It is well known that telomeres, the structures that cap chromosomes, play a key role in aging. The shorter these structures, the faster we age. Telomeres are regulated by the enzyme telomerase, which was recently reported to be present in extraordinarily high levels in flatworms during self-regeneration. Flatworms, like hydra and starfish, have the ability to regenerate missing or damaged body parts by employing the same asexual mitotic mechanism they use to reproduce. If we can find a way to effectively promote telomerase production in humans, we might be on the right path in the quest for immortality, at least at the cellular level.

These findings by Tan et al. were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-author Dr Aziz Aboobaker concluded that “the next goals for us are to understand the mechanisms in more detail and to understand more about how you evolve an immortal animal.” You can read more about these exciting developments here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/22/1118885109.abstract?sid=72163015-b1e7-49f8-bbc9-14b3c40b0950

Did you know that you can download or read online hundreds of scientific books without paying a subscription fee? The Open Access publisher InTech, established in 2004, provides free online access to books and 13 journals in the fields of physical sciences, engineering and technology; life sciences; medicine; and social sciences and humanities. InTech is part of the growing trend toward Open Access publishing, which offers academics a way to share their knowledge without restriction and retain their rights as authors. Also, with fewer hardcopies being printed, the environmental benefits are there for all to see.

So, next time you’re stuck on the train and would like something interesting to read, why not browse through the many subjects on offer…

http://www.intechopen.com/

Thanks to the useful online application, Local Prediction of the Solar Eclipse, developed by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, professional and amateur astronomers alike can now easily predict the time and place where a partial, annular, or total solar eclipse can be viewed. To find out where the next viewable solar eclipse will be in your area, simply click the link above and enter the place, choose the eclipse you are interested in from the list, and choose what kind of calculation you want to see. The next solar eclipse predicted to be viewable from Japan will be an annular solar eclipse on May 21, 2012 between 06:19 and 09:02, and you can see the path it will take here.

Remember, if you plan to view a solar eclipse, please take necessary precautions to protect your eyesight!

Human activities are a major source of sound under water and such sound could be negatively affecting marine mammals. Research into the effect of sound on the behavior of marine mammals is aimed at understanding how and why marine mammals respond to various sound stimuli. Researchers have found that killer whales and pilot whales change the calls they make when responding to sonar sound. They believe that with greater knowledge about the sounds these animals make, regulations can be created to mitigate the impacts of the sound created by humans on marine life.

Researchers are now asking for the public’s help in classifying the calls of killer whales and pilot whales into distinct categories. Through the Whale Song Project, you can help by matching similar sounding whale calls. The results obtained will help specialists to refine the categories of calls used and discover patterns in the calls. The project is part of the Zooniverse network of projects (see our earlier posts on Galaxy Zoo and Ancient Lives, other Zooniverse projects).
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In many fields—especially math, physics, and chemistry—variables, constants, and other symbols are frequently used, and sometimes it’s difficult to know what font to use: roman (regular text), italics, bold, or bold italics…

For example, for the mass of an electron, m_e = 9.109×10⁻³¹ kg, m is written in italics because it’s a physical quantity, e is written in roman type because it’s a descriptor, and kg is written in roman type because it’s an SI unit.

There are many rules to remember, so we wanted to share with you a useful reference sheet, Typefaces for Symbols in Scientific Manuscripts, from the U.S. National Institute of Standards.

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/typefaces.pdf

We hope this is helpful to you in preparing your next manuscript!

Through the Ancient Lives Project, researchers at Oxford University are asking for help in deciphering fragments of text recovered from the ancient site of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, at around the turn of the 20th century. Approximately 50,000 fragments of papyri were saved from garbage tips at the site and the texts identified so far include the Gospel of St. Thomas and the writings of Plato. The sheer volume of fragments still to be transcribed has led researchers to ask for help from the public in deciphering the texts for subsequent translation by scholars. You don’t need to know Greek to participate!

You can help by matching the letters handwritten on fragments of papyri to examples of Greek letters provided for reference. Operated under the Zooniverse network of projects (see our earlier post on Galaxy Zoo, another Zooniverse project), you just need to login and begin transcribing your first fragment of text. You can save your work at any time and come back to it later.

If you think you’d like to participate in this latest citizen science project, you can take the tutorial first without needing to login and see just what you have to do: http://www.ancientlives.org/guides/tutorial

Attention is again firmly focused on regenerative medicine following the advance online publication of a paper entitled ‘Functional tooth regeneration using a bioengineered tooth unit as a mature organ replacement regenerative therapy’. The article, published in PLoS ONE on July 12, reports how a team of Japanese researchers successfully transplanted a stem-celled derived tooth unit into the alveolar bone of a mouse. The transplanted tooth unit (composed of a mature tooth, periodontal ligament, and alveolar bone) demonstrated important physiological tooth functions including mastication and responsiveness to noxious stimulation. As stated in the press release posted on the Tokyo University of Science website, this proof-of-concept brings the reality of bioengineered mature organ replacement one step closer.

Here at ThinkSCIENCE, we have the pleasure of editing and translating many papers destined for American Chemical Society (ACS) journals. So, we wondered which ACS journal has the highest impact factor. > > >

We recently came across the amazing photographic series entitled ‘Your Beautiful Eyes’ by Dr. Suren Manvelyan which shows the topography of the iris in extreme close up.

In this series, Dr. Manvelyan, who has a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Yerevan State University in Armenia and currently works as a physical sciences teacher and professional photographer, has managed to capture the intricate beauty of the human iris. His photographic technique remains a secret!

You can view of some of his photographs online at http://www.behance.net/paronsuren/Frame/428809.

A team of researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Kobe, Japan have successfully derived an optic cup from mouse embryonic stems cells. Published online in Nature this month, the team’s article entitled ‘Self-organizing optic-cup morphogenesis in three-dimensional culture’ reports that the optic cup gave rise to tissue exhibiting the stratified structure characteristic of the retina in vivo. As stated on the CDB website, the potential applications of this important work include regenerative medicine treatment for retinal degenerative disorders such as retinitis pigmentosa.

Check out the movies accompanying the article on the Nature website, showing, for example, 3D live imaging of morphogenesis of the optic cup.