*Feeding habits haven’t always been what they are today*
The feeding habits of mammals haven’t always been what they are today, particularly for omnivores.
Some groups of mammals almost exclusively eat meat–take lions and tigers and other big cats as examples.
Other mammals such as deer, cows and antelope are predominantly plant-eaters, living on a diet of leaves, shoots, fruits and bark. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— A year after the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, scientists and engineers remain largely in the dark when it comes to fundamental knowledge about how nuclear fuels behave under extreme conditions, according to a University of Michigan nuclear waste expert and his colleagues.
In a review article in this week’s edition of the journal Science, U-M’s Rodney Ewing and two colleagues call for an ambitious, long-term national research program to study how nuclear fuels behave under the extreme conditions present during core-melt events like those that occurred at Fukushima following the March 11, 2011, magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. (more…)
*Berkeley Lab Researchers Developing Promising Treatment for Safely Decontaminating Humans Exposed to Radioactive Actinides*
The New York Times recently reported that in the darkest moments of the triple meltdown last year of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese officials considered the evacuation of the nearly 36 million residents of the Tokyo metropolitan area. The consideration of so drastic an action reflects the harsh fact that in the aftermath of a major radiation exposure event, such as a nuclear reactor accident or a “dirty bomb” terrorist attack, treatments for mass contamination are antiquated and very limited. The only chemical agent now available for decontamination – a compound known as DTPA – is a Cold War relic that must be administered intravenously and only partially removes some of the deadly actinides – the radioactive chemical elements spanning from actinium to lawrencium on the periodic table – that pose the greatest health threats. (more…)
New images from the Planck mission show previously undiscovered islands of star formation and a mysterious haze of microwave emissions in our Milky Way galaxy. The views give scientists new treasures to mine and take them closer to understanding the secrets of our galaxy.
Planck is a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation. (more…)
*Geologists learn how earthquakes change the landscape — down to a few inches*
Geologists have a new tool to study how earthquakes change the landscape–down to a few inches. It’s giving scientists insights into how earthquake faults behave.
In this week’s issue of the journal Science, a team of scientists from the United States, Mexico and China reports the most comprehensive before-and-after picture yet of an earthquake zone, using data from the magnitude 7.2 event that struck near Mexicali, Mexico, in April 2010. (more…)
Researchers from North Carolina State University, Sandia National Laboratories, and the University of California, San Diego have developed new technology that uses microneedles to allow doctors to detect real-time chemical changes in the body – and to continuously do so for an extended period of time.
“We’ve loaded the hollow channels within microneedles with electrochemical sensors that can be used to detect specific molecules or pH levels,” says Dr. Roger Narayan, co-author of a paper describing the research, and a professor in the joint biomedical engineering department of NC State’s College of Engineering and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (more…)
*Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Develop CAD-Type Tools for Engineering RNA Control Systems*
The computer assisted design (CAD) tools that made it possible to fabricate integrated circuits with millions of transistors may soon be coming to the biological sciences. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have developed CAD-type models and simulations for RNA molecules that make it possible to engineer biological components or “RNA devices” for controlling genetic expression in microbes. This holds enormous potential for microbial-based sustainable production of advanced biofuels, biodegradable plastics, therapeutic drugs and a host of other goods now derived from petrochemicals. (more…)
AUSTIN, Texas — A team of astronomers including Karl Gebhardt and graduate student Jeremy Murphy of The University of Texas at Austin have discovered the most massive black holes to date — two monsters weighing as much as 10 billion suns and threatening to consume anything, even light, within a region five times the size of our solar system.
The research is published in the Dec. 8 issue of the journal Nature in a paper headlined by graduate student Nicholas McConnell and professor Chung-Pei Ma of the University of California, Berkeley. (more…)
