Author Archives: Guest Post

‘Tis the Season — for Plasma Changes at Saturn

By Guest PostMay 5, 2013Scienceautumn, cassini spacecraft, cell phone communication, charged particles, electrically charged gas, flux tubes, iowa city, jupiter, magnetosphere, NASA, plasma changes, radiation belts, rotation period, satellite, saturn, saturnian plasma sheet, season, seasonal effect, southern hemispheres, spring, tim kennelly, university of iowa, van allen

Researchers working with data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have discovered one way the bubble of charged particles around Saturn — known as the magnetosphere — changes with the planet’s seasons. The finding provides an important clue for solving a riddle about the planet’s naturally occurring radio signal. The results might also help scientists better understand variations in Earth’s magnetosphere and Van Allen radiation belts, which affect a variety of activities at Earth, ranging from space flight safety to satellite and cell phone communications.

The paper, just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, is led by Tim Kennelly, an undergraduate physics and astronomy major at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, who is working with Cassini’s radio and plasma wave science team. (more…)

Insect eye-inspired camera captures wide field of view with no distortion, according to study co-led by CU-Boulder

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Nature, Science3d shape, boulder, bowl shaped eyes, camera, conventional cameras, conventional systems, crystalline cone, deform, distortion, dragonflies, electronic detector, electronic system, exoskeletons, experimental digital camera, eyes of arthropods, houseflies, insect eye, jianliang xiao, john roger, mammalian eyes, ommatidia, praying mantises, resolution, university of colorado, university of Illinois, urbana-champaign, viktor malyarchuk, yizhu xie, young min song

By mimicking the bulging, bowl-shaped eyes possessed by dragonflies, praying mantises, houseflies and other insects, a team of researchers that includes a University of Colorado Boulder engineer has built an experimental digital camera that can take exceptionally wide-angle photos without distorting the image.

To create the innovative camera, which also allows for a practically infinite depth of field, the scientists used stretchable electronics and a pliable sheet of microlenses made from a material similar to that used for contact lenses. The researchers described the camera in an article published on May 1, 2013 in the journal Nature. (more…)

What Happened to Dinosaurs’ Predecessors After Earth’s Largest Extinction 252 Million Years Ago?

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Scienceadam huttenlocker, africa, after the extinction, Antarctica, asilisaurus, australia, biogeographic patterns, brandon peecook, christian sidor, daril vilhena, dinosaurs in tanzania, dinosaurs predecessors, earliest dinosaur, earth, expeditions to antarctica, fossil hunting expeditions, fossil record, four legged animals, h richard lane, India, karoo, ken angielczyk, largest extinction, linda tsuji, mass extinction, museum fossils, national science foundation, nyasasaurus parringtoni, paleontologist, pig sized dicynodon, predecessors to dinosaurs, roger smith, sebastien steyer, snapshots, South Africa, south america, southern pangea, southwest russia, species distributions, sterling nesbitt, university of washington, unorthodox places, zambia, zambian basins

Fossil-hunting expeditions to Tanzania, Zambia and Antarctica provide new insights

Predecessors to dinosaurs missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during Earth’s largest mass extinction 252 million years ago.

Or did they?

That thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia.

It turns out, however, that scientists may have been looking in the wrong places. (more…)

Sweet Success: Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Way to Catalyze More Sugars from Biomass

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Scienceachilles heel, advanced biofuels, amorphous, berkeley lab, biofuel production, biomass of grasses, carbon into atmosphere, catalysis, catalytic activity, cellulase enzymes, cellulose classification system, cellulosic biomass, crystalline, douglas clark, enzyme cocktails, enzyme synergy, fermentable sugars, fossil fuels, harvey blanch, industrial manufacturing processes, jan liphardt, jerome fox, light microscopy technique, localization microscopy, palm, palm technology, photo activated, solid surfaces, substrate heterogeneity, sweet success, synergistic activity, ultrahigh precision, united states, university of california

Catalysis may initiate almost all modern industrial manufacturing processes, but catalytic activity on solid surfaces is poorly understood. This is especially true for the cellulase enzymes used to release fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass for the production of advanced biofuels. Now, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) through support from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) have literally shed new light on cellulase catalysis.

