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Opposites Attract

By Guest PostJuly 1, 2012Sciencechemical crosslinking, energy engineering, fuel cell membranes, human hair, opposites attract, thickness

UD professor reports milestone in fuel cell membrane research

It looks like a plastic candy wrapper that’s been charred on both sides, but it may hold the solution to commercially viable fuel cells. (more…)

Today in the Milky Way: Cloudy Skies

By Guest PostJune 30, 2012Scienceadam block, aquila dark cloud, aquila rift arcs, astronomy picture, cloudy skies, dust lanes, Galaxy, gas and dust, herbig haro object, hh32, infrared, ldn 673, light years, Milky Way, mount lemmon skycenter, radiation, radio wave, rno 109, schulmann telescope, stellar winds, summer triangle, university of arizona

Adam Block of the UA’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter brings us a rare view of the clouds wafting through our Milky Way in this Astronomy Picture of the Day.

In silhouette against the Milky Way’s faint starlight, its dusty molecular clouds likely contain raw material to form hundreds of thousands of stars, prompting astronomers to eagerly search the clouds for telltale signs of star birth.

This telescopic close-up looks toward the region at a fragmented Aquila dark cloud complex identified as LDN 673, stretching across a field of view slightly wider than the full moon.

For this image selected by NASA as the June 29 Astronomy Picture of the Day, astrophotographer Adam Block of the University of Arizona’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter remotely operated the 32-inch Schulmann Telescope to peer into the vast chasms of gas and dust wafting through the Milky Way, exposing for about 15 minutes at a time during several nights in April and May. (more…)

Scientists Urge New Approaches to Plant Research

By Guest PostJune 30, 2012Nature, Sciencearms race, Environment, evolution, genetic engineering, kurt stepnitz, metabolic pathway, metabolic reaction, michigan state university, molecular biology, new approach, nonrenewable energy, plant metabolism, plant research, robert last, ron milo, satellite image, therapeutic properties, weizmann institute

EAST LANSING, Mich. — You’d be amazed at how much you can learn from a plant.

In a paper published this week in the journal Science, a Michigan State University professor and a colleague discuss why if humans are to survive as a species, we must turn more to plants for any number of valuable lessons.

“Metabolism of plants provides humans with fiber, fuel, food and therapeutics,” said Robert Last, an MSU professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. “As the human population grows and nonrenewable energy sources diminish, we need to rely increasingly on plants and to increase the sustainability of agriculture.” (more…)

Greg Landsberg: Seeking the Higgs boson

By Guest PostJune 29, 2012Scienceelectromagnetic interaction, higgs boson, higgs particle, massless, particle masses, photons

Greg Landsberg, professor of physics at Brown, is the physics coordinator for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) at CERN in Switzerland, part of a Brown team that includes professors David Cutts, Ultich Heintz, and Meenakshi Narain. The giant instrument’s primary mission is finding the Higgs boson, a particle whose existence would confirm the best guess physicists have made about why things have mass. (more…)

Nano-Sandwich Technique Slims Down Solar Cells, Improves Efficiency

By Guest PostJune 29, 2012Scienceamorphous silicon, Berkeley, cadmium telluride, chemical fuel, efficiency, electricity, linyou cao, nano-sandwich, nanometer, nanostructures, nm, organic materials, paul alivisatos, solar cells, solar energy, substrate, technique, Technology, university of california, vivian ferry

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found a way to create much slimmer thin-film solar cells without sacrificing the cells’ ability to absorb solar energy. Making the cells thinner should significantly decrease manufacturing costs for the technology.

“We were able to create solar cells using a ‘nanoscale sandwich’ design with an ultra-thin ‘active’ layer,” says Dr. Linyou Cao, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research. “For example, we created a solar cell with an active layer of amorphous silicon that is only 70 nanometers (nm) thick. This is a significant improvement, because typical thin-film solar cells currently on the market that also use amorphous silicon have active layers between 300 and 500 nm thick.” The “active” layer in thin-film solar cells is the layer of material that actually absorbs solar energy for conversion into electricity or chemical fuel. (more…)

What’s Happening with the Higgs Boson

By Guest PostJune 28, 2012Scienceantibottom quark, atlas, beate heinemann, CERN, cms, dark matter, data reduction, electron volts, electrons, extra dimension, fermions, gamma rays, geneva, higgs, higgs boson, higgs field, ian hinchliffe, inner detector, Large Hadron Collider, lhc, miniature black holes, murdock gil gilchriese, nuclear research, particles of matter, photon channel, photons, prediction, quarks, Space, specific masses, standard model, supersymmetry, switzerland, tau particles, w bosons

Berkeley Lab scientists, major contributors to the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, explain what the excitement is about

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, will hold a seminar early in the morning on July 4 to announce the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that are searching for the Higgs boson. Both experimental teams are working down to the wire to finish analyzing their data, and to determine exactly what can be said about what they’ve found.

“We do not yet know what will be shown on July 4th,” says Ian Hinchliffe, a theoretical physicist in the Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), who heads the Lab’s participation in the ATLAS experiment. “I have seen many conjectures on the blogs about what will be shown: these are idle speculation. Things are moving very fast this week, and it’s an exciting time at CERN. Many years of hard work are coming to fruition.” (more…)

UCLA Biologists Reveal Potential ‘Fatal Flaw’ In Iconic Sexual Selection Study

By Guest PostJune 27, 2012Sciencefemale mating habits, mating pair, mutant offspring, selecting mates, sexual selection

A classic study from more than 60 years ago suggesting that males are more promiscuous and females more choosy in selecting mates may, in fact, be wrong, say life scientists who are the first to repeat the historic experiment using the same methods as the original. (more…)

Selenium Controls Staph on Implant Material

By Guest PostJune 26, 2012Scienceantibiotic coating, implanted devices, medical implants, selenium, selenium nanoparticles

A coating of selenium nanoparticles significantly reduces the growth of Staphylococcus aureus on polycarbonate, a material common in implanted devices such as catheters and endotracheal tubes, engineers at Brown University report in a new study.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Selenium is an inexpensive element that naturally belongs in the body. It is also known to combat bacteria. Still, it had not been tried as an antibiotic coating on a medical device material. In a new study, Brown University engineers report that when they used selenium nanoparticles to coat polycarbonate, the material of catheters and endotracheal tubes, the results were significant reductions in cultured populations of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, sometimes by as much as 90 percent. (more…)

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