and Technology suggests that in 40 years a hotter planet would cut the yield of corn grown for ethanol in the U s. by an average of 7 percent
Juan C Motamayor from Mars Incorporated and colleagues sequenced the genome of the Matina cacao variety then used genetic analyses
Or the researchers speculate a science fiction idea of a space elevator that could connect an orbiting satellite to Earth by a long cord that might consist of sheets of CVD graphene
The researchers believe that their work could be applied widely helping to identify at-risk species from many different groups and from many regions of the planet.
and orient themselves in relation to the sun. In a new study researchers report that a regulatory gene known to be involved in learning
Since crop production consumes more freshwater than any other human activity on the planet the study has significant implications for addressing the twin challenges of water stress
Such an ultrathin array could save space in small microprocessor-based devices. Further work along these lines could produce such structures as patterned nanotube arrays on diamond that could be utilized in electronic devices Ajayan said.
Through beautiful images of strikingly symmetric stars and triangles hundreds of microns across they have uncovered key insights into the optical and electronic properties of this new material
Rivers of wildebeests zebra and Thompson's gazelles--more than 2 million all told--cross the landscape in one of the largest animal migrations on the planet.
100 of our Planet's Most Amazing New Species (NY Plume 2013. For decades we have averaged 18000 species discoveries per year
At the same time we search the heavens for other earthlike planets we should make it a high priority to explore the biodiversity on the most earthlike planet of them all:
I am shocked by our ignorance of our very own planet and in awe at the diversity beauty and complexity of the biosphere and its inhabitants.
Study contradicts predictions of widespread extinctiona new Dartmouth College study finds human-caused climate change may have little impact on many species of tropical lizards contradicting a host of recent studies that predict their widespread extinction in a rapidly warming planet.
One problem is that the islands are separated by nonmagnetic spaces--some 25-65%of the surface only is magnetic.
The A*STAR-affiliated researchers contributing to this research are from the Data storage Institutestory Source The above story is provided based on materials by The Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR.
and there would be no galaxies stars planets or people said Tim Chupp a University of Michigan professor of physics
Antimatter is rare in the known universe flitting briefly in and out of existence in cosmic rays solar flares and particle accelerators like CERN's Large Hadron Collider for example.
It produces the matter/antimatter asymmetry in the early universe and it aligns the direction of the spin and the charge axis in these pear-shaped nuclei.
Our expectation is that the data from our nuclear physics experiments can be combined with the results from atomic trapping experiments measuring EDMS to make the most stringent tests of the Standard model the best theory we have for understanding the nature of the building blocks of the universe Butler said.
5 stars best available; 4 stars very good; 3 stars good 2 stars adequate; 1 star marginal;
and no star not recommended. Each modern helmet was subjected to all 20 drop tests (four impact locations at five drop heights.
Each vintage leather helmet was subjected to 12 drop tests; the 48-and 60-inch drop tests were undertaken not
because it was feared that accelerations from those heights might damage the head form when covered by vintage helmets.
Drop testing of modern helmets was conducted during an earlier study at which time the modern helmets were assigned star ratings.
six helmets with a four-or five-star rating in the first group and four helmets with a three-star or lower rating in the second group.
Modern helmets with lower star ratings had greater peak accelerations for each drop height than modern helmets with higher star ratings
The approach foresees big changes for one of the planet's great carbon sponges. Boreal forests will likely shift north at a steady clip this century.
Boreal ecosystems encircle the planet's high latitudes covering swaths of Canada Europe and Russia in coniferous trees and wetlands.
The planet's boreal forests won't expand poleward. Instead they'll shift poleward. The difference lies in the prediction that as boreal ecosystems follow the warming climate northward their southern boundaries will be overtaken by even warmer
Climate models divide the planet into gridcells that cover tens or hundreds of square kilometers.
This is a very important and fundamental process of ecosystem renewal around the planet that we really didn't understand says co-senior investigator Joseph P. Noel professor and director of Salk's Jack H. Skirball Center for Chemical
The study found that isoprene once it is altered chemically via exposure to the sun reacts with human-made nitrogen oxides to create particulate matter.
