The initial discovery, made June 20 by middle-school student Noah Traylor during a UA-hosted expedition, was later identified as part of a large neck vertebra of an elasmosaur, which is a subgroup of the late Cretaceous plesiosaurs.Elasmosaurid plesiosaurs are easily recognized by their large body size -- some species reach up to 45 feet in length.

"Think Loch Ness monster," said Dr. Dana Ehret, UA Museum paleontologist. "They have very large flippers for swimming and extremely long necks, consisting of up to about 70 neck vertebrae."

Artist Sketch

Plesiosaurs became extinct by the end of Cretaceous, or about 65.5 million years ago, and they are generally rare in the fossil record for Alabama. This is only the second elasmosaurid specimen containing more than one or two bones found in the state, Ehret said. The first, which consists of 22 vertebrae, was found in the late 1960s and is now part of UA Collections.This discovery appears to be on par with the first one. To date, about 15 large vertebrae, a few paddle bones and many bone fragments have been collected, but an extensive excavation is still in progress, so Ehret is uncertain how complete this skeleton is.

"We find a lot of the more common fossils here, but this is a macropredator that is not normally found in Alabama," Ehret said. "It's really interesting because it gives us a bigger picture of what was happening in Alabama at that time."

The skeleton was also not found near water. Ehret said during the late Cretaceous period, temperatures were much warmer than they are today, resulting in higher sea levels. The specimen was found in a small quarry in rural Greene County, a region commonly called the "Black Belt."The "Black Belt" represents the late Cretaceous shoreline in the Gulf Coast. The sediments found in this region are classified as chalk, are composed of extinct microscopic organisms and are extremely nutrient rich, making them the perfect place for farming.The discovery was made during the Museum's Expedition 35, which was hosted by UA's Alabama Museum of Natural History and led by Randy Mecredy, director of the Museum. The expedition is an annual summer program that is open to middle and high-school students.

In addition to Ehret, others involved in the excavation include students from the expedition, Dr. Takehito "Ike" Ikejiri with UA's department of geological sciences, museum staff, Dr. Prescott Atkinson of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the UA Museum's Board of Regents and a few UA geology students.The bones were initially excavated in place from the chalk in the quarry. Once they were able to determine the size and extent of the individual bones, those working the excavation could take them out of the ground and transport them back to the museum. Some pieces came back loose, while others were wrapped to prevent them from falling apart.

In the paleontology lab, the bones are now being unwrapped and prepared. Specimens are washed and scrubbed to remove loose sediments, and, for those that are still embedded in the chalk sediment, Ehret said they will use different tools to remove the sediment.It will take several weeks to prepare the bones properly and then harden them to ensure they will not later fall apart. Once finished, the specimen will be displayed in UA's Smith Hall.

"From a research standpoint, this is an important find. To have this many pieces, you can do an extensive comparative analysis," Mecredy said. "But, it's also having the ability to take high-school and middle-school students in the field where they find these things. It inspires them to pursue science-related fields."

Researchers have developed a drug delivery technique for diabetes treatment in which a sponge-like material surrounds an insulin core. The sponge expands and contracts in response to blood sugar levels to release insulin as needed. The technique could also be used for targeted drug delivery to cancer cells.

"We wanted to mimic the function of health beta-cells, which produce insulin and control its release in a healthy body," says Dr. Zhen Gu, lead author of a paper describing the work and an assistant professor in the joint biomedical engineering program at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "But what we've found also holds promise for smart drug delivery targeting cancer or other diseases." The research team includes Daniel Anderson, the senior author and an associate professor of chemical engineering and member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and researchers from the Department of Anesthesiology at Boston Children's Hospital.

The researchers created a spherical, sponge-like matrix out of chitosan, a material found in shrimp and crab shells. Scattered throughout this matrix are smaller nanocapsules made of a porous polymer that contain glucose oxidase or catalase enzymes. The sponge-like matrix surrounds a reservoir that contains insulin. The entire matrix sphere is approximately 250 micrometers in diameter and can be injected into a patient.

