Stars create complex organic molecules

Complex organic molecules like those on which life is based exist throughout the universe and can be made naturally by stars, European Space Agency data has revealed.
Professor Sun Kwok and Dr Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong say they've found compounds so complex that their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum.
The find suggests that complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space without the presence of life forms.
"Our work has shown that stars have no problem making complex organic compounds under near-vacuum conditions," says Kwok. "Theoretically, this is impossible, but observationally we can see it happening."
The researchers were investigating a set of infrared emissions detected in stars, interstellar space and galaxies, and known as Unidentified Infrared Emission features.
These signatures were believed to have come from simple organic molecules made of carbon and hydrogen atoms, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules.
But, using the Infrared Space Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, Kwok and Zhang discovered that the spectra have features that can't be explained by PAH molecules.
Instead, they say, the substances generating these infrared emissions have chemical structures that are much more complex.
Analysis of the spectra of star dust formed in novae shows that stars are making these complex organic compounds in a matter of weeks, and then ejecting it into the general interstellar space.
Interestingly, this organic star dust is similar in structure to the complex organic compounds found in meteorites, and could form their source. Thus, it's possible that life on Earth developed from this organic star dust

Science, engineering and technology

The distinction between science, engineering and technology is not always clear. Science is the reasoned investigation or study of phenomena, aimed at discovering enduring principles among elements of the phenomenal world by employing formal techniques such as the scientific method.Technologies are not usually exclusively products of science, because they have to satisfy requirements such as utility, usability and safety.
Engineering is the goal-oriented process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural phenomena for practical human means, often (but not always) using results and techniques from science. The development of technology may draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical knowledge, to achieve some practical result.
Technology is often a consequence of science and engineering — although technology as a human activity precedes the two fields. For example, science might study the flow of electrons in electrical conductors, by using already-existing tools and knowledge. This new-found knowledge may then be used by engineers to create new tools and machines, such as semiconductors, computers, and other forms of advanced technology. In this sense, scientists and engineers may both be considered technologists; the three fields are often considered as one for the purposes of research and reference.
The exact relations between science and technology in particular have been debated by scientists, historians, and policymakers in the late 20th century, in part because the debate can inform the funding of basic and applied science. In the immediate wake of World War II, for example, in the United States it was widely considered that technology was simply "applied science" and that to fund basic science was to reap technological results in due time. An articulation of this philosophy could be found explicitly in Vannevar Bush's treatise on postwar science policy, Science—The Endless Frontier: "New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature... This essential new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research." In the late-1960s, however, this view came under direct attack, leading towards initiatives to fund science for specific tasks (initiatives resisted by the scientific community). The issue remains contentious—though most analysts resist the model that technology simply is a result of scientific research.

The Science Breakthroughs that 2011 May Bring

From discovering the so-called God particle and confirming the existence of an Earth-like exoplanet to understanding more about the brain and even defining a fourth domain of life, the science possibilities for 2011 are awe-inspiring.

Here's a look at some of what may come to bear in this year.

The Higgs boson – a particle so important to science that it's been dubbed "the God particle" – may come out of hiding in 2011.

This fundamental particle, thought to give mass to all particles, has been theorized since 1964 but never detected.

"If nature is kind to us, we will find it next year," said particle physicist Christoph Rembser, of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, where the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, went online in September 2008. With the atom smasher up and running, Rembser said physicists have everything they need to detect and measure the particle. 

Offering an X Prize for brain breakthroughs

A $10 million prize to spur the creation of innovative neurotechnologies for the human brain could debut as soon as next year. The first possible challenge might be a Neuroeducation X Prize that seeks to dissect learning in the brain and eventually give a boost to the brains of students, or a Paralysis X Prize that promotes recovery of body functions in spinal cord-injured patients. Future X Prizes could even tackle far-out ideas such as virtual telepathy, allowing humans to effortlessly interface with computers using only their brains, and smaller X Challenge rewards could drive innovation for brain issues such as Alzheimer's disease.

The effort is backed by the X Prize Foundation, which successfully spurred on the first private spaceflight with the Ansari X Prize and has also launched the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize for teams racing to land a robot on the moon. Similarly, the $10 million Progressive Auto X Prize recently awarded money to the most fuel-efficient vehicles from among more than 100 competitors.

Now the X Prize Foundation hopes the lure of big rewards can attract more private money and talent to the effort of untangling the serious brain puzzles faced by modern-day researchers.

