An international team of astronomers led by a former UA graduate student has set out on the largest program to date exploring the alien atmospheres of “Hot Jupiters” – massive planets in solar systems far away from our own. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study uses – for the first time – recorded jailhouse telephone conversations between men charged with felony domestic violence and their victims to help reveal why some victims decide not to follow through on the charges.
Researchers listened to telephone conversations between 17 accused male abusers in a Washington state detention facility and their female victims, all of whom decided to withdraw their accusations of abuse. For each of the couples, the researchers analyzed up to about three hours of phone conversations. (more…)
*A former UA postdoctoral fellow has discovered amazing relationships between organisms: a bacterium living inside a bacterium living inside an insect. Evolving together, the organisms depend on each other for survival, and each contributes a subset of the enzymes needed in shared metabolic pathways.*
Sure, many bacteria cause disease, but most people don’t realize how beneficial they can be. The human gut, for example, brims with bacteria that play critical roles in everything from immune system development and extracting energy from food to providing necessary nutrients.
They get a nice comfy home living inside people, and in return they help us. It’s a symbiotic relationship. However, these beneficial partnerships are nothing compared to the complex relationships between bacteria and citrus mealybugs recently discovered by a team of biologists led by former UA researcher John McCutcheon, who recently took a position as an assistant professor at the University of Montana. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Salmonella cells have hijacked the protein-building process to maintain their ability to cause illness, new research suggests.
Scientists say that these bacteria have modified what has long been considered typical cell behavior by using a beta form of an amino acid – as opposed to an alpha form – during the act of making proteins. (more…)
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — USGS Alaska Science Center researchers, in cooperation with the Native Village of Point Lay, will attempt to attach 35 satellite radio-tags to walruses on the northwestern Alaska coast in August as part of their ongoing study of how the Pacific walrus are responding to reduced sea ice conditions in late summer and fall. (more…)
Researchers from North Carolina State University, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and CFD Research Corporation have found a new way to develop straight carbon nanofibers on a transparent substrate. Growing such nanofiber coatings is important for use in novel biomedical research tools, solar cells, water repellent coatings and others. The technique utilizes a charged chromium grid, and relies on ions to ensure the nanofibers are straight, rather than curling – which limits their utility.
“This is the first time, that I know of, where someone has been able to grow straight carbon nanofibers on a clear substrate,” says Dr. Anatoli Melechko, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research. “Such nanofibers can be used as gene-delivery tools. And a transparent substrate allows researchers to see how the nanofibers interact with cells, and to manipulate this interaction.” (more…)
Conventional wisdom has long held that Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, which advocated racial self-help and the unity of the African diaspora, grew out of the heady political and cultural environment of the Harlem Renaissance and benefited African Americans above all other black people. Any Caribbean role, according to this view, was separate and incidental to the primary legacy bequeathed to American race relations by the charismatic Jamaica native.
Now a UCLA historian argues the reverse in the first book of a multi-volume series on the Garvey movement and the Caribbean. From the UNIA’s organizational structure to its most valuable foot soldiers during its first half-decade, Garvey’s Caribbean links were indispensable to the movement’s success, and the region ultimately proved to be its most important theater, contends Robert A. Hill in “The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers: The Caribbean Diaspora 1910–1920.” (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— How common are droplets of saltwater on Mars? Could microbial life survive and reproduce in them? A new million-dollar NASA project led by the University of Michigan aims to answer those questions.
This project begins three years after beads of liquid brine were first photographed on one of the Mars Phoenix lander’s legs.
“On Earth, everywhere there’s liquid water, there is microbial life,” said Nilton Renno, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences who is the principal investigator. Researchers from NASA, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Georgia and the Centro de Astrobiologia in Madrid are also involved. (more…)
