Physicists at the University of Chicago and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, are uncovering the fundamental physical laws that govern the behavior of cellular materials.
“We don’t have any tools or formalism to think about these types of materials, and that’s what we’ve been trying to go after,” said Margaret Gardel, professor in physics at UChicago. Gardel and Jennifer Ross of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, are supported in this work by a four-year, $800,000 INSPIRE grant from the National Science Foundation. (more…)
The fibrous threads helping mussels stay anchored – in spite of waves that sometimes pound the shore with a force equivalent to a jet liner flying at 600 miles per hour – are more prone to snap when ocean temperatures climb higher than normal.
Emily Carrington, a University of Washington professor of biology, reported Saturday (Feb. 16) that the fibrous threads she calls “nature’s bungee cords” become 60 percent weaker in water that was 15 degrees F (7 C) above typical summer temperatures where the mussels were from. She spoke at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston. (more…)
Hosted by world-renowned astrophotographer Adam Block at the UA’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, a group of sky and astronomy enthusiasts watched Venus cross the sun from the highest vantage point in Southern Arizona.
On Nov. 24, 1639, in the tiny village of Much Hoole not far from Liverpool, England, a poor farmer’s son and self-taught astronomer affixed a sheet of paper in front of a makeshift telescope pointed at the sun and waited.
Thirty-five minutes before sunset, a dark, round spot appeared right next to the bright disc that was the sun’s face projected on the paper, and made Jeremiah Horrocks, only 20 years old at the time, the first known human to predict, observe and record a transit – the passage of a planet across the sun as seen from Earth.
Almost 373 years later, a group of sky enthusiasts is gathered beneath the dome of one of the University of Arizona’s observatories on Mount Lemmon just north of Tucson, Ariz. (more…)