The nanostructured black silicon coating features very low reflectivity meaning that a larger portion of the Sun's radiation can be exploited.
because they were situated between spaces known to contain food and areas without food. Mood can have a huge influence on how the brain processes information.
Spera and Mustard used imaging from NASA's Terra satellite to track land use changes in Mato grosso from 2000 to 2011.
what occurs in human skin after sun exposure. They were also able to show that mushrooms
#Grains of sand from ancient supernova found in meteorites: Supernova may have been the one that triggered the formation of the solar systemit's a bit like learning the secrets of the family that lived in your house in the 1800s by examining dust particles they left behind in cracks in the floorboards.
By looking at specks of dust carried to earth in meteorites scientists are able to study stars that winked out of existence long before our solar system formed.
This technique for studying the stars--sometimes called astronomy in the lab--gives scientists information that cannot be obtained by the traditional techniques of astronomy such as telescope observations or computer modeling.
Now scientists working at Washington University in St louis with support from the Mcdonnell Center for the Space sciences have discovered two tiny grains of silica (Sio2;
the most common constituent of sand) in primitive meteorites. This discovery is surprising because silica is not one of the minerals expected to condense in stellar atmospheres--in fact it has been called'a mythical condensate.'
but because of their isotopic compositions they are thought to originate from AGB stars red giants that puff up to enormous sizes at the end of their lives
instead from a core-collapse supernova a massive star that exploded at the end of its life. Because the grains which were found in meteorites from two different bodies of origin have spookily similar isotopic compositions the scientists speculate in the May 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters that they may have come from a single supernova perhaps even the one
whose explosion is thought to have triggered the formation of the solar system. A summary of the paper will also appear in the Editors'Choice compilation in the May 3 issue of Science magazine.
The first presolar grains are discovereduntil the 1960s most scientists believed the early solar system got so hot that presolar material could not have survived.
But in 1987 scientists at the University of Chicago discovered miniscule diamonds in a primitive meteorite (ones that had not been heated and reworked.
Since then they've found grains of more than ten other minerals in primitive meteorites. Many of these discoveries were made at Washington University home to Ernst Zinner Phd research professor in Physics at Washington University in St louis who helped develop the instruments
and techniques needed to study presolar grains (and the last author on the paper). The scientists can tell these grains came from ancient stars
because they have highly unusual isotopic signatures. Isotopes are different atoms of the same chemical element that have a slightly different mass.
Different stars produce different proportions of isotopes. But the material from which our solar system was fashioned was mixed
and homogenized before the solar system formed. So all of the planets and the Sun have the pretty much the same isotopic composition known simply as solar.
Meteorites most of which are pieces of asteroids have the solar composition as well but trapped deep within the primitive ones are pure samples of stars.
The isotopic compositions of these presolar grains provide clues to the complex nuclear and convective processes operating within stars
which are understood poorly. Even our nearby Sun is still a mystery to us; much less more exotic stars that are incomprehensibly far away.
Some models of stellar evolution predict that silica could condense in the cooler outer atmospheres of stars
but others predict silicon would be consumed completely by the formation of magnesium -or iron-rich silicates leaving none to form silica.
But in the absence of any evidence few modelers even bothered to discuss the condensation of silica in stellar atmospheres.
We didn't know which model was right and which was not because the models had said so many parameters Pierre Haenecour a graduate student in Earth
and Planetary Sciences who is the first author on the paper. The first silica grains are discovered In 2009 Christine Floss Phd research professor of physics at Washington University in St louis
and Frank Stadermann Phd since deceased found the first silica grain in a meteorite. Their find was followed within the next few years by the discovery of four more grains.
or AGB stars Floss said. When Haenecour began his graduate study with Floss she had him look at a primitive meteorite that had been picked up in Antarctica by a U s. team.
Antarctica is prime meteorite-hunting-territory because the dark rocks show up clearly against the white snow and ice.
Haenecour with the Nanosims 50 ion microprobe he used to look for presolar grains in a primitive meteorite.