When a diabetic patient's blood sugar rises, the glucose triggers a reaction that causes the nanocapsules' enzymes to release hydrogen ions. Those ions bind to the molecular strands of the chitosan sponge, giving them a positive charge. The positively charged chitosan strands then push away from each other, creating larger gaps in the sponge's pores that allow the insulin to escape into the bloodstream. In type 1 and advanced type 2 diabetes, the body needs injections of insulin, a hormone that transports glucose -- or blood sugar -- from the bloodstream into the body's cells.

As the insulin is released, the body's glucose levels begin to drop. This causes the chitosan to lose its positive charge, and the strands begin to come back together. This shrinks the size of the pores in the sponge, trapping the remaining insulin.While this work created hydrogen ions by using enzymes that are responsive to glucose, the technique could be simplified to target cancers by eliminating the enzymes altogether. Tumors are acidic environments that have high concentrations of hydrogen ions. If the sponge reservoir were filled with anticancer drugs, the drugs would be released when the chitosan came into contact with the hydrogen ions in tumor tissues or cancer cells.

"We can also adjust the size of the overall 'sponge' matrix as needed, as small as 100 nanometers," Gu says. "And the chitosan itself can be absorbed by the body, so there are no long term health effects."

In tests using diabetic laboratory mice, the researchers found the sponge matrix was effective at reducing blood sugar for up to 48 hours. However, the researchers published a separate "smart system" for insulin delivery in May that maintained normal blood sugar levels for 10 days.

"But we learned a lot from the promising 'sponge' research and will further optimize it. Meanwhile, we are already exploring applications to combat cancer," Gu says
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New observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope show for the first time a gas cloud being ripped apart by the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. The cloud is now so stretched that its front part has passed the closest point and is travelling away from the black hole at more than 10 million km/h, whilst the tail is still falling towards it. 

In 2011 ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) discovered a gas cloud with several times the mass of Earth accelerating towards the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. This cloud is now making its closest approach and new VLT observations show that it is being grossly stretched by the black hole's extreme gravitational field.

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"The gas at the head of the cloud is now stretched over more than 160 billion kilometres around the closest point of the orbit to the black hole. And the closest approach is only a bit more than 25 billion kilometres from the black hole itself -- barely escaping falling right in," explains Stefan Gillessen (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany) who led the observing team . "The cloud is so stretched that the close approach is not a single event but rather a process that extends over a period of at least one year."

As the gas cloud is stretched its light gets harder to see. But by staring at the region close to the black hole for more than 20 hours of total exposure time with the SINFONI instrument on the VLT -- the deepest exposure of this region ever with an integral field spectrometer  -- the team was able to measure the velocities of different parts of the cloud as it streaks past the central black hole .

"The most exciting thing we now see in the new observations is the head of the cloud coming back towards us at more than 10 million km/h along the orbit -- about 1% of the speed of light," adds Reinhard Genzel, leader of the research group that has been studied this region for nearly twenty years. "This means that the front end of the cloud has already made its closest approach to the black hole." The origin of the gas cloud remains mysterious, although there is no shortage of ideas . The new observations narrow down the possibilities.

"Like an unfortunate astronaut in a science fiction film, we see that the cloud is now being stretched so much that it resembles spaghetti. This means that it probably doesn't have a star in it," concludes Gillessen. "At the moment we think that the gas probably came from the stars we see orbiting the black hole."

The climax of this unique event at the centre of the galaxy is now unfolding and being closely watched by astronomers around the world. This intense observing campaign will provide a wealth of data, not only revealing more about the gas cloud , but also probing the regions close to the black hole that have not been previously studied and the effects of super-strong gravity.

A robotic bird created in conjunction with U.S. Army could be developed into an unsuspecting future war agent.The Robo-Raven's manoeuvres are so realistic that other birds are fooled into thinking it is one of them.Its ability to hide in plain sight and light weight could prove valuable in military operations, claim Army Research Laboratory researchers. It weighs just 9.7 grams and has a wingspan of 34.3 cm. 

'It already attracts attention from birds in the area which tends to hide its presence,' said John Gerdes, a mechanical engineer at Aberdeen Proving Ground.Seagulls, songbirds and sometimes crows tend to try to fly in a formation near the bird during testing, but birds of prey, like falcons and hawks take a much more aggressive approach.
 
