Technology – Page 696 – Shamskm: A site to exchange knowledge and solutions

Thawing ‘Dry Ice’ Drives Groovy Action on Mars

PASADENA, Calif. — Researchers using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter see seasonal changes on far-northern Martian sand dunes caused by warming of a winter blanket of frozen carbon dioxide.

Earth has no naturally frozen carbon dioxide, though pieces of manufactured carbon-dioxide ice, called “dry ice,” sublime directly from solid to gas on Earth, just as the vast blankets of dry ice do on Mars. A driving factor in the springtime changes where seasonal coverings of dry ice form on Mars is that thawing occurs at the underside of the ice sheet, where it is in contact with dark ground being warmed by early-spring sunshine through translucent ice. The trapped gas builds up pressure and breaks out in various ways. (more…)

Facebook Activity Reveals Clues to Mental Illness, says MU Researcher

Analysis of social media use could give therapists more complete view of patients’ health

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Facebook activity provided a window into the psychological health of participants in a study at the University of Missouri. Social media profiles could eventually be used as tools for psychologists and therapists, according to study leader Elizabeth Martin, doctoral student in MU’s psychological science department in the College of Arts and Science.

“Therapists could possibly use social media activity to create a more complete clinical picture of a patient,” Martin said. “The beauty of social media activity as a tool in psychological diagnosis is that it removes some of the problems associated with patients’ self-reporting. For example, questionnaires often depend on a person’s memory, which may or may not be accurate. By asking patients to share their Facebook activity, we were able to see how they expressed themselves naturally. Even the parts of their Facebook activities that they chose to conceal exposed information about their psychological state.” (more…)

New Key to Organism Complexity Identified

Berkeley Scientists Find that a Critical Transcription Factor Co-exists in Two Distinct States

The enormously diverse complexity seen amongst individual species within the animal kingdom evolved from a surprisingly small gene pool. For example, mice effectively serve as medical research models because humans and mice share 80-percent of the same protein-coding genes. The key to morphological and behavioral complexity, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests, is the regulation of gene expression by a family of DNA-binding proteins called “transcription factors.” Now, a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley has discovered the secret behind how one these critical transcription factors is able to perform – a split personality. (more…)

UCLA Professor Leads Effort to Protect Africa’s Rainforests from Ravages of Climate Change

UCLA professor Thomas B. Smith will head an international research project investigating the effects of climate change on biodiversity in Central Africa’s rainforests, under a $4.95 million grant from the National Science Foundation. (more…)

Engineered Immune Cells Resist Infection from Hiv and Could Ultimately Replace Drug Therapy

AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the Stanford University School of Medicine have found a novel way to engineer key cells of the immune system so they remain resistant to infection from HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. (more…)

A Material that Most Liquids Won’t Wet

ANN ARBOR — A nanoscale coating that’s at least 95 percent air repels the broadest range of liquids of any material in its class, causing them to bounce off the treated surface, according to the University of Michigan engineering researchers who developed it. (more…)

Technology in the Classroom

UD students use iPads to study the presidential election

Ralph Begleiter and Paul Brewer, professors in the University of Delaware’s Department of Communication, wanted to see if students enrolled in their Road to the Presidency class would pay more attention to the presidential election if media were at their fingertips 24/7. Through a UD Information Technologies (IT) Transformation Grant, iPads were distributed to students enrolled in the course.

“There is something about a student laying their finger on the iPad and discovering what event occurred to make a jump in public opinion popularity occur. It’s that interactivity that makes it a personal experience for the student,” Begleiter observed. (more…)

Keepers of Prometheus: The World’s Oldest Tree

After a nearly 5,000-year vigil upon a Nevada mountaintop, an ancient tree now finds its home in the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. A member of the long-lived Bristlecone pine species, the tree called Prometheus is the oldest individual ever known to have lived. Its age was not accurately known until a few years ago.

On a craggy, windswept peak in a lonely Nevada wilderness stands a grove of old-growth trees. Gnarled and twisted, shaped by the weather and whirling winds into erratic growth forms, their roots have clung to the pebble-strewn mountainside for literally millennia. (more…)