Guest Post – Page 948 – Shamskm: A site to exchange knowledge and solutions

Border Fences Pose Threats to Wildlife on U.S.-Mexico Border, Study Shows

By Guest PostJuly 19, 2011Nature, Sciencearroyo toad, biological diversity, border fences, california coasts, california red legged frog, conservation, department of homeland security, fire, harmful mutations, human impacts, human migration barriers, human population growth, hurricane, impacts on the ecosystem, inbreeding depression, jesse lasky, landscape, species in california, texas gulf, the jaguarondi, the university of texas at austin, threats to wildlife populations, tim keitt, unforeseen disturbances, us mexico border, walter jetz

AUSTIN, Texas — Current and proposed border fences pose significant threats to wildlife populations, with those animals living in border regions along the Texas Gulf and California coasts showing some of the greatest vulnerability, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin shows.

“Our study is the first comprehensive analysis of threats to species across the entire U.S.-Mexico border,” says Jesse Lasky, a graduate student in the laboratory of Tim Keitt, associate professor of integrative biology. “The scale at which these fences stretch across the landscape is large, so it’s important for us to also have a large-scale view of their effects across the continent.” (more…)

Microsoft Announces Simple Transfer of Health Data From Google Health Service to Microsoft HealthVault

By Guest PostJuly 18, 2011TechnologyGoogle, google health, google health profile, google health service, healthvault, Microsoft, microsoft amalga, microsoft corp., microsoft health solutions group, microsoft healthvault, nate mclemore, personal health information, sentillion inc

*Google Health users can send their Google Health profile directly to a HealthVault account using Direct Project messaging protocols.*

REDMOND, Wash. — July 18, 2011 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that people using the Google Health service, scheduled to be discontinued Jan. 1, 2012, can easily transfer their personal health information stored in a Google Health profile to a Microsoft HealthVault account using the Direct Project messaging protocols established by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. The Direct Project specifies a simple, scalable, standards-based way for participants to send authenticated, encrypted health information to known, trusted recipients over the Internet.

Google announced on June 24 that Google Health will be discontinued, effective Jan. 1, 2012, with records remaining available to account holders until Jan. 1, 2013. (more…)

U.S. Mobile Map Audience Grows 39 Percent in Past Year as Fixed-Internet Map Audience Softens Slightly

By Guest PostJuly 18, 2011TechnologyComscore, comscore mobilens, mark donovan, mobile map usage, mobile users, smartphone adoption, smartphones

*Smartphone Adoption Leads to Doubling of Map App Audience*

RESTON, VA, July 18, 2011 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released results of a U.S. study of mobile map usage based on data from its comScore MobiLens service. The study found that 48 million mobile users accessed maps on their mobile device during the three month average period ending May 2011, an increase of 39 percent from the previous year, driven in large part by the increase in smartphone adoption. The study found that map usage via mobile applications was the primary access point for smartphone owners as the map app audience doubled in size over the past year. (more…)

MU Professor Creates Resource for Helping People with Brain Injuries

By Guest PostJuly 18, 2011Healthbrain injury, brain injury in veterans and children, centers for disease control and prevention, knowledge of tbi, life changing events, military professionals, police officers, public health impact, social workers, stephanie reid arndt, tbi, traumatic brain injuries, university of missouri

COLUMBIA, Mo. – According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.7 million people suffer traumatic brain injuries each year. Stephanie Reid-Arndt, chair and assistant professor of health psychology in the University of Missouri School of Health Professions, has launched The Brain Injury Guide and Resources at https:// braininjuryeducation.com/ to provide a resource for people to understand traumatic brain injuries.

“Brain injuries aren’t visible like other injuries, and often, people with brain injuries can be misunderstood,” Reid-Arndt said. “Direct results of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) include cognitive difficulties, changes in behavior or difficulty managing anger that are direct results of the brain injuries. Unfortunately, these symptoms are often misconstrued as willfully uncooperative behavior.” (more…)