Securing a satellite for free Internet access

Kosta Grammatis doesn't see the Internet as a luxury as a human right for the billions of people who still lack access to one of the most powerful tools of the 21st century. That's why he launched a bid to buy a satellite and move it to a new orbit where it can provide free Internet access for one or more developing countries. His nonprofit organization, called A Human Right, is looking for $150,000 in donations through the online site buythissatellite.org so it can put together a business plan.

The target acquisition is the Terrestar-1 satellite, which is owned by a company that filed for bankruptcy protection in October. Grammatis hopes eventually to persuade a generous big spender such as Google or Richard Branson to back his bid for Terrestar-1, and then to re-park the satellite above a region with poor Internet access – perhaps above Papua New Guinea or even Africa.

To keep the operation funded, Grammatis envisions leasing out high-speed bandwidth to telecommunications companies, even while providing free Internet connections at lower speeds. If a serious project backer can be found, look for a possible move on this plan in 2011.

Declaring a fourth domain of life

In October, researchers announced the discovery of the world's second giant virus, dubbed CroV. This virus, which infects single-cell marine creatures, is considered enormous due to the size of its genome – approximately 730,000 base pairs, or genetic building blocks, more than double the size of the largest known "normal" virus. Mimivirus, the king of giant viruses so far, has 1.2 million base pairs.

More giant viruses are likely on their way to being found. Mimivirus and CroV are only distant relatives of each other, suggesting that others exist, according to Matthias Fischer who described CroV for his doctoral dissertation at the University of British Columbia. Gunnar Bratbak, of the University of Bergen in Norway, confirmed that his lab has isolated and is studying additional giant viruses.

Viruses, which rely on the machinery of infected cells to reproduce and so aren't considered "alive," are not included in the three domains of life: eukaryotes, prokaryotes and the most ancient, archaea. However, the surprising contents of these giant viruses' genomes endow them with features similar to cells and allow them to play a more active role in replicating themselves. 

Research published Dec. 2 in the journal PLoS ONE reconstructs evolutionary relationships between the three domains and viruses, arguing that viruses are entitled to a domain for themselves. Viruses and all other organisms share a common set of genes involved in DNA processing, according to the researchers at Université de la Méditerranée in France.

Bratbak does not believe viruses are "alive" but that they are an important part of life and evolution, and excluding them from the domains is tricky, he told LiveScience in an e-mail.

"Viruses are not only a 'process' that aid evolution by shuffling genes around, but they are also evolving and obeying the same laws of evolution as the other domains," Bratbak wrote. "Thus the more we learn, the harder it gets to define 'domain' without including viruses among them. I am not sure we are there yet."

Confirming an Earth-like planet beyond the solar system

Plenty of claims have been made about finding what may be an Earth-like exoplanet – one that's rocky, about Earth’s size and orbiting its star within the habitable zone (where it's not too hot or too cold to sustain life as we know it).

"As regards 'definitively and positively identifying' a truly earth-like planet outside of our solar system, that all depends on what one means by definitively and positively," astronomer Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, told LiveScience in an e-mail.

"I would argue (and indeed have argued) that we have already done this, with the announced detection of GJ 581g," said Vogt, who led the team that found the planet.

Gliese 581g, one of six worlds orbiting a star in the constellation Libra, was announced as the first Earth-like planet where life might exist. While Vogt stands by the discovery, some science groups question the finding. For instance, a group of astronomers, led by Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, performed a follow-up investigation in an attempt to confirm the existence of Gliese 581g and said they were unable to.

Even with Mayor's team and Vogt's team trying to confirm Gliese 581g, "it may take another season or two to really know, so I expect we won't see any possible confirmation (or refutation) for another year or two," Vogt said. "In the meantime, we are hard at work not only gathering more data on this system, but on others that may
yield similar potentially habitable planets."

The Kepler mission, which launched in spring 2009 and whose goal is to search for Earth-like worlds, hasn't been under way long enough to confirm habitable Earth-like exoplanets, Vogt said. Even so, MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager said she expects Kepler will making some amazing exoplanet discoveries in 2011, though likely not a truly Earth-like planet.

"To find a true Earth twin, we need to be able to find and characterize Earths orbiting true solar twins," Seager told LiveScience. "This isn't possible until we have the money to invest in a 'Terrestrial Planet Finder,' a direct imaging space telescope, one that is capable of blocking out the starlight to search for a planet that is 10 billion times fainter than its host star. I hope this year brings some breakthroughs in technology in this regard."

