World's Oldest Sperm Is Discovered In Shrimp Fossil, And It's Huge

Researchers found the oldest sperm ever discovered--belonging to a small crustacean called a seed shrimp up to 23 million years old--in a pile of bat poop, but lost the robotic submersible Nereus when it imploded thousands of miles below the surface of the ocean in the Kermadec Trench near New Zealand. Elephant seals have as much carbon monoxide in their blood as a two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker; this possibly helps them survive deep dives in the ocean while hunting.

The oldest petrified sperm ever discovered is gargantuan, at least for a gamete.

The sperm comes from the early Miocene epoch, between about 23 million and 16 million years ago, and belonged to a tiny crustacean called a seed shrimp or ostracod. Seed shrimp are bivalves like mussels, but sport tiny appendages that make them look like walking beans. Though they measure just millimeters long, their sperm often reaches more than 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) in length.

The new fossilized sperm comes from an ancient cave deposit in Australia, where bat guano falling into the water may have helped preserve the cells.

"We can distinguish the typical helical organization of the organelles in the sperm cell, which makes its surface look like a hawser or cable," study researcher Renate Matzke-Karasz, a geobiologist at Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Germany, said in a statement. "But the most astounding aspect of our findings is that it strongly suggests that the mode of reproduction in these tiny crustaceans has remained virtually unchanged to this day." [See images of the giant sperm and ancient ostracods]

Ancient animals, strange sperm

Seed shrimp aren't the only organisms with absurdly long sperm. The longest sperm in nature today belongs to Drosophila bifurca, a fruit fly whose seed stretches to more than 2 inches (5 centimeters).

A modern ostracod (Newnhamia). These tiny crustaceans create sperm longer than their own bodies.

But ostracod sperm is extra odd, because it lacks the familiar tail, or flagellum, thatpropels most sperm cells. Instead, ostracod sperm consists of a large, elongate head. This entire structures moves by contracting organelles along its membrane, which causes the sperm cell to ripple and rotate.

Matzke-Karasz and her colleagues discovered the fossilized sperm cells in five specimens of ostracods from the Riversleigh fossil site in northwest Queensland, Australia. This site preserves what was once a cave, with copious ancient bat bones and cave formations. Ostracods once lived in standing water inside the cave.

The sperm are at least 16 million years old and fossilized in rock, making them the oldest petrified sperm cells ever discovered. (The previous oldest-known ostracod sperm was only a few thousand years old.) One other sperm find does beat out the ostracod find in age: An insect-like springtail trapped in amber about 40 million years ago had sperm inside its body. But preservation in amber is different than preservation in rock, as amber frequently preserves soft tissue and rock rarely does.

Giant sperm

Matzke-Karasz and her colleagues studied 66 ostracod fossils from the Queensland site using X-ray tomography, which enables a three-dimensional peek inside the fossils.

In 2009, Matzke-Karasz and her team discovered a 100-million-year-old female ostracod with large receptacles for giant sperm, but the cells inside had degraded. The new study proved more fruitful. The researchers discovered sperm cells in various states of preservation in one male and three female ostracods of the speciesHeterocypris collaris, and one female of the species Newnhamia mckenziana.

A cross section of a male Heterocypris collaris, showing Zenker organs, which act as sperm pumps, as well as sperm stored in the seminal vesicle and ducts.

The researchers could not discern the length of the sperm in all of the fossils, but the researchers estimate that the 0.05-inch-long (1.26 mm) H. collaris male had sperm almost exactly its own length — 0.047 to 0.051 inches long (1.2 to 1.3 mm).

The fossils also preserved the ducts in the female ostracod anatomy where the sperm would enter the body. These spiral ducts are longer even than ostracod sperm, sometimes reaching lengths four times that of the ostracod body. The discovery of the giant sperm and giant receptacle ducts provides evidence that these body parts co-evolved and have changed little in millions of years, the researchers report today (May 13) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Jodie Foster Joins Alien Hunt

Jodie Foster, Academy Award winning actor, producer and director, was among 2,557 donors helping SETI (Search for extraterrestrial intelligence -- collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life) in its lookout for alien radio signal from outer space.

With no successful alien-spotting to boast of, SETI was going through a severe cash crunch due to dwindling interest of funding agencies and high profile individual donors. However, the latest news from the institute will revive the lost interest, as it has announced raising $223,000, exceeding its $200,000 goal. Setistars.org has a big red bold lettered message on the site, "Thank you for all your support to resume."

"The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is good to go and we need to return it to the task of searching newly discovered planetary worlds for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence," Foster was quoted by AFP. She said the telescopes "could turn science fiction into science fact, but only if it is actively searching the skies. I support the effort to bring the array out of hibernation."

