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Researchers Create ‘Soft Robotic’ Devices Using Water-Based Gels

By Guest PostAugust 7, 2013Scienceaqueous environments, biomedical applications, daniel morales, etienne palleau, hydrogels are elastic, invista, michael dickey, north Carolina, orlin velev, patterns of ions, petals, polymer molecules, soft robotic devices, state university, technique, theory, three dimensions, water based gels

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for creating devices out of a water-based hydrogel material that can be patterned, folded and used to manipulate objects. The technique holds promise for use in “soft robotics” and biomedical applications.

“This work brings us one step closer to developing new soft robotics technologies that mimic biological systems and can work in aqueous environments,” says Dr. Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. (more…)

Nighttime heat waves quadruple in Pacific Northwest

By Guest PostAugust 7, 2013Environmentcascade mountains, climate change, historical record, history books, karin bumbaco, kathie dello, nicholas bond, nighttime heat waves, nighttime low temperature, oregon, oregon climate service, oregon state university, pacific northwest, predictions, quadruple, seatac airport, summer temperatures, temperatures on record, trend, triple digit, university of washington, western washington

Nighttime heat waves are becoming more frequent in western Washington and Oregon.

And if you don’t sleep well in hot weather, this might be a good time to buy a fan, since records show that on average heat waves tend to strike around the last week of July.

University of Washington research shows that the region west of the Cascades saw only three nighttime heat waves between 1901 and 1980, but that number quadrupled to 12 nighttime heat waves in the three decades after 1980, according to a paper published in the July issue of the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. (more…)

Two 6000-year-old ‘halls of the dead’ unearthed, in UK first

By Guest PostAugust 7, 2013General, Science6000 year old, archaeologists, artefacts, dorstone hill, eastern yorkshire, England, halls of dead, herefordshire council, julian thomas, keith ray, late neolithic, neolithic, neolithic heritage, peterchurch, prehistoric burial mound, uk, university of manchester, wales

The remains of two large 6000-year-old halls, each buried within a prehistoric burial mound, have been discovered by archaeologists from The University of Manchester and Herefordshire Council – in a UK first.

The sensational finds on Dorstone Hill, near Peterchurch in Herefordshire, were thought to be constructed between 4000 and 3600 BC.

Some of the burnt wood discovered at the site shows the character of the building’s structure above ground level- in another UK first.

The buildings, probably used by entire communities, are of unknown size, but may have been of similar length to the Neolithic long barrows beneath which they were found – 70metres and 30m long. (more…)

From obscurity to dominance: Tracking the rapid evolutionary rise of ray-finned fish

By Guest PostAugust 6, 2013Nature, Scienceadaptive radiation, age of fish, backboned animals, darwins comment, devonian era, end devonian extinction, evolutionary biologist, evolutionary rise, fossils from scotland, fouldenia, glaciers, hangenberg extinction, japanese amberjack, john megahan, lauren sallan, long extinct fish, mass extinctions, michael coates, misclassified fouldenia, oceans, post devonian tetrapods, predatory fish, ray finned fish, romers gap, sea levels, shell crushing, styracopterus, tropics, university of chicago, university of michigan, vertebrate species, yellowtail

ANN ARBOR — Mass extinctions, like lotteries, result in a multitude of losers and a few lucky winners. This is the story of one of the winners, a small, shell-crushing predatory fish called Fouldenia, which first appears in the fossil record a mere 11 million years after an extinction that wiped out more than 90 percent of the planet’s vertebrate species.

The extinction that ended the Devonian Era 359 million years ago created opportunities quickly exploited by a formerly rare and unremarkable group of fish that went on to become—in terms of the sheer number of species—the most successful vertebrates (backboned animals) on the planet today: the ray-finned fish. (more…)

New IBM Flex Systems Allow Clients to Build Larger Clouds in Smaller Data Centers

By Guest PostAugust 6, 2013Technologybuild larger clouds, cloud environments, computational algorithms, double dense, ibm flex systems, libra internet bank, romania, sdn, smaller data centers, x222 system, x86 technology

Mobile Flex System Manager helps clients to monitor and control their systems from any location using smartphones or tablets

ARMONK, N.Y. – 06 Aug 2013: IBM today unveiled a number of major additions to its Flex System portfolio. The offerings combine the latest server technology with new virtualization, networking and management tools, allowing clients to consolidate their existing IT infrastructures and reduce operating costs. This will help clients use smaller data center environments to quickly deploy, manage and secure increasingly larger clouds.

Today’s announcement comes at a critical time, as organizations look to consolidate their existing data centers and shift greater workloads to the cloud. In fact, one study has determined that by 2014, businesses will have migrated more than 62 percent of their existing database workloads to the cloud. [1] (more…)

One Tree’s Architecture Reveals Secrets of a Forest, Study Finds

By Guest PostAugust 6, 2013Nature, Sciencebranching pattern, brian enquist, carbon dioxide, cathy hulshoff, course of evolution, ecosystem, Environment, journal ecology, leonardos rule, lisa patrick bentley, oxygen, secrets of forest, species, symmetrical y, theory, tree architecture, ua ecologists, ua ecology professor, university of arizona, university of oxford

Behind the dazzling variety of shapes and forms found in trees hides a remarkably similar architecture based on fundamental, shared principles, UA ecologists have discovered.

Researchers in the University of Arizona’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology have found that despite differences in appearance, trees across species share remarkably similar architecture and can tell scientists a lot about an entire forest.

Just by looking at a tree’s branching pattern, it turns out, scientists can gather clues about how it functions – for example how much carbon dioxide it exchanges with the atmosphere or how much water transpires through its leaves – regardless of the tree’s shape or species. (more…)

Sea level rise: New iceberg theory points to areas at risk of rapid disintegration

By Guest PostAugust 6, 2013Environmentantarctic ocean, Antarctica, catastrophic breakup, catastrophic disintegration, coast, diverse calving patterns, glacier geometry, greenland, helheim glacier, ice shelf, iceberg calving, jakobshavn glacier, jeremy bassis, larsen b, new iceberg theory, new model, physics, pine island glacier, rapid disintegration, risk, sea-level rise, thwaites, university of michigan

ANN ARBOR — In events that could exacerbate sea level rise over the coming decades, stretches of ice on the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland are at risk of rapidly cracking apart and falling into the ocean, according to new iceberg calving simulations from the University of Michigan.

“If this starts to happen and we’re right, we might be closer to the higher end of sea level rise estimates for the next 100 years,” said Jeremy Bassis, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the U-M College of Engineering, and first author of a paper on the new model published in the current issue of Nature Geoscience. (more…)

Ecological forces structure your body’s personal mix of microbes

By Guest PostAugust 5, 2013Health, Sciencebacteria, body, chronic digestive inflammation, computer model, ecological forces, elhanan borenstein, energy metabolism, environmental conditions, fungi, genetics studies, habitat filtering, human microbiome, infection, injury, microbes, nutrient, roie levy, species interaction, toxins, university of washington

Environmental conditions have a much stronger influence on the mix of microbes living in various parts of your body than does competition between species. Instead of excluding each other, microbes that fiercely compete for similar resources are more likely to cohabit in the same individual.

This phenomenon was discovered in a recent study of the human microbiome – the vast collection of our resident bacteria, fungi, and other tiny organisms. (more…)

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