The silica grain he found is too small to be seen with the unaided eye but the microprobe can magnify it 20000 times to about the size of a chocolate chip.
Haenecour found 138 presolar grains in the meteorite slice he examined and to his delight one of them was a silica grain
which meant it came from a core-collapse supernova not a red giant. He knew that another graduate student in the lab had found a silica grain rich in oxygen-18.
Xuchao Zhao now a scientist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing China found his grain in a meteorite picked up in Antarctica by the Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition.
With two specks to go on Haenecour tackled the difficult problem of calculating how a supernova might have produced silica grains.
Before it explodes a supernova is a giant onion made up of concentric layers dominated by different elements.
A massive star that will explode at the end of its life a core-collapse supernova has layered a structure rather like that of an onion.
Some theoretical models predicted that silica might be produced in massive oxygen-rich layers near the core of the supernova.
amounts of material from the hydrogen envelope of the supernova. In fact Haenecour said the mixing needed to produce the composition of the two grains was so similar that the grains might well come from the same supernova.
Could it have been the supernova whose explosion is thought to have started kick the collapse of the molecular cloud out of which the planets of the solar system formed?
How strange to think that two tiny grains of sand could be the humble bearers of such momentous tidings from so long ago and so far away.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Washington University in St louis. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
and research student Michael Yartsev of the Weizmann Institute's Neurobiology Department published today in Science reveals for the first time how three-dimensional volumetric space is perceived in mammalian brains.
The question of how animals orient themselves in space has been studied extensively but until now experiments were conducted only in two-dimensional settings.
which they launched rats into space (aboard a space shuttle). However although the rats moved around in zero gravity they ran along a set of straight one-dimensional lines.
in order to understand movement in three-dimensional volumetric space it is necessary to allow animals to move through all three dimensions--that is to research animals in flight.
while the experiment required their flights to fill a three-dimensional space. The solution was to be found in a previous study in Ulanovsky's group
when bats arrive at a fruit tree they fly around it utilizing the full volume of space surrounding the tree.
Measuring the activity of hippocampus neurons in the bats'brains revealed that the representation of three-dimensional space is similar to that in two dimensions:
The findings suggest that each place cell responds to a spherical volume of space i e. the perception of all three dimensions is uniform.
because on the one hand humans evolved from apes that moved in three-dimensional space when swinging from branch to branch but on the other hand modern ground-dwelling humans generally navigate in two-dimensional space.
The findings provide new insights into some basic functions of the brain: navigation spatial memory and spatial perception.
Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation the Nature Conservancy Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District Feliadae Conservation Fund and UC Santa cruz
and dried in sun light and sterilization method began with these grains and beans which were roasted on a hot plate to prevent germination.
People Prosperity and Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability. One of the Johns Hopkins student projects focuses on growing large masses of algae to address three sustainability issues:
The University of Cincinnati proved to be an ideal location for Townsend-Small's project thanks to the proximity of the managed green spaces on campus and the natural environment of nearby city parks.
and it's a great research site for us because of the access to urban green spaces Townsend-Small says.
and moregenes from the family of bacteria that produce vinegar Kombucha tea and nata de coco have become stars in a project
The whole universe of virology is divided into two types of viruses--viruses that are enveloped and viruses that are enveloped not.
#NASA flies radar south on wide-ranging expeditiona versatile NASA airborne imaging radar system is showcasing its broad scientific prowess for studying our home planet during a month-long
These studies assist scientists preparing for the launch of NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite in 2014.
#Green pea galaxies could help astronomers understand early universethe rare Green pea galaxies discovered by the general public in 2007 could help confirm astronomers'understanding of reionization a pivotal stage in the evolution of the early universe
Reionization occurred a few hundred million years after the Big bang as the first stars were turning on
During this period the space between the galaxies changed from an opaque neutral fog to a transparent charged plasma as it is today.
As for how this happened the prevailing theory holds that massive stars in the early galaxies produced an abundance of high-energy ultraviolet light that escaped into intergalactic space.
The Green peas are compact highly star-forming galaxies that are very similar to the early galaxies in the universe Jaskot said.
