Discovery of element 115

# Science in the news

The new element doesn't have an official name yet, so scientists are calling it ununpentium, based on the Latin and Greek words for its atomic number, 115.

Periodic Table Courtesy of Tomacco/Getty Images

The heaviest element in nature is uranium, which has 92 protons. But heavier elements-which have more protons in their nucleus-can be created through nuclear fusion.

The man-made 115 was first created by Russian scientists in Dubna about ten years ago. This week, chemists at Lund University in Sweden announced that they had replicated the Russian study at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Germany. 

Element 115 will join its neighbors 114 and 116-flerovium and livermorium, respectively-on the periodic table just as soon as a committee from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) decides on an official name for 115.(share courtesy:http://news.nationalgeographic.co.in/news/2013/08/130828-science-chemistry-115-element-ununpentium-periodic-table/)

In fact, this was the second sighting of the element: Russian scientists had claimed the discovery of element 115 back in 2003, but the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry—chemistry’s equivalent of the International Astronomical Union, which famously demoted Pluto from planet status in 2006—wouldn’t acknowledge it without a confirming experiment from another team. The Helmholtz Center’s work must still be reviewed by both the I.U.P.A.C. and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, but ununpentium is now a step closer to inclusion on the periodic table. If that happens, the International Union will assign it a permanent, official name.(share courtesy:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/08/unumpentium-the-new-artificial-element.html)

Discovery of elements 113 and 115: Two superheavy elements, elements 113 and 115, were recently synthesized through a collaborative effort between scientists from the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and researchers from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at the Flerov Laboratory for Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia. Two isotopes of element 115 survived 30-80 milliseconds before decaying into isotopes of element 113 that survived approximately ten times longer prior to decaying themselves. Following a series of alpha-decays, the element 115 atoms decayed into long-lived isotopes (multiple hours) of element 105 (Db). The great-great-great granddaughter Db isotopes were also chemically identified in subsequent experiments.(share courtesy:https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-chemistry-elements_113_and_115) 

pic courtesy:https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-chemistry-elements_113_and_115

Dmitri Mendeleev

8 February 1834 – 2 February 1907

pic courtesy:http://en.wikipedia.org/

wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev

When the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published his periodic table of elements in 1869, there were just fifty-nine entries on it. The table grouped those elements

The table also contained thirty-three empty spaces that implied that there were elements still to be discovered. He gave these still-hypothetical elements names like  ekasilicon, ekaaluminium and ekaboron (germanium, gallium and scandium, respectively). “Eka-” is a Sanskrit prefix meaning “one,” so you can think of the names as silicon 1, aluminum 1, and so on. For his predicted eight elements, he used the prefixes of eka, dvi, and tri (Sanskrit one, two, three) in their naming. By year 1939, all of Mendeleev’s boxes had been filled in; the last one was “ekacesium,” now called francium.

What Mendeleev couldn’t have imagined was that scientists would one day begin creating elements not found naturally.(share courtesy:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/08/unumpentium-the-new-artificial-element.html) 

Dmitri Mendeleev and Sanskrit: By giving Sanskrit names to his "missing" elements, Mendeleev showed his appreciation and debt to the Sanskrit grammarians of ancient India, who had created sophisticated theories of language based on their discovery of the two-dimensional patterns in basic sounds. According to Professor Paul Kiparsky of Stanford University, Mendeleev was a friend and colleague of the Sanskritist Böhtlingk, who was preparing the second edition of his book on Pāṇini at about this time, and Mendeleev wished to honor Pāṇini with his nomenclature. Noting that there are striking similarities between the periodic table and the introductory Śiva Sūtras in Pāṇini's grammar, Prof. Kiparsky says:

[T]he analogies between the two systems are striking. Just as Panini found that the phonological patterning of sounds in the language is a function of their articulatory properties, so Mendeleev found that the chemical properties of elements are a function of their atomic weights. Like Panini, Mendeleev arrived at his discovery through a search for the "grammar" of the elements...(share courtesy:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev)

Human body and Theseus paradox

Human body: collection of organisms we are !!

viruses hid in chromosome, cyanobacteria lie inside the cytoplasm  of every cell

and

cells often behaving as free organism.  

Like the Theseus's paradox, which most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late 1st century, that raises the question of whether an object which has had all its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object; human body too faces an identity crisis when we consider the facts that viruses hid in chromosome, cyanobacteria lie in cytoplasm and our cell often behaving as free organism. 

pic courtesy: http://prestidigitator420.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/the-theseus-paradox/

Human body

(human body)

Every part of the body is composed of various types of cell. At maturity, the estimated number of cells in the body is given as 37.2 trillion.

