Aestus Ajith

Melbourne researchers have made a breakthrough in the search for an AIDS cure. Researchers have moved a step closer to finding a cure for HIV by successfully luring the ‘sleeping’ virus out of hiding in infected cells. New research has shown how the cancer drug vorinostat is able to ‘wake up’ the sleeping virus that silently persists in patients on standard HIV treatment, by altering how HIV genes are turned on and off. Professor Sharon Lewin, of Monash University's Department of Medicine, Director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at the Alfred Hospital, and co-head, Centre for Virology at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, said the results from the trial were promising and would inform further studies in the quest to cure HIV. “We know the virus can hide in cells and remain out of reach from conventional HIV therapies and the immune system,” Professor Lewin said. “Anti-HIV drugs are unable to eradicate the virus because it burrows deeply into the DNA of immune cells, w...

Biological systems have been using DNA as an information storage molecule for billions of years. Vast amounts of data can thus be encoded within microscopic volumes, and we carry the proof of this concept in the cells of our own bodies. Could this ultimate storage solution meet the ever-growing needs of archivists in this age of digital information? This dream has come a step closer to reality with the  publication of a new technique  in this week’s edition of the scientific journal  Nature . Stored in DNA A team of researchers headed by Nick Goldman and Ewan Birney at the European Bioinformatics Institute of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL-EBI) has dramatically demonstrated the potential of the technique to store and transport human-made data. Their data included some well-chosen iconic elements: Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, an audio excerpt from Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, Watson and Crick’s classic paper on the structure of ...

Break out the vodka. The first confirmed sample of water from the subsurface Lake Vostok in Antarctica has been retrieved. Almost a year ago, in February 2012 Russian scientists and engineers drilled to a depth of nearly 4,000 meters in the ice above Lake Vostok – a 1,300 cubic mile volume of liquid water thought to have formed some 20 million years ago and to have been effectively isolated from the outside world for at least 100,000 years and possibly for millions of years. This was the culmination of a 23 year effort to reach the lake. As I wrote in a  previous piece back in 2012 , Vostok presents an intriguing case for the study of both extreme organisms and evolutionary isolation, as well as an environment that parallels some of those that we think might exist elsewhere in the solar system – either in the subsurface of Mars, or on icy moons like  Enceladus  or even Europa. Now it seems that perseverance may have paid off. By withdrawing the drill last year t...

Where science meet art! Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh have been  dissected and their insides illustrated in the same style as their famous paintings.  An advertising agency created these images as part of a campaign for an art school in Brazil

Robots inspired by the animal kingdom are already being designed to mimic plenty of creatures, from speedy cheetahs to slithering serpents. Now, researchers are welcoming yet another bio-inspired robot to join the menagerie: a 'bot built to emulate the movements of baby sea turtles. In a new study published in  Bioinspiration and Biomimetics , a team of physicists and engineers out of Georgia Tech and Northwestern University shared progress on "FlipperBot," a robot designed to emulate the strategies employed by young sea turtles in order to traverse both firm terrain and sand with equal ease. The robot's creation started in nature itself, with a lengthy study on 25 hatchling sea turtles in their natural habitat. Researchers compiled data on the movement patterns of the turtles, namely how they were able to maintain their pace while zipping along sandy ground. That pace is important for the critters: immediately after hatching, the turtles need to make their ...

Where has all the antimatter gone? The Universe today is made of matter, but scientists believe that in the beginning, the Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter. A new discovery at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern means scientists are furthering our understanding of the differences in behaviour between matter and antimatter. Chris Parkes, professor of physics at the University of Manchester and a spokesman for the UK's involvement at Cern, explains why the antimatter has disappeared.

What are the greatest global threats to humanity? Are we on the verge of our own unexpected extinction? An international team of scientists, mathematicians and philosophers at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute is investigating the biggest dangers. And they argue in a research paper, Existential Risk as a Global Priority, that international policymakers must pay serious attention to the reality of species-obliterating risks. Last year there were more academic papers published on snowboarding than human extinction. The Swedish-born director of the institute, Nick Bostrom, says the stakes couldn't be higher. If we get it wrong, this could be humanity's final century. Been there, survived it So what are the greatest dangers? First the good news. Pandemics and natural disasters might cause colossal and catastrophic loss of life, but Dr Bostrom believes humanity would be likely to survive. The femur of a dodo: An estimated 99% of all species that hav...

The oil that the bacteria produced had a near-identical composition and chemical properties to conventional diesel Continue reading the main story Related Stories Biofuels are 'irrational strategy' Sugar-rich willow biofuels boost EU acts to counter biofuel harm A strain of bacteria has been created that can produce fuel, scientists say. Researchers genetically modified  E. coli bacteria to convert sugar into an oil that is almost identical to conventional diesel. If the process could be scaled up, this synthetic fuel could be a viable alternative to the fossil fuel, the team said. The study is published in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Professor John Love, a synthetic biologist from the University of Exeter, said: "Rather than making a replacement fuel like some biofuels, we have made a substitute fossil fuel. "The idea is that car manufacturers, consumers and fuel retailers wouldn't even notice the difference - it...