Gregory Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Samuel Arbesman, a computational biologist at Harvard Medical School, are more optimistic, and specific, though they are not referring to an "Earth twin," but instead a planet similar to Earth where there's a possibility of life.

"In the past decades, the number of known extrasolar planets has ballooned into the hundreds, and with it the expectation that the discovery of the first Earth-like extrasolar planet is not far off," they write in an online research article published on arXiv.org. Using statistical analyses based on past exoplanet discoveries, "we predict the discovery of the first Earth-like planet to be announced in the first half of 2011, with the likeliest date being early May 2011," they wrote.

More details on how they came to the conclusion can be found at Arbesman's blog.

Understanding what your genes do for you

The studies linking genes to behavior come fast and furious these days: Scientists have found a gene for impulsivity, for promiscuity, even for liberalism. And that's just in the last few months.

Of course, all these findings come with a huge disclaimer: Genes aren't destiny. A single gene won't make you prone to violence or sex, nor will it force you to vote for Barack Obama. On its own, the presence of one of these "behavior" gene variants tells you precisely nothing about the person carrying it.

So what's the point? It’s a growing understanding of the complex interactions between our genes and the environment, researchers say. New genome sequencing techniques allow researchers to cast wider and deeper nets in the search for genetic links to behavior. Close study can reveal how early-life experiences or exposure to certain situations can influence those genes. Even your parents' experiences could make a difference in how your genes are expressed.

It's the beginning of a new era, said David Goldman, a geneticist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, who authored the study on the genetics of impulsivity.

"To generate a million nucleotides of DNA sequence costs about 25 cents, which is just an astounding number," Goldman told LiveScience. "What else in life is that cheap?"

Don't expect a simple breakthrough in 2011 – it's highly unlikely that anyone is going to discover THE depression gene or THE schizophrenia gene. But psychiatry researchers say they're gradually piecing together the gene-environment puzzle, and new clues could arise any day.

"We really might identify new genes and new proteins that are involved in depression that we never thought to look at before," said Srijan Sen, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan. "That's happening a little bit in schizophrenia and autism… In that way, I think revolutionary things could happen."

Dining on genetically modified salmon

A transgenic salmon that grows to meal size in half the time of ordinary salmon is poised to become the first genetically modified animal approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for consumption. But despite a series of recent FDA panels finding that it does not pose any new threat to human health, the AquaBounty Technologies fish still faces criticism from experts and the threat of lawsuits from consumer organizations.

The panel hearings found the AquaBounty salmon to be safe, based on studies that some critics have argued involved too few fish; the FDA has not indicated whether it will require additional studies before ruling on the panels’ recommendation. The environmental risks of the transgenic salmon escaping their indoor facilities and mingling with wild salmon were also considered minimal.

Some economists have argued that the FDA also needs to consider how the AquaBounty salmon could encourage an expansion of the aquaculture industry that raises farm-bred fish. That move could make salmon cheaper and allow for a healthier diet among consumers on the plus side, but also may drain the numbers of wild fish required to feed the growing numbers of farm salmon.

Either way, the salmon will not represent the first genetically modified food to enter human diets if it gets FDA approval in 2011 – just look at the ingredients of your next package of corn chips.

Learning the cultures of Earth’s other creatures

Evidence of culture – learned behavior characteristics of a particular group – among animals is mounting, and research is continuing to add nuance to our understanding of how animals learn from one another and how animal culture, like human culture, evolves. 

Within the next year, Diana Reiss of Hunter College in New York City, and collaborator Ofer Tchernichovski at the City College of New York plan to embark on research that could show, among other things, how dolphins learn new whistles – the sounds by which they communicate – and how they incorporate them into their own social interactions.

A new experimental system the two scientists are developing will allow a social group of dolphins at the National Aquarium in Baltimore to interact with a touch screen projected onto the wall of the tank, while identifying the whistles the animals make, in near-real time.

When asked if findings from animal culture mean humans are not unique in that regard, Tchernichovski balked, calling it a "trick question."

"The more interesting science is the science using animal models to understand ourselves and to understand animals and to see [if] there is a continuum between them," he told LiveScience.

Finding the causes of animal-disease epidemics

In recent years, colony collapse disorder has emptied out honeybee colonies in North America and Europe, and chytrid fungal infections are blamed for amphibian deaths and declining populations on several continents. Most recently, white-nose syndrome has been decimating hibernating bats as it radiates outward from a cave near Albany, N.Y., where it was first seen February 2006.

