Science blog

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:07:20 GMT

SimplyNoise

White noise is a random signal with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal''s power spectral density has equal power in any band, at any centre frequency, having a given bandwidth. White noise is considered analogous to white light which contains all frequencies.

At SimplyNoise you can use a slider to find a comfort zone and enjoy the auditory zen. The site claims you can use it for aid sleep, to block distractions, mask Tinnitus, configure audio equipment, and sooth migrains. Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

July 7, 2008, 10:10 PM CT

Smithsonian coral biodiversity survey of Panama's Pearl Islands

A comprehensive survey of coral biodiversity in Panama's Las Perlas Archipelago, reported in the journal Environmental Conservation by scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and their colleagues, has resulted in clear conservation recommendations for a new coastal management plan.

"To evaluate strategies for the protection of natural resources in the Las Perlas archipelago, we gathered basic information about coral species distributions. Our recommendations include large conservation units, "no take zones" and marine reserves, with an emphasis on the northern part of the archipelago, and extremely careful regulation of fishing, tourism and development," said Smithsonian staff scientist, Hector Guzman.

The Las Perlas Islands in the Gulf of Panama are one of two archipelagos in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. The other is the Galapagos. The Las Perlas Marine Special Management Zone, created under Panama's Law 18 in May 2007, is the most recent addition to a major regional marine conservation corridor extending from Costa Rica to Ecuador. The 1688-km2 management zone includes 250 mostly uninhabited rock islands and islets.

The authors conducted an extensive biodiversity inventory, determining coral distribution and species richness across the region. They counted a total of 57 coral species: 19 hard (scleractinian) corals and 38 soft corals (octocorals). For comparison, the species count for Panama's Pacific biodiversity hotspot in the Gulf of Chiriqui is 74, whereas near Cao Island Biological Reserve, Costa Rica's hot spot, there are 43 coral species......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:50:09 GMT

Mimulus aurantiacus

I''m at a conference this week, so I''m only posting abbreviated entries when I have the time!

Mimulus aurantiacus, or bush monkeyflower, is a native to the southwestern US. In yesterday''s field trip to the San Gabriel mountains, we noted that this species defied its harsh conditions (growing on rock walls) with prolific masses of blooms. Posted by: Daniel Mosquin      Read more     Source

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:32:57 GMT

Computing is Bigger in Vegas

Las Vegas is Everyman's cut-rate Babylon. - Alistair Cooke
© guspim
The Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas has brought six Microsoft Surface tabletop computers into its iBar ultra-lounge for use and play by bar patrons. Cool. I cannot wait to get out there and try it out.Microsoft Surface is a thirty inch tabletop computer that features an interface that allows several users to move data around with their hands on the tabletop. I really do not know what practical value that has, but I am not Microsoft.

The chief application is called Flirt. This is described as "an exciting new way to chat and meet people from one Surface to another. Strategically placed video cameras at each Surface add even more energy to the action, allowing guests to interact with old friends, flirt with new acquaintances, and take and send photos across the lounge." Cool. But, my significant other and Microsoft Surface partner is probably not into this feature. Guests will also be able to play a variety of games, order specialty cocktails, view videos, and tour Vegas virtually.

The Microsoft Surface Microsoft Surface has a video and a description of the first days' implementation of the project. Having spent significant time in the Rio, I doubt the tabletop will stay as clean, spill-free, and without ashes, as shown in the video.

I have checked out the schedule at the Rio to see if I could justify a convention trip on the business tab. No dice. The Microsoft Surface have the next big convention out there in July (with the exception of a June seminar on Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities). Neither sound at all interesting (no offense internal auditors - Go Flirt with the other auditors!). Posted by: Gregory Boop      Read more     Source

July 1, 2008, 9:46 PM CT

How older adults function in daily life

As more adults age into the high-risk period for cognitive impairment, clinicians need simple and reliable methods to identify where they may have problems in everyday life that reveal underlying changes in the brain. A new, carefully validated questionnaire called Everyday Cognition (ECog), when filled out by someone who knows an older adult well, can sensitively evaluate the performance of everyday activities that reflect basic mental functioning, as per a report in the recent issue of Neuropsychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

Keeping track of things, sorting the mail, following a conversation, shopping for a few things without a list, finding the car in a parking lot activities such as these, if compromised, could signal the risk for or presence of disease. The quick and easy identification of mild functional problems in elderly adults could be extremely useful in primary-care settings, where dementia and its early warning signs are frequently missed.

Seven academic and Veterans Administration psychology experts, led by co-authors Sarah Tomaszewski Farias, PhD, and Dan Mungas, PhD, of the University of California, Davis, teamed up to develop and validate this new 39-question screening tool. The team first collected data on everyday functioning and mental status for 576 elderly adults, averaging nearly 77 years old, who were reviewed at the University of California's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Of these individuals, 174 were diagnosed as cognitively normal, 126 were diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment (which often develops into dementia), and 276 were diagnosed with dementia (progressive cognitive decline)......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

June 26, 2008, 8:32 PM CT

Physicists Produce Quantum-Entangled Images

Using a convenient and flexible method for creating twin light beams, scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland (UM) have produced "quantum images," pairs of information-rich visual patterns whose features are "entangled," or inextricably linked by the laws of quantum physics.

