Category Archives: Science

A Long Distance Call: Astronaut’s Kids See Dad’s Office from Ladd

By Guest PostMarch 4, 2013Scienceadult kids, anthony, astronomer robert horton, brown, brown university, fast moving objects, heidi, heidi ford, international space station, kevin ford, ladd observatory, rhode islanders, sky, space station commander, telescope, ufo, valentines day greetings, watch dad fly

Space Station Commander Kevin Ford exchanged Valentine’s Day greetings with his adult kids Heidi and Anthony — he speeding by about 220 miles above Providence and they watching him fly past from Brown’s Ladd Observatory.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Rhode Islanders with their eyes skyward around 6 p.m. last Thursday might have noticed a curiously bright speck speeding across the evening sky. No, it wasn’t a UFO or an asteroid. It was the International Space Station, and for Providence resident Heidi Ford, it was dad’s office.

Heidi’s father Kevin Ford is currently the commander of the ISS. And with the help of Brown’s Ladd Observatory and astronomer Robert Horton, Heidi and her brother Anthony, who was visiting from Houston, got to see last week’s flyby close up while they talked to their dad on the phone. (more…)

Searching for the Solar System’s Chemical Recipe

By Guest PostMarch 4, 2013Scienceasteroids, basic ingredients, beams of vuv, carbon monoxide, clouds, comets, dust, elements, gas molecules, gas phase photodynamics, genesis mission, hydrogen sulfide, interplanetary ice, isotope ratios, isotopic differences, john heidenreich, mark thiemens, mass spectrometry, mean ocean water, moons, musahid musa ahmed, nanometer wavelength range, NASA, nitrogen, one extra neutron, origin, oxygen 17, oxygen isotope puzzle, photochemistry, physical factors, planets, primitive solar nebula, raindrops, san diego, smow, solar system recipe, standard, subrata chakraborty, teresa jackson, ultraclean aluminum foil, university of california, vacuum ultraviolet light, vuv wavelengths, x axis, y axis

Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Dynamics Beamline points to why isotope ratios in interplanetary dust and meteorites differ from Earth’s

By studying the origins of different isotope ratios among the elements that make up today’s smorgasbord of planets, moons, comets, asteroids, and interplanetary ice and dust, Mark Thiemens and his colleagues hope to learn how our solar system evolved. Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, has worked on this problem for over three decades.

In recent years his team has found the Chemical Dynamics Beamline of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to be an invaluable tool for examining how photochemistry determines the basic ingredients in the solar system recipe. (more…)

UCLA Researchers Further Refine ‘Nanovelcro’ Device to Grab Single Cancer Cells from Blood

By Guest PostMarch 3, 2013Scienceact like velcro, analysis, angewandte chemie, antoni ribas, biopsy samples, blood, blood samples, braf v600e, cancer cells, cancer grow, circulate, circulating melanoma cells, circulating tumor cells, cmcs, configuration, ctcs, disease, dna structure, early stages, fatal metastases, fibers coated, genes, genetic analysis, genomic evolution, growth, hematology, histopathology, hsian rong tseng, jonsson cancer center, laser micro dissection, liquid biopsy, lmd, melanoma, melanoma cells, melanoma tumors, metastasis, method, microscopic structure, nanoscale technology, nanoscale wires, nanovelcro chip, new tumors, oncology, patient, polymer nanofiber, progression, protein antibodies, researchers, roger lo, single cell genotyping, skin cancer, tumors, ucla, velcro like, working mechanism

Improvement enables ‘liquid biopsies’ for metastatic melanoma

Researchers at UCLA report that they have refined a method they previously developed for capturing and analyzing cancer cells that break away from patients’ tumors and circulate in the blood. With the improvements to their device, which uses a Velcro-like nanoscale technology, they can now detect and isolate single cancer cells from patient blood samples for analysis.

Circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, play a crucial role in cancer metastasis, spreading from tumors to other parts of the body, where they form new tumors. When these cells are isolated from the blood early on, they can provide doctors with critical information about the type of cancer a patient has, the characteristics of the individual cancer and the potential progression of the disease. Doctors can also tell from these cells how to tailor a personalized treatment to a specific patient. (more…)

What Lies Beneath: NASA Antarctic Sub Goes Subglacial

By Guest PostMarch 2, 2013Scienceantarctic expedition, ice sheet behavior, nasa antarctic sub, robotic antarctic research, robotic sub, subglacial lake, subglacial lake whillans

When researcher Alberto Behar from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., joined an international Antarctic expedition last month on a trek to investigate a subglacial lake, he brought with him a unique instrument designed and funded by NASA to help the researchers study one of the last unexplored aquatic environments on Earth. (more…)

Songbirds’ Brains Coordinate Singing with Intricate Timing, Study Shows

By Guest PostMarch 2, 2013Nature, Scienceactivity, ana amador, anatomy, aphasia, avian vocal organ, basic motor functions, brain, buenos aires, control vocalizations, coordinate singing, coordinating human speech, daniel margoliash, disorder, dynamics of movement, feedback, gabriel mindlin, highly skilled behavior, howard nusbaum, human brain, human speech production, model, neuroscientist, premotor cortical neurons, single neurons, song, song system, songbird, songs of birds, speech, speech problems, stroke, stuttering, syrinx, timing, university, university of chicago, vocal signals, yonatan sanz perl, zebra finches

Research may help explain how human brain governs speech

As a bird sings, some neurons in its brain prepare to make the next sounds while others are synchronized with the current notes—a coordination of physical actions and brain activity that is needed to produce complex movements, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

In an article in the current issue of Nature, neuroscientist Daniel Margoliash and colleagues show, for the first time, how the brain is organized to govern skilled performance—a finding that may lead to new ways of understanding human speech production. (more…)

A Cyclotron’s Long Journey Home

By Guest PostMarch 2, 2013Scienceamerican science, atom smashers, atomic energy commission, aundra richards, berkeley hills, berkeley lab, brass cyclotron, circular particle accelerator, cyclotrons, david shirley, diameter, electron volts, ernest o lawrence, hall of science, hydrogen atoms, invention, kinetic energy, lab history, Large Hadron Collider, light, london science museum, merry go round, modern particle physics, natalie roe, nobel prize, nuclei, pamela patterson, paul alivisatos, protons, secret, Smithsonian, speed, the royal society, uk museum, university of california, Washington, yale university

One of the world’s first working circular particle accelerators returns to Berkeley Lab—75 years later.

Seventy-five years after one of the world’s first working cyclotrons was handed to the London Science Museum, it has returned to its birthplace in the Berkeley hills, where the man who invented it, Ernest O. Lawrence, helped launch the field of modern particle physics as well as the national laboratory that would bear his name, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

On Jan. 9, 1932 the brass cyclotron—which measures 26 inches from end to end and whose accelerating chamber measures just 11 inches in diameter—was successfully used to boost protons to energies of 1.22 million electron volts. Its return to Berkeley Lab caps a decades-long saga in which various parties endeavored to secure the cyclotron’s return from London, but the persistence of Pamela Patterson, who chronicles Berkeley Lab’s history as managing editor of its website, finally paid off. (more…)

How a Microbial Biorefinery Regulates Genes

By Guest PostMarch 1, 2013Sciencebacteria, biorefinery technology, gene expression, microbial biorefinery, protein crystallography, protocatechuate, transcription factors

Digesting lignin, a highly stable polymer that accounts for up to a third of biomass, is a limiting step to producing a variety of biofuels. Researchers at Brown have figured out the microscopic chemical switch that allows Streptomyces bacteria to get to work, breaking lignin down into its constituent parts. (more…)

Researchers Create Semiconductor ‘Nano-Shish-Kebabs’ With Potential for 3-D Technologies

By Guest PostMarch 1, 2013Science3 d devices, 3 d structure, chun li, crystalline layers, crystalline structure, crystals, electric charges, germanium sulfide, ges, ges nanowire, heterostructure, large surface area, linyou cao, miaofang chi, molybdenum sulfide, mos2, nano shish kebab, nanoscale structure, next generation sensors, next generation supercapacitors, north Carolina, one dimensional nanowire, photodetectors, photonic properties, researcher, semiconductor, solar cells, state university, three dimensional technologies, two dimensional nanosheets, weak oxidation, yifei yu

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new type of nanoscale structure that resembles a “nano-shish-kebab,” consisting of multiple two-dimensional nanosheets that appear to be impaled upon a one-dimensional nanowire. However, the nanowire and nanosheets are actually a single, three-dimensional structure consisting of a seamless series of germanium sulfide (GeS) crystals. The structure holds promise for use in the creation of new, three-dimensional (3-D) technologies.

The researchers believe this is the first engineered nanomaterial to combine one-dimensional and two-dimensional structures in which all of the components have a shared crystalline structure. (more…)