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Researcher Discovers Bug That Might Only Exist on Mizzou’s Campus

By Guest PostMarch 17, 2013Scienceaphid family, aphis mizzou, ben puttler, bend stems, bug, campus, crumple leaves, distort plant tissue, doris lagos, faurot field, five segmented antenna, jesse hall, memorial union, molecular tests, mu researcher, new insect, North America, sap of plants, shrubs, trees, university of Illinois, university of missouri

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The University of Missouri has Jesse Hall, Faurot Field, Memorial Union and the Columns. Now, MU has its own bug. An MU researcher has discovered a new insect on campus and given it a Mizzou name. Ben Puttler, assistant professor emeritus of plant sciences at the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, first discovered Aphis Mizzou in 2005 while conducting research on wasps on the MU campus.

The insect, Aphis Mizzou, is a member of the aphid family of bugs. Aphids are tiny insects that live by feeding on the sap of plants. Nearly all annual and perennial plants, including shrubs and trees, are potential hosts for aphids. When feeding on these plants, aphids can crumple leaves, distort plant tissue and bend stems. There are 5,000 species of aphids known in the world, but only 150 live in North America. (more…)

Study Shows How One Insect Got Its Wings

By Guest PostMarch 16, 2013Scienceevolutionary history, fruit fly, growth of wings, wing development

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have delved deeper into the evolutionary history of the fruit fly than ever before to reveal the genetic activity that led to the development of wings – a key to the insect’s ability to survive. (more…)

‘Nuisance’ Data Lead to Surprising Star-Birth Discovery

By Guest PostMarch 15, 2013Sciencealma, Antarctica, atacama, atacama desert, baby picture, Chile, cosmic microwave background, early universe, earth, electromagnetic spectrum, history, joaquin vieira, john carlstrom, large millimeter array, northern hemisphere, nuisance data, population, radio galaxies, sky, south pole telescope, star birth discovery, star forming galaxies, sub millimeter wavelengths, universe, university of chicago

When a batch of bright cosmic objects first appeared in maps in 2008 made with data from the South Pole Telescope, astronomers at the University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics regarded it only as an unavoidable nuisance.

The light sources interfered with efforts to measure more precisely the cosmic microwave background—the afterglow of the big bang. But the astronomers soon realized that they had made a rare find in South Pole Telescope’s large survey of the sky. The spectra of some of the bright objects, which is the rainbow of light they emit, were inconsistent with what astronomers expected from the well-known population of radio galaxies. (more…)

Tiny Piece of RNA Keeps ‘Clock’ Running in Earliest Stages of Life

By Guest PostMarch 13, 2013Sciencecyclical gene activity, embryonic tissue, microrna, segment of rna, segmentation clock

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research shows that a tiny piece of RNA has an essential role in ensuring that embryonic tissue segments form properly. (more…)

Engineering Bacterial Live Wires

By Guest PostMarch 13, 2013Sciencebacterial species, berkeley lab, bioelectronic systems, biological wire, caroline ajo franklin, cell membranes, cheryl goldbeck, common language, e coli, electron, electronic communication systems, energy, energy conversion techniques, guillaume cambray, heather jensen, information transfer, largus angenent, living cell, matt hepler, metabolic pathways, michaela teravest, molecular foundry, mr 1, mtrcab pathway, nanocrystalline iron oxide, nicole beedle, protein complex, shewanella oneidensis, strain, synthesis, university of california, vivek mutalik, yancey appling

Berkeley Lab scientists discover the balance that allows electricity to flow between cells and electronics

Just like electronics, living cells use electrons for energy and information transfer. Despite electrons being a common “language” of the living and electronic worlds, living cells cannot speak to our largely technological realm. Cell membranes are largely to blame for this inability to plug cells into our computers: they form a greasy barrier that tightly controls charge balance in a cell. Thus, giving a cell the ability to communicate directly with an electrode would lead to enormous opportunities in the development of new energy conversion techniques, fuel production, biological reporters, or new forms of bioelectronic systems. (more…)

Space Station to Host New Cosmic Ray Telescope

By Guest PostMarch 13, 2013Sciencealan watson, angela olinto, atmosphere, auger project, big bang, center, cosmic ray detector, cosmic ray telescope, decaying particles, delaware, earth atmosphere, earth based detectors, international project, iss, james cronin, japanese experiment module, light emissions, light speed, marshall space flight, NASA, nobel laureate, observatory in argentina, physicist john linsley, space station, stagg field, supermassive black holes, tennis ball, the universe, ultra high energy, university of chicago, university of leeds

UChicago’s Angela Olinto leads U.S. collaboration on international project

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has awarded $4.4 million to a collaboration of scientists at five United States universities and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to help build a telescope for deployment on the International Space Station in 2017.

The U.S. collaboration is part of a 13-nation effort to build the 2.5-meter ultraviolet telescope, called the Extreme Universe Space Observatory. UChicago Prof. Angela Olinto leads the U.S. collaboration. The telescope will search for the mysterious source of the most energetic particles in the universe, called ultra high-energy cosmic rays, from the ISS’s Japanese Experiment Module. The source of these cosmic rays has remained one of the great mysteries of science since physicist John Linsley discovered them more than 50 years ago. These cosmic rays consist of protons and other subatomic scraps of matter that fly through the universe at almost light speed. (more…)

NASA Rover Finds Conditions Once Suited for Ancient Life on Mars

By Guest PostMarch 12, 2013Scienceancient life, ancient wet environment, bedrock, calcium sulfate, carbon, chemical energy source, chemical ingredients, chemin, chlorinated forms, condition, david blake, gale crater, hydrogen, instruments, john grotzinger, john klein, life, living microbes, mars, mars exploration program, methane, michael meyer, micro-organisms, mildly alkaline, mudstone, nasa rover, neutral, nitrogen, oxygen, paul mahaffy, phosphorus, powder, presence, red planet, rocknest, sam, soil, stream bed, sulfur, yellowknife bay

PASADENA, Calif. –– An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes.

Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon — some of the key chemical ingredients for life — in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.

“A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “From what we know now, the answer is yes.” (more…)

Big Bang Meets Big Data: South Africa Joins ASTRON and IBM to Build the Foundation for a New Era of Computing

By Guest PostMarch 12, 2013Science, Technology13 billion years, 3d stacked chips, astron, australia, big bang, big data, big data challenge, cognitive systems, computing, dome, drenthe, dutch ministry, economic affairs, exascale computer systems, exascale technology, human capital development, ibm, institute, national research foundation, new era, nrf, radio astronomy, simon ratcliffe, ska, ska phase 2, ska project, South Africa, square kilometer array, Technology, the netherlands

South African scientists to develop rugged microservers to handle the harsh desert conditions, explore new computer architectures and develop advanced algorithms for radio astronomy imaging

Pretoria, South Africa – 11 Mar 2013: Square Kilometer Array (SKA) South Africa, a business unit of the country’s National Research Foundation is joining ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, and IBM in a four-year collaboration to research extremely fast, but low-power exascale computer systems aimed at developing advanced technologies for handling the massive amount of data that will be produced by the SKA, which is one of the most ambitious science projects ever undertaken.

The SKA is an international effort to build the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, which is to be located in Southern Africa and Australia to help better understand the history of the universe. The project constitutes the ultimate Big Data challenge, and scientists must produce major advances in computing to deal with it. The impact of those advances will be felt far beyond the SKA project—helping to usher in a new era of computing, which IBM calls the era of cognitive systems. (more…)

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