SETI officials didn't disclose Foster's donation amount.

"We are so grateful to our donors," said Tom Pierson, who co-founded the SETI Institute with Jill Tarter. "We believe we will be back on the air in September."

Bill Anders, Apollo 8 mission astronaut, said: "... it is absolutely irresponsible of the human race not to be searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence."

The failure of the SETI program to announce an alien radio signal had partially dimmed hopes of humans' encounter with life forms outside Earth. The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) went offline in April this year following a SETI announcement about the lack of funding for the institute. The Allen Telescope Array is a facility dedicated to detecting electromagnetic transmission from outer space. 

SETI had announced taking down ATA as the funds from NASA and a number of wealthy donors, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, had exhausted and the institute needed an estimated $5 million to operate for the next two years.

Sources:

Jodie Foster Helps Revive SETI ET Search

Jodie Foster Funds Alien Hunt

THE “CHEMISTRY” OF FALLING IN LOVE

THE “CHEMISTRY” OF FALLING IN LOVE.

  

A psychologist conducted an experiment on how to make two strangers fall in love in 34 minutes. And two subjects got married afterwards!

Still remember the first time you fall in love?  Of course you do! Everybody does! The unexplainable feeling of nervousness when the person you fancy walk across the room. The sweating palms. The irregular sound of your heartbeat. The butterfly in your stomach. The mind that remembers only him and nothing else.

I still remember when one of my good friend, pretty Lisa, get into this madness of falling in love with the guy with bulky arms playing basketball in a court across our apartment. At first it was only “Wow, check out the body!” on one fine afternoon. Then, all of a sudden she knows how to play basketball. Next, she began to dress up and smiling more. The next thing I know, she is receiving unstamped letters on a weekly basis. Her performance in work dropped a bit the first 3 months but after that she flew high. Why are we experiencing all this when we fall in love? 

Stages of Love

 
Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey has proposed 3 stages of love – lust, attraction and attachment. Each stage are driven by different hormones and chemicals produced by the body.

Stage 1 : Lust

This is the first stage of love and is driven by the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen in both men and women. These hormones set you up to go out there looking for a potential lover.

Stage 2: Attraction

This is the truly “struck-by-cupid-arrow” phase where both men both become madly in love. When people fall in love they can think of nothing else. They might even lose their appetite and sleep less, preferring to spend hours at a time daydreaming about their new lover. 3 hormones are responsible for this.

·  Dopamine – when released, the body will require less sleep, less food, increased energy, more focused and detail attention to the love ones. It has the same effect of the brain taking cocaine or nicotine.

·  Norepinephrine / Adrenaline - The initial stages of falling for someone activates your stress response, increasing your blood levels of adrenalin. When you unexpectedly bump into your new love, you start to sweat, your heart races and your mouth goes dry.

·  Serotonin - One of love's most important chemicals. The image of the love ones keeps appearing in your thoughts making the person temporarily insane.

Stage 3: Attachment

Attachment is the bond that bonds the couples together for them to have and raise children. Scientists think there might be two major hormones involved in this feeling of attachment; oxytocin and vasopressin.  

Oxytocin (The cuddle hormone) - This is released by the hypothalamus gland during child birth and also helps the breast express milk. It helps cement the strong bond between mother and child. It is also released by both sexes during orgasm and it is thought that it promotes bonding when adults are intimate. The theory goes that the more sex a couple has, the deeper their bond becomes

§         Vasopressin -  is another important hormone in the long-term commitment stage and is released after sex. Vasopressin (also called anti-diuretic hormone) works with your kidneys to control thirst. Studies shows that this hormone promotes devotion and protection towards the other partner

How to fall in love?

Understanding the chemical reactions while falling in love and how it happen means that falling in love can be created any time and any where scientifically. York psychologist, Professor Arthur Arun, has been studying why people fall in love and came out with a very simple technique to get the chemistry going. 3 easy steps to follow :

§         Find a complete stranger.

§         Reveal to each other intimate details about your lives for half an hour.

§         Then, stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for 4 minutes

He asked his subjects to carry out the above 3 steps and found that many of his couples felt deeply attracted after the 34 minute experiment. Two of his subjects later got married. Cautious! Only try this if you are SINGLE and AVAILABLE!!

Some people find their true love the first time they fall in love and live happily ever after. Some people, on the other hand, have a less favourable experience. No matter how good or bad it turned out to be, the experience will always have a special place in your heart. Want to know what happened to my friend pretty Lisa, with the basketball guy? Well, they dated for a year, getting to know each other. After a year the relationship became sour. Lisa learned that the only thing that she liked about him was his body, and they seemed unable to move beyond that. That’s what happens when you let the “chemistry” of love takes over your mind!

