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NASA Map Sees Earth’s Trees in a New Light

By Guest PostFebruary 19, 2012Environment, Scienceaustralia, caltech, carbon, carbon cycle, climate change, cloud, data, earth, effects of topography, eucalyptus, flowering plants, forest, forest canopy, forest habitat, global map of forest height, height, high resolution map, icesat, laser pulse measurements, lidar, light detection and ranging, marc simard, modis, monitor, NASA, new zealand, satellites, south latitude, southern tropical forests, Space, spatial modeling, spatial resolution, trmm sensors, vegetation, worldclim database

PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA-led science team has created an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of Earth’s forests. The map will help scientists better understand the role forests play in climate change and how their heights influence wildlife habitats within them, while also helping them quantify the carbon stored in Earth’s vegetation.

Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; the University of Maryland, College Park; and Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Mass., created the map using 2.5 million carefully screened, globally distributed laser pulse measurements from space. The light detection and ranging (lidar) data were collected in 2005 by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System instrument on NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat). (more…)

Teaching Science to The Religious? Focus on How Theories Develop

By Guest PostFebruary 18, 2012Educationanti religious agenda, explaining science, rational process, religious students, scientific theory, zero sum mindset

Brown biology Professor Ken Miller understands that most students are religious. He is too. The way to teach science to religious students is to show how scientific ideas come to be, he says. Students can learn that religious people engage in scientific explorations of nature, and that theories are based on observation and logic, not some anti-religious agenda.

Vicious, winner-take-all competition in nature is an essential pillar of evolutionary theory, but it frequently describes the mindset people have about how, or whether, to teach the subject. Religious students sometimes come to class thinking that science and religion are in deliberate opposition, like two lionesses fighting over a kill. When Brown University biologist and practicing Catholic Kenneth Miller teaches evolution, he also teaches that such a zero-sum mindset just isn’t warranted. (more…)

Study: Military Death Sentence More Likely For Minorities

By Guest PostFebruary 18, 2012Politicscapital punishment, military criminals, military death sentence, military prosecutions, racial discrimination, skin color

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Skin color plays a role in deciding whether to execute military criminals, according to a new study by a Michigan State University law professor who found minorities in the military are twice as likely as whites to be sentenced to death. (more…)

UCLA Engineers Create Tandem Polymer Solar Cells That Set Record For Energy-Conversion

By Guest PostFebruary 18, 2012Scienceabsorption, california nanosystems institute, cnsi, conductive, conversion, electricity, gang li, Japan, organic polymers, photovoltaic solar cells, polymer solar cells, shuji doi, solar energy, solar spectrum, sumitomo chemical, sunlight, tandem solar cell technology, tandem structure, yang yang

In the effort to convert sunlight into electricity, photovoltaic solar cells that use conductive organic polymers for light absorption and conversion have shown great potential. Organic polymers can be produced in high volumes at low cost, resulting in photovoltaic devices that are cheap, lightweight and flexible.

In the last few years, much work has been done to improve the efficiency with which these devices convert sunlight into power, including the development of new materials, device structures and processing techniques. (more…)

At Yale, Quantum Computing is a (qu)bit Closer to Reality

By Guest PostFebruary 18, 2012Scienceartificial atoms, computation, delft university of technology, eric gershon, errors, exponentially faster, information processing, l dicarlo, l frunzio, l sun, matthew reed, molecules, Nature, Netherlands, physicists, quantum bits, quantum computing, quantum error correction, qubit states, qubits, robert schoelkopf, s e nigg, s m girvin, superconducting circuits, trapped ions, yale university

Physicists at Yale University have taken another significant step in the development of quantum computing, a new frontier in computing that promises exponentially faster information processing than the most sophisticated computers of today.

In research published online this month in the journal Nature, the Yale physicists demonstrate the most basic form of quantum error correction — a way to compensate for quantum computing’s intrinsic susceptibility to errors. Developing technology to correct these errors on the fly is a necessary step for fully realizing quantum computers. (more…)

Cellphone Use Linked to Selfish Behavior in UMD Study

By Guest PostFebruary 18, 2012Culture, Technologyajay t abraham, anastasiya pocheptsova, basic human need, cellphone user, cellphones, control group, counterpart, devices, Facebook, john consoli, phenomenon, prosocial behavior, rosellina ferraro, social media, Technology, university of maryland

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Though cellphones are usually considered devices that connect people, they may make users less socially minded, finds a recent study from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Marketing professors Anastasiya Pocheptsova and Rosellina Ferraro, with graduate student, Ajay T. Abraham, conducted a series of experiments on test groups of cellphone users. The findings appear in their working paper, The Effect of Mobile Phone Use on Prosocial Behavior. (more…)

Coal-Tar Sealcoat a Major Source of PAHs to Air and to Children Living Nearby

By Guest PostFebruary 18, 2012Environmentcoal tar sealants, coal tar sealcoat, pah emissions, pahs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, sealcoat products, source of pahs

*Four new reports examine the contaminants polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found in house dust, streams, lakes, soil, and air*

Coal-tar-based sealants are emitting polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) into the air at rates that may be greater than annual emissions from vehicles in the United States, according to new reports by the U.S. Geological Survey, published in the scientific journals Chemosphere and Atmospheric Environment. (more…)

New Mouse Reference Library Should Speed Gene Discoveries

By Guest PostFebruary 17, 2012Sciencecc, collaborative cross, david threadgill, francis s collins, genes, genetic information, genetic sequences, genetic variation, human disease, jackson laboratory, lab mice, manual, mice, north carolina state university, oxford university, tel aviv university

Genetic information provided by a large group of specially designed mice could pave the way to faster human health discoveries and transform the ways people battle and prevent disease.

In 15 papers published Feb. 16 in the Genetics Society of America journals Genetics and G3:Genes/Genomes/Genetics, researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Jackson Laboratory and other universities and labs across the globe highlight a new genetic resource that could aid development of more effective treatments for any number of human diseases. (more…)

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