth's early atmosphere that scientists have been working with for the last 25 years is incorrect, and the escape of hydrogen from Earth's early atmosphere was probably two orders of magnitude slower than scientists previously believed. According to Tian, the escape of hydrogen was low due to the lower temperatures in the upper atmosphere, and the losses were more than compensated by hydrogen release by the volcanoes.
All this makes the old experiments by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey (where they simulated ancient Earth in a glass enclosure as a methane and ammonia rich atmosphere, ultraviolet light and lightning discharges, and managed to generate four amino acids) relevant again. However, in this new scenario, it is a hydrogen and CO₂-dominated atmosphere that leads to the production of organic molecules, not the methane and ammonia atmosphere used in Miller's experiment.
More needs to be studied. Now, we suddenly have two competing theories: 1) Amino acids were first created on land by a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, and 2) Amino acids were created near hydrothermal vents. Only more research will tell which of these (or perhaps both) is the way life first started on Earth.

Solar sails use the steady stream of particles (and light) from the Sun (light sail when some other source is used, e.g. a laser) for propulsion, not unlike sailboats on Earth that utilize the force of wind to travel. Often cited as the future most economical way for inter-stellar travel, such sails would normally be large, thin, and lightweight, so as to capture the maximum possible radiation from the Sun. When the solar thrust is not needed, the sail can be either collapsed into a smaller area, or re-aligned to present the smallest area to the solar stream.
NASA engineers (and partners) are preparing to test two 20-meter (66-feet) long solar sail propulsion system designs (starting April 18). Such sails can be utilized for deeps-space missions later in this century.

Solar Sail (Courtesy: Wikimedia)The system designs were developed by two engineering firms, L'Garde Inc., of Tustin, and ATK Space Systems of Goleta, both in California. Their work is led by the In-Space Propulsion Technology Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Solar sails are normally hundreds of times thinner that a slice of paper. Thin, yet durable, the only hazards they might face in space is a random micro-meterorite impact. The NASA sails will be tested in a vacuum chamber that will simulate the space environment. Both the sails will be tested during April-June 2005.
Among the future propulsion systems that are currently on the drawing board, solar sails are the cheapest to implement, and have the greatest potential. Since there is little need for other fuel, solar-powered spaceships can be light-weight. And of course, by 2100, one should have such a hardy bunch of ships, carrying supplies from one space-colony to another in the solar system. Hey, it doesn't hurt to dream, right?! :):)

The Mohorovicic (MOHO) discontinuity (first observed by Andrija Mohorovicic in 1909) is the boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle. This boundary has been determined seismologically. Oceanic and continental crust are formed by entirely different geological processes: the former is typically 6-7 km thick, the latter about 35-40 km. Now for the first time, scientists have been able to drill into the lower section of Earth's crust, and will break through to the mantle (through the Moho) in coming years.

Earth composition (Courtesy: EJGE)The project, known as The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) has drilled about 4,644 feet (1,416 meters) below the ocean seafloor (near Atlantis Massif, located at the intersection of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Atlantis fracture zone). The seafloor was chosen because the crust is quite thin there, and therefore easier to breach. It took nearly 8 weeks to drill this hole, which is the third deepest ever made. The rock collection brought back to the surface is providing new information about the planet's composition.
The rocks brought back from that depth is already allowing scientists to form new theories and confirm old ones about how the Earth's crust formed, and how it is going to evolve in the future. This study has practical benefits as well: we will be better able to predict and analyze earthquakes once we know what the crust (and the mantle) are made of.
The next step is breaking into the mantle. The mantle material will be evident when and if it's brought up because it will have different texture and chemistry and will contain different proportions of minerals compared with rock in the crust.

Sony has patented a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain. The technique is completely non-invasive. As reported by New Scientist, the device fires pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating "sensory experiences" ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds.

