Rebecca Is Loving This Snapchat Filter From IWD 2017!!

End of fillings in sight as scientists find Alzheimer's drug makes teeth grow back

Fillings could be consigned to history after scientists discovered that a drug already trialled in Alzheimer's patients can encourage tooth regrowth and repair cavities.

Researchers at King’s College London found that the drug Tideglusib stimulates the stem cells contained in the pulp of teeth so that they generate new dentine – the mineralised material under the enamel.

Teeth already have the capability of regenerating dentine if the pulp inside the tooth becomes exposed through a trauma or infection, but can only naturally make a very thin layer, and not enough to fill the deep cavities caused by tooth decay.

But Tideglusib switches off an enzyme called GSK-3 which prevents dentine from carrying on forming.

Scientists showed it is possible to soak a small biodegradable sponge with the drug and insert it into a cavity, where it triggers the growth of dentine and repairs the damage within six weeks.

The tiny sponges are made out of collagen so they melt away over time, leaving only the repaired tooth.

Bumblebees Leave 'Smelly Footprints' Behind on Flowers

Bumblebees mark the flowers they've visited with smelly footprints, and they can tell the difference between odors from family members' feet and those of strangers.

Bumblebees mark the flowers they’ve visited with smelly footprints, and they can tell the difference between odors from family members’ feet and those of strangers, researchers have found.

By sniffing out these dainty footprints, bumblebees can locate good food and steer clear of flowers whose nutrients have been depleted, the scientists reported in a new study.

“Bumblebees secrete a substance whenever they touch their feet to a surface, much like us leaving fingerprints on whatever we touch,” Richard Pearce, a scientist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

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A Visualisation of the Recent Rapid Change in Temperature.

(GreenPeace)

Magnetic hard drives go atomic

Physicists demonstrate the first single-atom magnetic storage.

Chop a magnet in two, and it becomes two smaller magnets. Slice again to make four. But the smaller magnets get, the more unstable they become; their magnetic fields tend to flip polarity from one moment to the next. Now, however, physicists have managed to create a stable magnet from a single atom.

The team, who published their work in Nature on 8 March1, used their single-atom magnets to make an atomic hard drive. The rewritable device, made from 2 such magnets, is able to store just 2 bits of data, but scaled-up systems could increase hard-drive storage density by 1,000 times, says Fabian Natterer, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, and author of the paper.

“It’s a landmark achievement,” says Sander Otte, a physicist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. “Finally, magnetic stability has been demonstrated undeniably in a single atom.”

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Cloud Chambers: Visualizing Radiation 

The cloud chamber, also known as the Wilson chamber, is a particle detector used for detecting ionizing radiation.

In its most basic form, a cloud chamber is a sealed environment containing a supersaturated vapor of water or alcohol. When a charged particle (for example, an alpha or beta particle) interacts with the mixture, the fluid is ionized. The resulting ions act as condensation nuclei, around which a mist will form (because the mixture is on the point of condensation). 

The high energies of alpha and beta particles mean that a trail is left, due to many ions being produced along the path of the charged particle. These tracks have distinctive shapes, for example, an alpha particle’s track is broad and shows more evidence of deflection by collisions, while an electron’s is thinner and straight. -(x)

More science and gifs on my blog: rudescience Gif made from: This video by The Royal Institution References: (x), (x). 

Six Things You Don’t Know About Snow

FACT #1: Snow covers 30 percent of land on Earth.

FACT #2: More than 1.2 billion people rely on melt from snowpack and glaciers.

FACT #3: Snowmelt is the main source of water for 60 million Americans.

FACT #4: Since 1967, 1 million square miles of spring snow cover has disappeared from the Northern Hemisphere – an area the size of the southwestern U.S.

FACT #5: 70 percent of water from the snow-fed San Joaquin River irrigates California’s Central Valley.

FACT #6: NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement mission observes falling snow, even at the tops of hurricanes.

Measuring how much water is in a snowpack is not easy. Scientists are investigating the best combination of sensors for different terrains. More accurate snow measurements will help scientists and decision makers better understand our world’s water supply and better predict floods and droughts.

To follow scientists in the field studying snow, follow #SnowEx on Twitter and Facebook 

Researchers Invent Sponge That Could Transform Oil Spill Cleanup

It can soak up 90 times its weight in oil.

Researchers have designed a new material that could completely revolutionize the way oil spills are cleaned up.

When the Deepwater Horizon spill happened in 2010, the cleanup presented an unexpected challenge. Millions of gallons of oil didn’t collect on the surface, where it could be skimmed off or burned, but instead was drifting through the ocean below the waves.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab have invented a material that could prevent a similar situation in future spills.

The foam, called Oleo Sponge, can soak up 90 times its own weight in oil before it needs to be wrung out to be reused — and the oil can be recovered.

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