It has been 2.3 billion years since Earth’s atmosphere became infused with enough oxygen to support life as we know it. About the same time, the planet became encased in ice that some scientists speculate was more than a half-mile deep. That raises questions about whether complex life could have existed before “Snowball Earth” and survived, or if it first evolved when the snowball began to melt.
New research shows organisms called eukaryotes — organisms of one or more
One of the youngest supernova remnants known, a glowing red ball of dust created by the explosion 1,000 years ago of a supermassive star in a nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, exhibits the same problem as exploding stars in our own galaxy: too little dust.
Recent measurements by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers using infrared cameras aboard NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope show, at most, one-hundredth the amount of dust predicted by current theories
A new understanding of how glass is formed may assist with our understanding of everything from the design of golf club heads to the structure of the early universe.
Princeton chemists have found that the formation of glass — a familiar substance that nonetheless retains some elusive scientific mysteries — always occurs differently depending on how quickly a liquid substance is cooled into its solid form. Though the findings will likely dash the hopes of condensed matter physi
Scientists have gone a long way to solving a question about the nature of plutonium that has remained a mystery since the Manhattan Project.
Plutonium behaves like no other element in nature. The bonding of its electrons causes its crystal structure to be uneven, similar to a mineral, and the nucleus is unstable, causing the metal to spontaneously decay over time and damage the surrounding metal lattice.
A plutonium-gallium alloy ingot reclaimed from a nuclear weapon.
Since their discovery in the late 1970s, microorganisms known as archaea have fascinated scientists with their ability to thrive where no other life can – in conditions that are extremely hot, acidic or salty.
In the 1990s, however, scientists discovered that archaea occur widely in more mundane, low-temperature environments such as oceans and lakes. Now, researchers from the University of Georgia and Harvard University find evidence that these low-temperature archaea might have e
Astronomers have found the largest number of the most distant, youngest galaxy clusters yet, a feat that will help them observe the developing universe when it was less than half its current age and still in its formative stages.
The team of astronomers from the University of Florida, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found nearly 300 new galaxy clusters and groups, including nearly 100 at distances of eight to 10 billion light yea
Up to 2 1/2 times greater risk than cars
Every year Utah children are seriously injured and killed when they’re hit by a vehicle backing out of a driveway. But a child is up to 2 ½ times more likely to be backed over by a minivan or truck than by a car, according to a University of Utah study.
In the first report of its kind, University researchers found children are 2.4 times more likely to be struck by a van and 53 percent more likely to be hit by a truck than by a car.
‘LEGO-Like’ Building Blocks to Halt Cell Growth Wins Kaye Prize for Hebrew University Ph.D. Student
A method for delivery of drugs to targeted cells through the design of specific molecular structures called SIB (Small Integrated Building Blocks) has won a prestigious scientific prize for a Ph.D. student in organic chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Jerusalemite Nir Qvit, 34, will be one of those receiving the Kaye Innovation Award on June 13, during the
A new strategy for getting anti-cancer drugs to kill cancer cells, without causing serious harm to normal cells in the body, is reported in the current [June] issue of ACS Chemical Biology, a monthly peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society.
The approach, tested in laboratory experiments with several existing anti-cancer drugs, could offer substantial benefits for cancer patients, according to Jeffrey P. Krise, Ph.D. Krise led a group of pharmaceutical and medicina
A team of military, telecommunications and surgical experts led by University of Cincinnati (UC) faculty are using an unmanned aircraft and sophisticated communication tools to take the next step toward making “telesurgery” a reality.
Telesurgery is a new approach to surgical care in which a surgeon performs operations using a surgical robot and advanced computer technology on a patient located miles away.
Timothy Broderick, MD, assistant professor of surgery at UC an
Scientists at the University of Chicago have bolstered the case for a popular scenario of the big bang theory that neatly explains the arrangement of galaxies throughout the universe. Their supercomputer simulation shows how dark matter, an invisible material of unknown composition, herded luminous matter in the universe from its initial smooth state into the cosmic web of galaxies and galaxy clusters that populate the universe.
Previous studies by other researchers had already v
Two of the five most important papers published in the 43-year history of the journal Applied Physics Letters were written by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Nick Holonyak Jr., a John Bardeen Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Illinois, was an author of both papers, which span the development of the light-emitting diode to the invention of the transistor laser.
As the American Institute of Physics cele
In the United States, two-thirds of the nonelderly population is covered by employer-provided health care, either directly or as a dependent. In an important new study forthcoming in the July issue of the Journal of Labor Economics, Katherine Baicker (University of California, Los Angeles) and Amitabh Chandra (Harvard University) demonstrate that the rise in health insurance premiums may increase the ranks of the uninsured and the unemployed by as many as 7 million workers.
“Understandin
Chocolate lovers, beware. Each year 20 percent of the cacao beans that are used to make chocolate are lost to plant diseases, but even greater losses would occur if important diseases spread.
“Plant diseases are the most important constraints to cacao production and the continued viability of the world’s confectionary trades,” said Randy Ploetz, plant pathology professor at the University of Florida, Homestead, FL. Currently, 4 million metric tons of beans worth more tha
Plastic surgery patients shouldn’t overlook hands in quest for more youthful appearance
Want to know a person’s real age? Just look at their hands, reports a study in the June issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). According to the study, most people can accurately tell a person’s age by viewing only their hands.
“A primary motivation to have plastic surgery is to look
Beavers, long known for their beneficial effects on the environment near their dams, are also critical to maintaining healthy ecosystems downstream. Researchers have found that ponds created by beaver dams raised downstream groundwater levels in the Colorado River valley, keeping soil water levels high and providing moisture to plants in the otherwise dry valley bottom. The results will be published 8 June in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Cherie
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