Scientists are piecing together the causes for these animal plagues, though many questions remain. In October, researchers reported in the journal PLoS ONE that a viral-fungal tag team was likely behind colony collapse, becoming more lethal when the virus and fungus infected the same bee together.

As for the skin infection causing amphibian deaths, a study published in the journal Science in 2009 proposed that the infectious disease, chytridimycosis, interferes with electrolyte transport over the skin, causing cardiac arrest and death. Separately, researchers have suggested that the fungus responsible was transported around the globe by the trade in African frogs, which were used in pregnancy tests during the first part of the 20th century.

The fungus behind white-nose syndrome may use a similar mechanism to kill bats, according to a study published in November in the journal BMC Biology. "In the next few years, it's plausible we will be able to establish exactly how the fungus is killing the bats, and that knowledge may certainly help us come up with the most effective management options," said Paul Cryan, a study researcher and bat ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Top 10 scientific discoveries in 2010

The year of 2010 is full of excitement as the world has witnessed many technological wonders and scientific breakthroughs.Below are the top 10 scientific discoveries of the year.
Top 1: Creation of first self-replicating synthetic life

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has called for enhanced federal oversight in the emerging field of synthetic biology, which involves the design and construction of laboratory-made biological parts.

In May, researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit, genomic-focused basic research organization, reported the successful construction of a first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell. They copied and modified an entire genome of a small bacterial cell, inserted it into a living cell of another species, and by doing so created a new, synthetic organism.

"This is the first self-replicating species that we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer," U.S. scientist Craig Venter who led the team said. "It also is the first species to have its own website encoded in its genetic code."
Scientists hope to patent the organism called Mycoplasma laboratorium and engineer it to manufacture cheap biofuels, medicines and other useful compounds.
However, critics argue the move will stifle future science relying on an artificial microbes. U.S. President Obama has asked the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to study the implications of synthetic biology after proponent, however, no federal regulations has been issued yet.
Top 2: Scientists found life built with toxic chemical

transmission electron micrograph of the bacterium strain GFAJ-1+As/-P GFAJ-1 shows internal vacuole-like structures in an undated photograph released by NASA, the journal Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science on December 2, 2010. A strange, salty lake in California has yielded the equally strange bacterium that thrives on arsenic and redefines life as we know it, researchers reported on Thursday. The finding shows just how little scientists know about the variety of life forms on Earth, and may greatly expand where they should be looking for life on other planets and moons, the NASA-funded team said.

An astrobiology research has found the first known microorganism able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic, which has changed the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth.
This finding of an alternative biochemistry makeup will alter biology textbooks and expand the scope of the search for life beyond Earth. The research is published in this week's edition of Science Express.
Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.
Top 3: Antimatter made & trapped in lab for the first time

In Dan Brown's Angels & Demons book, scientists have solved one of the most complicated scientific problems: the capture and storage of antimatter. In the real life, capturing atomic antimatter is yet to be achieved.

Antimatter Have you read Dan Brown's Angels & Demons book or watched the movie, in which symbologist Robert Langdon tries to stop a legendary secret society Illuminati from destroying Vatican City with the newly discovered power of antimatter stored in a canister?
According to the book, antimatter is an extremely dangerous substance with immense destructive potential, which is unleashed upon contact with any form of normal matter, and is comparable to a small nuclear weapon. In the story, scientists have solved one of the most complicated scientific problems: the capture and storage of antimatter.
Now the story is coming true in real life as researchers at CERN's Geneva labs have recently managed to trap a sizeable amount of antihydrogenhave managed to trap a sizeable amount of antihydrogen.
The development opens the path to new ways of making detailed measurements of antihydrogen. This will in turn allow scientists to compare matter and antimatter, which remains one of the biggest mysteries of science.
Top 4: Scientists Solve Mystery Of Mass In Variable Stars
 
Astronomers have found the first double star in which a pulsating variable and another star pass in front of one another, solving a a decades-old mystery in the process.
"By using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, along with other telescopes, we have measured the mass of a Cepheid with an accuracy far greater than any earlier estimates," said Grzegorz Pietrzyski, of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile and the Warsaw University Observatory in Poland. "This new result allows us to immediately see which of the two competing theories predicting the masses of Cepheids is correct."
Top 5: Astronomers Discover 'Rosetta Stone' For T-dwarf Stars

