Night Monkey

A new species of night monkey is one of eight new mammals found during an expedition to northern Peru’s Tabaconas Namballe National Sanctuary (map), scientists announced recently.

A team of Mexican and Peruvian biologists found this “new heaven of unknown biodiversity” during a 2009-2011 expedition, according to a press statement.

Rarely seen and little-studied, night monkeys are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and endangered by the Peruvian government, making the new discovery especially notable.

The as yet unnamed new species was found close to the border of Ecuador, said expedition co-leader Gerardo Ceballos, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Compared with two other species of night monkey in the region, the new one has a more uniform color and smaller skull.

(Source: National Geographic)

Science Art-Nature invites you to participate in a juried virtual exhibit, WINDOWS ON EVOLUTION:  An Artistic Celebration of Charles Darwin, commemorating Darwin Day, February 12, 2013.

• The top 40 entries will be posted on Darwin Day, but all qualifying works will eventually be added. 
• The exhibit will remain accessible through the Science Art-Nature website indefinitely. 

We intend to have the exhibit announced through various websites including that of the Darwin Day Organization. Darwin Day, as described there, is “an international celebration of science and humanity.” Visit their site to see videos, lectures on evolution, and information on Darwin, evolution, Darwin Day events and more.

As always, our aim is to display and promote the best contemporary Science Art and to encourage discourse between the scientific and artistic communities.

• Each selected piece of art must portray a narrative about evolution. To help viewers step inside that narrative it must be accompanied by a 100-word caption describing the evolutionary context. For comparable caption examples, please refer to our previous shows in 2010 and 2011. For an example of evolutionary art, see our placeholder for the exhibit.
• The exhibit may be interactive, inviting commentaries from viewers.   Send us your preference!
• The exhibit is open to all living artists working in any medium, although submission of traditional photographs is discouraged.
• Each artist may submit up to three works, but no more than two works from each artist will be selected.

SUBMISSION DATE:  The deadline for entries is midnight, October 15th, 2012.

Toys Cars Offer Mobility to Children with Disabilities

Children born with severe mobility impairments, such as those associated with cerebral palsy, are at increased risk for mobility-related developmental delays in cognition, language and socialization. Providing daily mobility between the ages of 1 and 5 is critical, given that significant learning, brain and behavioral development is dependent on mobility during this time.

The NSF-funded project, affectionately termed “Babies Driving Robots and Racecars,” began at the University of Delaware when Sunil Agrawal, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, approached Cole Galloway, a professor in the Department of Physical Therapy.

"Dr. Agrawal told me, ‘We have small robots, and you have small infants, do you think we can do something together?’" Galloway explained.

Galloway was hesitant at first; he could not envision babies and robots in the same room much less interacting with each other. However, after visiting the lab and seeing Agrawal’s robots in action, Galloway began to see the possibilities.

What is reality?

WHEN you woke up this morning, you found the world largely as you left it. You were still you; the room in which you awoke was the same one you went to sleep in. The outside world had not been rearranged. History was unchanged and the future remained unknowable. In other words, you woke up to reality. But what is reality? The more we probe it, the harder it becomes to comprehend. In the eight articles on this page we take a tour of our fundamental understanding of the world around us, starting with an attempt to define reality and ending with the idea that whatever reality is, it isn’t what it seems. Hold on to your hats.

Gene That Causes a Form of Deafness Discovered

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center have found a new genetic mutation responsible for deafness and hearing loss associated with Usher syndrome type 1.

These findings, published in the Sept. 30 advance online edition of the journal Nature Genetics, could help researchers develop new therapeutic targets for those at risk for this syndrome.

Partners in the study included the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Kentucky.

Usher syndrome is a genetic defect that causes deafness, night-blindness and a loss of peripheral vision through the progressive degeneration of the retina.

(Image credit: GETTY)

You, robot?

Technology and regulation: A research project considers how the law should deal with technologies that blur man and machine

SPEAKING at a conference organised by The Economist earlier this year, Hugh Herr, a roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, described disabilities as conditions that persist “because of poor technology” and made the bold claim that during the 21st century disability would be largely eliminated. What gave his words added force was that half way through his speech, after ten minutes of strolling around the stage, he unexpectedly pulled up his trouser legs to reveal his bionic legs, and then danced a little jig. In future, he suggested, people might choose to replace an arthritic, painful limb with a fully functional robotic one. “Why wouldn’t you replace it?” he asked. “We’re going to see a lot of unusual situations like that.”

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Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Tufts University say they have invented functional electronic implants that can dissolve after programmable time periods. To demonstrate the system, which could aid in healing during the first few crucial days after an operation, they implanted one in a rat. It created a temporary temperature increase to sterilize a wound, and then it dissolved after 15 days. The researchers reported the development this week in the journal Science.

Biomedical researchers are turning to the idea of “programmable degradation” because it is difficult to develop materials that remain compatible with human tissue over the long term. Medical implants or drug-delivery systems that do their work and then disappear are ideal. To develop the electronic implants, the researchers encased them in silk. That material’s characteristics, particularly its crystallinity, can be adjusted so that its degradation time can be anywhere from seconds to years.

The electronics inside the silk were based on nanometers-thick sheets or ribbons of silicon, called silicon nanomembranes. The materials have been previously used to make experimental transistors, diodes, complementary logic devices, and photocells for flexible surfaces. Whereas a conventional silicon wafer or a chip would take about a thousand years to dissolve in biofluids, says John A. Rogers, who led the research at the University of Illinois, a nanomembrane is gone in a couple of weeks.

Bioengineers Introduce ‘Bi-Fi’ — The Biological ‘Internet’

If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford University have given M13 a bit of a makeover.

The researchers, Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, and Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor of bioengineering, have parasitized the parasite and harnessed M13’s key attributes — its non-lethality and its ability to package and broadcast arbitrary DNA strands — to create what might be termed the biological Internet, or “Bi-Fi.” Their findings were published online Sept. 7 in the Journal of Biological Engineering

Using the virus, Ortiz and Endy have created a biological mechanism to send genetic messages from cell to cell. The system greatly increases the complexity and amount of data that can be communicated between cells and could lead to greater control of biological functions within cell communities. The advance could prove a boon to bioengineers looking to create complex, multicellular communities that work in concert to accomplish important biological functions.

Pill for healthy ageing ‘available within a generation’

Dame Linda Partridge, a geneticist at University College London, claimed drugs will soon be available which can lower the risk of diseases like cancer and dementia by tackling the root cause – age itself.

Rather than promising immortality, taking the drugs from middle age or earlier could dramatically shorten the period of illness and frailty that we typically experience before we die.

Speaking at the EMBO life sciences meeting in Nice, France this week Dame Linda said several existing drugs have already been shown to have unexpected and welcome side effects, such as aspirin which reduces the risk of cancer.

Other therapies will be produced that mimic the effects of a severely restricted diet, which animal studies suggest can protect against a host of age-related conditions including heart disease and diabetes, she said.

Speaking after her keynote lecture, she told The Daily Telegraph: “One obvious approach in trying to deal with the very rapidly increasing incidence of age related diseases is to tackle the underlying aging process itself, because it is the major risk factor.