In addition to promising better detection of faint objects and improved amplification and positioning of light beams, the researchers' technique for producing quantum images-unprecedented in its simplicity, versatility, and efficiency-may someday be useful for storing patterns of data in quantum computers and transmitting large amounts of highly secure encrypted information. The research performed at the NIST/UM Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) was described in the June 12 edition of Science Express.*.

Conventional photographic films or digital camera sensors only record the color and intensity of a light wave striking their surfaces. A hologram additionally records a light wave's "phase"-the timing the crests and valleys in the wave. However, much more happens in a light wave. Even the most stable laser beam brightens and dims randomly over time because light has inherent quantum level "uncertainties" in its properties. Controlling these fluctuations-which represent a sort of "noise"-can improve detection of faint objects, produce better amplified images and allow workers to more accurately position laser beams. Scientists can't completely eliminate the noise, but they can rearrange it to improve desired features in images. A quantum-mechanical technique called "squeezing" lets physicists reduce noise in one property-such as intensity-at the expense of increasing the noise in a complementary property, such as phase. In addition to noise reduction, the quantum manipulations open new applications for images-such as transferring heaps of encrypted data protected by the laws of quantum mechanics and performing parallel processing of information for quantum computers......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

June 26, 2008, 8:27 PM CT

Extreme Ultraviolet Photoresists

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have confirmed that the photoresists used in next-generation semiconductor manufacturing processes now under development are twice as sensitive as previously believed. This finding, announced at a workshop last month,* has attracted considerable interest because of its implications for future manufacturing. If the photoresists are twice as sensitive as previously thought, then they are close to having the sensitivity mandatory for high volume manufacturing, but the flip side is that the extreme ultraviolet optical systems in the demonstration tools currently being used are only about half as effective as believed.

Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) is a process analogous to film photography. A silicon wafer is coated with photoresist and exposed to EUV light that reflects off a patterned "photomask." Where the light strikes the resist it changes the solubility of the coating. When developed, the soluble portions wash away leaving the same pattern exposed on the silicon surface for the processing steps that ultimately create microcircuits.

The drive to make circuits with ever smaller features has pushed manufacturers to use shorter and shorter wavelengths of light. EUVL is the next step in this progression and requires developing both suitable light sources and photoresists that can retain the fine details of the circuit, balancing sensitivity, line edge roughness and spatial resolution. NIST researcher Steve Grantham says that optical lithography light sources in use today emit light with a wavelength of about 193 nanometers, which borders on optical wavelengths. EUVL sources produce light with wavelengths about an order of magnitude smaller, around 13.5 nanometers. Because this light does not travel through anything-including lenses-mirrors have to be used to focus it......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

June 23, 2008, 8:07 PM CT

What Makes Diamonds Slippery

They call diamonds "ice," and not just because they sparkle. Engineers and physicists have long studied diamond because even though the material is as hard as an ice ball to the head, diamond slips and slides with remarkably low friction, making it an ideal material or coating for seals, high performance tools and high-tech moving parts.

Robert Carpick, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, and his group led a collaboration with scientists from Argonne National Laboratories, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Florida to determine what makes diamond films such slippery customers, settling a debate on the scientific origin of its properties and providing new knowledge that will help create the next generation of super low friction materials.

The Penn experiments, the first study of diamond friction convincingly supported by spectroscopy, looked at two of the main hypotheses posited for years as to why diamonds demonstrate such low friction and wear properties. Using a highly specialized technique know as photoelectron emission microscopy, or PEEM, the study reveals that this slippery behavior comes from passivation of atomic bonds at the diamond surface that were broken during sliding and not from the diamond turning into its more stable form, graphite. The bonds are passivated by dissociative adsorption of water molecules from the surrounding environment. The scientists also observed that friction increases dramatically if there is not enough water vapor in the environment......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

June 23, 2008, 8:03 PM CT

A look into the nanoscale

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have captured time-series snapshots of a solid as it evolves on the ultra-fast timescale.

Using femtosecond X-ray free electron laser (FEL) pulses, the team, led by Anton Barty, is able to observe condensed phase dynamics such as crack formation, phase separation, rapid fluctuations in the liquid state or in biologically relevant environments.

Other Livermore scientists include Michael Bogan, Stafan Hau-Riege, Stefano Marchesini, Matthias Frank, Bruce Woods, former Livermore researcher Saša Bajt and former LLNL scientist Henry Chapman, who is now at the Centre for Free Electron Laser Science, DESY, in Hamburg, Germany.

"The ability to take images in a single shot is the key to studying non-repetitive behavior mechanisms in a sample," Barty said.

As the femtosecond laser blasts the sample, it is destroyed, but not before the scientists created images with a 50-nanometer spatial resolution, and a 10-femtosecond shutter speed. (A femtosecond is one billionth of one millionth of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second as a second is to about 32 million years.).

"This experiment opens the door to a new regime of time-resolved experiments in mesoscopic dynamics," Barty said. "This technique could be extended to a few nanometers spatial and a few tens of femtoseconds temporal resolution"......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

June 19, 2008, 9:13 PM CT

Tiny refrigerator taking shape to cool future computers

Scientists at Purdue University are in the process of developing a miniature refrigeration system small enough to fit inside laptops and personal computers, a cooling technology that would boost performance while shrinking the size of computers.

