Hasta La Gadget!

Earlier this year, scientists announced they’d finally captured video footage of Architeuthis—or kraken, or just the giant squid if you prefer. In this video, Edith Widder, once of the scientists responsible for the discovery, explains how she and her team did it. More »

Last November, a group of scientists claimed that they had discovered DNA evidence of the existence of the fabled Bigfoot. The scientists promised that they would be publishing a paper outlining their findings and if you’ve been wondering where exactly that paper is, that mystery is now solved. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the scientists had a difficult time finding a publication that would actually publish their findings.

According to Ars Technica, the researchers ended up having to purchase their own online journal to be able to publish their findings. You can download the research paper yourself if you feel like coughing up $30 for what apparently are rather questionable results. While the researchers claim that their DNA evidence proves the existence of Bigfoot, the results seemed off to Ars Technica.

Ars’ John Timmer has a background in biological research and looked over the results and came away feeling like the results have significant issues. He says that where the nuclear genome is concerned “the results are a mess.” He points out that sometimes the tests picked up human DNA and other times human DNA wasn’t found. He also notes that sometimes the tests failed altogether. He also points out test results that show patches of double and single stranded DNA intermixed. Timmer says all this suggests is that the researchers have are samples of modern human DNA intermingled with some other contaminant.

So yet again, Sasquatch continues to elude us.

[via Ars Technica]

You might think that if you’re mixing a cocktail it’s only the liquor you should worry about. But new research suggests that the type of mixer you use also plays a role in how the booze affects your body. More »

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.

In isolation, this week’s stories are all pretty notable, but if you put them together, it begins to sound a lot like the plot of a movie. Four-stranded DNA, a database of alien planets, a new super-chemical to kill hospital bugs and a byzantine gamma-radiation blast. You can almost picture the plucky heroine trying to unpick the galactic conspiracy before someone loses an eye — and if you’ve already cast weepy Clare Danes in the role, then you’ve already passed the entry exam to read Alt-week.

NASA’s Kepler observatory is designed to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and civilizations traces of exoplanets and has clocked up around two thousand unconfirmed sightings. The team behind the program have decided to lessen the workload by opening up its findings and letting armchair astronomers worldwide participate. As well as being able to chip in with opinions about what constitutes a planet, the team are letting students develop data mining experiments, looking for patterns that could assist in the discovery of alien life — or just look neat when graphed visually.

Scientists think that a blast of Gamma radiation might have hit our planet in the halcyon days of the year 775. Fusa Miyake discovered Carbon-14 and Beryllium-10 traces in tree rings from the era, which point to a gamma ray burst from a celestial body other than the Sun. Of course, the natural question is why we have no recorded instances of Dr. Brvce Banner turning green and smashing up Byzantine Constantinople? Well, it seems that astrophysicist Ralph Neuhauser has the unexciting answer — most of the radiation would have been caught by the atmosphere, meaning that it’s highly unlikely anyone succumbed to an accidental overdose.

Hospital bugs like MRSA are easy to kill when they’re outside your body, just as long as you’ve got some alcohol nearby. If they get inside you, then there’s always the option of taking an antibiotic or two to kill ’em off. If, however, they’ve hitched a ride on a catheter that’s implanted into your body, then the bugs can grow a biofilm — in short, a biological beachhead that will constantly reinfect you and is impenetrable to antibiotics. IBM, in partnership with the Singapore Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, has developed a hydrogel that can be smeared all over such implants, greatly reducing the risk of infection. Safe enough to go into the human body, the hydrogel prevents biofilms from growing and, thanks to its positive charge, attracts negatively charged microorganisms, which it then pops like water balloons. There’s no word on if Big Blue plans to share the discovery with chemical corporations, but it certainly sounds better than downing a shot of Purell every time we venture in for a check-up.

DNA can only be found in a double helix, right? That fact seems destined for the biology section of Snopes after scientists found a quadruple helix. A team at Cambridge University used structure-specific markers to tag the G-Quadruplex, proving that these structures can exist in the human body as well as in petri dishes and in simple organisms. It transpires that they can form during cell division at the point where DNA is being replicated, and may have a hand in the development of some cancers — meaning they’re of great interest to oncologists.

Seen any other far-out articles that you’d like considered for Alt-week? Working on a project or research that’s too cool to keep to yourself? Drop us a line at alt [at] engadget [dot] com.

[Image Credit: NASA / IBM / JP Rodriguez / G.Biffi]

Filed under: Science, Alt

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