11.07.2012 – GOLLYGEE!

The view from the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Curosity has been examining scoop fulls of Martian soil by x-ray diffratcion and its analysis is similar to the soil in parts of Hawaii. For the scientists involved in the project this was not an unexpected result. From Scientific American:

“This Martian soil that we’ve analyzed onMars just this past week appears mineralogically similar to some weathered basaltic materials that we see on Earth,” David Bish, a CheMin co-investigator with Indiana University, told reporters. He cited as an example the “weathered soils on the flanks of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.”

…

CheMin’s first results—obtained using soil Curiosity scooped at a site called “Rocknest”—aren’t terribly surprising, researchers said.

“Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy,” Bish said in a statement. “We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected. Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass.”

Blind mole rats fight off tumorigenic cells by necrosis since their cells are unable to undergo apoptosis. From Science News:

Blind mole rats ought to be more susceptible to cancer because their cells can’t kill themselves through a type of cell suicide called apoptosis. Low oxygen conditions, such as those common in blind mole rats’ burrows, usually cause cells to commit suicide. To survive underground, the blind rodents had to evolve a countermeasure, a mutation in a cancer-fighting protein called p53. That mutation prevents cells from undergoing apoptosis, a type of cell death in which cells dismantle themselves from the inside — and a process used to kill off cancer cells. Human cancer patients often have similar mutations, which prevent tumor cells from dying.

But blind mole rat cells find a way to off themselves. Growing cells in laboratory dishes, Vera Gorbunova of the University of Rochester in New York and colleagues found that the animals’ cells die on cue after three days. The cells release a chemical called interferon-beta, which the immune system normally uses to fight viruses. In this case, the chemical caused blind mole rat cells to burst open in a violent death known as necrosis.

For more check the link above or read the article at PNAS.

GOLLYGEE!

Date: 11.07.2012

martian dirt similar to hawaiian soil

self destructing cancers