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How the Slime Mold Gets Organized

Cells at the tip of the slime mold’s fruiting body organize into an epithelial layer and secrete proteins as do some animals cells

The so-called cellular slime mold, a unicellular organism that may transition into a multicellular organism under stress, has just been found to have a tissue structure that was previously thought to exist only in more sophisticated animals. What’s more, two proteins that are needed by the slime mold to form this structure are similar to those that perform the same function in more sophistical animals. (more…)

NASA Shows Topography of Tsunami-Damaged Japan City

Environment

The topography surrounding Sendai, Japan is clearly visible in this combined radar image and topographic view generated with data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) acquired in 2000. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck offshore about 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of Sendai, the capital city of Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture, generating a tsunami that devastated the low-lying coastal city of about 1 million residents.

The city is centered in the image and lies along the coastal plain between the Ohu Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The eastern part of the city is a low-lying plains area, while the city center is hilly (the city’s official elevation is about 43 meters, or 141 feet). Sendai’s western areas are mountainous, with its highest point being Mt. Funagata at an elevation of about 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) above sea level. (more…)

WHOI Experts Stress Lessons From Japan Earthquake

Environment

While Japan’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake and accompanying tsunami represent a devastating natural disaster for the country’s residents, scientists should also seize upon the massive temblor as an important learning tool for future quakes around the world, including the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States, according to experts from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). (more…)

PASSIVE NEWS REPORTS MAY LEAD READERS TO FEEL THEY CAN’T FIND THE TRUTH

Culture, Technology

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Passive news reporting that doesn’t attempt to resolve factual disputes in politics may have detrimental effects on readers, new research suggests.

The study found that people are more likely to doubt their own ability to determine the truth in politics after reading an article that simply lists competing claims without offering any idea of which side is right. (more…)

Gulf Oil Spill Study Sheds Light On Urban Air Pollution

Environment

When a team of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences raced to the scene of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to assess the disaster’s impact on air quality last year, they found more than they expected. (more…)

comScore Releases February 2011 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

Technology

RESTON, VA, March 11, 2011 – 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 February with 65.4 percent of searches conducted.

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in February with 65.4 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.1 percent and Microsoft sites with 13.6 percent (up 0.5 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.2 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.7 percent. (more…)

More Reasons to Be Nice: It’s Less Work for Everyone

Culture

A polite act shows respect. But a new study of a common etiquette—holding a door for someone—suggests that courtesy may have a more practical, though unconscious, shared motivation: to reduce the work for those involved. The research, by Joseph P. Santamaria and David A. Rosenbaum of Pennsylvania State University, is the first to combine two fields of study ordinarily considered unrelated: altruism and motor control. It is to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

“The way etiquette has been viewed by Emily Post—that you’re being proper by following social codes—is undoubtedly part of it,” said psychology professor Rosenbaum. “Our insight is there is another contributor: the mental representation of other people’s physical effort. Substantial research in the field of motor control shows that people are good at estimating how much effort they and others expend,” Rosenbaum continued. “We realized that this concept could be extended to a shared-effort model of politeness.” (more…)

Color View from Orbit Shows Mars Rover Beside Crater

Science

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has nearly completed its three-month examination of a crater informally named “Santa Maria,” but before the rover resumes its overland trek, an orbiting camera has provided a color image of Opportunity beside Santa Maria.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired the image on March 1, while Opportunity was extending its robotic arm to take close-up photos of a rock called “Ruiz Garcia.” From orbit, the tracks Opportunity made as it approached the crater from the west are clearly visible. Santa Maria crater is about 90 meters (295 feet) in diameter. (more…)