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What Happened to Dinosaurs’ Predecessors After Earth’s Largest Extinction 252 Million Years Ago?

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Scienceadam huttenlocker, africa, after the extinction, Antarctica, asilisaurus, australia, biogeographic patterns, brandon peecook, christian sidor, daril vilhena, dinosaurs in tanzania, dinosaurs predecessors, earliest dinosaur, earth, expeditions to antarctica, fossil hunting expeditions, fossil record, four legged animals, h richard lane, India, karoo, ken angielczyk, largest extinction, linda tsuji, mass extinction, museum fossils, national science foundation, nyasasaurus parringtoni, paleontologist, pig sized dicynodon, predecessors to dinosaurs, roger smith, sebastien steyer, snapshots, South Africa, south america, southern pangea, southwest russia, species distributions, sterling nesbitt, university of washington, unorthodox places, zambia, zambian basins

Fossil-hunting expeditions to Tanzania, Zambia and Antarctica provide new insights

Predecessors to dinosaurs missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during Earth’s largest mass extinction 252 million years ago.

Or did they?

That thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia.

It turns out, however, that scientists may have been looking in the wrong places. (more…)

Sweet Success: Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Way to Catalyze More Sugars from Biomass

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Scienceachilles heel, advanced biofuels, amorphous, berkeley lab, biofuel production, biomass of grasses, carbon into atmosphere, catalysis, catalytic activity, cellulase enzymes, cellulose classification system, cellulosic biomass, crystalline, douglas clark, enzyme cocktails, enzyme synergy, fermentable sugars, fossil fuels, harvey blanch, industrial manufacturing processes, jan liphardt, jerome fox, light microscopy technique, localization microscopy, palm, palm technology, photo activated, solid surfaces, substrate heterogeneity, sweet success, synergistic activity, ultrahigh precision, united states, university of california

Catalysis may initiate almost all modern industrial manufacturing processes, but catalytic activity on solid surfaces is poorly understood. This is especially true for the cellulase enzymes used to release fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass for the production of advanced biofuels. Now, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) through support from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) have literally shed new light on cellulase catalysis.

Using an ultrahigh-precision visible light microscopy technique called PALM – for Photo-Activated Localization Microscopy – the researchers have found a way to improve the collective catalytic activity of enzyme cocktails that can boost the yields of sugars for making fuels. Increasing the sugar yields from cellulosic biomass to help bring down biofuel production costs is essential for the widespread commercial adoption of these fuels. (more…)

Monitoring concrete

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Sciencealkali silica reaction, asr, asr affected concrete, asr damage, chemical, concrete, construction material, cracking, deldot, DNA, dry environments, Environment, environmental engineering, environmental stressors, harsh environment, internal chemical reactions, julie maresca, kinds of microbes, microbiology, monitoring concrete, non destructive methodology, nutrient requirements, ph, physical stresses, potassium, project, salt concentrations, silica minerals, sodium, temperature fluctuations, thomas schumacher, university of delaware

UD professors study microbes as potential biomarkers for damaged concrete

Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world. However, many concrete roadways and bridges crack due to internal chemical reactions, temperature fluctuations or external chemical and physical stresses.

One internal chemical reaction is the Alkali-Silica Reaction (ASR) that destroys the concrete from within. (more…)

Subconscious mental categories help brain sort through everyday experiences

By Guest PostMay 2, 2013Health, Scienceanna schapiro, brain, brown university, chopping vegetables, computational model, dynamic, experiences, functional, magnetic resonance imaging, matthew botvinick, michael frank, natalia cordova, nature neuroscience, neural populations, nicholas turk browne, princeton university, similarity structure, subconscious mental, temporal relationship, timothy rogers

Your brain knows it’s time to cook when the stove is on, and the food and pots are out. When you rush away to calm a crying child, though, cooking is over and it’s time to be a parent. Your brain processes and responds to these occurrences as distinct, unrelated events.

But it remains unclear exactly how the brain breaks such experiences into “events,” or the related groups that help us mentally organize the day’s many situations. A dominant concept of event-perception known as prediction error says that our brain draws a line between the end of one event and the start of another when things take an unexpected turn (such as a suddenly distraught child). (more…)

One-two punch could be key in treating blindness

By Guest PostMay 1, 2013Scienceachromatopsia, andras komaromy, blindness, central nervous system, cntf, fido, humans, michigan state university, model disease, molecular therapy, most younger dogs, photoreceptors, protein, treatment, university of miami, veterinary ophthalmologist

Researchers have discovered that using two kinds of therapy in tandem may be a knockout combo against inherited disorders that cause blindness. While their study focused on man’s best friend, the treatment could help restore vision in people, too.

Published in the journal Molecular Therapy, the study builds on earlier work by Michigan State University veterinary ophthalmologist András Komáromy and colleagues. In 2010, they restored day vision in dogs suffering from achromatopsia, an inherited form of total color blindness, by replacing the mutant gene associated with the condition. (more…)

Deep in Texas, a plant-eating feathered dinosaur reemerges

By Guest PostMay 1, 2013Sciencebird like dinosaurs, feathered dinosaur, plant eating dinosaur, small dinosaurs

A recently identified feathered dinosaur found deep in West Texas reinforces an emerging view that creatures like it were more diverse and widespread in North America than previously thought, according to a new study. (more…)

NASA Probe Gets Close-Up Views of Large Hurricane on Saturn

By Guest PostMay 1, 2013Scienceandrew ingersoll, angle, boulder, cassini huygens mission, cassini spacecraft, counter clockwise spin, earth, equinox, eye, france, Germany, hexagon, high clouds, hurricane, hydrogen atmosphere, jet propulsion laboratory, kunio sayanagi, mysterious hurricane, NASA, north pole, northern hemisphere, orbit, pasadena, saturn, saturn hurricane movie, saturnian storms, scott edgington, six sided, space science institute, the rose, united kingdom, united states, water vapor, weather pattern

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole.

In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon. (more…)

Listening to the Big Bang – in high fidelity

By Guest PostApril 30, 2013Sciencebig bang, computer program, cosmic microwave, data, earthquake, high frequency structure, john cramer, mathematica, planck satellite mission, radiation, recordings, seismologists, septillion times, universe, university of washington

A decade ago, spurred by a question for a fifth-grade science project, University of Washington physicist John Cramer devised an audio recreation of the Big Bang that started our universe nearly 14 billion years ago.

Now, armed with more sophisticated data from a satellite mission observing the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow in the universe that acts as sort of a fossilized fingerprint of the Big Bang – Cramer has produced new recordings that fill in higher frequencies to create a fuller and richer sound. (The sound files run from 20 seconds to a little longer than 8 minutes.) (more…)

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