Unlike conventional cooling systems, which use a fan to circulate air through finned devices called heat sinks attached to computer chips, miniature refrigeration would dramatically increase how much heat could be removed, said Suresh Garimella, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

The Purdue research focuses on learning how to design miniature components called compressors and evaporators, which are critical for refrigeration systems. The scientists developed an analytical model for designing tiny compressors that pump refrigerants using penny-size diaphragms and validated the model with experimental data. The elastic membranes are made of ultra-thin sheets of a plastic called polyimide and coated with an electrically conducting metallic layer. The metal layer allows the diaphragm to be moved back and forth to produce a pumping action using electrical charges, or "electrostatic diaphragm compression".

In related research, the engineers are among the first to precisely measure how a refrigerant boils and vaporizes inside tiny "microchannels" in an evaporator and determine how to vary this boiling rate for maximum chip cooling......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

June 17, 2008, 9:53 PM CT

DNA Knot KeepsViral Genes Tightly Corked Inside Shell

A novel twist of DNA may keep viral genes tightly wound within a capsule, waiting for ejection into a host, a high-resolution analysis of its structure has revealed.

Using electron microscopy and three-dimensional computer reconstruction, UC San Diego biologists and chemists have produced the most detailed image yet of the protein envelope of an asymmetrical virus and the viral DNA packed within, they report this week in the journal Structure. The image, with a resolution of less than a nanometer, or a millionth of a millimeter, will help to unravel how the virus locks onto its host and infects the cells by injecting its DNA.

By assembling more than 12,000 microscopic views of frozen viral particles from different angles, UCSD chemists Jinghua Tang, Norman Olson and Timothy Baker, a professor of chemistry and biological sciences, have determined the structure of a bacteriophage called phi29 with a resolution finer than 8 Angstroms (one Angstrom equals a tenth of a nanometer). Their project was part of a long-term collaboration with molecular virologist Dwight Anderson and colleagues at the University of Minnesota.

Eventhough the structures of spherical viruses with a high degree of symmetry have been resolved using similar methods, a number of more images were mandatory to accomplish the same task for the head-and-tail shape of phi29. The UCSD researchers said their images of phi29 are twice as fine as those created in prior efforts to visualize viruses with a similar shape......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

June 10, 2008, 8:32 PM CT

Secrets of Newest Form of Carbon

Using one of the world's most powerful sources of man-made radiation, physicists from UC San Diego, Columbia University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have uncovered new secrets about the properties of graphene-a form of pure carbon that may one day replace the silicon in computers, televisions, mobile phones and other common electronic devices.

Graphene-a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycombed lattice-has many advantages over silicon. Because it is an optically transparent conductor of electricity, graphene could be used to replace current liquid crystal displays that employ thin metal-oxide films based on indium, a rare metal that is becoming increasingly expensive and likely to be in short supply within a decade,. The problem for researchers is that not much is known about its optical and electronic properties because graphene, which was discovered only four years ago, has resisted traditional forms of spectroscopy.

In this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature-Physics, the physicists report that they used the Advanced Light Source at the Berkeley lab-one of the most powerful and versatile sources of electromagnetic radiation, from the infrared to x-ray region, in the world-to reveal some of those secrets. The scientists said that their study shows that the electrons in graphene strongly interact not only with the honeycomb lattice, but also with each other......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

June 10, 2008, 8:26 PM CT

Carbon emissions trading in Europe

For the past three years, the European Union has been operating the world's largest emissions trading system and the first system to limit and to trade carbon dioxide emissions. An MIT analysis of this initial "trial" phase finds that-despite its hasty adoption and somewhat rocky beginning-the European Union cap-and-trade system has operated well and has had little or no negative impact on the overall EU economy.

The MIT results provide both encouragement and guidance to policy makers working to design a carbon dioxide (CO2)-trading scheme for the United States and for the world. "This important public policy experiment is not perfect, but it is far more than any other nation or set of nations has done to control greenhouse gas emissions-and it works surprisingly well," said A. Denny Ellerman, senior lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management, who performed the analysis with Paul L. Joskow, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor in the Department of Economics.

The cap-and-trade approach to controlling emissions is hardly unprecedented. For years, the US has operated highly successful cap-and-trade systems for emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Based on a national emissions cap, facilities that emit those pollutants receive a limited number of emissions permits, or "allowances," for a given period. Facilities that emit more than their allowed limit must buy allowances from facilities that emit less. Markets for trading allowances operate smoothly, and-in response to the strong economic incentive-facilities have reduced their emissions significantly......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

Sat, 24 May 2008 22:19:36 GMT

Plant Flavonoid Luteolin Reduce Inflammatory Response

© Harris Graber Scientists have found that luteolin, a plant flavonoid found in celery and green peppers can disrupt a key component of the inflammatory response in the brain typical of aging and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis. Graduate research assistant Saebyeol Jang studied the inflammatory response in microglial cells. She spurred inflammation by exposing the cells to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a component of the cell wall of many common bacteria.

