Tag Archives: national science foundation

Facebook Helps Researchers See How Friendships Form

By Guest PostDecember 21, 2011Culture, Technologyadvertising, basic building blocks, classical, diffusion, emotional health, Facebook, friends, friendship, harvard university, influence, internet, internet and society, internet relationships, jason kaufman, jazz, kevin lewis, marco gonzalez, mechanisms, national science foundation, network, obesity, online social network, patterns of social segregation, relationships, reproduction of inequality, role, society, sociologists, statistical methods

*Long-term study analyzes social selection and peer influence in online environments*

New research funded by the National Science Foundation and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by three Harvard University sociologists examines how we select our friends and the role that friendship plays in transmitting tastes and new ideas.

Relationships are basic building blocks of society, and understanding who befriends whom can therefore provide insight into patterns of social segregation, mechanisms for the reproduction of inequality, social support (including mental and emotional health), and access to job opportunities. Some have even viewed these relationships as a means to influence behavior whether to control obesity or target advertising. But is it really that easy, even on the Internet, to make friends with people who have different cultural upbringings, different interests, different backgrounds and different tastes in movies, music and books? (more…)

Close Family Ties Keep Microbial Cheaters in Check, Study Finds

By Guest PostDecember 16, 2011Scienceamoebae, Antarctica, canopies, clonal lineage, cosmopolitan groups, david queller, deserts, dicty, dictyostelium discoideum, e coli, evolution, forest park, genes, jennie kuzdzal fick, joan strassmann, kissing kin, life cycles, multicellular organisms, mutation, national science foundation, obligate cheaters, sam scheiner, sara fox, single cell, slime mold, social amoeba, st. louis, tropical forests, washington university

*Experiments on “slime mold” explain why almost all multicellular organisms begin life as a single cell*

Any multicellular animal, from a blue whale to a human being, poses a special challenge for evolution.

Most of the cells in its body will die without reproducing; only a privileged few will pass their genes to the next generation.

How could the extreme degree of cooperation required by multicellular existence actually evolve? Why aren’t all creatures unicellular individualists determined to pass on their own genes? (more…)

Evidence Emerges of Ancient Lake in California’s Eel River

By Guest PostNovember 15, 2011Environment, Scienceairborne light detection and ranging, ancient landslide, benjamin mackey, california institute of technology, catastrophic landslide, dam burst, diverse phenomena, ecological changes, eel river, gene flow, genetic introgression, genetic trajectories, genetics of steelhead trout in the eel river, geological history, global positioning systems, gps, humboldt county, interbreeding, joshua roering, lakebed, late pleistocene, lidar, michael lamb, modern landslide hazard, mountainous region, national science foundation, northern california, pacific ocean, paul cutler, populations, remote sensing technology, steelhead trout, university of oregon

*Ecological changes from lakebed may have led to two different populations of once-related steelhead trout*

A catastrophic landslide 22,500 years ago dammed the upper reaches of northern California’s Eel River, forming a 30-mile-long lake which has since disappeared. It left a living legacy found today in the genes of the region’s steelhead trout.

Using remote-sensing technology known as airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and hand-held global-positioning-systems (GPS) units, scientists recently found evidence for a late Pleistocene, landslide-dammed lake along the river. (more…)

Pine Island Glacier: A Scientific Quest in Antarctica to Determine What’s Causing Ice Loss

By Guest PostNovember 10, 2011EnvironmentAntarctica, bismarck, cold, glacier, glacier melt, global sea level rise, harsh, hazards, ice shelf, international polar year, ipy, logistics hub, mcmurdo station, models to predict glacier acceleration, NASA, national science foundation, north dakota, nsf, ocean cavity shape, ocean currents, oceanographic instruments, pine island glacier, pine island glacier ice shelf, project, ross island, scott borg, sea-level rise, stormy climate, united states antarctic program, warmer ocean water, Washington

*Researchers study heat delivered by ocean currents to bottom side of glacier that releases more than 19 cubic miles of ice each year*

An international team of researchers, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA, will helicopter onto the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, one of Antarctica’s most active, remote and harsh spots, in mid-December 2011–weather permitting.

The project’s mission is to determine how much heat ocean currents deliver to the underside of the Pine Island Glacier as it discharges into the sea. Quantifying this heat and understanding how much melting it causes is key to developing reliable models to predict glacier acceleration and therefore predict how much ice will be delivered from land into the ocean thus contributing to sea level rise. (more…)

Link Between Air Pollution and Cyclone Intensity in Arabian Sea

By Guest PostNovember 5, 2011Environmentabcs, aerosol, air pollution, amato evan, anjuli bamzai, arabian sea, arabian sea cyclones, atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns, atmospheric brown clouds, atmospheric concentrations of pollutants, biomass, chul eddy chung, climate, climatological vertical wind shear, cyclone gonu, cyclone phet, diesel emissions, gujarat, gulf of oman, gwangju institute of science and technology, himalayan glacial melting, India, iran, james p kossin, lpg fuel, monsoon season, national science foundation, oman, Pakistan, pollution, rainfall patterns in south asia, scripps institution of oceanography, sea surface temperatures, south korea, storms, university of virginia, veerabhadran ramanathan, wind shear patterns

*Disruption of wind shear enables stronger storms*

Pollution is making Arabian Sea cyclones more intense, according to a study in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.

