Wouldn’t it be nice if you had in your first aid kit something that would stop bleeding almost instantly? Well, the future sure sounds good in this regards, because Arch Therapeutics have made a nanohealing gel that does just that, it stops bleeding.

With clinical trials starting soon for this miracle gel, we can hope that we’ll see it in use eventually during surgery (stopping bleeding instantly instead of looking for vessels to cauterize), by paramedics or field medics during combat. The possibilities are so many for something like this.

The material consists of naturally occurring amino acids that have been engineered to form peptides that spontaneously cluster together to create long fibers when exposed to salty, aqueous environments, such as those found in the body. The fibers form a mesh that serves as a physical barrier to blood and other fluids.

And, since the body eventually assimilates it, you don’t have to remove it after using it. Sounds great!

Here’s to hoping it will be cheap when mass produced, so everyone can have it.

I found quite a few articles dealing with our Solar System this week, so I thought I’d share them all in one post.

A Telescope Farm on the Moon? Maybe

Astronomers looking for a clear and quiet place from which to map the faintest echoes from the universe’s infancy may have found a welcome mat on the far side of the moon.

A farm of lunar radio telescopes is among 19 next-generation observatories that intrigued NASA enough to garner a combined $12 million for a year-long study.

Earth, Mars, Moon, have different origin, study says

A new study is challenging the long-standing notion that the whole solar system formed from the same raw materials.

Until now most scientists had believed that the inner solar system bodies—Mercury, Venus, Earth, its moon, and Mars—had the same composition as primitive meteorites called chondrites.

Salt deposits found on Mars, may point to former life on Mars

Scientists using a Mars-orbiting camera designed and operated at Arizona State University’s Mars Space Flight Facility have discovered the first evidence for deposits of chloride minerals - salts - in numerous places on Mars. These deposits, say the scientists, show where water was once abundant and may also provide evidence for the existence of former Martian life.

Evidence for Ocean Found at Saturn’s Moon Titan

An ocean seasoned with the chemical ingredients of life may lie hidden beneath the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Titan.

The evidence? The entire surface of Titan appears to be sliding around, scientists say, like cheese over tomato sauce on a slice of pizza.

The European Union has recently allocated €2 million ($3million) to a project that aims to research and explain religion. I think it’s something that people need in order cope with the inevitable death that comes at some point and the fact that they can’t accept not existing anymore. But then again, I’m guessing they’re looking for something a bit more complicated than my answer.

“Explaining Religion”, as the project is known, is the largest-ever scientific study of the subject. It began last September, will run for three years, and involves scholars from 14 universities and a range of disciplines from psychology to economics. And it is merely the latest manifestation of a growing tendency for science to poke its nose into the God business.

Economist.com has the full story.

Scientific American has an interesting article on the possibility of limb regeneration in humans, and how the human body reacts during an amputation compared with a salamander, which will regenerate the lost body part.

The gold standard for limb regeneration is the salamander, which can grow perfect replacements for lost body parts throughout its lifetime. Understanding how can provide a road map for human limb regeneration.

The early responses of tissues at an amputation site are not that different in salamanders and in humans, but eventually human tissues form a scar, whereas the salamander’s reactivate an embryonic development program to build a new limb.

Learning to control the human wound environment to trigger salamanderlike healing could make it possible to regenerate large body parts.

One of the most encouraging signs that human limb regeneration is a feasible goal is the fact that our fingertips already have an intrinsic ability to regenerate. This observation was made first in young children more than 30 years ago, but since then similar findings have been reported in teenagers and even adults. Fostering regeneration in a fingertip amputation injury is apparently as simple as cleaning the wound and covering it with a simple dressing.

Read the rest of this 6 page article

According to scientists, very large ice deposits have been found on Mars, below the surface and far away from the polar ice caps.

The Sharad (SHAllow RADar) can look up to 1 km below the surface to find water, by sending pulse waves and analyzing the time delay when they return and their strength.

The Sharad radar experiment, on Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft made the discovery in Mars’ mid-northern latitudes.

The ice is found in distinctive geological structures on Mars’ surface that are hundreds of metres thick.

The radar data suggest that some of these features consist mostly of ice.

Read more here