Giant Freakin Robot

One of the main mission goals of NASA’s Curiosity rover is to search for evidence of life on Mars — both any signs of it currently, or further insight as to whether it might have existed in the past. Sure, the former is a definitely long-shot, but you never know, right? I’m fairly certain Curiosity isn’t going to wander into a secret subterranean Martian city, but life could be found in more humble forms, such as bacteria. With all that taken into account, when NASA scientists start hinting that they have some major Curiosity/Mars-related announcement coming up, you can probably guess how websites all over the internet are going to react.

OMG THEY FOUND LIFE ON MARS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which is all well and good, presuming they, you know, actually did find life on Mars. But they haven’t said that. Not yet. So while the science geek in me wants to seize on that wondrous possibility and begin jumping up and down, the cynical, misanthropic journalist in me is doing its level best to moderate my expectations.

Whether you liked Hugh Jackman’s robot-boxing flick Real Steel or not, you have to love the core concept: remote-controlled robots beating the ever-loving snot out of each other. It takes the brutal appeal of boxing or MMA fighting but adds the ability to punch your opponent’s head off or rip his arms out of their sockets. We are still not at Real Steel levels of tech, but we just inched a little closer. Syfy has unveiled a new robot-fighting series called Robot Combat League that is, for all intents and purposes, Real Steel: The Reality Show.

Astronomers have discovered a planet 13 times the size of Jupiter — the largest planet in our solar system orbiting around the Kappa Andromedae star. It is reddish in color and is just at the mass between a star and a planet, which is why astronomers are having trouble classifying it.

It looks like every dog really does have its day. Scientists and researchers have successfully regenerated spinal cord cells of a paralyzed dachshund’s injured spinal cord, giving the dog the ability to use his hind legs again. The procedure involved injecting the dog with his own olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), which are found in his nose.

As part of the study at the Regenerative Medicine Centre and Cambridge University’s Veterinary School, researchers have conducted tests on the injured spinal cords of 23 dachshunds. But one 10-year-old dachshund named Jasper has regained feeling and movement in his spinal cord after the series of injections and treatments. The study was conducted exclusively on dachshunds because they are prone to spinal cord injuries.

The results and findings of the study will be published in The Brain — a neurology journal — and involved taking the dachshund’s olfactory ensheathing cells from their nose and continuing to grow the cell cultures. The OECs are found at the back of the nasal cavity and are the only nerve fibers in the body that continue to grow well into adulthood. These are the only cells that have the potential ability to repair damaged spinal cord injuries. Researchers have found success in the past by performing these treatments on rats.