Even Einstein Could Not Have Imagined Technology Used to Directly Detect Gravitational Waves

The director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics talks about the news this week of indirect evidence for gravitational waves and his work to obtain direct evidence.

Physicists were thrilled this week at news of strong evidence for gravitational waves, perturbations of the early universe that confirm it expanded rapidly following the big bang during a period called inflation.

To gain a different perspective on these findings, Carsten Koenneker of Scientific American’s German-language editionSpektrum interviewed Bruce Allen, director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, about the BICEP2 experiment that detected these long-sought waves.

You study gravitational waves. How important are the new findings from BICEP2 for physics?

These are very important, because they provide "missing evidence" for an inflationary phase in the early history of the universe. Also important: This gravitational-wave evidence is stronger than many of us, including me, had expected. It demonstrates how gravitational waves let us "look at" things that we cannot see in other ways.

Why did it take 100 years for us to detect such a strong signal of these waves, which were predicted long ago by Einstein in his theory of general relativity?

The BICEP results are indirect evidence for the existence of gravitational waves. There is other indirect evidence, for example the decay of the orbit of the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16 or of the double pulsar PSR J0737-3039. In the coming years we expect to make the first direct observations with the LIGO, VIRGO, GEO600 and KAGRA experiments. These are possible because in the 98 years since Einstein's 1916 prediction there has been a lot of technological progress in lasers, precision optics, electronic control systems, and computers and data analysis. Einstein could not have imagined that, 100 years ago!

Some commentators compare this result with the discovery of the Higgs boson. Do you agree?

Not quite. For me, the important thing is not the confirmation of the existence of gravitational waves. The important thing is that this is strong evidence supporting an inflationary early history in the universe. If this gravitational wave background had not been found, it would have been similar to the Higgs boson not being found: It would have forced us to reconsider this very well-studied model of the early universe.

If these results are confirmed, what would this mean for theoretical physics?

There are an enormous number of different inflationary models. If these results are confirmed, they will rule out a large number of these models. This is very healthy for theoretical physics!

You conduct gravitational wave experiments within the GEO600 experiment in Hannover together with colleagues from Glasgow and Cardiff. What are the differences between your work and BICEP2?

The LIGO, VIRGO and GEO600 experiments are looking for gravitational waves that are passing by Earth right now. These come from neutron stars and black holes that exist in our universe now—today. The BICEP experiment is observing the effects of gravitational waves from almost 14 billion years ago, before stars and planets even formed. The BICEP experiment is looking at very-low-frequency gravitational waves (80 cycles in 14 billion years). The LIGO, VIRGO and GEO600 experiments are looking for gravitational waves with frequencies of hundreds of hertz. The sources are very different!

Do you think that you might directly confirm the existence of gravitational waves with GEO600 independently from BICEP2?

Yes. In the coming years LIGO, VIRGO and GEO are expected to make direct detections of gravitational waves as they fly by Earth. This is different than the indirect detections (the signs of gravitational waves) being seen by BICEP2 in the cosmic background radiation.

These Are North Korea’s 28 State-Approved Hairstyles

It looks a lot of this year's male Oscar winners wouldn't survive the Communist state of North Korea without a haircut.

David Guttenfelder / AP

Photos showing example hair styles hang inside a hair salon in Pyongyang, North Korea on Feb. 20, 2013.

It looks a lot of this year’s male Oscar winners wouldn’t survive the Communist state of North Korea without a haircut.

The Telegraph reports that the world’s favorite hermit state is implementing state-sanctioned haircuts for men and women. Women are allowed to choose one of 14 styles; married women are instructed to keep their tresses short, while the single ladies are allowed let loose with longer, curlier locks. (We’re partial to no. 6 on the ladies’ list, which pays homage to the fabulous feathering that dominated so much of 1980s.)

Men are prohibited from growing their hair longer than 5 cm — less than 2 inches — while older men can get away with up to 7 cm (3 inches).
Oddly enough, the list falls short of including its young leader Kim Jong Un’s current look — a variation on the high-and-tight that may be too much of a power ‘do for North Korea’s non-elite.

David Guttenfelder / AP

Photos showing example hair styles hang inside a barber shop in Pyongyang, North Korea on Feb. 20, 2013.

But hair conformity is nothing new in North Korea. The Daily Mail reports that in 2005 state TV aired a five part series on haircut guidelines for today’s modern socialist lifestyle, and it seems the concept is reemerging under North Korea’s new leader. There are a couple theories as to why this mandate is in place, including that Kim is not a fan of previous styles. Perhaps he just wants to avoid having to grow a pompadour like his father’s.