Image of two facing pages of text, 

also including woodcuts of naked 

"Adam" and "Eve" figures. "Epitome",

 fol. 10b and 11a. HMD Collection, 

WZ 240 V575dhZ 1543.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body

The composition of the human body shows it to be composed of a number of certain elements in different proportions.

The main elements that compose the human body 

are shown from most abundant to least abundant.

pic courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body

Viruses, Cyanobacteria, Protozoan are still lie hidden in each cell of ours

And this body to which we owe to our many predecessors (protozoan to mammalian) 

in our millions of year's evolutionary journey, 

is still riddled with those ancestors of ours; 

as viruses hid in chromosome and cyanobacteria lie in cytoplasm.

pic courtesy: http://health.india.com

Sometimes the one single individual cell, out of it's trillion more fellows....

just forgets the "covenant of common co-existence in a multicellular body"  

(Multicellularity is the ultimate in cooperation,  

Multiple cells make up an individual that cooperates for the benefit of the whole. 

Sometimes cells give up their ability to reproduce for the benefit of close kin), 

and behaves uncontrollably of complex human body, destroying the whole system,

causing in death of that individual being.

100,000 viruses hid in human genes (endogenous retroviruses)

(viruse in human genome)

(viruses are cellular organisms)

About eight percent of human genetic material comes from a virus and not from our ancestors, according to a new study. The research shows that the genomes of humans and other mammals contain DNA derived from the insertion of bornaviruses, RNA viruses whose replication and transcription takes place in the nucleus.

It also makes me wonder who is really in charge of this body of mine — me or the viruses that inhabit it? Do I have free will or am I behaving the way my viruses want me to? It’s starting to feel like viruses are calling all the shots when you get down to the bottom of things. There’s a science fiction movie script here for someone.(Judy/May14,2013/NatGeo)
That collection of organisms that is you is most likely guided by “cooperative viruses” rather than selfish genes free will – not a chance.(Don Byrd/May15,2013/NatgGeo)

An archaic ancestor (prokaryotic cyanobean symbiont) resides in our cell, a case of organisms within organisms

(mitochondria:a symbiont cyanobacteria)

(chloroplast:a symbiont cyanobacteria)

Parasites that do not debilitate their host can get along indefinitely.  But the relationship that works the best is that of symbiont.  Bacteria have been at it for literally billions of years.  At some point prokaryotic cells found a comfortable shelter inside larger cells, and lent their particular expertise to their host’s success.  

The chloroplasts within the cells of leaves have their own distinct DNA.  They do the photosynthesizing to provide the abundant supply of energy that the plants enjoy.  

Within animal cells, mitochondria do something similar, in that they are small powerhouses providing benefit to the cell.  They, too, show evidence of their colonial past in their distinct DNA.Organisms within organisms, providing mutual benefit, the recipe for long-term evolutionary success.  

Role of one cell in multicellular organization

(cell and multicellularity)  

“Multicellularity is the ultimate in cooperation,” said Travisano, who wants to understand how cooperation emerges in selfishly competing organisms. “Multiple cells make up an individual that cooperates for the benefit of the whole. Sometimes cells give up their ability to reproduce for the benefit of close kin.”

When a cell starts behaving as free individual organism, in a multicellular body 

(cancer cell)

Cell is a structural and functional unit of life, that we all know from our high school classes..

Cell specializing in to tissue, tissue system, organ, organ system;  that is the pattern we find in simple to complex evolutionary pattern in all life forms.

Amoeba always reminds us the hidden potentiality of a cell..where many functions like growth and reproduction been discarded  for the sake of ultimate cooperation of multicellularity. 

When a cell in our body rebels to cooperate, go on dividing and growing by itself, defying natural process of cell death called apoptosis, that becomes cancerous..(cancer cell)

Cell is still a mystery.. As and when it behaves of it's own, as selfishly competing organism in itself, for the reasons unknown..!!

# all above pics thankfully shared from different sources on Internet.

100,000 viruses hid in human genes (endogenous retroviruses )

Virus epidemic within our genome

Scientists have uncovered clues as to how mammal genomes became riddled with viruses. The research reveals important information about the so-called 'dark matter' of the human genome.