Those cells that were also exposed to luteolin showed a significantly diminished inflammatory response. Jang showed that luteolin was shutting down production of a key cytokine in the inflammatory pathway, interleukin-6 (IL-6). The effects of luteolin exposure were dramatic, resulting in as much as a 90 percent drop in IL-6 production in the LPS-treated cells.
In vivo experiments in mice also showed similar results. The authors suggest that these results indicate a possible role for luteolin in treating neuroinflammation.

Source Posted by: ruth      Read more     Source

May 14, 2008, 9:29 PM CT

Climate is changing life on global scale

A vast array of physical and biological systems across the earth are being affected by warming temperatures caused by humans, says a new analysis of information not previously assembled all in one spot. The effects on living things include earlier leafing of trees and plants over a number of regions; movements of species to higher latitudes and altitudes in the northern hemisphere; changes in bird migrations in Europe, North America and Australia; and shifting of the oceans plankton and fish from cold- to warm-adapted communities. The study appears in the May 15 issue of the leading scientific journal Nature.

Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems attributable at the global scale, said lead author Cynthia Rosenzweig, a scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research. Both are affiliates of The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Rosenzweig and scientists from 10 other institutions across the world analyzed data from published papers on 829 physical systems and some 28,800 plant and animal systems, stretching back to 1970. Their analysis of revealed a picture of changes on continental scales; prior studies had looked mainly at single phenomena, or smaller areas. In physical systems, 95% of observed changes are consistent with warming trends. These include wastage of glaciers on all continents; melting permafrost; earlier spring river runoff; and warming of water bodies. Among living creatures inhabiting such systems, 90% of changes are consistent with warming. The scientists say it is unlikely that any force but human-influenced climate change could be driving all this; factors like deforestation or natural climate variations could not explain it. Their work builds upon the consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which in 2007 declared manmade climate warming likely to have discernible effects on biological and physical systems......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

Fri, 09 May 2008 02:11:34 GMT

Atriplex hortensis

Sorry about the errant entry notification sent earlier today. I made some updates to that entry and the upgraded software decided that was enough to send out a new notification, so I''ll have to figure out how to suppress that in the future.

Here''s today''s entry, written by Connor:

Also known as orache and mountain-spinach, Atriplex hortensis can be found in cultivation worldwide. It is possibly native to central Asia, but the widespread cultivation obscures its origin. Mountain-spinach was formerly in the Chenopodiaceae before this entire family was included in the Amaranthaceae (via Wikipedia).

Plants For A Future Database reports a number of intriguing uses of orache. Not only do they taste like spinach, the leaves of mountain-spinach are suggested as an externally-applied remedy for gout. The seeds, when mixed with wine, are thought to be a possible treatment for jaundice.

Atriplex hortensis is a halophyte, meaning it grows well in saline soils. This is an increasingly valuable trait in cultivated plants, given the widespread use of irrigation. About one-half of the Earth''s land surface is "perennial desert or drylands" requiring irrigation for use in cultivation, a consequence of which is soil salinization (from Improving crop salt tolerance (PDF)). Irrigation salinity is "the rise in saline groundwater and the build up of salt in the soil surface in irrigated areas. Inefficient irrigation or applying more water than the plants can use means that this excess water leaks past the root zone to groundwater (recharge). This excess water can cause the watertable to ''mound'' under irrigation areas and in some cases the ground becomes waterlogged."

Species of Atriplex are able to tolerate saline soils because they concentrate the accumulated salt in specialized cells on the leaf surface called trichomes (from Vesiculated Hairs: A Mechanism for Salt Tolerance in Atriplex halimus L. (PDF)). In Introduction of a Na+/H+ antiporter gene from Atriplex gmelini confers salt tolerance to rice, the ability of transgenic rice plants to tolerate saline soil was evaluated. A gene from Atriplex responsible for a protein pump which transports salt ions across the cell membrane and the vacuole membrane was incorpoarated into rice plants. The transgenic plants were more tolerant of saline conditions not because they transported more ions into their cells reducing water loss through osmosis, but because they were able to transport more salt into the vacuoles of individual cells. Older leaves of the transgenic plants died because of this but the younger leaves continued to grow.

Many thanks to annkelliot@Flickr for a great photo (original via the UBCBG BPotD Flickr Pool). Posted by: Daniel Mosquin      Read more     Source

May 5, 2008, 8:09 PM CT

Cells Communicate To Activate The Cell Division Machinery

A study performed by scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) on the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, unveils how distinct signaling pathways operate between neighboring cells in order to activate the cell proliferation machinery that results in the organized growth of the fly wing. The signaling pathways involved in this process are also conserved in humans, and when altered in diverse tissues give rise to the appearance of different types of cancer, including cancer of the colon and skin, and leukemia. The study has been undertaken in the Cell and Development Biology Laboratory headed by ICREA Research Professor, Marco Milán, at IRB Barcelona, and has been released in and advanced online format by the EMBO Journal.

The scientists have shown that the Notch and Wnt/Wingless signaling pathways exert control over the cell division machinery through two gene effectors, the proto-oncogen dMyc and the micro-RNA bantam. Regulated by Notch and Wnt/Wingless, these two genes instruct another gene, E2F, to activate the cell division machinery. "All the components were already known but we have clarified the order in the signaling cascade and the interaction between the molecular elements that regulate proliferation for the correct development of the wing", explains Hector Herranz, first author of the article......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

May 3, 2008, 7:39 PM CT

Fixing up 'this old house' may increase young

Ripping out and tearing down to create a divinely designed home, a la HGTV, is all the rage today and the economic downturn may be leading more families to renovate rather than relocate. But a new study has observed that parents need to be aware that all this interior renovation can put their children's health at risk due to exposure to lead.