Traditionally, prevailing wind shear patterns prohibit cyclones in the Arabian Sea from becoming major storms.

The Nature paper suggests that weakening winds have enabled the formation of stronger cyclones in recent years–including storms in 2007 and 2010 that were the first recorded storms to enter the Gulf of Oman. (more…)

NSF Announces Major Awards for Biodiversity Research, WHOI Scientists Selected

By Guest PostNovember 1, 2011Sciencealvin, bigelow laboratory for ocean sciences, biogeochemical cycling of carbon, biogeochemistry, biologist, bosun patrick hennessy, catie craver, chemist, chemosynthesis, China, crab spa, craig taylor, deep sea hydrothermal vent, deep sea vent microbial communities, dimensions in biodiversity research, east pacific rise, ecosystems, france, Germany, hydrothermal vents, jeff seewald, mclane research laboratories, microbial interaction, microbiology, nadine le bris, national science foundation, nitrogen, photosynthesis, ramunas stepanauskas, rv atlantis, scientist, seaman kevin threadgold, stefan sievert, sulfur, woods hole oceanographic institution

The 1977 discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems that obtain energy through chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis greatly expanded the perception of life on Earth. However, an understanding of their underlying microbiology and biogeochemistry still remains elusive.

A newly funded project, one of several major awards announced by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Dimensions in Biodiversity research program, stands to change that through a multi-disciplinary, international collaborative research effort led by Associate Scientist Stefan Sievert of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (more…)

Geoscientists Find Key to Why Some Patients Get Infections from Cardiac Implants

By Guest PostOctober 26, 2011Health, Scienceamericans, antibiotics, atomic force microscopy, bacteria adhere to mineral surfaces, bacterial and human proteins, bacterial cells, biofilm, biofilm formation, biofilm of persistent bacteria, blood infection bacteremia, charles darwin, common human blood protein, contaminated device, deadly blood infection, defibrillators, duke university medical center, enriqueta barrera, eric taylor, fibronectin, fibronectin binding protein a, gene mutations, genetic variants, geobiologists, heart implants, human body, implanted cardiac devices, infections, l barth reller, molecular dynamics simulations, nadia casillas ituarte, national science foundation, ohio state university, pacemakers, patients with implants, prosthetic cardiac valves, proteins of infectious bacteria, ruchirej yongsunthon, single nucleotide polymorphisms, snips, snps, solid substrate, staph bacteria, staphylococcus aureus, steven lower, supaporn lamlertthon, united states, vance fowler

*Bacterial cells have gene mutations that allow them to ‘stick’ to the devices*

New research suggests that some patients develop a potentially deadly blood infection from their implanted cardiac devices because bacterial cells in their bodies have gene mutations that allow them to stick to the devices.

Geoscientists were the major contributors to the finding.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the study results online this week. (more…)

Manufacturing Goes Viral

By Guest PostOctober 22, 2011Sciencealzheimer, amyloid aggregation in our brain tissues, bacteria hunting virus, berkeley laboratory, bioengineering laboratories, biological helical nanofiber structures, biological tissues in nature, biomimetic, chiral materials, chiral strands, coax viruses, collagens for animals and celluloses for plants, corneas, e coli, Environment, environmental variables, escherichia coli, filamentous viruses, helical ribbons, hierarchical level of complexity, induce polarization, joseph akkara, m13, m13 phages, macroscale structures, national science foundation, Nature, periodic changes in cell activity, physical environment, ramen noodle like, range of the spectrum, seung wuk lee, skin, skin tissue, structural building blocks for materials, substrate, supramolecular structures, synthetics with microstructures, teeth, tissue regeneration and repair, university of california at berkeley, wavelengths, wavy, woo jae chung, zina deretsky

*Researchers coax viruses to assemble into synthetics with microstructures and properties akin to those of corneas, teeth and skin*

Using a simple, single-step process, engineers and scientists at the University of California at Berkeley recently developed a technique to direct benign, filamentous viruses called M13 phages to serve as structural building blocks for materials with a wide range of properties.

By controlling the physical environment alone, the researchers caused the viruses to self-assemble into hierarchically organized thin-film structures, with complexity that ranged from simple ridges, to wavy, chiral strands, to truly sophisticated patterns of overlapping strings of material–results that may also shed light on the self-assembly of biological tissues in nature. (more…)