GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Blueberry wine can provide more potentially healthy compounds than white wines and many red wines, according to a new University of Florida study.
Researchers with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences measured antioxidant content in a Florida-produced blueberry wine and compared it to published reports of antioxidant content in white and red wines made from grapes. Antioxidants are compounds that may offer cells protection from damaging molecules called free radicals. (more…)
*The U’s active learning biology courses garner attention*
What if you could remove lead from a person’s blood with a bacterial protein that snags the toxic metal?
Or treat spinal cord injury by shutting off a gene that prevents nerve regrowth?
Ideas like these used to be the exclusive province of practicing biologists. But they are among 14 ideas conceived and presented recently by students in the University of Minnesota’s introductory biology course.(more…)
Deforestation, considered by scientists to contribute significantly to global warming, has been shown by a Yale-led team to actually cool the local climate in northern latitudes, according to a paper published Nov. 17 in Nature.
“If you cut trees in the boreal region, north of 45 degrees latitude, you have a net cooling effect,” says Xuhui Lee, the study’s principal investigator and professor of meteorology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “You release carbon into the atmosphere by cutting down trees, but you increase the albedo effect — the reflection of sunlight.” (more…)
*Three members of Bing’s social search team chat with Microsoft News Center about working in the exciting technological frontier of search – and what they do when they’re not hard at work.*
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Sean Suchter’s last name is a misspelling of the German word for searcher, which has to be one of the greater aptronyms in the technology industry.
Suchter heads up Bing’s social search team on Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus, where he relishes his job as a frontiersmen in the field of search, particularly social search. (more…)
*New research has found that hurricane activity is ‘clustered’ rather than random, which has important long-term implications for coastal ecosystems and human population.*
The research was carried out by Professor Peter Mumby from The University of Queensland Global Change Institute and School of Biological Sciences, Professor David Stephenson and Dr Renato Vitolo (Willis Research Fellow) at the University of Exeter’s Exeter Climate Systems research centre.
Tropical cyclones and hurricanes have a massive economic, social and ecological impact, and models of their occurrence influence many planning activities from setting insurance premiums to conservation planning. (more…)
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida has the world’s worst invasive amphibian and reptile problem, and a new 20-year study led by a University of Florida researcher verifies the pet trade as the No. 1 cause of the species’ introductions.
From 1863 through 2010, 137 non-native amphibian and reptile species were introduced to Florida, with about 25 percent of those traced to one animal importer. The findings appear online today in Zootaxa. (more…)
*Outstanding educators using technology are recognized for their contribution and impact in teaching.*
REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 1, 2011 — Microsoft Corp. today announced 11 educators from Alabama, Alaska, California, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Washington who have been selected as winners of the 2011 U.S. Innovative Education Forum (IEF). The IEF is an event recognizing innovative teachers and school leaders who creatively and effectively use technology in their curriculum to help improve the way kids learn while increasing student success. Out of the thousands that applied, 100 educators from 25 states were selected for a spot to compete on Microsoft’s corporate campus in Redmond. IEF participants also voted on their peers in the Educator’s Choice category and selected a winning project. The winning educators will represent the U.S. and advance to compete against educators from around the world at the Partners in Learning Global Forum, Nov. 6–11, 2011 in Washington, D.C. (more…)
Southern California’s high desert has been a stand-in for Mars for NASA technology testing many times over the years. And so it is again, in a series of flights by an F/A-18 aircraft to test the landing radar for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission.
The flight profile is designed to have the F/A-18 climb to 40,000 feet (about 12,000 meters). From there, it makes a series of subsonic, stair-step dives at angles of 40 to 90 degrees to simulate what the Mars radar will see while the spacecraft is on a parachute descending through the Martian atmosphere. The F/A-18 pulls out of each dive at 5,000 feet (about 1,500 meters. Data collected by these flights will be used to finesse the Mars landing radar software, to help ensure that it is calibrated as accurately as possible.(more…)