The study conducted by scientists at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center observed that interior renovation of older housing is linked to a modest increase in childrens blood lead level (BLL) and associated long-term health risks. These findings will be presented by co-author Stephen Wilson, M.D., at the Pediatric Academic Society (PAS) annual meeting in Honolulu on May 3.

Any person working on a home where children reside or visit frequently should know that their renovation work could cause lead hazards for the kids if the home was built before 1978, when the government banned lead-based paint in housing, said Adam Spanier, M.D., Ph.D. M.P.H., the studys lead author and director of the Pediatric Environmental Health and Lead Clinic at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center.

The study of 249 children, all living in homes built before 1978, observed that those who resided in houses where renovations had been done had higher blood lead levels than those in houses where no renovating had been done. Scientists used multivariable analysis to find that the kids who had lived through renovation projects had a 12 percent increase in mean BLL by age 2 compared with other children (p<0.01). The increase in BLL seemed related directly to the renovation work, given that if renovation took place within one month previous to measurement, 2-year-old children had a 1.6 micrograms per deciliter increase in average BLL and if the renovation was more recent (within a month before blood tests were done), in comparison to an average jump of 0.8 micrograms per deciliter in children whose houses had been renovated two to six months before measurement (p<0.01)......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

April 30, 2008, 6:39 PM CT

Injecting Sulfate Particles into Stratosphere

A much-discussed idea to offset global warming by injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere would have a drastic impact on Earth's protective ozone layer, new research concludes.

The study, led by Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., warns that such an approach would delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by decades and cause significant ozone loss over the Arctic.

The study results are published recently in the journal Science Express The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR's principal sponsor, as well as by NASA and other agencies.

"Our research indicates that trying to artificially cool off the planet may be a perilous endeavor," Tilmes says. "While climate change is a major threat, this solution could create severe problems for society.".

"The challenges of global warming mitigation are extremely complex," said Cliff Jacobs, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences. "Continued investment in basic research will allow the most cost-effective solutions--and those of the most benefit to society--to be found.".

Climate scientists, concerned that society is not taking sufficient action to prevent significant changes in climate, have studied various "geoengineering" proposals to cool the planet and mitigate the most severe impacts of global warming......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

April 30, 2008, 5:49 PM CT

Zebrafish may help solve ringing in vets' ears

Ernest Moore, an audiologist and cell biologist at Northwestern University, developed tinnitus -- a chronic ringing and whooshing sound in his ears -- twenty years ago after serving in the U.S. Army reserves medical corps. His hearing was damaged by the crack of too a number of M16 rifles and artillery explosions. He suspects his hearing also suffered from hunting opossum with rifles as a kid on his grandmother's farm in Tennessee.

Ever since his ears began ringing, Moore has been researching a cure. He's at the forefront of just a small band of such researchers in the country. There's a lot riding on his work.

Half of the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan exposed to explosive devices suffer from tinnitus. The major cause is exposure to loud noises, which can damage and destroy hair cells of the inner ear. It's the number one war-related disability.

Nearly 400,000 troops collected disability for service-related tinnitus in 2006, which cost $539 million in 2006. The number climbs nearly 20 percent each year. It could hit $1 billion by 2011, as per the American Tinnitus Association.

An additional 12 million Americans have tinnitus severe enough to seek medical attention. In about two million of those cases, patients are so debilitated they can't function normally......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

April 28, 2008, 5:35 PM CT

Leaving our mark

Whether you live in a cardboard box or a luxurious mansion, whether you subsist on homegrown vegetables or wolf down imported steaks, whether you're a jet-setter or a sedentary retiree, anyone who lives in the U.S. contributes more than twice as much greenhouse gas to the atmosphere as the global average, an MIT class has estimated.

The class studied the carbon emissions of Americans in a wide variety of lifestyles--from the homeless to multimillionaires, from Buddhist monks to soccer moms--and compared them to those of other nations. The somewhat disquieting bottom line is that in the United States, even people with the lowest energy usage account for, on average, more than double the global per-capita carbon emission. And those emissions rise steeply from that minimum as people's income increases.

"Regardless of income, there is a certain floor below which the individual carbon footprint of a person in the U.S. will not drop," says Timothy Gutowski, professor of mechanical engineering, who taught the class that calculated the rates of carbon emissions. The results will be presented this May at the IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment in San Francisco.

While it may seem surprising that even people whose lifestyles don't appear extravagant--the homeless, monks, children--are responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions, one major factor is the array of government services that are available to everyone in the United States. These basic services--including police, roads, libraries, the court system and the military--were allocated equally to everyone in the country in this study. Other services that are more specific, such as education or Medicare, were allocated only to those who actually make use of them......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

April 24, 2008, 10:20 PM CT

Ozone hole recovery may reshape southern hemisphere climate change

A full recovery of the stratospheric ozone hole could modify climate change in the Southern Hemisphere and even amplify Antarctic warming, as per researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

While Earth's average surface temperatures have been increasing, the interior of Antarctica has exhibited a unique cooling trend during the austral summer and fall caused by ozone depletion, said Judith Perlwitz of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NOAA. "If the successful control of ozone-depleting substances allows for a full recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica, we may finally see the interior of Antarctica begin to warm with the rest of the world," Perlwitz said.

