The Saturn Moon Prometheus has a very interesting look. The picture here shows that it appears to be oblong, and looks much like a Great White Whale (under the proper lighting conditions ). This new 3-D image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft (click on that link for many more images taken by the craft including the Death Star moon, Mimas) with an amazing clarity as it flies towards the viewer.

Besides having an odd look for a moon, Prometheus most likely has a violent history. Well…almost any moon orbiting around Saturn in a rings of giant space debris probably does, but the many craters on this moon suggest a bit more than others. This moon is so odd looking. It reminds me of “The Marker” from the video game Dead Space for some reason. Yeah…I’m weird. Look at all the markings on it…it looks like an alien artifact…lol

Prometheus is one of Saturn’s innermost moons. It orbits Saturn at a distance of about 140,000 kilometers (86,000 miles) and is 86 kilometers (53 miles) across at its widest point. The porous, icy world was originally discovered in images taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft back in 1980.

That image wasn’t nearly as beneficial as it took an image of one of the short sides of the moon. This image is simply amazing. Between the Marker and the Death Star there is something real fishy going on out there by Saturn. Might be something out there that wants to show you the benefits of colon cleansing at some point .

EDIT: no pun intended with that “fishy comment…More likely those things will show you the

“This is telling us about where people came from and what they ate as children,” explains T. Douglas Price, a UW-Madison professor of anthropology and the leader of the team conducting an analysis of the tooth enamel of three individuals from a larger group excavated almost 20 years ago from shallow graves at the site of La Isabela, founded by Columbus.

Price and colleague James Burton, in collaboration with researchers from the Autonomous University of the Yucatan in Mexico, are attempting to flesh out the details of a colony that lasted less than five years. The human remains used in the study were buried without the formalities of coffins or shrouds, and were excavated from what was once the church graveyard of the town Columbus established. Headstones and other identifying markers have long since faded to nothing or have been lost entirely during the 500 years since the bodies were first interred.

The researchers are taking their programmer jobs seriously as they look at the remains with the new technology available.

A new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey and involving the University of Colorado at Boulder and Oregon State University as well as other research institutes indicates tree deaths in the West’s old-growth forests have more than doubled in recent decades, likely from regional warming and related drought conditions.

The study that was published in the Jan. 23 issue of Science magazine, documented tree deaths in all tree sizes in the West located at varying elevations, including tree types such as pine, fir and hemlock. The death totals were also documented in the interior West including Colorado and Arizona as well as Northwest regions like northern California, Oregon, Washington and southern British Columbia.

The researchers speculated higher tree deaths could lead to substantial ecological changes in the West, including cascading effects affecting wildlife populations. The tree deaths also could lead to possible increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels contributing to warming, which could stem from lower CO2 uptake and storage by smaller trees and increased CO2 emissions from more dead trees on the forest floors.

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When someone tells me that they were off by maybe 5-10% I can sort of understand when it comes to space. Apparently we were off by a hell of a lot more. Like 50% off.

Astronomers arrived at the new mass by using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope to make detailed images of the galaxy’s structure, measuring distances and motions of different areas of the Milky Way.

These high-precision measurements, presented here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, indicate that the galaxy’s speed at the position of our solar system (at a distance of 28,000 light-years from the galactic center) is about 600,000 mph (970,000 kph) to 100,000 mph (160,000 kph) faster than previously thought.

This means that the mass of the galaxy is about 50% greater than previously thought. Also, instead of being the puny little brother of the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighbor, we are much more of a competition to it now.

NASA also released this new photo of the center of the Milky Way today which reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This sweeping panorama is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core.

In other space news, astronomers are expected to enter a new study to expand out knowledge of the history of the universe. UK astronomers are set to expand our knowledge of the history of our Universe with a new project to map the inception and formation of galaxies.

Dr Seb Oliver at the University of Sussex speaking about their ground and air tools “it is fantastic to see major international astronomical facilities both on the ground and in space working in harmony to tackle the fundamental questions of galaxy formation and evolution”.

Yu-Hua Tseng, Ph.D. an Assistant Investigator in the Joslin Section on Obesity and Hormone Action and lead author of the paper published in the August 21 issue of Nature said that obesity is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes. It is also closely linked to the metabolic syndrome, which adds complications associated with insulin resistance that can lead to an increased risk of atherosclerosis, the buildup of plaque in coronary arteries that leads to heart attack and stroke.

“White fat cells are the ‘conventional’ form of fat designed to store energy. By contrast, the main role of brown fat is to burn calories by generating heat. Brown fat cells largely disappear by adulthood in humans, but their precursors still remain in the body,” Tseng explained.

While exercise such as jogging is obviously the best way to go to prevent obesity. Chugging along being your Bob stroller with your child, not everyone has that luxury.

The study hopes to utilize the “good fat” to help produce better weight loss solutions, and to help prevent metabolic disorders.

A lone granite boulder found against all odds high atop a glacier in Antarctica may provide additional key evidence to support a theory that parts of the southernmost continent once were connected to North America hundreds of millions of years ago.

The team’s find, they argue, provides physical evidence that confirms the so-called southwestern United States and East Antarctica (SWEAT) hypothesis.

“What this paper does is say that we have three main new lines of evidence that basically confirm the SWEAT idea,” said John Goodge, an NSF-funded researcher with the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

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Well now…this is something that we should all be interested in. This is the first to show that induced stem cells or iPS cells, which don’t involve the use of embryos or eggs, can be differentiated into the three types of cardiovascular cells needed to repair the heart and blood vessels. Stem cell researches at UCLA have been able to grow functioning cardio cells using mouse skin cells that had been reprogrammed into cells with the same unlimited properties as embryonic stem cells.

The discovery could one day lead to clinical trials of new treatments for people who suffer heart attacks, have atherosclerosis or are in heart failure, said Dr. Robb MacLellan, a researcher at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research and senior author of the study.

“I believe iPS cells address many of the shortcomings of human embryonic stem cells and are the future of regenerative medicine,” said MacLellan, an associate professor of cardiology and physiology. “I’m hoping that these scientific findings are the first step towards one day developing new therapies that I can offer my patients. There are still many limitations with using iPS cells in clinical studies that we must overcome, but there are scientists in labs across the country working to address these issues right now.”

These discoveries have also been able to differentiate into other types of blood cells that may one day help in treating blood diseases, and bone marrow transplants. Amazing discoveries that may one day lower the need for so much drug rehab because of all the damn medications we are prescribed for anything.

This saying is so ingrained in public perception that this doesn’t even seem like a discovery at all does it? IT doesn’t say anything about the flu, but I guess food isn’t exactly going to keep you from heaving in front of your bathroom vanities either. It is going to help.

While it is known that the immune system expends energy when it gears up to fight a virus or an infection–a fever, for example–the researchers found that restricting their subjects’ diet by 30% significantly decreased the amount of available B cells, which produce antibodies and maintain immune memory. Without these cells, the immune system must relearn how to fight a threat if it reappears.

Studies have shown that infections are more prevalent in malnourished children because they lack the energy to get vaccines to work properly. Specifically they must provoke B cells to produce sufficient antibodies for immune memory.