Researchers using the Advanced Photon Source, a Department of Energy user facility at Argonne National Laboratory, have gotten the first-ever look inside the living beetle as it sprays. The results are published today in Science.
A team of highly determined high school students discovered a never-before-seen pulsar by painstakingly analyzing data from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Further observations by astronomers using the GBT revealed that this pulsar has the widest orbit of any around a neutron star and is part of only a handful of double neutron star systems.
A team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and other groups has focused its attention on fishery improvement projects (FIPs), which are designed to bring seafood from wild fisheries to the certified market, with only a promise of sustainability in the future. They conclude that FIPs need to be fine-tuned to ensure that fisheries are delivering on their promises.
Researchers have perfected a noninvasive “chemogenetic” technique that allows them to switch off a specific behavior in mice – such as voracious eating – and then switch it back on. The method works by targeting two different cell surface receptors. It’s the first fruit of the NIH BRAIN Initiative.
Studying fruit fly larvae, Janelia scientists have mapped the entire neural circuit involved in combining vibration and pain sensations used in triggering an escape behavior.
Bats must rapidly integrate different types of sensory information to catch insects and avoid obstacles while flying. A study shows, for the first time, that a unique array of sensory receptors in the wing provides feedback to a bat during flight. The findings also suggest that neurons in the bat brain respond to incoming airflow and touch signals, triggering rapid adjustments in wing position to optimize flight control.
Columbia Engineering Professor James Hone led a team in 2013 that dramatically improved the performance of graphene by encapsulating it in boron nitride. They’ve now shown they can similarly improve the performance of another 2D material, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2. Their findings provide a demonstration of how to study all 2D materials and hold great promise for a broad range of applications including high-performance electronics, detection and emission of light, and chemical/bio-sensing. Nature Nanotechnology , week of April 27, 2015
A patented passive cooling system for computer processors invented at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) could save U.S. consumers more than $6.3 billion per year in energy costs.
University of Utah seismologists discovered and made images of a reservoir of hot, partly molten rock 12 to 28 miles beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano, and it is 4.4 times larger than the shallower, long-known magma chamber. The hot rock in the newly discovered, deeper magma reservoir would fill the 1,000-cubic-mile Grand Canyon 11.2 times.
An international team of researchers has sequenced the nearly complete genome of two Siberian woolly mammoths—revealing the most complete picture to date—including new information about the species’ evolutionary history and the conditions that led to its mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age.
Assistant Professor of Oceanography Robert Spencer writes in Geophysical Research Letters that single-cell organisms called microbes are rapidly devouring the ancient carbon being released from thawing permafrost soil and ultimately releasing it back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Increased carbon dioxide levels, of course, cause the Earth to warm and accelerate thawing.
Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have discovered a new method to detect a bacterium that has contaminated New England oyster beds and sickened consumers who ate the contaminated shellfish. The new detection method is a significant advance in efforts to identify shellfish harboring disease-carrying strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus.
Researchers need to find ways to measure how the changes in climate are affecting biodiversity. One of the best places to look may be down at our feet, at beetles. That`s because, as a McGill research team discovered after doing the first large-scale survey of Arctic beetles, these six-legged critters are not only abundant in number but also diverse in feeding habits and what they eat is closely linked to the latitude in which they are found.
Using statistics that describe how an infectious disease spreads, a University of Utah anthropologist analyzed different theories of how people first settled islands of the vast Pacific between 3,500 and 900 years ago. Adrian Bell found the two most likely strategies were to travel mostly against prevailing winds and seek easily seen islands, not necessarily the nearest islands.
Research by scientists at The University of Manchester has revealed that the colour of light has a major impact on how our body clock measures the time of day.
University at Buffalo researchers have discovered a way to easily and effectively fasten proteins to nanoparticles – essentially an arranged marriage – by simply mixing them together. The biotechnology, described April 20 online in the journal Nature Chemistry, is in its infancy. But it already has shown promise for developing an HIV vaccine and as a way to target cancer cells.
Following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010, many people were concerned that seafood was contaminated by either the oil or dispersants used to keep the oil from washing ashore. Ina University of Florida study, all seafood tested so far has shown “remarkably low contaminant levels,” based on FDA standards, and revealed that: • 74 percent of samples were below quantifiable limits; • 23 percent of samples were between 0.1-0.9 parts per billion, and; • 3 percent of samples were between 1.0 and 48 parts per billion.
An international team of scientists, including researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have found antibiotic resistance genes in the bacterial flora of a South American tribe that never before had been exposed to antibiotic drugs. The findings suggest that bacteria in the human body have had the ability to resist antibiotics since long before such drugs were ever used to treat disease.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has revealed an extremely powerful magnetic field, beyond anything previously detected in the core of a galaxy, very close to the event horizon of a supermassive black hole.
Two primatologists working in the forests of the Republic of Congo have returned from the field with a noteworthy prize: the first-ever photograph of the Bouvier’s red colobus monkey, a rare primate not seen for more than half a century and suspected to be extinct by some, according to WCS (the Wildlife Conservation Society).
UNC researchers have published the first direct evidence that a low dose of electric current can enhance the brain’s natural alpha oscillations to boost creativity by an average of 7.4 percent. Next up: using the method to treat depression.
Scientists at The University of Manchester have discovered a way to make trees grow bigger and faster, which could increase supplies of renewable resources and help trees cope with the effects of climate change.