Perlwitz is lead author of a new study on the subject would be published April 26 in Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors include Steven Pawson and Eric Nielson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Ryan Fogt and William Neff of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder. The study was supported by NASA's Modeling and Analysis Program.

The authors used a NASA supercomputer model that included interactions between the climate and stratospheric ozone chemistry to examine how changes in the ozone hole influence climate and weather near Earth's surface, said Perlwitz......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:35:40 GMT

Pine Bark Extract Pycnogenol For Osteoarthritis Symptoms

Yet another study involving the medical utility of Pycnogenol indicates that the pine bark extract can reduce all osteoarthritis symptoms by 56 percent. The study revealed a particularly high efficacy of Pycnogenol for lowering joint pain by 55 percent. Moreover, patients required dramatically less standard pain medication (-58 percent), which greatly improved the gastrointestinal complications resulting from the pain medication by 63 percent. In addition to the osteoarthritis results, 76 percent of the patients in the Pycnogenol group and 79 percent in the placebo group showed visible ankle and foot edema at inclusion of the study. After the three months, edema decreased in 79 percent of the Pycnogenol patients and only one percent in placebo-treated patients. Source Posted by: ruth      Read more     Source

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:28:55 GMT

Using Immunotherapy for Treating Food Allergies

Scientists from the National Jewish Medical and Research Center are evaluating the use of immunotherapy to prevent food allergy reactions. They are feeding peanut- and egg-allergic people increasing doses of an investigational protein extract from the foods to induce the participants' immune systems to tolerate the food. This is not the first time this approach has been tried. Last year, a similar study on oral immunotherapy using peanut flour turned out promising results, enabling peanut allergic children to have higher tolerance to peanuts after 2 years of therapy.

This time, older participants with peanut and egg allergies will be studied and exposed to increasing doses of the allergen.

Study participants (ages 12-40 years for peanut allergy and 6-18 years for egg allergy) will start by consuming tiny amounts of either egg or peanut protein. Physicians and staff at National Jewish will observe them closely to see if they have any symptoms of an allergic reaction. Over the course of several months, participants will consume the protein daily at home, coming in every couple of weeks or so to slowly ramp up the amount of protein they consume until they reach a "maintenance dose."

Shortly after reaching the maintenance dose, participants will be tested with a larger amount of either egg or peanut to see if the immunotherapy has reduced the immune system's response. Participants will continue taking the maintenance doses for one to three years to see if they can achieve long-term results. Six to eight weeks after discontinuing the immunotherapy, participants will again consume a larger amount of peanut or egg to see if they have become tolerant of the food.

Let's hope that this study points to a possible treatment for food allergies. Posted by: ruth      Read more     Source

April 10, 2008, 8:11 PM CT

Explaining Science Through Drawings

If a picture is worth a thousand words, creating one can have as much value to the illustrator as to the intended audience. This is the case with "Picturing to Learn," a project in which college students create pencil drawings to explain scientific concepts to a typical high school student. The National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Undergraduate Education, provides support for this effort.

What sets this project apart is its emphasis on inviting students to draw in order to explain scientific concepts to others. The act of creating pencil drawings calls into play a different kind of thought process that forces students to break down larger concepts into their constitutive pieces. This helps clarify the underlying science--from Brownian motion (the movement of particles suspended in a liquid or gas and the impact of raising the temperature of the liquid), to chemical bonding, to the quantum behavior of a particle in a box. In the same assignment, students are asked to evaluate their own drawings, which helps them identify and appreciate critical components.

"Visually explaining concepts can be a powerful learning tool," says Felice Frankel, principal investigator at Harvard University. "The other important part of this is that the teacher immediately identifies student misconceptions."......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Hippophae rhamnoides

Again, another thanks to Connor for assembling this series:

Here is the last of four entries featuring a plant from the Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species. Another four part series will be posted in the future. Photo courtesy of Paul Bordoni. Thanks again Hannes and Paul for all the information and photographs!

Hippophae rhamnoides, native over a wide area across Europe and Asia, is one of the important natural resources growing from Europe to northwest China. It can grow in low rainfall areas of mountains, sea coast and semi-desert areas. In western and northern Europe, it is largely confined to sea coasts where salt spray from the sea prevents other larger plants from out-competing it due to its tolerance to high levels of salinity. Sea buckthorn is dioecious, with separate male and female plants. It produces small flowers and red to yellow berries the size of a pea.

For centuries, the people of central and southeastern Asia have used sea buckthorn as an agent of traditional medicine to prevent and treat various ailments. Today, the plant is primarily valued for its fruits, which provide vitamin C, vitamin E, and other nutrients, antioxidants, oils rich in essential fatty acids, and other healthful components. The leaves are also used for making a multi-vitamin herbal beverage. The list of products made with sea buckthorn is long and varied and includes jams, juices, medicinal and cosmetic lotions, nutritional supplements, liquors.

