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Managing the Deluge of ‘Big Data’ From Space

By Guest PostOctober 18, 2013Scienceandrea donnellan, big data, chris mattmann, cloud computing, data points, distant galaxies, earth, eric de jong, extracting data, flood of data, from space, gps data, jet propulsion laboratory, mars reconnaissance orbiter, NASA, nasa mission, pasadena, ska, software engineer, spacecraft monitor, square kilometer array, steve groom

For NASA and its dozens of missions, data pour in every day like rushing rivers. Spacecraft monitor everything from our home planet to faraway galaxies, beaming back images and information to Earth. All those digital records need to be stored, indexed and processed so that spacecraft engineers, scientists and people across the globe can use the data to understand Earth and the universe beyond.

At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., mission planners and software engineers are coming up with new strategies for managing the ever-increasing flow of such large and complex data streams, referred to in the information technology community as “big data.” (more…)

Scientists Cooking Up Alloy “Recipes” For Bone Implants

By Guest PostOctober 17, 2013Health, Sciencealloy recipes, armed with microscopes, bone, bone implants, computer simulations, general electric, hamish fraser, ji cheng, niobium, ohio state university, President Obama, strain, stress, tantalum, titanium, united states, zhao

Project will utilize Ohio State’s new microscopy facility

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Armed with microscopes, computers and an innovative way to study metals, researchers at The Ohio State University and their partners are building a database of new titanium alloys.

The goal: to reduce the stress that pins, plates and other medical implants put on healthy bones. (more…)

Nobel in Physics: A long time in the making

By Guest PostOctober 16, 2013Sciencehiggs boson, higgs mechanism, nobel in physics, particle physics experimenters

Nearly 50 years of experiments and billions of dollars in equipment followed the prediction of the Higgs mechanism by theoretical physicists in 1964. Ulrich Heintz and Meenakshi Narain, two of the particle physicists at Brown University who worked on experiments at Fermilab and at CERN, note that the successful search for the Higgs was caried on by thousands of researchers.

The Nobel Prize awarded today to Francois Englert and Peter Higgs was a long time in the making. The Higgs mechanism was invented almost 50 years ago, and ever since the standard model emerged as the explanation of everything in particle physics that we have observed so far. (more…)

Want ripples on your icicles? University of Toronto scientists suggest adding salt

By Guest PostOctober 14, 2013Scienceadding salt, antony szuhan chen, beginning of autumn, computer image processing, ice dynamics, icicles, key factors, man like ripples, michelin, pattern formation, ripples, sodium chloride, stephen morris, toronto garages, university of toronto

TORONTO, ON – Though it’s barely the beginning of autumn, scientists at the University of Toronto are one step closer to explaining why winter’s icicles form with Michelin Man-like ripples on their elongated shapes.

Experimental physicist Stephen Morris and PhD candidate Antony Szu-Han Chen were spurred to investigate by the ripples that appear around the circumference of icicles that occur naturally. It has been theorized that the ripples are the result of surface tension effects in the thin water film that flows over the ice as it forms. Their investigation revealed that the actual culprit is salt. (more…)

First Step to Reduce Plant Need for Nitrogen Fertilizer Uncovered in Science Study

By Guest PostOctober 13, 2013Sciencebacteria, beneficial relationship, gary stacey, mechanism, nitrogen fertilizer, pathogen, plant, plant need, rhizobia, soybeans, tomatoes, university of missouri, yan liang

MU scientists say discovery could save farmers billions and protect the environment.

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Nitrogen fertilizer costs U.S. farmers approximately $8 billion each year, and excess fertilizer can find its way into rivers and streams, damaging the delicate water systems. Now, a discovery by a team of University of Missouri researchers could be the first step toward helping crops use less nitrogen, benefitting both farmers’ bottom lines and the environment. The journal Science published the research this month.

Gary Stacey, an investigator in the MU Bond Life Sciences Center and professor of plant sciences in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, found that crops, such as corn, are “confused” when confronted with an invasive, but beneficial, bacteria known as rhizobia bacteria. When the bacteria interact correctly with a crop, the bacteria receive some food from the plant and, simultaneously, produce nitrogen that most plants need. In his study, Stacey found that many other crops recognize the bacteria, but do not attempt to interact closely with them. (more…)

UCLA physicists played prominent role in Nobel Prize-winning Higgs boson research

By Guest PostOctober 12, 2013Scienceatlas, belgium, Britain, CERN, cms experiment, compact muon solenoid, david cline, david saltzberg, electrons, forces of nature, francois englert, god particle, higgs boson particle, higgs boson research, jay hauser, Large Hadron Collider, lhc, nobel prize, peter higgs, photons, switzerland, ucla physicists

Two large collaborations of scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made worldwide news in July 2012 when they announced independent observations of the elusive Higgs boson particle — a discovery hailed as one of the greatest scientific accomplishments of recent decades.

This so-called “God particle” was first postulated some 50 years ago as a crucial element of the modern theory of the forces of nature — it is, physicists say, what gives everything in the universe mass — and it had been the subject of worldwide searches ever since. (more…)

On the Road to Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing

By Guest PostOctober 11, 2013Sciencealexei fedorov, berkeley lab, bi2se3, bismuth strontium, calcium copper oxide, China, decoherence problem, Environment, eryin wang, fault tolerant, hao ding, high temperature superconductivity, majorana zero mode, mysterious quasiparticle, quantum computing, quantum data bit, qubit, shuyun zhou, supercomputer, topological surface state, tsinghua university, xi chen, xray photons

Collaboration at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source Induces High Temperature Superconductivity in a Toplogical Insulator

Reliable quantum computing would make it possible to solve certain types of extremely complex technological problems millions of times faster than today’s most powerful supercomputers. Other types of problems that quantum computing could tackle would not even be feasible with today’s fastest machines. The key word is “reliable.” If the enormous potential of quantum computing is to be fully realized, scientists must learn to create “fault-tolerant” quantum computers. A small but important step toward this goal has been achieved by an international collaboration of researchers from China’s Tsinghua University and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) working at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). (more…)

Poetry is like music to the mind, scientists prove

By Guest PostOctober 9, 2013Culture, Health, Scienceadam zeman, anatomical sense, art, brain imaging technology, favourite poetry, fmri technology, introspection, music to mind, poetry, prose, recollection, scientist, university of exeter

New brain imaging technology is helping researchers to bridge the gap between art and science by mapping the different ways in which the brain responds to poetry and prose.

Scientists at the University of Exeter used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, which allows them to visualise which parts of the brain are activated to process various activities.

No one had previously looked specifically at the differing responses in the brain to poetry and prose. (more…)

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