The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth.
Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span. Scientists say the hydrozoan jellyfish is the only known animal that can repeatedly turn back the hands of time and revert to its polyp state (its first stage of life).
The key lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where one type of cell is transformed into another type of cell. Some animals can undergo limited transdifferentiation and regenerate organs, such as salamanders, which can regrow limbs. Turritopsi nutricula, on the other hand, can regenerate its entire body over and over again. Researchers are studying the jellyfish to discover how it is able to reverse its aging process.
Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They're now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters. "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion," says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute.
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Twitter can't handle the load
In the past few weeks many users have been noticing several problems with the popular social networking site Twitter. Sean Garrett of the Twitter communications team has made a post on the Twitter blog about the recent problems they have been having.
Twitter were trying to get their systems ready in time for the starting of the World Cup but complications caused the maintenance to take far longer than anticipated. They have been trying to tweak their systems with very small, minor changes. However, these small changes have led to the discovery of deeper issues with the site. This is what is causing the unexpected downtime that users have been experiencing. This coupled with the huge increase in traffic due to the World Cup has led to Twitter's worst month since last October in terms of up-time and stability.
The problems are not over either, Twitter is planning several periods of "down-time" in the coming two weeks in order to finish their maintenance. They have, however, promised that prior notice will be given to users and the down-time will not affect people tweeting over the World Cup games.
There is good news though, the changes that they are currently implementing "will make Twitter much more reliable in the future" and will hopefully reduce the chances of this happening again.
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Digital Storm intros new Special Ops gaming machines
Digital Storm has taken the covers off its new "affordable" Special Ops gaming PC series, which appears to be comprised of 10 uniquely named base systems ranging in price from $987 to $2,429. By default, the vast majority use Intel Core processors (some are P55-based while others use the X58 platform), but two are available with a quad or hexa-core AMD Phenom II CPU.
Five of the computers are listed with Nvidia GPUs, and five with ATI – but the advertised base systems are more along the lines of recommendations than individual machines with rigid hardware limitations. For instance, you can select the $1,397 "Maelstrom" PC (which is simply the name of the system's chassis) and customize the hardware to match the $2,429 Hailstorm desktop.
As for being more affordable, the Special Ops series is definitely easier on the wallet than the company's Black Ops line, which starts at well over $2,000. Despite the lower prices, Digital Storm says its Special Ops range has the same build quality as Black Ops PCs. To celebrate the launch of its new line, the company is offering a complimentary overclocking between 3.3GHz and 3.9GHz.
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