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Wacky Honda Cars

Honda is working towards the cars it will be presenting at the Tokyo Auto Salon. In this vein, the company is developing its wacky small cars including the FreeD Spike Transporter Version, FreeD Wa and FLASH BOX.

None of the cars presented at the show are currently for sale in America. The FLASH BOX, however, is not exactly new since it is a spin-off of Honda’s N Box microcar but has matte gunmetal paint and purple LED lighting. The inside is pretty cool too with purple lights and black vinyl-looking seats that have purple piping.

Some of the old Honda cars will also be receiving facelifts. These two will be modeled at the show. For example, the Honda Beat sports car – that just met the two decade mark a year ago – is going to be getting special Honda accessories: front and rear lips and spoilers.

So for car lovers who like something different and new, check out the Tokyo Auto Salon.

Marie Curie on Google Doodle

Radioactive Curie

Marie Curie turned 144 yesterday. Well, at least she would have done had she still been alive. Google marked her life with a Google Doodle. A pioneering chemist and physicist of her time, Curie might not have lived the safest life since today, all of her papers and books are still radioactive even after a century has passed. Indeed, anyone who wants to view her manuscripts has to wear special protective clothing and sign a waiver of liability ahead of time. Although ahead of her time vis-à-vis chemistry and physics, she certainly didn’t have enough information on the dangers of radiation; it just wasn’t known back then and was what ultimately led to her death.

Nobel Prize Winner

Marie Curie won a Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 and another one in chemistry eight years later. She was born in Poland as Marie Sklodowska and then moved to Paris where she married Pierre Curie. It was she who increased information about radioactivity which also significantly advanced the use of X-Rays in surgery. During the First World War, she pushed for mobile radiography units to assist the wounded. Thus they were renamed Petites Curies (Little Curies). She passed away in 1934 from an aplastic anemia which resulted from her many years of exposure to radioactive materials.

‘Astronaut’ Crew Emerges After 520 Days of Isolation

The crew of a long-duration isolation study finally “landed” back on earth to be greeted by daylight and applause after living 520 days, or seventeen months, in a simulation of space travel to Mars.

The Mars500 experiment, which cost $15 million, aimed to test whether humans could stay physically and mentally healthy during the months of travel to Mars.

Six male volunteers from Europe, Russia and China took part in the experiment. On Friday, they emerged from their cells red eyed but smiling, and were allowed to greet friends and family briefly before being sent into a three-day quarantine.

“It’s really, really great to see you again, rather heartwarming,” said Diego Urbina, an Italian-Colombian participant. “On this mission we’ve achieved the longest isolation ever so that humankind can go to a distant but reachable planet.

Psychologists worry that the noise and activity of normal life will shock the would-be astronauts greatly.

“Time seems to have flown by since we closed the hatch last year. But how time really felt to the crew we’ll soon know. Probably we’ll have a very big difference of opinion,” said Igor Ushakov, head of the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems, which ran the experiment.

Having fed on real astronauts rations, rarely showered and taken daily urine and blood samples, the men felt truly distant from Mission Control.

“I felt a physical distance between out crew and the people in Mission Control. My reasoning knows that they’re just 20 m away from us but my mind can’t accept it.”

New Findings Reveal Prehistoric Human-Dog Bonds

Paleontologists have recently unearthed the fossils of three prehistoric dogs, one of which had a mammoth bone locked in its jaws. Researchers believe the bone may have been placed in the dog’s mouth after its death by a human, in a ritual-like burial.

The bone, and other procedures which were performed on the dog’s body before burial, imply that the relationship between dogs and humans may go back farther than previously believed.

Mietje Germonpre, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, explained that the mammoth bone could reveal “that the dog was ‘fed’ to accompany the soul of the dead person on its journey.” She added that a perforation was found in the dog’s skull, which implies a ritual to release the dog’s spirit after the death of its body.

Rob Losey, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, said the study certainly reveals that dog domestication occurred much earlier than once believed.

He said: “The distinctive treatment given to some of the remains also is compelling and this indicates to me that a special connections had developed between people and some canids quite early on- long prior to any good evidence for dogs being buried.”

Researchers believe the dogs were used for hauling loads such as meat, bones and mammoth tusks, as well as firewood.

Scientists Create Animal with Artificial Data

For the first time ever, an animal containing artificial data in its genetic code has been developed by scientists which could result in the possibility of the establishment of “man-made properties in a wide range of animals,” according to a recent article in The Daily Mail. In addition, they could get “atom-by-atom control over molecules in living things” as well.

The research was undertaken by scientists from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, who “modified the genetic code of nematode worms, 1mm long invertebrates with just a thousand cells in their transparent bodies. The study was recorded in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The team proved their results using a fluorescent dye – the artificial protein they introduced into the worms’ DNA contained a fluorescent dye that glows cherry red under ultraviolet light.” If it worked the protein would have to be replicated in all of the worms’ bodies cells for the worms to completely ignite under the rays but there would not be a glow if the technique didn’t work.

Every living creature has DNA in each cell, acting as a blueprint to set the characteristics of the organism which is comprised of “strings of simpler building blocks called amino acids, which, depending on their combinations, make the different proteins needed to sustain life.” Each organism contains 20 different amino acids, but combining them all leads to tens of thousands of different proteins.

With this research however, Jason Chin and Sebastian Greiss used a 21^st “man-made amino acid not found in nature, in the nematode worms’ DNA,” for the first time ever. In the future, such an approach might be able to be used as a way of bringing in other “amino acids into the animals that could be controlled by light.”