The ruddy color of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is likely a product of simple chemicals being broken apart by sunlight in the planet’s upper atmosphere, according to a new analysis of data from NASA’s Cassini mission. The results contradict the other leading theory for the origin of the spot’s striking color — that the reddish chemicals come from beneath Jupiter’s clouds. (more…)
Freiburger Neurobiologen decken räumliche und zeitliche Dynamik bestimmter Glutamat-Rezeptoren im Gehirn auf
Dr. Uwe Schulte, Dr. Jochen Schwenk und Prof. Dr. Bernd Fakler haben mit ihrem Team erstmals die große räumliche und zeitliche Dynamik in der Proteinzusammensetzung der AMPA-Rezeptoren, der wichtigsten erregenden Neurotransmitter-Rezeptoren im Gehirn, aufgedeckt. Diese Rezeptoren befinden sich in den Synapsen, den Kontaktstellen zwischen zwei Nervenzellen, und sind für die schnelle Übertragung und Verarbeitung von Informationen verantwortlich. Die Resultate zeigen eine bislang ungeahnte Vielfalt der Rezeptoren und ermöglichen es, deren jeweilige Funktionen in den verschiedenen Regionen des Gehirns zu erforschen. Die Ergebnisse haben die Biologen in der Fachzeitschrift „Neuron“ veröffentlicht. (more…)
Researchers at Berkeley and Oak Ridge Labs Test a Multi-element High-Entropy Alloy with
A new concept in metallic alloy design – called “high‐entropy alloys” – has yielded a multiple-element material that not only tests out as one of the toughest on record, but, unlike most materials, the toughness as well as the strength and ductility of this alloy actually improves at cryogenic temperatures. This multi-element alloy was synthesized and tested through a collaboration of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge National Laboratories (Berkeley Lab and ORNL). (more…)
Wenn Wissenschaftler chemische Reaktionen untersuchen, ist die Verbesserung der zeitlichen Auflösung eine ständige Herausforderung. Besonders Reaktionen, die sich nicht durch Licht auslösen lassen, sind auf kurzen Zeitskalen schwierig zu verfolgen. Ein Team von Forschern um Alec Wodtke am Max-Planck-Institut (MPI) für biophysikalische Chemie und an der Universität Göttingen hat jetzt ultrakurze Pulse von Atomen erzeugt. Die sogenannte bunch-compression-photolysis-Methode könnte helfen, zeitlich hochaufgelöste Experimente durchzuführen, bei denen atomare Kollisionen den Anfang bilden. (Nature Communications, 5. November 2014) (more…)
The phrase “tears of joy” never made much sense to Yale psychologist Oriana Aragon. But after conducting a series of studies of such seemingly incongruous expressions, she now understands better why people cry when they are happy.
“People may be restoring emotional equilibrium with these expressions,” said Aragon, lead author of work to be published in the journal Psychological Science. “They seem to take place when people are overwhelmed with strong positive emotions, and people who do this seem to recover better from those strong emotions.” (more…)
AUSTIN, Texas — Middle-school girls who value sex appeal differ from their peers in troubling ways, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin. (more…)
The planet’s largest and most powerful driver of climate changes from one year to the next, the El Niño Southern Oscillation in the tropical Pacific Ocean, was widely thought to have been weaker in ancient times because of a different configuration of the Earth’s orbit. But scientists analyzing 25-foot piles of ancient shells have found that the El Niños 10,000 years ago were as strong and frequent as the ones we experience today. (more…)
Life can be so intricate and novel that even a single cell can pack a few surprises, according to a study led by Princeton University researchers.
The pond-dwelling, single-celled organism Oxytricha trifallax has the remarkable ability to break its own DNA into nearly a quarter-million pieces and rapidly reassemble those pieces when it’s time to mate, the researchers report in the journal Cell. The organism internally stores its genome as thousands of scrambled, encrypted gene pieces. Upon mating with another of its kind, the organism rummages through these jumbled genes and DNA segments to piece together more than 225,000 tiny strands of DNA. This all happens in about 60 hours. (more…)
