*The molecular machinery bacteria use to rid themselves of toxic substances including antimicrobial drugs has been studied in detail by a UA-led team of researchers. A better understanding of these mechanisms could lead to new weapons in the fight against pathogens.*
Microbes have colonized virtually every spot on this planet, from deep sea vents spewing scalding seawater laden with heavy metals to the icy pinnacles of the world’s tallest mountain ranges. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — In a head-to-head battle of harvesting the sun’s energy, solar cells beat plants, according to a new paper in Science. But scientists think they can even up the playing field, says Michigan State University researcher David Kramer.
Plants are less efficient at capturing the energy in sunlight than solar cells mostly because they have too much evolutionary baggage. Plants have to power a living thing, whereas solar cells only have to send electricity down a wire. This is a big difference because if photosynthesis makes a mistake, it makes toxic byproducts that kill the organism. Photosynthesis has to be conservative to avoid killing the organisms it powers. (more…)
*Berkeley Lab scientists decipher immune system for plants beneath our feet*
Those vegetables you had for dinner may have once been protected by an immune system akin to the one that helps you fight disease. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Netherland’s Wageningen University found that plants rely on a complex community of soil microbes to defend themselves against pathogens, much the way mammals harbor a raft of microbes to avoid infections.
The scientists deciphered, for the first time, the group of microbes that enables a patch of soil to suppress a plant-killing pathogen. Previous research on the phenomenon of disease-suppressive soil had identified one or two pathogen-fighting microbes at work. (more…)
More than 500 extrasolar planets–planets that orbit stars other than the sun–have been discovered since 1995. But only in the last few years have astronomers observed that in some of these systems, the star is spinning one way and the planet is orbiting that star in the opposite direction.
“That’s really weird, and it’s even weirder because the planet is so close to the star,” said Frederic A. Rasio, a theoretical astrophysicist at Northwestern University. “How can one be spinning one way and the other orbiting exactly the other way? It’s crazy. It so obviously violates our most basic picture of planet and star formation.” (more…)
A new analysis of data from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft has revealed that beneath the surface of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io is an “ocean” of molten or partially molten magma.
The finding, from a study published May 13 in the journal Science, is the first direct confirmation of such a magma layer on Io and explains why the moon is the most volcanic object known in the solar system. The research was conducted by scientists from UCLA, UC Santa Cruz and the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. (more…)
When NASA’s salt-seeking Aquarius instrument ascends to the heavens this June, the moon above its launch site at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base won’t be in the seventh house, and Jupiter’s latest alignment with Mars will be weeks in the past, in contrast to the lyrics of the song from the popular Broadway musical “Hair.” Yet for the science team eagerly awaiting Aquarius’ ocean surface salinity data, the dawning of NASA’s “Age of Aquarius” promises revelations on how salinity is linked to Earth’s water cycle, ocean circulation and climate.
Salinity – the concentration of salt – on the ocean surface is a key missing puzzle piece in satellite studies of Earth that will improve our understanding of how the ocean and atmosphere are coupled and work in tandem to affect our climate. While satellites already measure sea surface temperature and winds, rainfall, water vapor, sea level, and ocean color, measurements of ocean surface salinity have, until quite recently, been limited to sparse data collected from ships, buoys and a small number of airborne science campaigns. (more…)
*Extinction of fishes 360 million years ago created natural ecology experiment*
In present-day ecology, the removal or addition of a predator in an ecosystem can produce dramatic changes in the population of prey species. For the first time, scientists have observed the same dynamics in the fossil record, thanks to a mass extinction that decimated ocean life 360 million years ago.
What was bad for fish was good for the fish’s food, according to a paper published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers from the University of Chicago, West Virginia University and The Ohio State University found that the mass extinction known as the Hangenberg event produced a “natural experiment” in the fossil record, with results that mirror modern observations about predator-prey relationships. (more…)
*UCLA psychologist helps law enforcement agencies tell truth from deception
When someone is acting suspiciously at an airport, subway station or other public space, how can law enforcement officers determine whether he’s up to no good?
The ability to effectively detect deception is crucial to public safety, particularly in the wake of renewed threats against the U.S. following the killing of Osama bin Laden. (more…)
