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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…)

Serendipitous News Reading Online is Gaining Prominence, MU Study Shows

By Guest PostDecember 3, 2011Mediabizarre, borchuluun yadamsuren, exposure, Facebook, internet, newspapers, online news, serendipitous discovery, television news, traditional media, university of missouri

*Media should place news links on different sites to take advantage of this phenomenon*

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Traditional media, such as newspapers and television news, require readers and viewers to intentionally seek out news by picking up a newspaper or turning on the television. The Internet and new technologies now are changing the way readers consume online news. New research from the University of Missouri shows that Internet users often do not make the conscious decision to read news online, but they come across news when they are searching for other information or doing non-news related activities online, such as shopping or visiting social networking sites. (more…)

Frogs’ Amazing Leaps Due to Springy Tendons

By Guest PostDecember 3, 2011Nature, Science3 d x ray video technology, biomechanics of frog jumping, brown university, bush babies, calaveras county, elastic mechanism, elastic structure, frog jumping, frog jumping competition, frogs, grasshopper, guinea fowl, henry astley, humble flea, invertebrates, milliseconds, muscles, northeast united states, northern leopard frog, pond frog, rana pipiens, richard lewis, species of frogs, thomas roberts, vertebrates

*The secret to frogs’ superlative jumping lies in their tendons. Researchers at Brown University, filming frogs jumping at 500 frames per second with special X-ray technology, show that the frog’s tendon stretches as it readies its leap and then recoils, much like a spring, when the frog jumps. The finding could explain how other animals are exceptional leapers. Results appear in Biology Letters.*

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Some species of frogs and many other animals are able to jump far beyond what appear to be their capabilities. The trained contestants in the frog-jumping competition in Calaveras County, Calif., come to mind, but even ordinary frogs can leap several times farther than their physiology would seem to allow.

“Muscles alone couldn’t produce jumps that good,” said Henry Astley, who studies the biomechanics of frog jumping at Brown University. (more…)

Petroleum-eating Mushrooms

By Guest PostDecember 2, 2011Environmentcontaminated soil, crude petroleum, mushroom spores, petroleum eating mushrooms, phytoremediation, soil decontamination

Take a Petri dish containing crude petroleum and it will release a strong odor distinctive of the toxins that make up the fossil fuel. Sprinkle mushroom spores over the Petri dish and let it sit for two weeks in an incubator, and surprise, the petroleum and its smell will disappear. “The mushrooms consumed the petroleum!” says Mohamed Hijri, a professor of biological sciences and researcher at the University of Montreal’s Institut de recherche en biologie végétale (IRBV). (more…)

Watching the Nervous System Being Wired in Real Time

By Guest PostDecember 2, 2011Sciencebill hathaway, daniel colon ramos, imaging technology, living organism, migration of cells, nervous system, neurodevelopmental atlas, new diseases, single cell, worm, yale, yale cell biologist, yale university

Thanks to a new imaging technology developed at Yale, the National Institutes of Health and Sloan-Kettering, scientists can now see for the first time the development of a living organism at the level of a single cell.

One of the developers, Yale cell biologist Daniel Colon-Ramos, illustrates the power of the new technology in this video that shows the migration of cells that will form the nervous system in a developing worm. (more…)

UCLA Scientists Engineer Blood Stem Cells to Fight Melanoma

By Guest PostDecember 1, 2011Health, Scienceantigen, blood stem cells, cancer and stem cell, cancer patient, caucasians, dimitrios n vatakis, DNA, genes, genetically engineered, human melanoma, immune system, jerome zack, microbiology, mouse models, PET, positron emission tomography, t cell receptor, t cells, viral vehicle

Researchers from UCLA’s cancer and stem cell centers have demonstrated for the first time that blood stem cells can be engineered to create cancer-killing T-cells that seek out and attack a human melanoma. The researchers believe the approach could be useful in about 40 percent of Caucasians with this malignancy.

Done in mouse models, the study serves as the first proof-of-principle that blood stem cells, which make every type of cell found in the blood, can be genetically altered in a living organism to create an army of melanoma-fighting T-cells, said Jerome Zack, the study’s senior author and a scientist with UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA. (more…)

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