The researchers focused on six of the most intensely star-forming Green pea galaxies which are between one billion and five billion light years away.
and in this case they helped the astronomers understand the relationship between the stars and gas in these galaxies.
and how many stars they contain. The galaxies the researchers determined produced more radiation than the researchers detected so they infer that some of it must have escaped.
source that powers the sun in a laboratory setting. The method known as fast ignition uses lasers capable of delivering more than a petawatt of power (a million billion watts) in a fraction of a billionth of a second to heat compressed deuterium
and just as water resistant as Styrofoam but they won't sit around taking up space in a landfill.
Earth Observatory and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Much of the arid U S. Southwest is expected to get even drier as winter precipitation declines under climate change
which is roughly about the area of the USA--resembling the vegetation that occurs further to the south says Dr. Compton Tucker Senior Scientist NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt Maryland.
and in particular sports stars in advertising unhealthy or High Fat Salt and Sugar (HFSS) products.
This study provides unequivocal evidence of the rapid demise of one of the planet's most charismatic and intelligent species. The world must wake up to stem this destruction of species due to conspicuous consumption.
they need adequate space in which to range normally and they need protection. Unprotected roads most often associated with exploitation for timber
unless it's a much bigger universe than we know. Jon and colleagues'algorithm is actually a practical one.
If the planet continues to warm by 1. 5-to-3. 0 degrees Celsius over the next century as the models predict we need to know not only what the warming will do to plants
#Hunt for distant planets intensifieswhen astronomers discovered planet GJ 1214b circling a star more than 47 light-years from Earth in 2009 their data presented two possibilities.
Either it was a mini-Neptune shrouded in a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium or it was a water world nearly three times the size of Earth.
& astrophysics at the University of Chicago who used a new method called multi-object spectroscopy to analyze the planet s atmosphere from large ground-based telescopes.
and his colleagues are surmounting the challenge of inferring the atmospheric composition of planets that were invisible to humans just a few years ago.#
whether it s like the gas giants we know about or something fundamentally different from what we ve seen in our solar system#an atmosphere predominantly composed of water#Bean said.
The search for exoplanets-planets beyond our own solar system-has taken off over the last decade
and is now a growing component of UCHICAGO s research agenda in astronomy. One estimate published in January calculated that our Milky way galaxy alone contains at least 17 billion Earth-sized planets with a vast potential for life-sustaining worlds.
Pursuing the exoplanet search via complementary methods are Bean and Daniel Fabrycky another assistant professor in astronomy & astrophysics.
Bean has received a 60-orbit allocation on the Hubble Space Telescope to continue his observations on GJ 1214b a sign of the work s importance.
Bean will use a technique called transmission spectroscopy to measure the chemical composition of the planet s atmosphere with unprecedented precision.
A big prizea definitive assessment of the planet s atmosphere could lead to a larger prize:
#If GJ 1214b is a water world#oeit would be very different than anything in our own solar system#said Harvard university astronomy Professor David Charbonneau whose team discovered the planet.
In one prescient passage Bruno wrote#oein space there are countless constellations suns and planets; we see only the suns
because they give light; the planets remain invisible for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns no worse and no less than this globe of ours.#
#Discoveries of new exoplanets have flowed like oil from a gushing wellhead in recent years. The number has topped 850
and continues to climb. Starting in the 1990s exoplanet hunters initially were only able to find giant Jupiter-like gas planets
because they were bigger and thus easier to find.##oethey were closer to their stars than Jupiter is from the sun
so we nicknamed them#hot Jupiters#Charbonneau said. But in recent years scientists began pursuing a new more interesting goal:
find planets that are more Earthlike. One major push along that front was the $600-million Kepler mission launched in 2009.
This mission encompassing a 100-member science team is conducting a survey of planets orbiting other sun-like stars.#
#oekepler is on the cusp of finding small planets in the habitable zone around both sun-like and small stars#Fabrycky said.#
#oethis is the goal of the mission and it s almost there.##A Kepler research veteran Fabrycky began his UCHICAGO faculty appointment last October.
