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Study Reveals Arab American Views on Organ Donation

By Guest PostJanuary 23, 2011Culture, Scienceaasim i padela, arab american community, arab americans, arabic language, arabic media, arabs, christian arab americans, detroit arab american study, muslim arab americans, organ donation, positive organ donation beliefs, Social networking, university of michigan

*New University of Michigan research shows higher education, religion, income levels influence Arab American support of organ donation*

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – U.S. organ procurement organizations looking to increase donation rates among Arab Americans can turn to new University of Michigan Health System research for recruitment ideas.

U-M researchers identified various factors – from education and income levels to gender and religion – that may predict how members of this population view organ donation, says lead study author Aasim I. Padela, M.D., an emergency physician and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the U-M Health System. (more…)

NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft

By Guest PostJanuary 23, 2011Scienceairborne telescopes, atmosphere, crater, earth, ed stone, icy rings, magnetic north, Miranda, mysterious seventh planet, NASA, neptune, saturn, south poles, Space, stars, suzanne dodd, uranian equator, uranus, voyager 2 spacecraft, voyager spacecraft

As NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft made the only close approach to date of our mysterious seventh planet Uranus 25 years ago, Project Scientist Ed Stone and the Voyager team gathered at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to pore over the data coming in.

Images of the small, icy Uranus moon Miranda were particularly surprising. Since small moons tend to cool and freeze over rapidly after their formation, scientists had expected a boring, ancient surface, pockmarked by crater-upon-weathered-crater. Instead they saw grooved terrain with linear valleys and ridges cutting through the older terrain and sometimes coming together in chevron shapes. They also saw dramatic fault scarps, or cliffs. All of this indicated that periods of tectonic and thermal activity had rocked Miranda’s surface in the past. (more…)

New Device May Revolutionize Computer Memory

By Guest PostJanuary 21, 2011Science, Technologydouble floating-gate, flash drives, server farms, unified device, volatile devices

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new device that represents a significant advance for computer memory, making large-scale “server farms” more energy efficient and allowing computers to start more quickly. (more…)

A Nanoscale Rope, and Another Step Toward Complex Nanomaterials That Assemble Themselves

By Guest PostJanuary 19, 2011Scienceblock copolymer, molecular scale, nanoscale ropes, nanoscale wires, synthetic polymers

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have coaxed polymers to braid themselves into wispy nanoscale ropes that approach the structural complexity of biological materials. (more…)

Improved Measurements of Sun to Advance Understanding of Climate Change

By Guest PostJanuary 17, 2011Environment, Scienceamount of energy, anthropogenic causes of climate change, calibration facility, climate change, climate respond, earth, global temperature, global warming, greg kopp, industrial revolution, judith lean, laboratory, NASA, optical design, planet, satellite data, solar fluctuations, solar irradiance, solar radiation and climate experiment spacecraft, sorce, spacecraft easurements, sun, tim, total irradiance monitor, total solar irradiance, tsi, tsi value

WASHINGTON — Scientists have taken a major step toward accurately determining the amount of energy that the sun provides to Earth, and how variations in that energy may contribute to climate change.

In a new study of laboratory and satellite data, researchers report a lower value of that energy, known as total solar irradiance, than previously measured and demonstrate that the satellite instrument that made the measurement—which has a new optical design and was calibrated in a new way—has significantly improved the accuracy and consistency of such measurements. (more…)

Spacecraft Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter into Space

By Guest PostJanuary 14, 2011Scienceantimatter, antimatter particles, beams, earth, egypt, electric fields, energy, fermi gamma ray space telescope, fermi spacecraft, gamma ray, joseph dwyer, light, michael briggs, NASA, phenomenon, scientists, seattle, spacecraft, steven cummer, storm, terrestrial gamma ray flash, tgf, thunderstorms, zambia

WASHINGTON — Scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 such flashes occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected. (more…)

Why Coffee Protects Against Diabetes

By Guest PostJanuary 13, 2011Health, Scienceamerican diabetes association, biological activity, body, brian chen, cancer, cardiovascular disease, coffee, coffee consumption, david geffen, decaffeinated coffee, diabetes, estrogen, gene, julie buring, molecular mechanism, morning elixir, mutation, non coffee drinkers, plasma levels, protective effect, protein, sex hormone binding globulin, sex hormones, shbg, simin liu, testosterone, tolerance to insulin, type 2 diabetes

*Researchers discover molecular mechanism behind drink’s prophylactic effect*

Coffee, that morning elixir, may give us an early jump-start to the day, but numerous studies have shown that it also may be protective against type 2 diabetes. Yet no one has really understood why.

Now, researchers at UCLA have discovered a possible molecular mechanism behind coffee’s protective effect. A protein called sex hormone–binding globulin (SHBG) regulates the biological activity of the body’s sex hormones, testosterone and estrogen, which have long been thought to play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes. And coffee consumption, it turns out, increases plasma levels of SHBG. (more…)

‘Hot-Bunking’ Bacterium Recycles Iron to Boost Ocean Metabolism

By Guest PostJanuary 13, 20111 commentSciencebiochemical trick, biogeochemistry, carbohydrates, crocosphaera watsonii, cyanobacteria, ecosystem dynamics, essential nutrient, frederica valois, hot-bunking bacterium, marine bacterium, marine microbes, nitrogen, organic nitrogen, photosynthetic enzymes, whoi, woods hole oceanographic institution

In the vast ocean where an essential nutrient—iron—is scarce, a marine bacterium that launches the ocean food web survives by using a remarkable biochemical trick: It recycles iron.

By day, it uses iron in enzymes for photosynthesis to make carbohydrates; then by night, it appears to reuse the same iron in different enzymes to produce organic nitrogen for proteins. (more…)

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