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Ribbeting Research

By Guest PostJuly 13, 2012Nature, Scienceacoustic difference, amphibians, amplexus, cocktail party problem, eardrum movement, eustachian tubes, female cope, frog ears, frogs, gray treefrog, hearing aids, jackhammer, mammalian ears, mammals, mark bee, mr right, study, university of minnesota, velocity

Studies of frogs may lead to better hearing aids

When Mark Bee talks to his 106-year-old grandmother alone, her two enormous hearing aids enable her to understand him well.

“But at a table at Thanksgiving, with everybody talking, the devices don’t do well,” says Bee, an associate professor of ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota.

Her difficulty in a noisy situation is called the cocktail party problem, after the background babble that stymies many hearing-impaired people trying to pick out individual voices at a party. But in ponds all over the world, frogs handle a similar problem, and Bee hopes to learn enough about how they do it to put the principles to work helping people like his grandmother. (more…)

Metamolecules That Switch Handedness at Light-Speed

By Guest PostJuly 13, 2012Scienceartificial chiral molecule, artificial molecules, enantiomers, meta atom, terahertz frequencies, terahertz technologies

Researchers Develop Optically Switchable Chiral Terahertz Metamolecules

A multi-institutional team of researchers that included scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has created the first artificial molecules whose chirality can be rapidly switched from a right-handed to a left-handed orientation with a beam of light. This holds potentially important possibilities for the application of terahertz technologies across a wide range of fields, including reduced energy use for data-processing, homeland security and ultrahigh-speed communications. (more…)

Training Improves Recognition of Rapid-Fire Objects

By Guest PostJuly 12, 2012Scienceattentional blink, attentional function, brain activity, brown university, fmri machine, gibberish character, hoon choi, Kazuhisa Shibata, li hung chang, perception, rapid fire objects, sequence, Takeo Watanabe, visual perception

“Attentional blink” is the term psychologists use to describe our inability to recognize a second important object if we see it less than half a second after a first one. It always seemed impossible to overcome, but in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Brown University psychologists report they’ve found a way.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — So far it has seemed an irreparable limitation of human perception that we strain to perceive things in the very rapid succession of, say, less than half a second. Psychologists call this deficit “attentional blink.” We’ll notice that first car spinning out in our path, but maybe not register the one immediately beyond it. It turns out, we can learn to do better after all. In a new study researchers now based at Brown University overcame the blink with just a little bit of training that was never been tried before. (more…)

Making Mirrors for the Sun

By Guest PostJuly 11, 2012Scienceblake coughenour, glass mirror, mirror lab, photovoltaic cells, photovoltaic prototype, pv cells, rioglass solar, roger angel, solar mirrors, solar spectrum, telescope mirror

With $1.5 million from the Department of Energy, UA researchers are continuing to improve groundbreaking technology to produce solar electricity at a price competitive with non-renewable energy sources.

Just behind the University of Arizona’s Bear Down Gymnasium, a house-sized frame of crisscrossing steel tubes is mounted onto a swiveling post in the concrete bottom of an empty swimming pool. (more…)

Diagnostic Technique Uses Immune Cell DNA

By Guest PostJuly 10, 2012Scienceafrican american, bladder cancer, blood samples, brock christensen, brown university, carmen marsit, cd4, cell carcinoma, cell membrane, chemical alteration, devin koestler, DNA, granulocyte leukocytes, immune cell, karl kelsey, leukocytes, methylation, ovarian cancer, t lymphocytes

By looking at signature chemical differences in the DNA of various immune cells called leukocytes, scientists have developed a way to determine their relative abundance in blood samples. The relative abundance turns out to correlate with specific cancers and other diseases, making the technique, described in two recent papers, potentially valuable not only for research but also for diagnostics and treatment monitoring.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When a person is sick, there is a tell-tale sign in their blood: a different mix of the various types of immune cells called leukocytes. A group of scientists at several institutions including Brown University has discovered a way to determine that mix from the DNA in archival or fresh blood samples, potentially providing a practical new technology not only for medical research but also for clinical diagnosis and treatment monitoring of ailments including some cancers. (more…)

Jekyll and Hyde Bacteria Aids or Kills, Depending on Chance

By Guest PostJuly 10, 2012Scienceantibiotic tolerance, bacterial insecticide, chronic infections, innocuous bacteria

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Living in the guts of worms are seemingly innocuous bacteria that contribute to their survival. With a flip of a switch, however, these same bacteria transform from harmless microbes into deadly insecticides. (more…)

Astronomers Discover Houdini-Like Vanishing Act in Space

By Guest PostJuly 9, 2012Scienceastronomer, astronomical scale, baffling discovery, benjamin zuckerman, carl melis, Chile, constellation centaurus, dust, dust particles, dusty disc, game changer, gemini observatory, gemini telescope, infrared astronomical satellite, iras, joseph rhee, joy pollard, jupiter, lynette cook, mars, mega flare, mercury, NASA, neptune, norm murray, rocky debris, rocky planet, saturn rings, solar system, tyc 8241 2652, ucla, wise satellite

Astronomers report a baffling discovery never seen before: An extraordinary amount of dust around a nearby star has mysteriously disappeared.

“It’s like the classic magician’s trick — now you see it, now you don’t,” said Carl Melis, a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Diego and lead author of the research. “Only in this case, we’re talking about enough dust to fill an inner solar system, and it really is gone!”

“It’s as if the rings around Saturn had disappeared,” said co-author Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. “This is even more shocking because the dusty disc of rocky debris was bigger and much more massive than Saturn’s rings. The disc around this star, if it were in our solar system, would have extended from the sun halfway out to Earth, near the orbit of Mercury.” (more…)

Mars Panorama: Next Best Thing to Being There

By Guest PostJuly 7, 2012Sciencearizona state university, cornell university, endeavour crater, greeley haven, jim bell, mars exploration rover, mars odyssey orbiter, mars panorama, mars pathfinder, martian winter, NASA, opportunity, pancam, ron greeley, steve squyres

PASADENA, Calif. — From fresh rover tracks to an impact crater blasted billions of years ago, a newly completed view from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the ruddy terrain around the outcrop where the long-lived explorer spent its most recent Martian winter.

This scene recorded from the mast-mounted color camera includes the rover’s own solar arrays and deck in the foreground, providing a sense of sitting on top of the rover and taking in the view. Its release this week coincides with two milestones: Opportunity completing its 3,000th Martian day on July 2, and NASA continuing past 15 years of robotic presence at Mars. Mars Pathfinder landed July 4, 1997. NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter reached the planet while Pathfinder was still active, and Global Surveyor overlapped the active missions of the Mars Odyssey orbiter and Opportunity, both still in service. (more…)

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