Bee pollination is a big deal. Just think about the buzz surrounding colony collapse disorder and the effects it could have on agriculture worldwide. But while honey bees get all the press, there are thousands of other bee species that are just as critical to the continued propagation of flowering plants.
A team led by Shree K. Nayar, Computer Science Professor at Columbia Engineering, has invented a prototype video camera that is the first to be fully self-powered—it can produce an image each second, indefinitely, of a well-lit indoor scene. They designed a pixel that can not only measure incident light but also convert the incident light into electric power. The work will be presented at the International Conference on Computational Photography in Houston, 4/24-26
Why are modern humans the only species to have chins? University of Iowa researchers say it's not due to mechanical forces, such as chewing, but may lie in our evolution: As our faces became smaller, it exposed the bony prominence at the lowest part of our heads. Results appear in the Journal of Anatomy.
Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have released the first in a series of dark matter maps of the cosmos. These maps, created with one of the world's most powerful digital cameras, are the largest contiguous maps created at this level of detail and will improve our understanding of dark matter's role in the formation of galaxies.
Astronomers compiled a story of our Milky Way's growth by studying galaxies similar in mass to our galaxy, found in deep surveys of the universe. Stretching back more than 10 billion years, the census contains nearly 2,000 snapshots of Milky Way-like galaxies . To learn even more about this study, join Hubble scientists for a live Hubble Hangout discussion at 3pm EDT on Thurs., April 9, on Google+ at http://hbbl.us/kd3, or YouTube at http://hbbl.us/y6r .
University of Florida and Kansas State University discovered there is substantial genetic variation in nature for both long-term seasonal acclimation and short-term acclimation associated with rapid extreme weather events.
An international team of nuclear physicists announced the first scientific results from the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) experiment. CUORE is designed to confirm the existence of the Majorana neutrino, which scientists believe could hold the key to why there is an abundance of matter over antimatter.
Fish are the key ingredients in a new recipe to diagnose and restore degraded coral reef ecosystems, according to scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, WCS, James Cook University, and other organizations in a new study in the journal Nature.
Astronomers using ALMA have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, suggesting once again that the conditions that spawned our Earth and Sun are not unique in the universe.
Salk scientists discover a single protein that energizes muscles and the brain
A big barrier to building useful electronics with carbon nanotubes has always been the fact that when they're arrayed into films, a certain portion of them will act more like metals than semiconductors. But now a team of researchers have shown how to strip out the metallic carbon nanotubes from arrays using a relatively simple, scalable procedure that does not require expensive equipment. Their work is described this week in the Journal of Applied Physics.
Astronomers have discovered that a distant galaxy -- seen from Earth with the aid of a gravitational lens -- appears like a cosmic ring, thanks to the highest resolution images ever taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).
New research from The University of Manchester and the Institute of Zoology has shed light on the complex challenge facing scientists battling one of the world’s most devastating animal diseases.
Introduced plants make up roughly half the diet of two subspecies of endangered tortoise, field research in the Galapagos reveals. Tortoises seem to prefer non-native to native plants and the plants may help them to stay well-nourished during the dry season.
With the Large Hadron Collider back in action, the more than 1,700 U.S. scientists who work on LHC experiments are prepared to join thousands of their international colleagues to study the highest-energy particle collisions ever achieved in the laboratory.
Infants have innate knowledge about the world and learn best when their expectations are defied.
A new University at Buffalo study finds that — contrary to what some physicists have argued for the years — information is not lost once it has entered a black hole. The research presents explicit calculations showing how information is, in fact, preserved.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a set of wispy, goblin-green objects that are the ephemeral ghosts of quasars that flickered to life and then faded. The eight unusual looped structures may offer insights into the puzzling behaviors of galaxies with energetic cores. Join Hubble scientists for a live Hubble Hangout at 3pm EDT on Thurs., April 2, to learn more. Visit http://hbbl.us/y6c .
Changes in the biochemical balance of the ocean were a crucial factor in the end-Triassic mass extinction, during which half of all plant, animal and marine life on Earth perished, according to new research involving the University of Southampton.
During prenatal development, the brains of most animals, including humans, develop specifically male or female characteristics. But scientists have known little about the details of how this differentiation occurs. Now, a new study by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has illuminated details about this process.
An international research team, led by a Virginia Tech geoscientist, has revealed information about how continents were generated on Earth more than 2.5 billion years ago — and how those processes have continued within the last 70 million years to profoundly affect the planet’s life and climate.
Researchers at the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) at the National University of Singapore have discovered that the inherent ‘handedness’ of molecular structures directs the behaviour of individual cells and confers them the ability to sense the difference between left and right. This is a significant step forward in the understanding of cellular biology.
Research published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Rhawn Denniston, professor of geology at Cornell College, and his research team, created a 2,200-year-long record of extreme rainfall events that might also help predict future climate change.
By studying the morphology and physiology of plants with tiny conical “hairs” or microfibers on the surface of their leaves, such as tomatoes, balsam pears and the flowers Berkheya purpea and Lychnis sieboldii, a team of researchers in Japan uncovered water collection-and-release secrets that may, in turn, one day soon “bioinspire” a technology to pull fresh water from the air to help alleviate global water shortages.
Using a new high-speed, high-resolution imaging method, Lihong Wang, PhD, and his team at Washington University in St. Louis were able to see blood flow and other functions inside a living mouse brain at faster rates than ever before.
Researchers have discovered an unconventional way that serotonin is released from neurons that could play an important role in the mechanism through which antidepressant drugs work.
Luke Skywalker’s home in “Star Wars” is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.
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