Category Archives: Science

MU Scientist Finds Late Cretaceous Period Was Likely Ice-free

By Guest PostSeptember 28, 2013Environment, ScienceAntarctica, benthic foraminifera, carbon dioxide levels, CO2, environmental conditions, fossilized shells, grain of salt, greenland, ice free, ken macleod, late cretaceous climate, late cretaceous period, modern warming, planktic, ppm, single celled organisms, Tanzania, university of missouri

Study results could foreshadow earth’s future climate, MU researcher says

COLUMBIA, Mo. – For years, scientists have thought that a continental ice sheet formed during the Late Cretaceous Period more than 90 million years ago when the climate was much warmer than it is today. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found evidence suggesting that no ice sheet formed at this time. This finding could help environmentalists and scientists predict what the earth’s climate will be as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise.

“Currently, carbon dioxide levels are just above 400 parts per million (ppm), up approximately 120 ppm in the last 150 years and rising about 2 ppm each year,” said Ken MacLeod, a professor of geological sciences at MU. “In our study, we found that during the Late Cretaceous Period, when carbon dioxide levels were around 1,000 ppm, there were no continental ice sheets on earth. So, if carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, the earth will be ice-free once the climate comes into balance with the higher levels.” (more…)

New Connection between Stacked Solar Cells Can Handle Energy of 70,000 Suns

By Guest PostSeptember 25, 2013Scienceconversion efficiency, energy, gallium arsenide, geoff bradshaw, heat, jeff harmon, joshua samberg, new technique, north Carolina, photovoltaic energy, salah bedair, solar energy, stacked solar cells, state university, suns, thin film, voltage, wasted energy, zachary carlin

North Carolina State University researchers have come up with a new technique for improving the connections between stacked solar cells, which should improve the overall efficiency of solar energy devices and reduce the cost of solar energy production. The new connections can allow these cells to operate at solar concentrations of 70,000 suns worth of energy without losing much voltage as “wasted energy” or heat.

Stacked solar cells consist of several solar cells that are stacked on top of one another. Stacked cells are currently the most efficient cells on the market, converting up to 45 percent of the solar energy they absorb into electricity. (more…)

Texas May Be Feeding its Red Drum Fish More Than They Need, Say Researchers

By Guest PostSeptember 24, 2013Scienceaustin, breeding season, capital breeders, climate change, cynthia faulk, effects of pollution, environmentally friendly, fuiman, lee fuiman, marianna grenadier, migratory patterns, natural population, port aransas, red drum fish, reproductive cycle, spawn, survival rate, university of texas

Austin, TEXAS — It’s not the chicken or the egg, but marine scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have answered a basic question about red drum fish and their eggs that may eventually help save the state of Texas a lot of money in hatcheries management and make fish farming more environmentally friendly.

Every year the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department spends millions of dollars breeding red drum, a popular game fish, releasing between 20 and 30 million hatchery-raised fingerlings into eight different bays and estuaries along the coast. In order to maximize the numbers that survive to adulthood, the practice has been to provide adult fish a diet rich in fatty acids for nine months before breeding season. During breeding season, in order to save money and resources, the diet is less rich. (more…)

Invention jet prints nanostructures with self-assembling material

By Guest PostSeptember 22, 2013Scienceatomic force, block copolymers, butterfly image, chemical nanopatterns, chemical pattern, dna molecule, double stranded, electrohydrodynamic, hanyang university, imec belgium, ink jet, invention, jet prints nanostructures, john rogers, korea, magnetic storage, microscope image, nanometers, paul nealey, photolithography, printing technology, resolution, ribbons, semiconductor, serdar onses, substrate, university of chicago, university of Illinois, urbana-champaign

A multi-institutional team of engineers has developed a new approach to the fabrication of nanostructures for the semiconductor and magnetic storage industries. This approach combines top-down advanced ink-jet printing technology with a bottom-up approach that involves self-assembling block copolymers, a type of material that can spontaneously form ultrafine structures.

The team, consisting of nine researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Chicago and Hanyang University in Korea, was able to increase the resolution of their intricate structure fabrication from approximately 200 nanometers to approximately 15 nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, the width of a double-stranded DNA molecule. (more…)

How Do We Know When Voyager Reaches Interstellar Space?