'Generally we don't see them coming,' Gerdes said. 'They will dive and attack by hitting the bird from above with their talons, then they typically fly away.’Scientists at the University of Maryland made Robo-Raven out of carbon fibre, thermal-resistant plastic, Mylar foil and foam. 

It has the unique ability to flap its wings completely independently of each other, enabling the bird to perform extreme aerobatic manoeuvres.Using two actuators for the wings required a bigger battery and an on-board micro controller, which initially made Robo-Raven too heavy to fly.To reduce the weight, engineers turned to advanced manufacturing processes such as 3D printing and laser cutting.The system now weighs just 9.7 grams and has a wing span of 34.3cm. It can carry a payload of almost six grams.The system is much quieter than the helicopter or propeller and can get much closer to an adversary without revealing its presence.
'We use hollow stiffeners to provide a stiff and light-weight structure, and our wing spars have been arranged in a fan pattern to create the desired airfoil shape during the flapping motions,' said Gerdes.

'At any time, we can transition between these behaviours with total control over the wings.'Robo-Raven’s aerobatics could someday prove vital in stealth reconnaissance and surveillance missions.Its potential has been recognised by the U.S Army who is funding research into small and micro scale unmanned aerial systems that could allow Robo-Raven to fly autonomously.Currently Robo-Raven cannot fly with sensors due to a very restricted payload, but advanced research is expected to improve their understanding of how a soldier could use it.

The team at Maryland University are also working on developing solar cell wings so that the Robo-Raven can land and charge before resuming a mission.The project builds on work by Dr SK Gupta, a professor in mechanical engineering at Maryland University, who began working on flapping-wing robotic birds nearly a decade ago.upta first successfully demonstrated a flapping-wing bird in 2007. This bird used one motor to flap both wings together in simple motions.

By 2010 the design had evolved over four successive models. The final bird in the series was able to carry a tiny video camera, could be launched from a ground robot, and could fly in winds up to 10 mph.‘Robotic birds are expected to offer advances in many different applications such as agriculture, surveillance, and environmental monitoring,’ said Gupta.‘Robo-Raven is just the beginning. Many exciting developments lie ahead. The exotic bird that you might spot in your next trip to Hawaii might actually be a robot.’

Cayan Tower, the 75-storey residential tower that spirals in a smooth curve by an astonishing 90 degrees to give every apartment a stunning view of the sea or marina.
Upon its opening on 10 June 2013, the tower has become world's tallest high rise building with a twist of 90 degrees Cayan Tower's dynamic twisting shape challenges conventional architecture and redefines standards of luxury.
Cayan Tower is situated in a key location at the mouth of Dubai Marina thus enjoying great views on to the marina, sea and The Palm.Cayan Tower is a truly architectural vision, certain to take its place as an icon not only in Dubai but in the world through winning the international property award more than once.

Designed by world-renowned Skidmore Owings and Merrill, otherwise known for projects such as Burj Khalifa, Trump Tower in Chicago, Jin Mao in Shanghai among many others.The units are special in its spacious rooms, big court yards with lots of sunlight that will enhance the feeling of space and freedom inside the unit.

The Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) is an autonomous regional satellite navigation system being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)which would be under complete control of the Indian government. The requirement of such a navigation system is driven by the fact that access to Global Navigation Satellite Systems, GPS, is not guaranteed in hostile situations. The IRNSS would provide two services, with the Standard Positioning Service open for civilian use and the Restricted Service, encrypted one, for authorised users.
As part of the project, ISRO opened a new satellite navigation center within the campus of ISRO Deep Space Network (DSN) at Byalalu near Bangalore in Karanataka on 28 May 2013. A network of 21 ranging stations located across the country will provide data for the orbit determination of the satellites and monitoring of the navigation signal.

The first satellite IRNSS-1A of the proposed constellation, developed at a cost of 16 billion (US$280 million),was launched on 1 July 2013 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre while the full constellation is planned to be realized by end of 2014.A goal of complete Indian control has been stated, with the space segment, ground segment and user receivers all being built in India. Three satellites will be in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean. Missile targeting could be an important military application for the constellation.

