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More Bang for the Biofuel Buck

Berkeley Lab Researchers Combine Old Fermentation Process For Making Explosives with New Chemical Catalysis to Boost Biofuel Production

A fermentation technique once used to make cordite, the explosive propellant that replaced gunpowder in bullets and artillery shells, may find an important new use in the production of advanced biofuels. With the addition of a metal catalyst, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that the production of acetone, butanol and ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass could be selectively upgraded to the high volume production of gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.

Using the bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum, the Berkeley Lab researchers fermented the sugars found in biomass into the solvent acetone and the alcohols butanol and ethanol, collectively known as “ABE” products. They then catalyzed these low carbon number products with the transition metal palladium into higher-molecular-mass hydrocarbons that are possible precursors to the three major transportation fuel molecules. The specific type of fuel molecule produced – whether a precursor to gasoline, diesel or jet – was determined by the amount of time the ABE products resided with the palladium catalyst. (more…)

The Ecology of Voter Signs

Students in Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman’s UA ecology class took to the streets of Tucson last week to lend their eyes and minds to real science.

You might have looked out your kitchen window last week to see a group of college students standing on the sidewalk clutching notepads and contemplating your front yard. If so, don’t worry – they were likely just counting the shrubbery. (more…)

How Do Cells Tell Time? Scientists Develop Single-Cell Imaging to Watch the Cell Clock

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new way to visualize single-cell activity in living zebrafish embryos has allowed scientists to clarify how cells line up in the right place at the right time to receive signals about the next phase of their life.

Scientists developed the imaging tool in single living cells by fusing a protein defining the cells’ cyclical behavior to a yellow fluorescent protein that allows for visualization. Zebrafish embryos are already transparent, but with this closer microscopic look at the earliest stages of life, the researchers have answered two long-standing questions about how cells cooperate to form embryonic segments that later become muscle and vertebrae. (more…)

For College Students, Job Market a Mixed Bag

EAST LANSING, Mich. — As Michigan State University’s Recruiting Trends report shows, college students are experiencing a mixed bag of outcomes when it comes to finding a job.

For some MSU students, like MBA candidate Megan Brody, the job search was short and rewarding. For others, like journalism senior Alex Mitchell, the hunt hasn’t led to any full-time positions.

Mitchell, who graduates in December with a degree in journalism, has sent out about 15 resumes to communications employers in Michigan and Ohio hoping to stay close to his hometown of Blissfield in southeastern Michigan. He said he will continue the process until he gets a job he sees fit. (more…)

Technology in the Classroom

Teaching future educators how to read and write in a new way

Rachel Karchmer-Klein, an associate professor in the University of Delaware’s School of Education, is teaching future educators to read and write multimodal texts, which includes everything from literature on a Kindle or iPad to information on a website.

“With traditional texts we teach students to read left to right, top to bottom, but electronic text is different because it contains multiple modes,” Karchmer-Klein explained. (more…)

Q&A: Assoc. Prof. Christopher Berry discusses rise of women in Congress

One of the most notable outcomes of the Nov. 6 election was the record number of women voted into Congress, including 20 women who will occupy seats in the U.S. Senate.

Christopher Berry, associate professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, recently discussed the effects of the increase in female U.S. senators. Berry co-authored a 2011 study that found congresswomen consistently outperform their male counterparts on several measures of job performance.

What implications will the increase of female representation have for the U.S. Senate?

Potentially of great interest to the constituents of the new female senators is our finding that they consistently bring home more federal projects and federal aid than their male counterparts. When you think about disasters like Hurricane Sandy, the ability to bring home federal aid for rebuilding efforts is really important. It is going to be good for their constituents and the states they represent. (more…)

Genetic Patterns of Deep-Sea Coral Provide Insights into Evolution of Marine Life

Patterns Also Shed Light on How Environmental Disturbances Affect Aquatic Organisms

The ability of deep-sea corals to harbor a broad array of marine life, including commercially important fish species, make these habitat-forming organisms of immediate interest to conservationists, managers, and scientists. Understanding and protecting corals requires knowledge of the historical processes that have shaped their biodiversity and biogeography. (more…)

Climate Change Threatens Giant Pandas’ Bamboo Buffet–and Survival

China’s endangered wild pandas may need new dinner reservations–and quickly, based on models that indicate climate change may kill off swaths of bamboo that pandas need to survive

In this week’s Nature Climate Change, an international journal, scientists from Michigan State University (MSU) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences provide comprehensive forecasts of how changing climate may affect the most common species of bamboo that carpet the forest floors of prime panda habitat in northwestern China. Even the most optimistic scenarios show that bamboo die-offs would effectively cause prime panda habitat to become inhospitable by the end of the 21st century.

The scientists studied possible scenarios of climate change in the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province. At the northern boundary of China’s panda distributional range, the Qinling Mountains are home to about 275 wild pandas, which account for about 17 percent of the remaining wild population. The Qinling pandas, which have been isolated because of thousands of years of human habitation around the mountain range, vary genetically from other giant pandas. The geographic isolation of these pandas makes them particularly valuable for conservation, but vulnerable to climate change. (more…)