Promising results of soil treatments to sequester carbon lead to field tests
In a novel approach to stalling global warming while reinvigorating nutrient-depleted farmland, chemists have found they can promote soil’s natural ability to soak up greenhouse-gas carbon dioxide from the surrounding air.
Experiments led by Jim Amonette at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., and reported today at the American Chemical Societ
In this week’s issue of Science, a Dartmouth researcher comments about a new experiment that brings us closer to connecting the macroscopic and the microscopic worlds.
Miles Blencowe, a quantum theorist with the Physics and Astronomy Department at Dartmouth, wrote the article “Nanomechanical Quantum Limits” for the “Perspectives” section of the April 2 issue of Science. In it, he explains the problem of reconciling the inherent contradiction between the quantum or atomic world and the
Lab discovers way to keep short-lived catalysts active for longer than five months
Enzymes, the workhorses of chemical reactions in cells, lead short and brutal lives. They cleave and assemble proteins and metabolize compounds for a few hours, and then they are spent.
This sad fact of nature has limited the possibilities of harnessing enzymes as catalytic tools outside the cell, in uses that range from biosensing to toxic waste cleanup.
To increase the enzyme’s lon
Black hole fits inside Earth’s orbit
Thirty years after astronomers discovered the mysterious object at the exact center of our Milky Way Galaxy, an international team of scientists has finally succeeded in directly measuring the size of that object, which surrounds a black hole nearly four million times more massive than the Sun. This is the closest telescopic approach to a black hole so far and puts a major frontier of astrophysics within reach of future observations. The scien
Scientists have generated and begun to analyze the rat genome, paving the way for comparisons with the two other mammalian genomes sequenced so far — human, and mouse. The primary results of the Rat Genome Sequencing Project Consortium (RGSPC) are presented in the April 1 issue of Nature, and an additional thirty manuscripts describing further detailed analyses are contained in the April issue of the journal Genome Research.
The cover image of Genome Research (see end of release) was produ
UK plans for Grid computing changed gear this week. The pioneering European DataGrid (EDG) project came to a successful conclusion at the end of March, and on 1 April a new project, known as Enabling Grids for E-Science in Europe (EGEE), begins. The UK is a major player in both projects, providing key staff and developing crucial areas of the technology. While EDG tested the concept of large-scale Grid computing, EGEE aims to create a permanent, reliable Grid infrastructure across Europe.
Gr
In a study of Han Chinese patients, researchers have for the first time directly linked a gene of the immune system to a severe adverse drug reaction called Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS), according to a Duke University Medical Center medical geneticist and collaborators in Taiwan.
The sometimes fatal condition is characterized by a blistering rash that can lead to detachment of the skin and inflammation of the gastrointestinal and respiratory lining. More than 100 drugs — including antibi
Patterns in nature can be seen every day, yet in many cases, little is understood about how and why they form. Now University of Arizona mathematicians have found a way to predict natural patterns, including fingerprints and the spirals seen in cacti.
UA graduate student Michael Kuecken developed a mathematical model that can reproduce fingerprint patterns, while UA graduate student Patrick Shipman created a mathematical model to explain the arrangement of repeated units in various plants.
Work could lead to improved machine vision systems, more
MIT scientists are reporting new insights into how the human brain recognizes objects, especially faces, in work that could lead to improved machine vision systems, diagnostics for certain neurological conditions and more.
Look at a photo of people running a marathon. The lead runners’ faces are quite distinct, but we can also make out the faces of those farther in the distance. Zoom in on that distant runner, how
When the gene, called Foxm1b, was deleted from liver cells in laboratory mice, the animals failed to develop tumors. Even when the researchers attempted to induce the formation of these tumors artificially, using a standard laboratory technique, the mice remained cancer free.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time a gene has been directly linked to the growth of cancer cells in live animals,” said Robert Costa, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics in the UIC College of Medicine
New studies by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers at The Rockefeller University show that the appetite-regulating hormone leptin causes rewiring of neurons in areas of the brain that regulate feeding behavior.
The discovery is another important clue about how leptin exerts its effects on the brain to cause decreased food intake and increased energy expenditure, said the researchers. The research also suggests that natural variability in the “wiring diagrams” of the neural feeding ci
Protein molecules that help maintain a healthy body temperature, electrolyte balance, respiration, heart rate, and other critical functions, also appear to regulate weight and fertility, according to Yale researchers.
STAT3 proteins are regulatory molecules that signal cell functions for activating genes. When the STAT3 molecules are disrupted in mice, the animals either die before they are born, or overeat and become obese, diabetic and infertile, according to the study published in the Pro
Scientists have discovered that the heart of a carp keeps beating when it is starved of oxygen for five days. “This is the first time that a vertebrate heart has been shown to survive such prolonged periods without oxygen and actually keep beating at the same rate as when oxygen is available” says Jonathan Stecyk (Simon Fraser University), presenting his latest results at the annual SEB meeting in Edinburgh this week.
“If I were to take oxygen away from your heart it would die in two minutes
How molecules are linked together to form liquid water is the subject of a groundbreaking study due to appear Thursday, Apr. 1 in Science magazine’s advance publication web site Science Express. The investigation entitled The Structure of the First Coordination Shell in Liquid Water summarizes the results of an international collaboration headed by researchers at Stockholm University and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California. The international team of researchers, which also inv
Innovation for People-this is what the project “Design for Well-Being” at Luleå University of Technology is all about. If people’s needs can be captured and carefully considered, then technology can help us feel better. This is the basic approach that is guiding eleven of the students in this year’s version of the course titled SIRIUS-Creative Product Development. Together with students from Stanford University and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, they are developing a wheelchair
Scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research are developing new plant breeding techniques which can improve the efficiency of cow digestion and reduce pollution at the same time. Grass isn’t the easiest food to digest, and even cows appear to have difficulty doing it efficiently. Dr. Alison Kingston-Smith and Mrs. Rosalind Shaw will present results at the SEB annual meeting at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh outlining how selective plant breeding can improve the amount of p
Feedback
