Body's Own 'Cannabis' Is Good For The Skin, Scientists Find

Scientists from Hungary, Germany and the U.K. have discovered that our own body not only makes chemical compounds similar to the active ingredient in marijuana (THC), but these play an important part in maintaining healthy skin.

This finding on "endocannabinoids" just published online in, and scheduled for the October 2008 print issue of, The FASEB Journal could lead to new drugs that treat skin conditions ranging from acne to dry skin, and even skin-related tumors.

"Our preclinical data encourage one to explore whether endocannabinoid system-acting agents can be exploited in the management of common skin disorders," said Tamás Biró, MD, PhD, a senior scientist involved in the research. "It is also suggested that these agents can be efficiently applied locally to the skin in the form of a cream."

Biró and colleagues came to this conclusion by treating cell cultures from human sebaceous glands (the glands that make the oil on our skin) with various concentrations of endocannabinoids (substances produced by the body that are similar to the active ingredient in marijuana)...

--Science Daily

Giant marine life found in antarctic waters

Scientists who conducted the most comprehensive survey to date of New Zealand's Antarctic waters were surprised by the size of some specimens found, including jellyfish with 12-foot tentacles and 2-foot-wide starfish.

A 2,000-mile journey through the Ross Sea that ended Thursday has also potentially turned up several new species, including as many as eight new mollusks.

It's "exciting when you come across a new species," said Chris Jones, a fisheries scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "All the fish people go nuts about that — but you have to take it with a grain of salt"...

--MSNBC

3-year-old boy finds woolly mammoth tooth

Gary Kidd had a pretty good idea that what his 3-year-old grandson had found was no rock, but the tooth of a woolly mammoth. That's because he had found one himself nine years ago.

Kaleb Kidd was chasing squirrels Monday at a family friend's property near La Crosse when he spotted what looked like an unusual rock.

"Grandpa, what's that?" Kaleb asked.

He told his grandson it looked like the tooth of the extinct woolly mammoth.

Next stop was the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, which confirmed that it was, indeed, the tooth of a mammoth...

--USA Today

Ancient Coelacanth Caught in Indonesia

An Indonesian fisherman hooked a rare coelacanth, a species once thought as extinct as dinosaurs, and briefly kept the "living fossil" alive in a quarantined pool.

Justinus Lahama caught the four-foot, 110-pound fish early Saturday off Sulawesi island near Bunaken National Marine Park, which has some of the highest marine biodiversity in the world.

The fish died 17 hours later, an extraordinary survival time, marine biologist Lucky Lumingas said Sunday.

"The fish should have died within two hours because this species only lives in deep, cold-sea environment," he said. Lumingas works at the local Sam Ratulangi University, which plans to study the carcass...

--ABC News

Study hints that fruit flies have free will

A spark of free will may exist in even the tiny brain of the humble fruit fly, based on new findings that could shed light on the nature and evolution of free will in humans.

Future research delving further into free will could lead to more advanced robots, scientists added. The result, joked neurobiologist Björn Brembs from the Free University Berlin, could be "world robot domination."

"Seriously though," Brembs said that programming robots with aspects of free will "may lead to more realistic and probably even more efficient behavior, which could be decisive in truly autonomous robots needed for planetary exploration"...

--MSNBC

Waterfowl wage genital warfare

A sexual arms race waged with twisted genitals has been discovered in waterfowl.

The genitalia of the females of these species have at times apparently evolved to make it harder for males to successfully impregnate them, according to new findings that shed light on the eternal war of the sexes.

Most birds lack phalluses, organs like human penises. Waterfowl are among the just 3 percent of all living bird species that retain the grooved phallus found in their reptilian ancestors.

Male waterfowl are especially unusual in that their phallus length varies greatly among different species, ranging from a half-inch to more than 15 inches long. They also display a remarkable level of diversity how elaborate they are, ranging from smooth to covered with spines and grooves.

Scientists had speculated that male waterfowl evolved longer phalluses to give them a competitive edge over those not as well-endowed when it came to successfully fertilizing females...

--MSNBC

Mammoth bones loom over Paris sale

For sale: a mammoth skeleton, a 150-kilogram meteorite and a kind of giant pearl formed in the stomachs of certain animals.

Christie's auction house in Paris is hosting an unusual auction of paleontological curiosities, including several prehistoric mammals. The sale takes place Monday.

Bidders interested in buying the star specimen — a 15,000-year-old Siberian mammoth dubbed "The President" — will need at least $199,000. And a lot of floor space: Tusks and all, it's 12.5 feet high and 16 feet long.

Skeletons of a 10,000-year-old, 13.5-foot-long rhinoceros and a 7.5-foot-high cave bear are also going under the hammer...

--USA Today

New 'super-Earth' found in space

Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface.

The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.

Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile.

They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life...

--BBC News

Creepy-crawly robot to mend a broken heart

A device that sounds like a 21st-century version of a medicinal leech may soon be set loose inside the chests of heart patients. Resembling a robotic caterpillar, it will crawl across the surface of their beating heart, delivering treatment without the need for major surgery.

The device, called HeartLander, can be inserted using minimally invasive keyhole surgery. Once in place, it will attach itself to the heart and begin inching its way across the outside of the organ, injecting drugs or attaching medical devices. In tests on live pigs, the HeartLander has fitted pacemaker leads and injected dye into the heart. This video shows the latest prototype creeping over the surface of a beating model heart (2.1MB, mpg format).

The 20-millimetre-long robot has two suckers for feet, each pierced with 20 holes connected to a vacuum line, which hold it onto the outside of the heart. By moving its two body segments back and forth relative to one another it can crawl across the heart at up to 18 centimetres per minute. This back-and-forth movement is generated by pushing and pulling wires that run back to motors outside the patient's body. The robot is being developed by Cameron Riviere and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...

--New Scientist

Experts open dolphin 'chat line' in Florida

A marine mammal rehabilitation facility opened a dolphin "chat line" of sorts Saturday, hoping to teach a deaf dolphin's unborn calf to communicate.

Castaway, as the stranded Atlantic bottlenose dolphin is named, has been recovering at the Marine Mammal Conservancy since Jan. 30. A battery of tests has confirmed she is deaf.

Dolphins need to hear echoes of sounds they produce to find food, socialize and defend themselves against predators...

--ABC News

Marmosets may carry their sibling's sex cells

If your testes or ovaries contained the sperm or eggs of another individual, how would you feel about reproducing? This extraordinary situation is experienced by marmosets, which have now been discovered to exhibit "germ line chimerism". It is a condition in which some of the sperm or eggs in their gonads come from another individual, and so do not contain their own DNA.

Marmosets (Callithrix kuhlii) are unusual in that most pregnancies result in non-identical twins, and a high proportion of those result in chimerism. Genetic analysis of these twins shows that all tissues - including skin, hair, brain, lung and muscle - may contain cells derived from the sibling twin...

New Scientist