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In The Dragonfish’s Mouth: The Next Generation of Superstars to Stir Up Our Galaxy

By Guest PostDecember 5, 2011Scienceastronomers, astronomical terms, celestial gas shell, Chile, christopher matzner, dae sik moon, deep sea creature, dragonfish, european southern observatory, Galaxy, gravity, infrared, light years, mouth, mubdi rahman, new technology telescope, peter shearer, radio waves, spitzer satellite, sun, supermassive stars, telescopes, ultraviolet, university of toronto, visible light, wmap satellite

TORONTO, ON – Three astronomers at the University of Toronto have found the most numerous batch of young, supermassive stars yet observed in our galaxy: hundreds of thousands of stars, including several hundreds of the most massive kind –blue stars dozens of times heavier than our Sun. The light these newborn stars emit is so intense it has pushed out and heated the gas that gave them birth, carving out a glowing hollow shell about a hundred light-years across.

These findings will be published in the December 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. For the researchers, the next step is already clear: “By studying these supermassive stars and the shell surrounding them, we hope to learn more about how energy is transmitted in such extreme environments,” says Mubdi Rahman, a PhD candidate in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, who led the work with his supervisors, Professors Dae-Sik Moon and Christopher Matzner. (more…)

New Study to Test Unusual Hypothesis on Beta Brainwaves

By Guest PostDecember 4, 2011Sciencebasal ganglia, beta, beta brainwaves, beta oscillations, brown university, christopher moore, cortex, david orenstein, hypothesis, key brain circuit, model, moore and jones, neurons, neuroscientists, optogenetics, parkinsonian symptoms, parkinsons disease, physical brain, predictions, sensory information, somatosensory system, stephanie jones, thalamocortical circuit, thalamus, touch, touch perception circuit

Beta oscillations are tightly linked to Parkinson’s disease and the ability to process sensory information, such as touch. Two neuroscientists have brought their collaboration to Brown University and won funding from the National Science Foundation to see if they can finally provide a definitive, if unorthodox, explanation for beta brainwaves.

Before she could seek to convince the world that her computer model of a key brain circuit explains a fundamental, 80-year-old mystery of neuroscience with potential relevance to Parkinson’s disease, Stephanie Jones sought to convince Christopher Moore. The new Brown neuroscience professors are now close collaborators, but when they first started talking about the beta oscillations of the cortex, Moore thought Jones was plain wrong, if not a bit nuts. (more…)

Study Debunks Stereotype That Men Think About Sex All Day Long

By Guest PostDecember 4, 2011Sciencebiological needs, biological sex, erotophilia, erotophobia, every seven seconds, frequency, male or female, mary jo pittenger, men, ohio state, psychology, sex, sexual thoughts, sexuality, sociosexual orientation, stereotype, terri fisher, women, young women, zachary moore

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Men may think about sex more often than women do, but a new study suggests that men also think about other biological needs, such as eating and sleep, more frequently than women do, as well.

And the research discredits the persistent stereotype that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would amount to more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours. In the study, the median number of young men’s thought about sex stood at almost 19 times per day. Young women in the study reported a median of nearly 10 thoughts about sex per day. (more…)

Powerful Mathematical Model Greatly Improves Predictions for Species Facing Climate Change

By Guest PostDecember 4, 2011Environment, Nature, Scienceatmosphere and oceans, beetle, bridgett vonholdt, carbon dioxide emissions, coat color gene, coat color phenotype, daniel macnulty, daniel stahler, earth temperature, ecological impacts, ecological model, ecological parameters, ecosystem, Environment, environmental change, general model, genetics, global warming, gray wolf, grizzly bears, harmony, health of populations, heterozygotes, high arctic, integral projection model, ipm, mathematical model, new model, plants, polar bear, population ecology, population genetics, predictive model, quantitative genetics, robert wayne, species, sub fields of ecology, tim coulson, trophic cascade, wolf, wolf population, wolves, yellowstone, yellowstone national park

UCLA life scientists and colleagues have produced the most comprehensive mathematical model ever devised to track the health of populations exposed to environmental change.