An international team of astronomers has discovered a unique star system comprised of a very cool, methane-rich dwarf star and a white dwarf star in orbit around each other, the the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said on November 22.
The system, which is the first of its type to be found, is a "Rosetta Stone" for such dwarf stars and gives scientists a way of finding the mass and age of the methane dwarf, known as a T-dwarf star.
Top 6: Mysterious Giant bubbles discovered in Milky Way

Scientists have discovered two massive gamma-ray emitting bubbles in the center of Milky Way galaxy.
Astronomers say the bubbles, which may be millions of years old, span more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus.
Scientists are now conducting more analyses to better understand the nature those bubbles, which appear to have well-defined edges and emit high energy gamma-ray fog not seen elsewhere in the Milky Way.
Scientists believe that the bubbles could have been formed as a result of gas outflows from a burst of star formation, perhaps the one that produced many massive star clusters in the Milky Way's center several million years ago.
Top 7: Possible Ice Volcanoes Spotted On Moon Of Saturn
 
Scientists have found possible ice volcanoes on Saturn's moon Titan, similar to those on Earth that spew molten rock.
Topography and surface composition data from NASA's Cassini Spacecraft have enabled scientists to make the best case yet for an Earth-like volcanic landform that erupts with ice instead of lava.
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere. Titan is also the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found.
Top 8:  Wobble May Keep Water Liquid On Moon Of Saturn

The surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus averages a very cold -198 degrees Celsius, which is enough to keep nitrogen liquid. So there shouldn't be any liquid water.
But that view changed when in 2005 the Cassini spacecraft got a picture of a plume of water rising from the surface. Recently scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have theorized that Enceladus rotates unevenly, giving rise to tidal forces that create heat, which keeps the water below the surface liquid.
Astronomers discover another Earth-like planet outside solar system.
Astronomers have discovered a habitable rocky planet in another solar system for the first time that could be another Earth-like discovery with basic and essential conditions needed to support extraterrestrial life after a decade long hunt ending human race's cosmic loneliness.
They said life does not necessarily exist on the planet but that the basic conditions are present to allow it to begin and keep it going. According to them, the planet is large enough to have the gravitational force to hold an atmosphere surrounding it and data tell scientists that any water on the new planet will be in liquid form.
However, scientists say there is no evidence that Gliese 581G holds oxygenated landscapes of green and blue that would support microbes, dinosaurs or some alien-looking pre-human. For life, there must be water, and there's no proof of that as yet.
Top 9: Planetary collisons in double star-systems leave no room for life to emerge

Since double star-systems make planets collide, any chances of life emerging on these planets is impossible, says a NASA report.
"This is real-life science fiction," said Jeremy Drake of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass said in news release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Our data tells us that planets in these systems might not be so lucky -- collisions could be common. It's theoretically possible that habitable planets could exist around these types of stars, so if there happened to be any life there, it could be doomed."
Top 10: Super-volcano erupts in outer galaxy, similar to Icelandic volcano on Earth

A galactic super-volcano is erupting in massive galaxy M87 and blasting gas outwards, and NASA scientists view that the huge volcano in M87 is very similar to the recent Icelandic volcano that caused heavy air traffic disruptions across Europe.
According to NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, M87 is relatively close to the Earth at a distance of about 50 million light years and lies at the center of the Virgo cluster, which contains thousands of galaxies.
Signs of life on Titan?
An analysis of data from NASA's Cassini probe shows depletions of certain chemicals on the surface. Back in 2005, Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA, said one line of evidence for life would be unusual depletions of acetylene, ethane and hydrogen at the surface.
While the findings aren't conclusive, some suggest the hydrogen and acetylene could be disappearing because they are being used by methane-based life in the same way life on Earth uses oxygen and other chemicals.

How science changed our world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oH6apmb6sY

 A good video to get the exact view over science and tech how it changed and also changed our world...............