Medicinal uses of sea buckthorn are well documented in Asia and Europe. Clinical tests on medicinal uses were first initiated in Russia during the 1950s. The most important pharmacological functions attributed to sea buckthorn oil are: anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, pain relief, and promoting regeneration of tissues. More than ten different drugs have been developed from sea buckthorn in Asia and Europe.

In large areas of northern China and Mongolia sea buckthorn has been developed into a major environmental resource. Many areas in fact, have become virtually treeless, even though they were once forested. Soil losses have been huge, and several previous attempts to grow various trees to hold down the soil have been unsuccessful. Sea buckthorn has turned out to be useful because it withstands severe weather and grows huge root systems in poor soil (and fixes nitrogen in the soil). For many animal and bird species, sea buckthorn is an important source of food or provides shelter.

The planting and maintenance of sea buckthorn is encouraged by local people in northern China and in Mongolia who can earn income from harvesting the fruits and other parts of the plant. In Nepal a partnership involving an international foundation, university research institutions, local community-based organizations, and practitioners of traditional Tibetan medicine, is working with a hospital and international businesses to build a sustainable program for the cultivation and sale of sea buckthorn in domestic and international markets. Local women''s cooperatives have also been trained to harvest and process wild sea buckthorn berries.

Some producers/retailers/distributors

• Weleda
• Lavera
• Sonnentor
• Lorenz & Lihn Obst-Edl-Erzeugnisse GmbH & Co.

Posted by: Daniel Mosquin      Read more     Source

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:47:05 GMT

Connections Between Handwriting and Personality

(RSS).

[Image credit: margolove]

References

Beyerstein, B. L. (2007). Graphology - a total write-off. In: S. D. Sala (Ed.). Tall tales about the mind and brain: separating fact from fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bradley, N. (2005). Users of Graphology. Graphology, the Journal of the British Academy of Graphology.(January) 69, 55-57.

Dean, G. (1992). The bottom line: effect size. In: B. L. Beyerstein, D. F. Beyerstein (Eds.). The write stuff: evaluations of graphology - the study of handwriting analysis. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Loewenthal, K. (1975). Handwriting and self-presentation. Journal of Social Psychology, 96, 267-270.Labels: Mind-Myths Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

March 27, 2008, 9:49 PM CT

Self-Assembled Materials Form Mini Stem Cell Lab

Imagine having one polymer and one small molecule that instantly assemble into a flexible but strong sac in which you can grow human stem cells, creating a sort of miniature laboratory. And that sac, if used for cell treatment, could cloak the stem cells from the human body's immune system and biodegrade upon arriving at its destination, releasing the stem cells to do their work.

Futuristic? Only in part. A research team from Northwestern University's Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine has created such sacs and demonstrated that human stem cells will grow in them. The scientists also report that the sacs can survive for weeks in culture and that their membranes are permeable to proteins. Proteins, even large ones, can travel freely across the membrane.

This new and unexpected mode of self-assembly, would be published March 28 in the journal Science, also can produce thin films whose size and shape can be tailored. The method holds promise for use in cell treatment and other biological applications as well as in the design of electronic devices by self-assembly, such as solar cells, and the design of new materials.

"We started with two molecules of interest, dissolved in water, and brought the two solutions together," said Samuel I. Stupp, Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry and Medicine, who led the research......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

March 27, 2008, 9:23 PM CT

Increased knowledge about global warming leads to apathy

The more you know the less you care at least that seems to be the case with global warming. A telephone survey of 1,093 Americans by two Texas A&M University political researchers and a former colleague indicates that trend, as explained in their recent article in the peer-evaluated journal Risk Analysis.

More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming, states the article, titled Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes toward Global Warming and Climate Change in the USA.

The study showed high levels of confidence in researchers among Americans led to a decreased sense of responsibility for global warming.

The diminished concern and sense of responsibility flies in the face of awareness campaigns about climate change, such as in the movies An Inconvenient Truth and Ice Age: The Meltdown and in the mainstream medias escalating emphasis on the trend.

The research was conducted by Paul M. Kellstedt, a political science associate professor at Texas A&M; Arnold Vedlitz, Bob Bullock Chair in Government and Public Policy at Texas A&Ms George Bush School of Government and Public Service; and Sammy Zahran, formerly of Texas A&M and now an assistant professor of sociology at Colorado State University......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 01:13:05 GMT

Two Brains for the Price of One?

covered in this series, there''s a solid grain of truth here but its extent has been wildly exaggerated.

Left side language
The biggest grain of truth is that our verbal powers are concentrated in the left side of our brains. It was Nobel Prize winner Roger W. Sperry who, in the 1960s, first showed that the left hemisphere is specialised for language (Corballis, 2007). He was studying patients suffering from crippling epileptic fits who had decided to undergo surgery to try and relieve their symptoms.

The surgery cut the bundle of white matter - the corpus callosum - that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. Along with successfully treating their epilepsy, these ''split-brain'' patients exhibited some strange new symptoms.

Sperry found that after the surgery patients were unable to name objects with the, now disconnected, right side of their brains. Their left-brains, however, seemed to have retained this ability. This lead him to propose that the left hemisphere is specialised for language.