Where the Earth’s Heat Comes From

By Guest PostJuly 18, 2011Scienceanti electron, berkeley lab, borexino experiment, brian fujikawa, bse, bulk silicate earth, department of physics, earth crust and mantle, earth interior, earth magnetic field, geo antineutrinos, geologists, geoneutrinos, gran sasso, heat, heat energy, italy, itaru shimizu, Japan, kamioka liquid-scintillator antineutrino detector, kamland, kamland collaboration, ke han, lawrence berkeley national laboratory, lithophiles, muon neutrinos, neutrinos, partial radiogenic heat model for earth, photomultiplier, potassium, radioactive decay of uranium, radioactive isotopes decay, rock loving elements, sea floors, siderophiles, stuart freedman, study antineutrinos, sunken layer, tau neutrinos, thomas banks, thorium, tohoku university, university of california

*Berkeley Lab scientists join their KamLAND colleagues to measure the radioactive sources of Earth’s heat flow*

What spreads the sea floors and moves the continents? What melts iron in the outer core and enables the Earth’s magnetic field? Heat. Geologists have used temperature measurements from more than 20,000 boreholes around the world to estimate that some 44 terawatts (44 trillion watts) of heat continually flow from Earth’s interior into space. Where does it come from?

Radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium in Earth’s crust and mantle is a principal source, and in 2005 scientists in the KamLAND collaboration, based in Japan, first showed that there was a way to measure the contribution directly. The trick was to catch what KamLAND dubbed geoneutrinos – more precisely, geo-antineutrinos – emitted when radioactive isotopes decay. (KamLAND stands for Kamioka Liquid-scintillator Antineutrino Detector.) (more…)

Making Blood-Sucking Deadly for Mosquitoes

By Guest PostJuly 17, 2011Scienceaedes aegypti, biochemical processes, blood feeding, blood meal, cellular process, coatomer protein 1, copi, copi system, dengue fever, dengue hemorrhagic fever, dengue viruses, digestive enzymes, egg production cycle, jun isoe, molecular process cells, mosquitoes, protein complex, proteins, rnai, roger miesfeld, secretion of enzymes, sub tropical, tablespoons of sugar, the university of arizona, toolbox, tropical regions of africa, vesicle transport, warm blooded animals

*Inhibiting a molecular process cells use to direct proteins to their proper destinations causes more than 90 percent of affected mosquitoes to die within 48 hours of blood feeding, a UA team of biochemists found.*

Mosquitoes die soon after a blood meal if certain protein components are experimentally disrupted, a team of biochemists at the University of Arizona has discovered.

The approach could be used as an additional strategy in the worldwide effort to curb mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever, yellow fever and malaria. (more…)

NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around Asteroid Vesta

By Guest PostJuly 17, 2011Scienceasteroid, asteroid vesta, ceres, charles bolden, dawn, dawn spacecraft, dwarf planet, german aerospace center, gravitational pull, gravity, italian space agency, jet propulsion laboratory, los angeles, main asteroid belt between mars and jupiter, marshall space flight center in huntsville, max planck institute for solar system research, NASA, President Obama, spacecraft, university of california, vesta

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Saturday became the first probe ever to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn will study the asteroid, named Vesta, for a year before departing for a second destination, a dwarf planet named Ceres, in July 2012. Observations will provide unprecedented data to help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system. The data also will help pave the way for future human space missions. (more…)

Climate Adaptation of Rice

By Guest PostJuly 17, 2011Environmentbacteria, China, climate change, climate impacts on plants, developing countries, disease, dna of the rice plant, drought, dunegrass, endophytes, genetically unrelated plant species, geothermal, heat tolerant plants, microscopic fungi, minimum air temperature, native plants, natural and agricultural ecosystems, process of darwinian evolution, rice, rusty rodriguez, salt, salt tolerant, seattle, seawater, symbiogenics, symbiotic endophytes, temperature, the philippines, tiny fungi, U.S. Geological Survey

*Symbiogenics — a New Strategy for Reducing Climate Impacts on Plants*

Seattle – Rice – which provides nearly half the daily calories for the world’s population – could become adapted to climate change and some catastrophic events by colonizing its seeds or plants with the spores of tiny naturally occurring fungi, just-published U.S. Geological Survey-led research shows.

In an effort to explore ways to increase the adaptability of rice to climatic scourges such as tsunamis and tidal surges that have already led to rice shortages, USGS researchers and their colleagues colonized two commercial varieties of rice with the spores of fungi that exist naturally within native coastal (salt-tolerant) and geothermal (heat-tolerant) plants. (more…)

Author Archives: Guest Post