Using an ultrahigh-precision visible light microscopy technique called PALM – for Photo-Activated Localization Microscopy – the researchers have found a way to improve the collective catalytic activity of enzyme cocktails that can boost the yields of sugars for making fuels. Increasing the sugar yields from cellulosic biomass to help bring down biofuel production costs is essential for the widespread commercial adoption of these fuels. (more…)

Monitoring concrete

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Sciencealkali silica reaction, asr, asr affected concrete, asr damage, chemical, concrete, construction material, cracking, deldot, DNA, dry environments, Environment, environmental engineering, environmental stressors, harsh environment, internal chemical reactions, julie maresca, kinds of microbes, microbiology, monitoring concrete, non destructive methodology, nutrient requirements, ph, physical stresses, potassium, project, salt concentrations, silica minerals, sodium, temperature fluctuations, thomas schumacher, university of delaware

UD professors study microbes as potential biomarkers for damaged concrete

Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world. However, many concrete roadways and bridges crack due to internal chemical reactions, temperature fluctuations or external chemical and physical stresses.

One internal chemical reaction is the Alkali-Silica Reaction (ASR) that destroys the concrete from within. (more…)

Where Does Charcoal, or Black Carbon, in Soils Go?

By Guest PostMay 2, 2013Environmentbiochar technology, black carbon, bonanza creek, carbon cycle, carbon sequestration, charcoal, climate change, ecology, environmental factors, environmental fate, everglades, fate of charcoal, florida international university, georgia coastal ecosystems, german, Germany, global carbon budget, global scale, hubbard brook, konza prairie, marine geochemistry, max planck society, national science foundation, organic carbon, rudolf jaffe, saran twombly, soils, thorsten dittmar, university oldenburg, yan ding

Scientists find surprising new answers in wetlands such as the Everglades

Scientists have uncovered one of nature’s long-kept secrets–the true fate of charcoal in the world’s soils.

The ability to determine the fate of charcoal is critical to knowledge of the global carbon budget, which in turn can help understand and mitigate climate change.

However, until now, researchers only had scientific guesses about what happens to charcoal once it’s incorporated into soil. They believed it stayed there.

Surprisingly, most of these researchers were wrong. (more…)

IBM Research Makes World’s Smallest Movie Using Atoms

By Guest PostMay 2, 2013Technologya boy, andreas heinrich, atomic memory, atoms, big data, christopher lutz, data storage, feel atoms, guinness world records, his atom, ibm research, ibm research lab, ibm scientists, law, million atoms, molecules, moore, nanoscale, nobel prize, novel, smallest movie

Future storage systems based on atomic-scale memory would be capable of storing massive amounts of Big Data
GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® certifies movie as World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film

SAN JOSE, Calif. – 01 May 2013: Scientists from IBM today unveiled the world’s smallest movie, made with one of the tiniest elements in the universe: atoms. Named “A Boy and His Atom,” the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS -verified movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action. (more…)

Subconscious mental categories help brain sort through everyday experiences

By Guest PostMay 2, 2013Health, Scienceanna schapiro, brain, brown university, chopping vegetables, computational model, dynamic, experiences, functional, magnetic resonance imaging, matthew botvinick, michael frank, natalia cordova, nature neuroscience, neural populations, nicholas turk browne, princeton university, similarity structure, subconscious mental, temporal relationship, timothy rogers

Your brain knows it’s time to cook when the stove is on, and the food and pots are out. When you rush away to calm a crying child, though, cooking is over and it’s time to be a parent. Your brain processes and responds to these occurrences as distinct, unrelated events.

But it remains unclear exactly how the brain breaks such experiences into “events,” or the related groups that help us mentally organize the day’s many situations. A dominant concept of event-perception known as prediction error says that our brain draws a line between the end of one event and the start of another when things take an unexpected turn (such as a suddenly distraught child). (more…)