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…)
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…)
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…)
New England is expected to experience a “moderate” red tide this spring and summer, report NOAA-funded scientists studying the toxic algae that cause blooms in the Gulf of Maine. The “red tide” is caused by an alga Alexandrium fundyense, which produces a toxin that can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP). Red tide typically occurs annually along some portions of the Gulf of Maine coast. This year’s outlook is similar to the 2012 red tide which was also classified as “moderate.”
As with the past five forecasts for this region, the 2013 outlook is based on the quantities of the A. fundyense in its cyst (dormant) state detected in Gulf of Maine sediments last fall. These data are combined with a computer model to produce a range of bloom scenarios based on previous years’ conditions. This year, the team also used a forecast of toxicity impact developed from 34 years of historical data as part of the 2013 outlook. The 2013 bloom is expected to fall somewhere in the middle in terms of toxicity impact, justifying a “moderate” forecast done by the established method. (more…)
Researchers have discovered that using two kinds of therapy in tandem may be a knockout combo against inherited disorders that cause blindness. While their study focused on man’s best friend, the treatment could help restore vision in people, too.
Published in the journal Molecular Therapy, the study builds on earlier work by Michigan State University veterinary ophthalmologist András Komáromy and colleagues. In 2010, they restored day vision in dogs suffering from achromatopsia, an inherited form of total color blindness, by replacing the mutant gene associated with the condition. (more…)
A recently identified feathered dinosaur found deep in West Texas reinforces an emerging view that creatures like it were more diverse and widespread in North America than previously thought, according to a new study.(more…)
Spinal muscular atrophy is a debilitating neuromuscular disease that in its most severe form is the leading genetic cause of infant death. By experimenting with an ALS drug in two very different animal models, researchers at Brown University and Boston Children’s Hospital have identified a new potential mechanism for developing an SMA treatment.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — There is no specific drug to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a family of motor neuron diseases that in its most severe form is the leading genetic cause of infant death in the United States and affects one in 6,000 people overall. But a new multispecies study involving a drug that treats amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has pinpointed a mechanism of SMA that drug developers might be able to exploit for a new therapy. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole.
In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon. (more…)