The proposed system would consist of a constellation of seven satellites and a support ground segment. Three of the satellites in the constellation will be placed in geostationary orbit. These GEOs will be located at 34 East 83 East and 132 East longitude. Two of the GSOs will cross the equator at 55 East and two at 111 East.Such an arrangement would mean all seven satellites would have continuous radio visibility with Indian control stations. The satellite payloads would consist of atomic clocks and electronic equipment to generate the navigation signals.IRNSS signals will consist of a Special Positioning Service and a Precision Service. Both will be carried on L5 (1176.45 MHz) and S band (2492.08 MHz). The SPS signal will be modulated by a 1 MHz BPSK signal. The Precision Service will useBOC(5,2).The navigation signals themselves would be transmitted in the S-band frequency (2–4 GHz) and broadcast through a phased array antenna to maintain required coverage and signal strength. The satellites would weigh approximately 1,330 kg and their solar panels generate 1,400 watts.The system is intended to provide an absolute position accuracy of better than 10 meters throughout Indian Landmass and better than 20 meters in the Indian ocean as well as a region extending approximately 1,500 km around India.

The ground segment of IRNSS constellation would consist of a Master Control Center (MCC), ground stations to track and estimate the satellites' orbits and ensure the integrity of the network (IRIM), and additional ground stations to monitor the health of the satellites with the capability of issuing radio commands to the satellites (TT&C stations). The MCC would estimate and predict the position of all IRNSS satellites, calculate integrity, makes necessary ionospheric and clock corrections and run the navigation software. In pursuit of a highly independent system, an Indian standard time infrastructure would also be established.

An international team of researchers has announced the discovery of the world’s oldest known fossil primate skeleton representing a previously unknown genus and species named Archicebus achilles.

The fossil was unearthed from an ancient lake bed in central China’s Hubei Province, near the course of the modern Yangtze River. In addition to being the oldest known example of an early primate skeleton, the new fossil is crucial for illuminating a pivotal event in primate and human evolution—the evolutionary divergence between the lineage leading to modern monkeys, apes and humans (collectively known as anthropoids) on the one hand and that leading to living tarsiers on the other. The scientific paper describing the discovery appears today in the prestigious journal Nature.

The fossil was recovered from sedimentary rock strata that were deposited in an ancient lake roughly 55 million years ago, during the early part of the Eocene epoch. This was an interval of global “greenhouse” conditions, when much of the world was shrouded in tropical rainforests and palm trees grew as far north as Alaska. Like most other fossils recovered from ancient lake strata, the skeleton of Archicebus was found by splitting apart the thin layers of rock containing the fossil. As a result, the skeleton of Archicebus is now preserved in two complementary pieces called a “part” and a “counterpart,” each of which contain elements of the actual skeleton as well as impressions of bones from the other side.

The skeleton of Archicebus is about 7 million years older than the oldest fossil primate skeletons known previously, which include Darwinius from Messel in Germany and Notharctus from the Bridger Basin in Wyoming. Furthermore, Archicebus belongs to an entirely separate branch of the primate evolutionary tree that lies much closer to the lineage leading to modern monkeys, apes and humans. Darwinius and Notharctus, on the other hand, are adapiform primates that are early relatives of living lemurs, the most distant branch of the primate family tree with respect to humans and other anthropoids.

Statistical analyses aimed at reconstructing how much an adult Archicebus would have weighed in life show that it was slightly smaller than the smallest living primates, which are pygmy mouse lemurs from Madagascar. Archicebus would have weighed about 20-30 grams (~ 1 ounce).Dr. Marian Dagosto notes that, “Even though Archicebus appears to be a very basal member of the tarsier lineage, it resembles early anthropoids in several features, including its small eyes and monkey-like feet. It suggests that the common ancestor of tarsiers and anthropoids was in some ways more similar than most scientists have thought.”

The new fossil takes its name from the Greek arche (meaning beginning or first; the same root as archaeology) and the Latin cebus (meaning long-tailed monkey). The species name achilles (derived from the mythological Greek warrior Achilles) highlights the new fossil’s unusual heel bone.

For the first time, scientists have mapped the structure of a metallic glass on the atomic scale, bringing them closer to understanding where the liquid ends and the solid begins in glassy materials. The findings could help explain the mystery of why glasses, or disordered solids form.

