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Cloning Dinos from DNA Impossible: DNews Nugget

Cloning Dinos from DNA Impossible: The movie Jurassic Park gave us the hope that if we could just find a dinosaur-era mosquito trapped in amber -- preferably one that had just snacked on dino blood before meeting its demise -- we might be able to extract the DNA from the blood and engineer a "thunder lizard."

Unfortunately, the hope is false. Scientists report in this week's Nature that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. And furthermore, every single nucleotide bond in a DNA strand is broken after 6.8 million years. Since dinosaurs perished 65 million years ago, well....you do the math. Sorry, John Hammond wannabes, a real-life dino park is not in your future. via Gizmodo

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Realistic Replica Face Masks Are Creepy

3DPF: $3,920 to $5,875

Remember the scene in the 1960s classic film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” where Holly Golightly and Fred steal face masks from a Five and Dime? Those were such innocent times where masks were cute puppies or funny president’s faces, not at all the creep-fest the 3DPFs seem to be. The REAL-f 3 Dimension Photo Forms are eerily realistic replicas of human faces. The Japanese company designs the masks by taking pictures of a person’s face from different positions and prints the image on vinyl resin.

PHOTOS: Hackers' Playbook: Common Tactics

The replicas can then be made into masks or a mannequin-like head. The printing on these masks is so precise even blood vessels and scars show up on the replicas. It’s weird beyond definition and unless one wants to invest in an elaborate prank, probably not something worth buying. However, it is something worth looking at and showing your friends to marvel in the freakiness of it all, so check out REAL-f’s Facebook to see more photos. 

Via: Geekosystem

Credit: REAL-f

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Petri Dish Brain Has 'Short-term Memory'

This psychedelic doughnut may look like a blacklight poster on the wall of that dude who was really into Pink Floyd freshman year, but it's actually more mind-blowing than any poster glowing on the wall of a dorm room. In a way, it's  "A Saucerful of Secrets," but in reality it's the creation of a few scientists attempting to grow an active brain in a petri dish.

The artificial microbrain consists of about 40 to 60 rat neurons and is capable of sustaining 12 neuronal seconds of network activity.

Although this sounds like a lost Syd Barrett song, the University of Pittsburgh researchers behind this project were able to keep a leash on their consciousness and create something far beyond a trippy musical number.

DNEWS VIDEO: IS IT FUTURE YET?

To cultivate their microbrain, Henry C. Zeringue and his colleagues took a silicon disk and stamped it with a layer of adhesive proteins. After the proteins had cultured and dried, brain (hippocampus) cells from embryonic rats were fused to the proteins and given time to grow and connect, forming a natural ring-shaped network capable of transmitting and receiving electrical signals. 

By stimulating the neurons with an electrical pulse, the researchers found that the pulse could surge around the microbrain for 12 seconds, which was 11.75 seconds longer than the team had anticipated. This meant the neurons were storing and transmitting the signal in sequence, creating a sort of short-term memory.

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"Persistent activity in the brain is involved in working memory and motor planning," states the study published by the team in the journal Lab on a Chip. "The ability of the brain to hold information ‘online' long after an initiating stimulus is a hallmark of brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex."

The researchers plan to use the microbrain to study how our brains transmit electrical signals and how our neural networks so efficiently process and store data.

Shine On You Crazy Diamonds!

[Via Scienceblogs.com]

Credit: Ashwin Vishwanathan, Guo-Qiang Bi and Henry C. Zeringue, University of Pittsburgh

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