NASA works to stop space 'stowaways'
WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- NASA scientists have discovered some species of bacteria never before detected -- and they found them in areas where U.S. spacecraft are assembled.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's "clean rooms" are used by scientists and engineers working on spacecraft. But those rooms have now joined hot springs, ice caves and deep mines as unlikely places where scientists have discovered ultra-hardy organisms collectively known as "extremophiles."
"These findings will advance the search for life on Mars and other worlds both by sparking improved cleaning and sterilization methods and by preventing false-positive results in future experiments to detect extraterrestrial life,” said study leader Kasthuri Venkateswaran of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
NASA builds its spacecraft in rooms designed to minimize contamination that might foul instruments and invalidate experiments. The same methods are necessary to avoid Earth microbes being transported to another planet.
Researchers said identifying and archiving clean-room microbes serves as an effective backup to cleaning and sterilization. Armed with a list of microbes that could possibly stow away on its spacecraft, NASA can disregard them if they turn up in future Martian samples.
The research appears in the journal Microbiology Ecology.
IBM announces nanotechnology achievements
ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 30 (UPI) -- IBM announced two major scientific achievements Thursday, both in the field of nanotechnology.
Researchers said the breakthroughs will enable scientists to further explore the building of structures and devices out of ultra-tiny components as small as a few atoms or molecules.
In the first report, scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., describe major progress in identifying a property called magnetic anisotropy, which determines an atom’s ability to store information. That research, said IBM, could lead to storage of as many as 30,000 movies in a device the size of an iPod.
In the second report, IBM researchers in Zurich, Switzerland, describe creating the first single-molecule switch that can operate without disrupting the molecule's outer frame. That is said to be a significant step toward building computing elements at the molecular scale -- chips the size of a dust specks that could each power a supercomputer.
Both achievements are to be detailed in the Friday issue of the journal Science.
Visual distortion effect affects consumers
WORCESTER, Mass., Aug. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists said the amount of a store's discounted price might be less important to consumers than the numerical value of the farthest right digit.
Researchers Keith Coulter of Clark University and Robin Coulter of the University of Connecticut discovered “right-digit effect” influences consumer perception of sale prices. When the right digits are small, people perceive the discount to be larger than when the right digits are large.
Therefore, said the researchers, an item on sale for $211 from the original price of $222 is thought to be a better deal than an item on sale for $188 from an original price of $199, even though both discounts are $11.
"When consumers examine multidigit regular and sale prices in an advertisement, they read those prices from left-to-right," the researchers said. "If the left (hundreds) digits are identical, consumers will pay less attention to those digits, and instead will focus primarily upon the disparate right-most digits in the price comparison process.
"Our findings indicate comparative price advertising can distort consumers’ perceptions in ways unintended by the seller."
The study appears in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Another cause of type 2 diabetes found
BOSTON, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have discovered a third abnormality that might play a role in the development of obesity-induced type 2 diabetes.
In cases of type 2 diabetes, the body’s cells fail to appropriately regulate blood glucose levels. Previous research suggested that results from two simultaneous problems: the improper functioning of pancreatic beta cells and the impairment of insulin’s actions on target tissues, including the liver, fat and muscles.
In the new study, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Oregon Health & Science University identified a previously unrecognized role for glucose-sensing neurons in the onset of the disease.
"For many years we’ve known subpopulations of neurons in the brain become ‘excited’ by glucose," said Dr. Bradford Lowell, a Harvard Medical School professor. "But we haven’t understood exactly how or why this is significant.
"With this study, we show these neurons sense increases in glucose and then initiate responses aimed at returning blood-glucose levels to normal. This is the first demonstration that glucose-sensing by neurons plays an important role in responding to rising blood glucose levels."
The study that included Michael Cowley of the Oregon Health & Science University appears in the journal Nature.