For years scientists have been struggling with the enigma that more than 90 percent of every mammal's genome has no known function. A part of this 'dark matter' of genetic material is known to harbour pieces of DNA from ancient viruses that infected our ancestors going back as far as the age of the dinosaurs.

(G. Magiorkinis, R. J. Gifford, A. Katzourakis, J. De Ranter, R. Belshaw. Env-less endogenous retroviruses are genomic superspreaders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1200913109)

(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120501210558.htm)

A virus hid in our genome for six million years

In the mid-2000s, David Markovitz, a scientist at the University of Michigan, and his colleagues took a look at the blood of people infected with HIV. Human immunodeficiency viruses kill their hosts by exhausting the immune system, allowing all sorts of pathogens to sweep into their host’s body. So it wasn’t a huge surprise for Markovitz and his colleagues to find other viruses in the blood of the HIV patients. What was surprising was where those other viruses had come from: from within the patients’ own DNA.

Scientists have identified 100,000 pieces of retrovirus DNA in our genes, making up eight percent of the human genome. That’s a huge portion of our DNA when you consider that protein coding genes make up just over one percent of the genome.

Close-up on HIV. Voth Lab, University of Chicago. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2966041/

Scientists have studied these so-called endogenous retroviruses both in humans and in other species, and the evidence all points to the same scenario for how they genetically merged with us. Our ancestors were infected with retroviruses on a regular basis. On rare occasion, a virus infected a sperm or egg and managed to end up in an embryo. Every new cell in the embryo inherited the retrovirus DNA implanted in its genome. And then the embryo grew up into an adult, which then had offspring of its own, and passed the virus DNA on as well.

(Carl Zimmer:  http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/10/the-lurker-how-a-virus-hid-in-our-genome-for-six-million-years/)
Retroviridae is a family of enveloped viruses that replicate in a host cell through the process of reverse transcription. A retrovirus is a single-stranded RNA virus that stores its nucleic acid in the form of an mRNA genome (including the 5' cap and 3' PolyA tail) and targets a host cell as an obligate parasite. Once inside the host cell cytoplasm the virus uses its own reverse transcriptase enzyme to produce DNA from its RNA genome, the reverse of the usual pattern, thus retro (backwards). This new DNA is then incorporated into the host cell genome by an integrase enzyme, at which point the retroviral DNA is referred to as a provirus. The host cell then treats the viral DNA as part of its own genome, translating and transcribing the viral genes along with the cell's own genes, producing the proteins required to assemble new copies of the virus. It is difficult to detect the virus until it has infected the host. At that point the infection will last forever. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus)

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are endogenous viral elements in the genome that closely resemble and can be derived from retroviruses. They are abundant in the genomes of jawed vertebrates and they occupy as much as 4.9% of the human genome. ERVs are a subclass of a type of gene called a transposon which is able to be packaged and moved within the genome to serve a vital role in gene expression and regulation. Research shows that retroviruses have evolved from a type of transposable gene called a retrotransposon which includes ERVs; these genes can mutate and instead of moving to another location in the genome they can became exogenous/pathogenic. This means that all ERVs may not have originated as an insertion by a retrovirus but rather some may have been the source of origin for the genetic information in the retroviruses they resemble.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus)
Genetic evidence for common descent: We have found that primates share many nearly identical ERVs. The only explanation for this is common descent: a common ancestor of all primates had the ERV and thus passed it on. In fact, scientists can build a tree of relationships using ERVs (on the left) that fits perfectly with evidence from other fields. There is, quite simply, no other explanation for these similar ERVs besides common descent.
(http://phylointelligence.com/genetics.html)

 Eight percent of human genetic material comes from a virus

About eight percent of human genetic material comes from a virus and not from our ancestors, according to a new study. The research shows that the genomes of humans and other mammals contain DNA derived from the insertion of bornaviruses, RNA viruses whose replication and transcription takes place in the nucleus.

A new study shows that the genomes of humans and other mammals contain DNA derived from the insertion of bornaviruses, RNA viruses whose replication and transcription takes place in the nucleus.