At the liquid-glass transition, the melt doesn't become solid at a distinct point, but becomes gradually more viscous until it is rigid. When crystalline solids - such as graphite, salt and diamonds - form they become abruptly rigid as the atoms form a regular, periodic arrangement. Glass never develops into an ordered atomic arrangement,but seems to retain the disordered structure of the liquid, despite its solidity.

This disordered structure gives glasses unique properties. Metallic glasses have a higher strength-to-weight ratio than aluminium and titanium alloys and are extremely promising structural materials with unique applications as biomaterials and microelectromechanical systems.

Led by Dr Amelia Liu from Monash University's School of Physics and the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy, the researchers found that the structure of this Zr-based glass was not random, but composed in large part by efficiently arranged 13-atom icosohedral clusters. cosahedra have 20 faces, 12 vertices and 12 axes of five-fold symmetry, which means they cannot be packed into an ordered three dimensional, crystalline structure.

“It has long been theorised that icosahedra were a key atomic motif in the structure of metallic glasses and could, in fact, underlie glass formation. We have provided the first experimental confirmation of this,” Dr Liu said.“Our findings also point the way towards understanding the glass transition from liquid to solid – a grand challenge in modern condensed matter physics.”

The researchers - from Monash, the University of Melbourne, the Australian Synchrotron, Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University in the US – developed a new electron scattering technique. By analysing the diffraction patterns from nano-scale volumes in the glass, they were able to identify symmetries in individual atomic clusters in the Zr-glass. Previous techniques had not provided sufficient detail to do this.Dr Liu said that the new technique can now be used to understand the structure of other glasses and help progress the study of disordered materials.

Scientists will retrace Sir Douglas Mawson's 1911-1914 expedition to Antarctica in November, the University of New South Wales  announced Tuesday.A team of 46 researchers and would-be explorers will set out from Hobart, the capital of Australia's southern Tasmania island state, for a six-week journey to repeat measurements made by Mawson's team 100 years ago, including observations of the ocean, wildlife, weather, geology and ice cover.

"Antarctica remains one of the last, great unexplored regions on Earth. It is a unique place to monitor the health of our planet. We want to discover just how much has changed since Mawson's time, " said Chris Turney, professor at the UNSW Climate Change Research Center. The 1.5 million AU dollars (1.46 million U.S. dollars) privately-funded expedition also aims to recapture and share the excitement of scientific exploration and discovery, using the latest technologies to communicate with school children and the public back home in Australia.

The researchers will take measurements of the ocean water, visit sub-Antarctic islands where they will collect sediment cores from lakes and peat bogs, and study the wildlife.They will also drill ice cores and take geological samples to study the changing shape of the ice sheet. A drone will survey from the air and some adventurous scientists hope to venture under the ice.

Phosphorus is a precious element, with all life depending on it. It is an essential nutrient for plant growth and an important constituent of fertilizer used in agriculture.Phosphorus is often removed during waste water treatment because it can lead to algal blooms in waterways. It is traditionally removed from waste water streams using chemical or biological processes before the water is discharged to the environment.

Waste water streams typically contain low concentrations of phosphorus, making direct recovery of phosphorus both technically and economically challenging. However, a team from CSIRO has developed a technique that can recover phosphorus from these low concentrations to provide a valuable resource.The conventional biological treatment process known as enhanced biological phosphorus removal removes phosphorus from waste water by selectively enriching a group of bacteria known as polyphosphate accumulating organisms.

CSIRO’s novel approach, termed enhanced biological phosphorus removal and recovery, exploits this unique characteristic of the organisms to ‘carry’ the phosphorus from the diluted waste water stream over to a concentrated recovery stream.

The phosphorus concentration in the recovery stream was approximately four times that of the concentration in the original waste water.The result was a phosphorus concentration in the recovery stream that was approximately four times that of the phosphorus concentration in the original waste water.The novel approach has applications for waste water treatment utilities and fertilizer producers alike.Further research is underway to increase the phosphorus concentration in the recovery stream.This research is being delivered through the Urban Water Technologies Stream of CSIRO’s Water for a Healthy Country Flagship.