Fabrycky precisely measures the timing of transits the mini eclipses that planets cause as they pass in front of their stars.
Timing inconsistencies in the transits often result from the gravitational influence of other planets. So far Kepler has confirmed 105 planet discoveries to its credit
and has identified 2740 planet candidates. As a postdoctoral scientist at the University of California Santa cruz two years ago Fabrycky was a member of a team that discovered six planets orbiting a single star called Kepler-11.#
#oekepler-11 is hanging on#for the moment#as the one with the most number of planet signals#among exoplanetary systems Fabrycky said.
Bean and his colleagues have made the best observations of planetary atmospheres so far using the Hubble Telescope the Spitzer Space Telescope and in Chile the Very Large Telescope array and the twin Magellan Telescopes.
But the planned Giant Magellan Telescope of which UCHICAGO is a founding partner and the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope should eclipse the capabilities of today s observatories
when they go into service late this decade. The new telescopes will be able to do the same sort of exoplanetary atmospheric studies underway now#oebut actually do it for the smaller planets that might even be said habitable#Charbonneau.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Chicago. The original article was written by Steve Koppes.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length r
#Reduced sea ice disturbs balance of greenhouse gasesthe widespread reduction in Arctic sea ice is causing significant changes to the balance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Normally the white ice reflects sunlight which then bounces out into space but when the sea-ice cover shrinks the amount of sunlight reflected is reduced also.
and weigh the seed for yields this will have tremendous value to the breeding program in terms of saving time space
Yet despite an abundance of seething swamps and flooded forests in the tropics ground-based measurements of methane have fallen well short of the quantities detected in tropical air by satellites.
In an effort to increase production much of the acreage has been converted to sun coffee which involves thinning
Vandermeer suspects that the shift to sun coffee may be contributing to the severity of the latest coffee rust outbreak.
The move to sun coffee results in a gradual breakdown of the complex ecological web found on shade plantations.
One element of that web is the white halo fungus which attacks insects and also helps keep coffee rust fungus in check.
Both the widespread use of pesticides and fungicides and the low level of biodiversity found at sun-coffee plantations have contributed likely to the decline of white halo fungus in recent years Vandermeer said.
Without white halo fungus to restrain it coffee rust also known as roya has been able to ravage coffee plantations from Colombia to Mexico he said.
and the parched grass visible on modern satellite images also suggested its presence Dr Wickstead said.
I was fascinated to see how much information could be gleaned from such a small space he said.
These little open spaces are like pieces of jigsaw puzzle and no one has ever put them all together.
Lee and colleagues found that the planet's greenhouse-icehouse oscillations are a natural consequence of plate tectonics.
Additional co-authors include Yusuke Yokoyama of the University of Tokyo Mark Jellinek of the University of British columbia Jade Star Lackey of Pomona College Tapio Schneider of Caltech and Michael Tice of Texas A&m.
Zimmerer designed this data collection and analysis to use with high-resolution satellite imagery and Geographic Information systems.
#Lungs of the planet reveal their true sensitivity to global warmingtropical rainforests are called often the lungs of the planet
So the trace of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere holds a record of how the lungs of the planet respond
#New retention model explains enigmatic ribbon at edge of solar systemsince its October 2008 launch NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has provided images of the invisible interactions between our home in the galaxy and interstellar space.
The Sun continually sends out a solar wind of charged particles or ions traveling in all directions at supersonic speeds.
As solar wind ENAS leave the solar system the majority move out in various directions never to re-enter.
However some ENAS leave the solar system and impact other neutral atoms becoming charges particles again.
These newly formed pickup ions begin to gyrate around the local interstellar magnetic field just outside the solar system.
From those regions some of those particles return to the solar system as secondary ENAS--ENAS that leave the solar system
and then re-neutralized only to travel back into the solar system as ENAS a second time.
The secondary ENAS coming into the solar system after having been trapped temporarily in a region just outside the solar system do the same thing.
IBEX is the latest in NASA's series of low-cost rapidly developed Small Explorer space missions.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Md. manages the Explorers Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
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