Choice is an illusion (Courtesy: Matrix)Sony is (understandably) quite tight-lipped about this. Current methods of non-invasive manipulation of the brain remains crude, since magnetic/electric fields cannot be focussed on single cells/neurons in the brain, without affecting the neighboring cells as well. However, independent researchers, like Niels Birbaumer, a pioneering neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany says he has looked at the device, and found it plausible.
If this is true, and if the device has sufficient focus and resolution, it will have huge applications, and consequences. On the positive side, there will be applications in medicine, recreation (something like Holodeck from StarTrek comes to mind) and immersive scientific visualizations and simulations. On the negative side, I am sure the military would like to have a go at this (good for torture, brainwashing, the whole nine yards).
I am keeping my fingers crossed! :):)

The Spirit and Opportunity rovers, developed by NASA, have been working on Mars for more than a year now. During this time, the rovers have uncovered tell-tale signatures of past volcanic and oceanic activities by studying the various rocks littering the Martian surface. The prospect of finding past/present life on Mars have never been better, and to that end, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, University of Idaho, and University of Montana are developing a chemical guidebook as part of what they hope will be a definitive method to determine whether extraterrestrial rocks have ever harbored life.

Spirit Rover (Courtesy: NASA)At a fundamental level, all organisms consume resources, and give out waste products. By studying a rock's composition, scientists hope to find signatures of such microbial (or otherwise!) activity within it. The team is using a specialized mass spectrometer to take chemical images of microbes and rocks under conditions close to what might be found on Mars, as well as developing a fuzzy logic computer program to decipher those spectral pictures. By testing and examining local exotic microbes (extremophiles), they expect to develop a guide-book that might point to rocks which might exhibit traces of past or present life.
The scientists will take advantage of two sophisticated research tools:
a) On the hardware side, the LOCI (Laser and Optical Chemical Imager) combines a laser with a mass spectrometer. Already part of the rover repertoire, the laser evaporates the rock surface, and the spectrometer analyses the gas cloud that is formed. Scientists can then study the spectral image to determine what the surface layers were made of – minerals such as iron, say, with a sprinkling of microbial waste products.
b) On the software side, a fuzzy logic computer program called the SIDIE (Spectral IDentification Inference Engine) would supply the Mars rover with some extra brains. Developed at the Idaho National Laboratory, SIDIE uses an open-ended reasoning approach that mimics a human's decision-making abilities and learning.
Thus combined, the two innovations might be able to point to rocks that have a curious chemical signature that might be the product of activities similar to what we call, life! Another bit of good news: NASA has recently extended the operations of the rovers to September 2006; so scientists will be able to test the new software on the rovers to see if they can find some such evidence of past or present life :):).

Scientists at Texas Tech University's Institute of Environmental and Human Health have developed a new composite cotton fabric they say will protect against biological and chemical agents.
The new fabric, which has been developed with the U.S. Department of Defense in mind, can be used as a wipe to remove dangerous contaminants from a variety of surfaces, including human skin and intricate equipment on fighter planes. The fabric is lightweight, soft, flexible and able to be draped over unusually shaped objects.

Cotton Plant (Courtesy: Robert Underwood)The material neutralizes and absorbs toxic chemicals used in chemical warfare and pesticides. Another use could be the inner lining of a protective suit. The fabric passed tests for bacteria, yeast, fungus and mold but has not been tested for anthrax and other potentially deadly biological agents. But enzymes specifically targeting a particular agent can be applied.
Currently, the suits used by the U.S. military are made from carbon, which leaves skin and other surfaces dirty. This cotton allows air to pass to the skin, but blocks the larger toxic molecules. Apart from the military uses, perhaps such cotton can also be used to filter out germs and other toxins from water, thus helping eradicate water-borne diseases in the world.

A comprehensive comparison between the genomes of humans, rats, and chimpanzees have turned up dozens of new genes on the X chromosome (One of the sex chromosomes, the other is Y). The new genes sit in regions tied to X-linked mental retardation syndromes, which appear only in boys, and other disorders. The team includes scientists from India (Institute of Bioinformatics, Bangalore) and USA (Johns Hopkins), and the results appear in the April issue of the journal Nature Genetics.

X And Y chromosomes (Courtesy: Futura Sciences)For 18 months, 26 Indian scientists pored through the publicly available sequence of the X chromosome (information generated by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England and others) to identify genes and other important parts of its DNA. Of particular interest were regions of DNA which encode proteins: the scientists compared similar regions between mice, humans and chimps. They found 43 new gene-structures that encode proteins, some of which lie in regions that are already tied to genetic diseases such as mental retardation, among others. Almost half of the new genes don't look like any previously known genes, nor do they look like each other.
The benfit of such a comprehensive study would be enormous. Similar comparisons can be done for other chromosomes as well, thus giving scientists a new way of comparing similar diseases between different species. As a side benefit, this will also allow evolutionary biologists to compare protein encoding techniques between species and better decipher the evolutionary tree of life.