The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, is published Dec. 2 in the journal Science.

The team’s groundbreaking integral projection model, or IPM, unites various sub-disciplines of population biology, including population ecology, quantitative genetics, population genetics, and life-span and offspring information, allowing researchers to link many different data sources simultaneously. Scientists can now change just a single variable, like temperature, and see how that affects many factors for a population. (more…)

E. Coli Bacteria Engineered to Eat Switchgrass and Make Transportation Fuels

By Guest PostDecember 4, 2011Environment, Scienceagricultural waste, anthe george, bacteria, berkeley lab, biofuel production, biofuels, blake simmons, bradley holmes, cellulolytic, cellulose, chemistry, christopher voigt, danielle tullman ercek, diesel, e coli, enzyme, eric steen, gasoline, green, gregory bokinsky, hemicellulolytic, hemicelluloses, ionic liquid, jay keasling, jbei, jeffrey dietrich, jet fuels, joint bioenergy institute, lignin, lignocellulosic biomass, lignocellulosic feedstocks, microbes, milestone, molten salt, pamela peralta yahya, renewable alternative, strains of escherichia coli bacteria, sugars, switchgrass biomass, synthesize, taek soon lee, woody material

*Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) Researchers Reach Milestone on the Road to Biofuels*

A milestone has been reached on the road to developing advanced biofuels that can replace gasoline, diesel and jet fuels with a domestically-produced clean, green, renewable alternative.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have engineered the first strains of Escherichia coli bacteria that can digest switchgrass biomass and synthesize its sugars into all three of those transportation fuels. What’s more, the microbes are able to do this without any help from enzyme additives. (more…)

Moral Dilemma: Would You Kill One Person to Save Five?

By Guest PostDecember 3, 2011Science3 d simulated, carlos david navarrete, evolutionary psychologist, greater good, michigan state university, moral dilemma, runaway boxcar, sensors, three dimensional setting, trolley problem, violate

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Imagine a runaway boxcar heading toward five people who can’t escape its path. Now imagine you had the power to reroute the boxcar onto different tracks with only one person along that route.

Would you do it?

That’s the moral dilemma posed by a team of Michigan State University researchers in a first-of-its-kind study published in the research journal Emotion. Research participants were put in a three dimensional setting and given the power to kill one person (in this case, a realistic digital character) to save five. (more…)

Yale-led Team Finds CO2 Levels Plunged as Antarctica Froze

By Guest PostDecember 3, 2011Environmentalgae, atmosphere, carbon dioxide levels, climate transition, co2 and climate change, critical condition, cryosphere, earth, eocene epoch, eocene to oligocene, freezing of antarctica, fundamental link, geochemist, global climate change, global cooling, greenhouse gases, ice sheets, icing of antarctica, mark pagani, matthew huber, molecules, oligocene, polar ice caps, robert m deconto, sea level, temperatures, yale university, zhonghui liu

A Yale University-led research team has found evidence that carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere plunged prior to and during the initial icing of Antarctica, about 34 million years ago. The new findings provide further evidence of atmospheric carbon dioxide’s role as a major trigger of global climate change.

“CO2 is tracking global cooling at that time,” said Yale geochemist Mark Pagani, lead author of a paper published online Dec. 1 in the journal Science. “It’s important to demonstrate that there are obvious linkages between CO2 and climate change. It’s one more piece of evidence that CO2 is a primary lever on climate.” (more…)

Israeli Public Supports Middle East Nuclear Free Zone: UMD Poll

By Guest PostDecember 3, 2011Politicsisraeli jews, israeli public, middle east, nuclear facilities, nuclear free zone

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Nearly two-thirds of Israeli Jews, 64 percent, favor establishing a nuclear free zone in the Middle East – even when it was spelled out that this would mean both Israel and Iran would have to forego nuclear weapons – finds a new University of Maryland poll. The research is a joint project of the Anwar Sadat Chair at the University of Maryland and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). (more…)

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