'We're bringing back avian dinosaurs': De-extinction company claims it will resurrect the giant moa in next 10 years - Live Science

Scientists reconstructed antimicrobial peptides from mammalian ancestors dating back up to 160 million years and found that some ancient forms killed bacteria more effectively than modern versions. Credit: ShutterstockAncient mammalian antimicrobial peptides revealed stronger bacteria-killing activity in some cases, offering clues for designing future treatments against resistant infections. Some proteins that vanished millions of years ago may still have something to teach scientists about fighting modern infections. University of Oregon biologists have reconstructed antimicrobial molecules dating back as far as 160 million years, and laboratory tests showed that some ancient versions were more effective against drug-resistant bacteria than their modern counterparts. The work, described in a paper published in PLOS Biology on August 25, traced these peptides — short protein fragments — through the evolutionary history of placental mammals, the lineage that includes humans and nearly all mammals living today.

Nitrogen is essential for every known form of life on Earth. Now, scientists say this common element may also help explain how the earliest life evolved on our planet and how life could develop elsewhere in the universe. "All living organisms need nitrogen to survive and, though it's all around us, we can't access it directly," says Utah State University biochemist Lance Seefeldt. "Enzymes called nitrogenases enable nitrogen fixation, which converts nitrogen to a form plants, animals, humans and other life forms can access. And we're just beginning to understand the extent to which, over the Earth's four-billion-year history, these nitrogenases have evolved. "

Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and… Prototype solid-state cells from NASA's SPEARS project survived minus 274 degrees Fahrenheit without damage and ran, at reduced performance, down to minus 112 degrees.

Engineers introduce a 3D-printed, hybrid aluminum-and-rubber cloaking device that blocks an object’s thermal signature by guiding heat around it, rendering it invisible to infrared cameras. Credit: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. An object doesn’t have to be visible to give away its location. Sometimes, the way it disrupts the flow of heat is enough to reveal that something is hiding there, much to the despair of camouflaged soldiers who have to endure thermal vision drones on the battlefield. Now, engineers have developed a device that can make that thermal signature almost disappear (although sadly it won’t work for infantry).

The Orion Nebula is a large star-forming region visible to the naked eye. Some of the young stars in the nebula are surrounded by disks of gas and dust in which planets form. Radiation from the massive central star, 1 Ori C1 (Theta-1 Orionis C1), gradually strips material from these disks, giving them shapes that resemble tadpoles. The disks are losing mass so rapidly that, given the age of the stars (around 1 million years), they should have disappeared long ago. The large gas shell surrounding the central star poses another puzzle. The star sets the surrounding gas in motion, causing the shell to expand at around 13 kilometers per second (8 miles per second).