 (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100107103621.htm)
Genetic evidence for common descent: We know this because mammals, especially primates, share several of these BDV insertions with humans. The chance of highly similar viral elements being inserted into the same regions in the genome of different organisms independently is extraordinarily low. This is where evolution comes in: the explanation for this becomes obvious when one realizes that mammal taxa share these viral elements because they share a common ancestor.
(http://phylointelligence.com/genetics.html) 

1. Masayuki Horie, Tomoyuki Honda, Yoshiyuki Suzuki, Yuki Kobayashi, Takuji Daito, Tatsuo Oshida, Kazuyoshi Ikuta, Patric Jern, Takashi Gojobori, John M. Coffin & Keizo Tomonaga. Endogenous non-retroviral RNA virus elements in mammalian genomes. Nature, 2010; 463 (7277): 84 DOI: 10.1038/nature08695
2. Cédric Feschotte. Virology: Bornavirus enters the genome. Nature, 2010; 463 (7277): 39 DOI: 10.1038/463039a

Who is really in charge 
of this body of ours..

It also makes me wonder who is really in charge of this body of mine — me or the viruses that inhabit it? Do I have free will or am I behaving the way my viruses want me to? It’s starting to feel like viruses are calling all the shots when you get down to the bottom of things. There’s a science fiction movie script here for someone.(Judy/May14,2013/NatGeo)

That collection of organisms that is you is most likely guided by “cooperative viruses” rather than selfish genes free will – not a chance.on Byrd/May15,2013/NatgGeo)(D

Disordered hyperuniformity: new state of matter

States of matter
There are five main states of matter. Solids, liquids, gases, plasmas, and Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) are all different states of matter. Each of these states is also known as a phase. Elements and compounds can move from one phase to another when specific physical conditions are present. One example is temperature. When the temperature of a system goes up, the matter in the system becomes more excited and active. Scientists say that it moves to a higher energy state. Generally, as the temperature rises, matter moves to a more active state.

solid

liquid

gas

The plasma state is often misunderstood, but it is actually quite common on Earth, and the majority of people observe it on a regular basis without even realizing it. Fire, lightning, electric sparks, fluorescent lights, neon lights, plasma televisions, and the stars are all examples of illuminated matter in the plasma state.

A gas is usually converted to a plasma in one of two ways, either from a huge voltage difference between two points, or by exposing it to extremely high temperatures.

Heating matter to high temperatures causes electrons to leave the atoms, resulting in the presence of free electrons. At very high temperatures, such as those present in stars, it is assumed that essentially all electrons are "free," and that a very high-energy plasma is essentially bare nuclei swimming in a sea of electrons.

The collapse of the atoms into a single quantum state is known as Bose condensation or Bose-Einstein condensation is now considered a 5th state of matter.

Recently, scientists have discovered the Bose-Einstein condensate, which can be thought of as the opposite of a plasma. It occurs at ultra-low temperature, close to the point that the atoms are not moving at all. A Bose-Einstein condensate is a gaseous superfluid phase formed by atoms cooled to temperatures very near to absolute zero. The first such condensate was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in 1995 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, using a gas of rubidium atoms cooled to 170 nanokelvins (nK). --Under such conditions, a large fraction of the atoms collapse into the lowest quantum state, producing a superfluid. This phenomenon was predicted in the 1920s by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein, based on Bose's work on the statistical mechanics of photons, which was then formalized and generalized by Einstein. 

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter, http://www.chem4kids.com/files/matter_states.html, http://www.chem.purdue.edu/gchelp/atoms/states.html, http://www.edinformatics.com/math_science/states_of_matter.htm )

A new state of matter

 'disordered hyperuniformity' is an arrangement of particles that allows material to behave like both a crystal and a liquid.

The unusual arrangement of cells in a chicken's eye, shown here, constitutes the first known biological occurrence of a potentially new state of matter known as 'disordered hyperuniformity'

This new state of matter has been discovered in the eye of a chicken.

http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.89.022721
Feb. 24, 2014

Gaze deeply into the eye of a chicken, and what do you see? Researchers at Princeton University and Washington University in St. Louis say they see in the bird's eye the first known biological occurrence of a strange state of matter known as "disordered hyperuniformity. 

("http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/26/chicken-eye-weird-state-of-matter_n_4854897.html)

The breakthrough was made by researchers studying minute light sensitive cells known as cones responsible for the perception of colour.

DISORDERED HYPERUNIFORMITY

Materials in this state are like crystals in the way they keep the density of particles consistent across large spatial distances.

But these systems are also like liquids because they have the same physical properties in all directions.

Researchers say this may be the first time disordered hyperuniformity has been observed in a biological system.

Previously it had only been seen in physical systems like liquid helium and simple plasmas.

For chicken eyes, the researchers speculate this cone arrangement allows the birds to evenly sample incoming light. 

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2567765/How-chickens-eye-revealed-new-state-matter.html)