Gizmorama!

Gizmorama -
“The Cutting Edge of Science Fact and Science Possibilities”
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Good Morning,

I hope you all had a very enjoyable and not too
hectic of a weekend. Mine was quite busy…

Have A Good Day!

Until Tomorrow,
Erin

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         Stennis to test Taurus II rocket engine

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said
the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi will test the
Taurus II space launch vehicle’s rocket engine. The
first Taurus II mission is scheduled to be flown in
support of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation
Services cargo demonstration to the International Space
Station. The demonstration is planned for the end of
2010. The Taurus II design being developed by the
Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., uses two Aerojet
AJ26 rocket engines to provide first stage propulsion
for the launch vehicle, officials said. Delivery of the
first engine is expected about June.

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       New method of killing bacteria is created

U.S. scientists say they have developed a method of
“fooling” a bacterium’s evolutionary machinery into
programming its own death. Researchers at the
University of Illinois and the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst said their achievement shows
a synthetic “hole punching” anti-microbial depends
upon the presence of phosphoethanolamine — a cone-
shaped lipid found within Gram-negative bacterial mem-
branes. “The basic idea is for an antimicrobial to
target something in a bacteria that, in order to gain
immunity, would require the bacteria to kill itself
through a suicide mutation,” said UI Professor Gerard
Wong, corresponding author of the study. “It’s a
Catch-22,” he added. “Some mutations bacteria can
tolerate, and some mutations they cannot tolerate. In
this case, the bacteria would have to go through a
mutation that would kill it, in order to be immune to
these anti-microbials. The anti-microbial reorganizes
PE lipids into holes in the membrane; the perforated
membranes leak, and the bacteria die.” The study that
included graduate student and lead author Lihua Yang,
as well as Professors Dallas Trinkle, John Cronan Jr.
and Gregory Tew has been accepted for publication in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
and is currently available on the journal’s Web site.

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        Enceladus shows more signs of activity

The U.S. space agency says its Cassini spacecraft has
detected Saturn’s small moon Enceladus is showing
signs of ongoing changes at its south polar surface.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said
close views of the southern polar region –  where jets
of water vapor and icy particles spew from vents within
the moon’s distinctive “tiger stripe” fractures — pro-
vide surprising evidence of Earth-like tectonics. “They
yield new insight into what may be happening within the
fractures,” NASA said, noting the latest data on the
plume — the huge cloud of vapor and particles fed by
the jets that extend into space — show it varies over
time and has a far-reaching effect on Saturn’s magnet-
osphere. “Enceladus has Earth-like spreading of the icy
crust, but with an exotic difference — the spreading
is almost all in one direction, like a conveyor belt,”
said Paul Helfenstein, Cassini imaging associate at
Cornell University. “We are not certain about the geo-
logical mechanisms that control the spreading, but we
see patterns of divergence and mountain-building sim-
ilar to what we see on Earth, which suggests that sub-
surface heat and convection are involved.” The new
findings were presented Monday during the American
Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco.