University of Minnesota researchers Renata Wentzcovitch and Koichiro Umemoto and Philip B. Allen of Stony Brook University have modeled the properties of rocks at the temperatures and pressures likely to exist at the cores of Jupiter, Saturn and two exoplanets far from the solar system. They show that rocks in these environments are different from those on Earth and have metallic-like electric and thermal conductivity. These properties can produce different terrestrial-type planets, with long
In the search for life on other worlds, scientists can listen for radio transmissions from stellar neighborhoods where intelligent civilizations might lurk or they can try to actually spot planets like our own in habitable zones around nearby stars.
Either approach is tricky and relies on choosing the right targets for scrutiny out of the many thousands of nearby stars in our galactic neighborhood.
Margaret Turnbull, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, ha
To present at AAAS meeting in St. Louis
Consumers who shop online may be risking their privacy with every purchase, contends University of Massachusetts Amherst computer scientist Kevin Fu. His research suggests that a confluence of factors, including the widespread use of cookies and demand for quick and easy transactions, results in Web sites that are often insecure.
“Much Web security rests on illusion and hope,” says Fu, who will discuss how Web sites leak private
The search for El Dorado in the Amazonian rainforest might not have yielded pots of gold, but it has led to unearthing a different type of gold mine: some of the globe’s richest soil that can transform poor soil into highly fertile ground.
That’s not all. Scientists have a method to reproduce this soil — known as terra preta, or Amazonian dark earths — and say it can pull substantial amounts of carbon out of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s
For scientists eying distant planets and solar systems for signs of alien activity, University of Colorado at Boulder Professor Carol Cleland suggests the first order of business is to keep an open mind.
It may be a mistake to try to define life, given such definitions are based on a single example — life on Earth, said Cleland, a philosophy professor and fellow at the NASA-funded CU-Boulder Center for Astrobiology. The best strategy is probably to develop a “general theory of
Protoypes can help designers meet user needs
Before Jeff Hawkins ever started making the original Palm Pilot digital organizer he prototyped it as a block of wood with fake buttons and a paper screen. To this day the Palm Pilot is a successful design of human and computer interaction that remains all too rare, says Stanford computer science Assistant Professor Scott Klemmer. Every time a person uses a computer–a desktop, a cell phone or even a chip-enabled coffee maker–the inter
Tiny fuel cells may provide power to many consumer goods
Carnegie Mellon University’s Prashant Kumta will discuss his novel methanol-powered fuel cell research from 8 to 9:30 a.m., Feb. 18, during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the Renaissance Grand Hotel in St. Louis, Mo.
Kumta, a professor of materials science and biomedical engineering, is developing microscale fuel cells that use methanol instead of expensiv
Red tide impacts increasing for endangered manatees and humans
According to statistics released in January 2006, the year 2005 was the second deadliest on record for Florida’s endangered manatee population. One of the leading causes of fatalities was the toxins produced by “red tide” blooms of the alga Karenia brevis, which appear to be growing increasingly common in Florida. A recently completed collaborative study now suggests a surprisingly tight connection between the ef
First scientific study of wolverines ever conducted in the Pacific Northwest
The closest encounter most wildlife biologists have with wolverines in the Pacific Northwest is seeing a set of the animal’s tracks in the snow. But wildlife biologist Keith Aubry recently got the call he had eagerly anticipated for several weeks.
A member of his research team called from a site high in the northern Cascade Range of Washington to report that a wolverine had just been captured.
Two new research studies on progeria, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, detail the damage a mutant protein does to blood vessel cells of humans and mice. The discoveries offer increased hope for a cure for progeria, a genetic condition fatal in children, but may also provide key insight into the cause of adult heart disease.
In children with progeria, a mutant protein accumulates in blood vessel cells, hampering their ability to grow and multipl
Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin studying electric fish have gained new insight into how memory is stored at the level of neurons.
Their finding, published in the Feb. 16 issue of Neuron, could help researchers better understand memory formation and neural disorders like epilepsy in humans.
Dr. Harold Zakon, Dr. Jörg Oestreich and colleagues show that when electric fish zap each other in dark waters, their neurons store a memory of the sizzling communi
When Voyager 1 finally crossed the “termination shock” at the edge of interstellar space in December 2004, space physicists anticipated the long-sought discovery of the source of anomalous cosmic rays. These cosmic rays, among the most energetic particle radiation in the solar system, are thought to be produced at the termination shock — the boundary at the edge of the solar system where the million-mile-per-hour solar wind abruptly slows. A mystery unfolded instead when Voyager data showed 20 y
Researchers are enlisting seals, sea lions, tunas, and sharks to serve as ocean sensors, outfitting these top predators with electronic tags that gather detailed reports on oceanographic conditions and, in many cases, transmit the data via satellite. The data are proving useful to both biologists and oceanographers, yielding new information about the migrations and behavior of the animals and about the environments in which they live.
“We’re using these animals as ocean sensors
Researchers at Florida State University’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Scripps Florida have developed and evaluated a robust new system for analyzing how drugs bind to proteins. This groundbreaking work could speed the delivery of potential new drugs and improve existing ones.
The work, which appears this week in the journal Analytical Chemistry, is the first published paper to result from a partnership between Scripps and a Florida university.
Scr
A new technique developed by an Indiana University School of Informatics scientist provides a strong shield against identity theft and cyber attacks.
Cybersecurity expert Markus Jakobsson and the start-up RavenWhite Inc., of which Jakobsson is a co-founder, have developed an “active cookie,” a countermeasure designed to protect against online scams such as pharming and man-in-the-middle attacks.
Pharming is obtaining personal or private (usually financial) information thr
The race is on to buy up inexpensive land along coastlines for vacation homes and tourist hotels. But increased development can mean more nutrient rich runoff that threatens the very coral reefs attracting tourists in the first place. David Kline at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and colleagues find that bacteria on coral reefs grow out of control as the level of simple sugars in seawater increases.
“I set up a seawater system at the Smithsonian station in Bocas del
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