Sahara fish discovery enforces Out-of-Africa theory

Fish may have once swum across the Sahara, a finding that could shed light on how humanity made its way out of Africa, researchers said. The cradle of humanity lies south of the Sahara, which begs the question as to how our species made its way past it. The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, and would seem a major barrier for any humans striving to migrate off the continent.
Scientists have often focused on the Nile Valley as the corridor by which humans left Africa. However, considerable research efforts have failed to uncover evidence for its consistent use by people leaving the continent, and precisely how watery it has been over time is controversial.
Now it turns out the Sahara might not have been quite as impassable as once thought — not only for humanity, but for fish as well.
"Fish appeared to have swam across the Sahara during its last wet phase sometime between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago," researcher Nick Drake, a geographer at King's College London, told LiveScience. "The Sahara is not a barrier to the migrations of animals and people. Thus it is possible — likely? —that early modern humans did so, and this could explain how we got out of Africa."
Using satellite imagery and digital maps of the landscape, the researchers found the Sahara was once covered by a dense network of rivers, lakes and inland deltas. This large waterway channeled water and animals into and across the Sahara during wet, "green" times.
In their analysis, Drake and his colleagues found evidence that many creatures, including aquatic ones, dispersed across the Sahara recently. For example, 25 North African animal species have populations both north and south of the Sahara with small refuges within the desert, including catfish (Clarias gariepinus), tilapia (Tilapia zillii), jewel cichlid fish (Hemichromis letourneuxi) and freshwater snails such as the red-rimmed melania (Melanoides tuberculata). Indeed, more animals may have once crossed over the Sahara than over the Nile corridor, the researchers said — only nine animal species that occupy the Nile corridor today are also found both north and south of the Sahara.
If fish could have crossed the Sahara, it is hard to imagine that humans didn't. Analysis of African languages and artifacts suggest that ancient waterways recently affected how humans occupied the Sahara. For instance, speakers of Nilo-Saharan languages once lived across central and southern Sahara, and may have once hunted aquatic creatures with barbed bone points and fish hooks. In addition, ancient lake sediments suggest the Sahara was green roughly 125,000 years ago, back when anatomically modern humans might have begun migrating out of Africa.
Future work could focus on when species got across the Sahara — genetic analysis of fish could help pinpoint such times in fish, Drake said. However, further research into the past of the Sahara could prove difficult and even dangerous, he noted. Some of the Saharan countries the researchers would like to visit in order to analyze the genetics of fish populations or date the ages of ancient shorelines "are deemed to be too dangerous to visit due to terrorist activity or civil war," Drake said.
The scientists detailed their findings online Dec. 27 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Scientific 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Scientists, Past and Present