The study, published in the  American Journal of Human Genetics , shows that as many as one in ten people is likely to develop a genetic condition as a consequence of carrying these variants. Straight from the Source It has been known for decades that everyone carries some damaging genetic variants that appear to cause little or no ill effect. However, this is the first time that researchers have been able to quantify how many such variants each of us has, and to list them. This was made possible by using the  Human Gene Mutation Database  (HGMD), developed over the last 15 years by Professor David Cooper and his team of researchers at Cardiff University’s Institute of Medical Genetics. HGMD constitutes a comprehensive collection of published data on gene mutations underlying or associated with human inherited disease. “In the majority of people we found to have a potential disease-causing mutation, the genetic condition is actually quite mild, or would only ...

This new computer model of a brain has one million neurons and works just as fast as a live brain does. There are other brain models, run on supercomputers, that are much bigger. IBM's SyNAPSE, for example,  modeled 530 billion neurons  last November. (That's more than the total number of neurons in humans' brains, which clock in at  86 billion neurons on average .) Such models are very slow, however. Some  take a couple hours  to simulate a second of brain activity. SyNAPSE works 1,500 times slower than real time. The new artificial brain, called Neurogrid, is a lighter, cheaper version of supercomputer models. It's also much more energy efficient, using just 5 watts of electricity, compared to the 8 megawatts that Blue Gene/Q Sequoia, SyNAPSE's supercomputer, uses. Neurogrid's creators hope that others may use it to learn more about healthy brains and brains affected by diseases such as autism and schizophrenia,  according to the U.S. National Scien...

Ultra-High-Efficiency Galaxy  In a galaxy called SDSSJ1506+54, nearly all of the gas has been driven to the central core of the galaxy and ignited into stars. This is a composite of images from the Hubble Space Telescope and Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer.  NASA A newly found faraway galaxy called SDSSJ1506+54 is the most efficient star maker ever seen, using up almost all of the gas available to it. Other galaxies are more profligate with their gas, only using some of it and leaving the rest just lying there. Stars form when collapsing gas clouds condense so tightly that they ignite nuclear fusion. In the Milky Way, the gas is relatively diffuse, with stars clustered in small pockets throughout the loose tendrils of its spiral arms. But in SDSSJ1506+54, everything is very compact, with most of the galaxy's light streaming from a region just a few hundred light-years across, according to new research. Put another way, the galaxy is emitting starlight from an are...

Research revealing that genetic sequences once considered as "junk DNA" can regulate cancer genes could lead to the development of new cancer drugs to re-activate tumour suppressor genes. Researchers led by UNSW's Associate Professor Kevin Morris have discovered a new mechanism,  which re-activate genes that have been switched off. Many cancers occur when genes that suppress tumours are not functioning properly, allowing the cancer to grow unchecked. The study by the international team is published in the journal  Nature Structural and Molecular Biology . It reveals how a tumour suppressor gene called PTEN, which is shut down in many cancers including skin cancer, is controlled. And it shows how DNA sequences long considered “junk” can influence disease genes. “We show that there are multiple layers of complexity in the regulation of this PTEN gene, but also that it might be possible to switch it back on in cancer,” Dr Morris says. The researchers hope...

Boston Dynamics'  BigDog rough-terrain robot just got even more terrifying, with the addition of a front-mounted arm that lets it toss around cinderblocks like soda cans. To get the job done, the 240-pound quadruped uses the same approach as human athletes, recruiting the strength in its legs and torso to power the throw. The new addition is just the latest in a long list of superpowers, including the ability to run at four miles per hour, climb slopes up to 35 degrees, and maintain balance on terrain ranging from slick ice to mud, snow, and rubble — even when subjected to punishing kicks, as shown in the bottom video. Now, armed with this newfound throwing capability, there’s little separating BigDog from its cousin, Dog from  Half-Life 2.

Scientists used to think that the Van Allen belts — two nested rings of charged particles surrounding the Earth — bulge and swell in response to what’s happening on the sun, but are otherwise more or less fixed in place. Well, according to a new finding  announced by NASA , the rings are actually much more malleable than originally thought. New data shows their structure reconfigured in response to a major  coronal mass ejection  (pictured below), for the first time revealing the formation of a third belt. In its press release, NASA said the discovery would require "rewriting textbooks." "THE THIRD BELT PERSISTED BEAUTIFULLY, DAY AFTER DAY." The finding was made possible by two identical satellites packed with high-precision instruments called the Van Allen Probes, which NASA launched in August of last year. But the exciting discovery would not have been made if the researchers hadn’t rushed to power up the Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (R...