By Guest PostSeptember 18, 2013Sciencealpha centauri, data on plasma, direct measurements, ed stone, exploration, galactic cosmic rays, interstellar magnetic fields, interstellar plasma, interstellar space, ionized gas, mid ocean ridges, milky way galaxy, neptune, particles, plasma environment, plasma influence, plasma oscillations, saturn, sea floors, solar storms, solar system, uranus, visited jupiter, voyager

Whether and when NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, humankind’s most distant object, broke through to interstellar space, the space between stars, has been a thorny issue. For the last year, claims have surfaced every few months that Voyager 1 has “left our solar system.” Why has the Voyager team held off from saying the craft reached interstellar space until now?

“We have been cautious because we’re dealing with one of the most important milestones in the history of exploration,” said Voyager Project Scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Only now do we have the data — and the analysis — we needed.” (more…)

Rabies Research Designed for Prevention

By Guest PostSeptember 17, 2013Health, Sciencecdc, heidi brown, hot-spot, human populations, michael acoba, mount lemmon, pima county, pima county officials, prevention, public education, rabies case, rabies research, robert clark, surrounding mountains, university of arizona, viral disease, wildlife

UA undergraduate researcher Robert Clark, his public health mentor and Pima County officials collaborated on an investigation of rabies cases in Pima County.

In a volunteer opportunity turned research project, University of Arizona undergraduate researcher Robert Clark has developed a comprehensive, multi-year snapshot of animal cases of rabies in Pima County.

Clark began working with a mentor in the UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and county officials to learn about the seasonality of rabies in animals and identify exactly where rabid animals were most often found. (more…)

The final nail in the Jurassic Park coffin

By Guest PostSeptember 16, 2013Sciencecontaminating modern molecules, copal, david penney, dna expert, dna from ambers, dna from insects, dna molecules, dna sequencing, final nail, jurassic park coffin, jurassic park scenario, pcr, polymerase chain reaction, recreating dinosaurs, sub fossilized insects, terry brown, university of manchester

It is hardly possible to talk about fossil insects in amber without the 1993 movie Jurassic Park entering the debate.

The idea of recreating dinosaurs by extracting DNA from insects in amber has held the fascination of the public for two decades. Claims for successful extraction of DNA from ambers up to 130 million-years-old by various scientists in the early 1990s were only seriously questioned when a study at the Natural History Museum, London, was unable to replicate the process. The original claims are now considered by many to be a text-book example of modern contaminant DNA in the samples. Nonetheless, some scientists hold fast to their original claims.

Research just published in the journal The Public Library of Science ONE (PLOS ONE) by a team of researchers from the Faculty of Life Sciences at The University of Manchester can now confirm that the existence of DNA in amber fossils is highly unlikely. The team led by amber expert Dr David Penney and co-ordinated by ancient DNA expert Professor Terry Brown used highly-sensitive ‘next generation’ sequencing techniques – the most advance type of DNA sequencing – on insects in copal, the sub-fossilized resin precursor of amber. (more…)

Hydrogen Fuel from Sunlight

By Guest PostSeptember 13, 2013Sciencealexandra krawicz, artificial photosynthesis, berkeley lab, caltech, carbohydrate sugars, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide reduction, earth abundant elements, eitan anzenberg, free electrons, gallium phosphide, gary moore, generate electricity, green sustainable energy, hydrogen fuel, hydrogen ions, hydrogen producing catalysts, ian sharp, jinhui yang, junko yano, non photoactive substrates, photoelectrochemical operations, protons, sunlight

Berkeley Lab Researchers at Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis Make Unique Semiconductor/Catalyst Construct

In the search for clean, green sustainable energy sources to meet human needs for generations to come, perhaps no technology matches the ultimate potential of artificial photosynthesis. Bionic leaves that could produce energy-dense fuels from nothing more than sunlight, water and atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide, with no byproducts other than oxygen, represent an ideal alternative to fossil fuels but also pose numerous scientific challenges. A major step toward meeting at least one of these challenges has been achieved by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) working at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP).

“We’ve developed a method by which molecular hydrogen-producing catalysts can be interfaced with a semiconductor that absorbs visible light,” says Gary Moore, a chemist with Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division and principal investigator for JCAP. “Our experimental results indicate that the catalyst and the light-absorber are interfaced structurally as well as functionally.” (more…)