1     Isaac Newton     the Newtonian Revolution     Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism, i.e., Athanasianism;
                                                                              believed in the Arianism of the Primitive Church)
2     Albert Einstein     Twentieth-Century Science     Jewish
3     Neils Bohr           the Atom     Jewish Lutheran
4     Charles Darwin     Evolution     Anglican (nominal); Unitarian
5     Louis Pasteur        the Germ Theory of Disease     Catholic
6     Sigmund Freud      Psychology of the Unconscious     Jewish; Atheist; Freudian psychoanalysis (Freudianism)
7     Galileo Galilei         the New Science     Catholic
8     Antoine Laurent Lavoisier      the Revolution in Chemistry     Catholic
9     Johannes Kepler     Motion of the Planets     Lutheran
10     Nicolaus Copernicus     the Heliocentric Universe     Catholic (priest)
11     Michael Faraday     the Classical Field Theory     Sandemanian
12     James Clerk Maxwell     the Electromagnetic Field     Presbyterian; Anglican; Baptist
13     Claude Bernard     the Founding of Modern Physiology    
14     Franz Boas     Modern Anthropology     Jewish
15     Werner Heisenberg     Quantum Theory     Lutheran
16     Linus Pauling     Twentieth-Century Chemistry     Lutheran
17     Rudolf Virchow     the Cell Doctrine    
18     Erwin Schrodinger     Wave Mechanics     Catholic
19     Ernest Rutherford     the Structure of the Atom    
20     Paul Dirac     Quantum Electrodynamics    
21     Andreas Vesalius     the New Anatomy     Catholic
22     Tycho Brahe     the New Astronomy     Lutheran
23     Comte de Buffon     l'Histoire Naturelle    
24     Ludwig Boltzmann     Thermodynamics    
25     Max Planck     the Quanta     Protestant
26     Marie Curie     Radioactivity     Catholic (lapsed)
27     William Herschel     the Discovery of the Heavens     Jewish
28     Charles Lyell     Modern Geology    
29     Pierre Simon de Laplace     Newtonian Mechanics     atheist
30     Edwin Hubble     the Modern Telescope    
31     Joseph J. Thomson     the Discovery of the Electron    
32     Max Born     Quantum Mechanics     Jewish Lutheran
33     Francis Crick     Molecular Biology     atheist
34     Enrico Fermi     Atomic Physics     Catholic
35     Leonard Euler     Eighteenth-Century Mathematics     Calvinist
36     Justus Liebig     Nineteenth-Century Chemistry    
37     Arthur Eddington     Modern Astronomy     Quaker
38     William Harvey     Circulation of the Blood     Anglican (nominal)
39     Marcello Malpighi     Microscopic Anatomy     Catholic
40     Christiaan Huygens     the Wave Theory of Light     Calvinist
41     Carl Gauss (Karl Friedrich Gauss)     Mathematical Genius     Lutheran
42     Albrecht von Haller     Eighteenth-Century Medicine    
43     August Kekule     Chemical Structure    
44     Robert Koch     Bacteriology    
45     Murray Gell-Mann     the Eightfold Way     Jewish
46     Emil Fischer     Organic Chemistry    
47     Dmitri Mendeleev     the Periodic Table of Elements    
48     Sheldon Glashow     the Discovery of Charm     Jewish
49     James Watson     the Structure of DNA     atheist
50     John Bardeen     Superconductivity    
51     John von Neumann     the Modern Computer     Jewish Catholic
52     Richard Feynman     Quantum Electrodynamics     Jewish
53     Alfred Wegener     Continental Drift    
54     Stephen Hawking     Quantum Cosmology     atheist
55     Anton van Leeuwenhoek     the Simple Microscope     Dutch Reformed
56     Max von Laue     X-ray Crystallography    
57     Gustav Kirchhoff     Spectroscopy    
58     Hans Bethe     the Energy of the Sun     Jewish
59     Euclid     the Foundations of Mathematics     Platonism / Greek philosophy
60     Gregor Mendel     the Laws of Inheritance     Catholic (Augustinian monk)
61     Heike Kamerlingh Onnes     Superconductivity    
62     Thomas Hunt Morgan     the Chromosomal Theory of Heredity    
63     Hermann von Helmholtz     the Rise of German Science    
64     Paul Ehrlich     Chemotherapy     Jewish
65     Ernst Mayr     Evolutionary Theory     atheist
66     Charles Sherrington     Neurophysiology    
67     Theodosius Dobzhansky     the Modern Synthesis     Russian Orthodox
68     Max Delbruck     the Bacteriophage    
69     Jean Baptiste Lamarck     the Foundations of Biology    
70     William Bayliss     Modern Physiology    
71     Noam Chomsky     Twentieth-Century Linguistics     Jewish atheist
72     Frederick Sanger     the Genetic Code    
73     Lucretius     Scientific Thinking     Epicurean; atheist
74     John Dalton     the Theory of the Atom     Quaker
75     Louis Victor de Broglie     Wave/Particle Duality    
76     Carl Linnaeus     the Binomial Nomenclature     Christianity
77     Jean Piaget     Child Development    
78     George Gaylord Simpson     the Tempo of Evolution    
79     Claude Levi-Strauss     Structural Anthropology     Jewish
80     Lynn Margulis     Symbiosis Theory     Jewish
81     Karl Landsteiner     the Blood Groups     Jewish
82     Konrad Lorenz     Ethology    
83     Edward O. Wilson     Sociobiology    
84     Frederick Gowland Hopkins     Vitamins    
85     Gertrude Belle Elion     Pharmacology    
86     Hans Selye     the Stress Concept    
87     J. Robert Oppenheimer     the Atomic Era     Jewish
88     Edward Teller     the Bomb     Jewish
89     Willard Libby     Radioactive Dating    
90     Ernst Haeckel     the Biogenetic Principle    
91     Jonas Salk     Vaccination     Jewish
92     Emil Kraepelin     Twentieth-Century Psychiatry    
93     Trofim Lysenko     Soviet Genetics     Russian Orthodox; Communist
94     Francis Galton     Eugenics    
95     Alfred Binet     the I.Q. Test    
96     Alfred Kinsey     Human Sexuality     atheist
97     Alexander Fleming     Penicillin     Catholic
98     B. F. Skinner     Behaviorism     atheist
99     Wilhelm Wundt     the Founding of Psychology     atheist
100     Archimedes     the Beginning of Science     Greek philosophy

Scientia

Scientia

Science (from Latin: scientia meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. An older and closely related meaning still in use today is that of Aristotle, for whom scientific knowledge was a body of reliable knowledge that can be logically and rationally explained