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A New Way of Looking at Photosystem II

By Guest PostJune 14, 2012Sciencealgae, angstroms, bacteria, berkeley lab, carbon dioxide, catalytic cycle, critical formation, cryogenic freezing, electrochemical energy, electrons, femtosecond timescale, femtosecond x ray pulses, green, green plants, hydrogen atom, hydrogen ions, jan kern, junko yano, knowledge, lcls, microcrystals, nicholas sauter, oxidation states, oxygen molecules, paul adams, photooxidation, photosynthesis, photosystem ii, protein crystallography, proteins, protons, renewable energy, resolution, slac, solar energy, synchrotron radiation, terabytes of data, uwe bergmann, vittal yachandra, water, xray diffraction, xrays

Berkeley Lab and SLAC Researchers Study Key Protein Complex Crucial to Photosynthesis

Future prospects for clean, green, renewable energy may hinge upon our ability to mimic and improve upon photosynthesis – the process by which green plants, algae and some bacteria convert solar energy into electrochemical energy. An artificial version of photosynthesis, for example, could use sunlight to produce liquid fuels from nothing more than carbon dioxide and water. First, however, scientists need a better understanding of how a large complex of proteins, called photosystem II, is able to split water molecules into oxygen, electrons and hydrogen ions (protons). A new road to reaching this understanding has now been opened by an international team of researchers, led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Using ultrafast, intensely bright pulses of X-rays from SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the research team produced the first ever images at room temperature of microcrystals of the photosystem II complex. Previous imaging studies, using X-rays generated via synchrotron radiation sources, required cryogenic freezing, which alters the samples. Also, to catalyze its reactions, photosystem II relies upon an enzyme that contains a manganese-calcium cluster that is highly sensitive to radiation. With the high-intensity femtosecond X-ray pulses of the LCLS, the research team was able to record intact images of these clusters before the radiation destroyed them. (more…)

Anxious Women’s Brains Work Harder

By Guest PostJune 14, 2012Healthanxiety disorders, anxious women, brain response, mental health, therapies for anxiety

EAST LANSING, Mich. — In a discovery that could help in the identification and treatment of anxiety disorders, Michigan State University scientists say the brains of anxious women work much harder than those of men. (more…)

Vampire Bat Study May Lead to Better Rabies-Control Strategies

By Guest PostJune 14, 2012Nature, ScienceAmazon rainforest, badgers, bat colonies, blood samples, bovine, cattle, charles rupprecht, culling bats, daniel streicker, ebola, genetic studies, immune, infectious diseases, ivan vargas, joel montgomery, jorge gomez benavides, marburg hemorrhagic fevers, mathematical modelling, nipah encephalitis, pejman rohani, peru, rabies, rabies in peru, rabies infections, rabies virus, sars, sergio recuenco, south america, tuberculosis, united states, university of michigan, vacuum effect, vampire bats, vampiricide, víctor pacheco, wildlife disease, zoonotic diseases

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— A new study of rabies in vampire bats in Peru has found that culling bats—a common rabies control strategy—does not reduce rates of rabies exposure in bat colonies, and may even be counterproductive.

The findings may eventually help public health and agriculture officials in Peru develop more effective methods for preventing rabies infections in humans and livestock, according to a team of scientists from the United States and Peru led by Daniel Streicker, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology.

The study was published online this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The research team includes University of Michigan population ecologist Pejman Rohani. (more…)

How to Find the Right Business Credit Card

By Guest PostJune 14, 2012Economyairline industry, blogger, business, business travelers, cash flow, credit card, emergency situations, ethan grunt, financial discipline, liquidity, personal credit, reverse transactions, small businesses, volatile economy

Even in a volatile economy, business can still flourish with the right attitude and the proper financial discipline. Liquidity and cash flow is essential to the continued operations of a business in the short term and in the long-term. With many of the traditional financing options unavailable to small businesses, the only course of action for many business owners is to find the right business credit card.

The right business credit card can provide a business owner with liquidity in emergency situations. It can also be a lifesaver in that the business owner will not have to wait on any bureaucracy or paperwork in order to get the money that he or she needs to fix a short-term situation. (more…)

comScore Releases May 2012 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

By Guest PostJune 13, 2012Technologyaol, ask network, Comscore, comscore qsearch, core search market, Google, microsoft sites, organic search, powered by bing, u.s. search marketplace, Yahoo

RESTON, VA, June 13, 2012 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. Google Sites led the explicit core search market in May with 66.7 percent of search queries conducted.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in May with 66.7 percent market share (up 0.2 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.4 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 13.4 percent. Ask Network accounted for 3 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.5 percent. (more…)

Woolly Mammoth Extinction Has Lessons for Modern Climate Change

By Guest PostJune 13, 2012Natureclimate warming, extinction, human settlements, mammoth extinction, woolly mammoth

Although humans and woolly mammoths co-existed for millennia, the shaggy giants disappeared from the globe between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago, and scientists couldn’t explain until recently exactly how the Flintstonian behemoths went extinct. (more…)

CU-Boulder-led Team Finds Microbes in Extreme Environment on South American Volcanoes

By Guest PostJune 13, 2012Scienceatacama mountain soil, fluorescent techniques, microbial species, rocky soils, south america, tallest volcanoes

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for organisms that eke out a living in some of the most inhospitable soils on Earth has found a hardy few. (more…)

Tongue Analysis Software Developed at MU Uses Ancient Chinese Medicine to Warn of Disease

By Guest PostJune 13, 2012Healthcold zheng, energies in body, hot zheng, preventive medicine, tongue analysis, zheng classification

COLUMBIA, Mo. — For 5,000 years, the Chinese have used a system of medicine based on the flow and balance of positive and negative energies in the body. In this system, the appearance of the tongue is one of the measures used to classify the overall physical status of the body, or zheng. Now, University of Missouri researchers have developed computer software that combines the ancient practices and modern medicine by providing an automated system for analyzing images of the tongue. (more…)

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