But this specialisation didn''t mean the right hemisphere had no language powers at all. Further experiments suggested the right hemisphere could indeed still process language, just to a lesser degree. For example, patients were able to point to the written names of objects which were presented to their right-brain, although they found themselves unable to say the word.

Right side?
Not long after the left-brain language discovery, researchers began to wonder about the right hemisphere''s special skills. Sure enough the right hemisphere seemed to perform better in some tasks:

• Mentally rotating shapes.
• Identification of melodies.
• Detecting facial emotions.

This seems to correspond well with the myth, after all right-brains are spatial, emotional and creative, aren''t they? Well, yes, but the actual differences found in these experiments are relatively small, especially when compared to the specialisation of the left hemisphere in language.

To completely lose a particular mental faculty, a person normally needs to suffer damage to a particular area in both the left and right hemispheres.In a classic paper published in the journal Neurology, renowned neuropsychologist Brenda Milner points out that while there are many measurable functional differences between the left and the right-brain, there are actually many more similarities between the two hemispheres (Milner, 1971). Perhaps the clearest evidence of this is from studies of brain damage. To completely lose a particular mental faculty, a person normally needs to suffer damage to a particular area in both the left and right hemispheres.

Research continues apace into the functional differences between our right and left hemispheres. But while findings about lateralisation continue to point out surprising new differences about our hemispheric twins, the overall message remains the same: apart from language these differences are generally small. Even in language, to perform at our best, we need both sides of our brain working together.

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[Image credit: Gaetan Lee]

References

Corballis, M. C. (2007) The dual-brain myth. In: S. D. Sala (Ed.). Tall tales about the mind and brain: separating fact from fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Milner, B. (1971). Interhemispheric differences in the localization of psychological processes in man, Neurology, 8, 299-321.Labels: Mind-Myths Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

March 20, 2008, 7:58 PM CT

Climate change threatens Amazonian small farmers

A six-year study of Amazonian small farmers and their responses to climate change shows the farmers are vulnerable to natural catastrophes and risky land use practices, say Indiana University Bloomington anthropologists Eduardo Brondizio and Emilio Moran.

The scientists report in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (now accessible online) that an increase in climate anomalies like El Nino could ultimately drive a number of small farmers to ruin, forcing them into Brazilian cities that may be ill-equipped to employ, house and feed them.

The scientists found a rapid decay in farmers' memories even of major climate events. For example, more than 50 percent of the farmers surveyed in 2002 did not recall the El Nino-caused drought of 1997 and 1998 -- the worst drought in recent recorded history.

"Because there's so much variability -- even within a three-year period -- most farmers do not seem to maintain a memory of major weather events unless they had some unusual and specific relevance to their lives," said Brondizio, the paper's corresponding author. "Small farmers' collective memory about past climate events is also impacted by the high rate of turnover as new farmers arrive and others leave for cities or new frontiers. It takes time for farmers to learn about a new environment. High rates of family turnover in rural areas further limit the sharing of knowledge and experiences and forms of collective action, such as preventing the spread of accidental fires, to cope with challenging times."........ Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

March 18, 2008, 8:53 PM CT

Tell Them Where it Hurts

For statues, stress injuries come from standing in place for hundreds of years. Using a novel technique, scientists have now developed a way to predict such fracturing, applying the procedure to Michelangelo's David in an analysis that proved simpler, faster and more accurate than prior methods.

In applying the technique to other objects -- including human bones -- the scientists are also gaining new perspective on how these structures are likely to fail.

On March 18, 2008, Vadim Shapiro of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Igor Tsukanov of Florida International University and their colleagues will present their latest results from their Scan and Solve technique at the International Conference on Computational and Experimental Engineering and Sciences in Honolulu, Hawaii.

"This research is likely to result in a breakthrough technology for performing direct engineering analysis on physical artifacts in situ (in place)," said Shapiro, director of the Spatial Automation Laboratory at his university.

Scan and Solve takes 3-D sampled or scanned data of an object and calculates where points of weakness occur and how those points will be affected by forces acting on them, such as gravity in the case of David or activity in the case of a human bone......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source

March 16, 2008, 9:50 PM CT

Mathematicians find new solutions to an ancient puzzle

A number of people find complex math puzzling, including some mathematicians.

Recently, mathematician Daniel J. Madden and retired physicist, Lee W. Jacobi, found solutions to a puzzle that has been around for centuries.

Jacobi and Madden have found a way to generate an infinite number of solutions for a puzzle known as 'Eulers Equation of degree four.'

The equation is part of a branch of mathematics called number theory. Number theory deals with the properties of numbers and the way they relate to each other. It is filled with problems that can be likened to numerical puzzles.

Its like a puzzle: can you find four fourth powers that add up to another fourth power? Trying to answer that question is difficult because it is highly unlikely that someone would sit down and accidentally stumble upon something like that, said Madden, an associate professor of mathematics at The University of Arizona in Tucson.

The team's finding is reported in the recent issue of The American Mathematical Monthly.

Equations are puzzles that need certain solutions plugged into them in order to create a statement that obeys the rules of logic.

For example, think of the equation x + 2 = 4. Plugging 3 into the equation doesnt work, but if x = 2, then the equation is correct......... Posted by: Beverly      Read more         Source