or add them up via metric tons of CO2. Rather it sets state-by-state requirements for reducing the power sector's rate of carbon intensity:
They leap between set elements like trained acrobats which in fact they are. While Rise of the Planet of the Apes (released in 2011) relied on stunt people the sequel to the sci-fi reboot has cast Cirque du Soleil performers.
or via genetic algorithms could benefit from the same diversity and convenient mutations that make some living species so resilient.
but the bots would excel as cannon fodder during the early stages of conflict providing intel on alien weapons
Researchers are reporting that a baboon is still alive after receiving a heart transplanted from a pig The Telegraph reports.
Previously when researchers tried to transplant pig hearts into primates the primates'bodies would reject the transplants within six months The Telegraph reports.
and they've been a major barrier to developing pig heart transplants The Telegraph reports. It will be years before pig hearts are ready for human patients
Now that the team has shown pig hearts are able to hang around inside primates safely the next step will be to actually replace baboons'hearts with pig hearts The Telegraph reports.
The Telegraph e
#Here's Why The FDA Is Regulating E-Cigarettesearly today the FDA fter years of saber-rattling roposed new rules to regulate e-cigarettes.
#IBM's Watson Made Me A Kebabyou've probably heard of Watson IBM's super-intelligent supercomputer that dominated on Jeopardy!
not too long ago. Turns out he's not a bad cook either. At South By Southwest IBM has set up a food truck staffed with chefs from the Institute of Culinary Education who are whipping up (strange uncanny surprisingly tasty) daily recipes dreamed up by the machine.
Here's the background. For about two years IBM has been working on a way to harness Watson's data-driven computing into more creative fields--the kinds of things where unlike a game show there's no one right answer.
The first experiment with that has been in the kitchen. By mining a database of freely available online recipes (as well as recipes from professional chefs
and a molecular textbook) and estimating which ingredients might combine for a dish pleasing to a human palate Watson has been creating unlikely culinary works.
and tastiness the company designed an app that can make logical decisions on what might make for a good dish.
A person piloting the app starts with an ingredient; I chose bacon during a demo from IBM Watson Group researcher Patrick Wagstrom.
Because I am in Austin I have been walking and I am hungering for grease.)After that I selected a region opting for something English with influences from another country.
At the food truck in Austin ICE chef Michael Laiskonis a pastry chef by training had Watson select a Vietnamese-themed kebab dish that included apple as determined by an online poll from IBM.
and instructions for the apple kebabs below or check it out at IBM's site. ground pork:
Towering piles of monitors printers and fax machines lined streets and occupied front yards. In a neighboring village women cooked circuit boards curbside in woks and children played atop ash heaps.
but he d succeeded in selling some recycled plastics back to IBM. We could look at a molded section
Several weeks later we chat on the phone and Biddle talks about a development that makes him more optimistic than the promises of British politicians.
Slowly though developers are coming around particularly those that grasp the economic benefits of building with CLT.
But the biggest driving force behind the turn toward wood is a growing awareness among architects and developers about their field s contribution to climate change.
PLOS ONE via io9 E
#Space-Grown Vegetables Are Safe To Eat, Scientists Announcepotluck time! Russian scientists have verified that several plants grown aboard the International Space station are safe to eat Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports.
Via Discovery News y
#Sloth Fur Might Yield New Drugssloths are cute. Take this video of baby sloths being washed:
It also comes as no shock that fungi create chemicals of interest to drug developers as fungi have spawned drugs from penicillin to Lovastatin.
Computer scientists are constantly searching for ways to squeeze ever more bandwidth from communications networks. Now a new approach to understanding a basic concept in graph theory known as vertex connectivity could ultimately lead to communications protocols--the rules that govern how digital messages are exchanged--that coax as much bandwidth as possible from networks.
and computer science and is used to describe the relationship between different objects. Each graph consists of a number of nodes or vertices
But at the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms in Portland Ore. in January Mohsen Ghaffari a graduate student in the Computer science and Artificial intelligence Laboratory at MIT will present a new technique for addressing vertex-connectivity problems.
Noga Alon a professor of mathematics and computer science at Tel aviv University says Ghaffari and his fellow authors have identified the notion that determines the largest achievable flow
and merging multiple large plant databases containing tens of thousands of species largely with the support of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North carolina and Macquarie University in Australia.
Recently satellite companies and engineers from Google have provided Academy researchers with high-resolution satellite images of some of the least explored areas of Madagascar.
They took data from six electronic databases. Cohorts of data were used from the US Europe Japan and Australia.
which includes gene expression profiles for all 29 strains into a publicly available database for other researchers to use
These toxins were isolated from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt. These Bt corn hybrids have been adopted widely because they are exceptional for managing ECB--99.9 percent of larvae are expected to die
when they feed on plants expressing Bt toxins he said. Yet a drawback to using these hybrids has been the high cost of purchasing the seeds
which can decrease potential profits. To understand current ECB populations in Pennsylvania field corn the researchers assessed larval damage in Bt and non-Bt corn hybrids at 29 sites over three years.
Specifically they planted Bt and non-Bt corn hybrids on farm sites across four growing zones in Pennsylvania in 2010 2011 and 2012.
During September of each season they assessed corn borer damage on 400 random plants at each site.
With less ECB damage around non-Bt hybrids in our tests yielded just as well as Bt hybrids so the decline in ECB populations provides an opportunity for growers to generate greater profits by planting high-yielding non-Bt seed
which is much cheaper than Bt seed. Secondarily planting more non-Bt corn will reduce the potential for ECB to develop resistance to Bt toxins as corn rootworms have done in about a dozen states so far.
The team's results appeared in an early online edition of the journal Pest Management Science in December.
In addition to investigating the extent of ECB populations and damage in Pennsylvania the researchers also examined the predictive ability of the Pestwatch network
whether Bt or non-Bt hybrids are right for growers in different parts of the state.
According to Tooker growers planting Bt corn hybrids are required to plant set amounts of non-Bt corn as part of a resistance management plan to help prevent evolution of ECB populations that are resistant
to the Bt toxins expressed in corn hybrids. Based on our results we would tell growers to scout their non-Bt acreage toward the end of the growing season he said.
If they have low ECB populations and Pestwatch reflects low moth captures in their area we would recommend that in the next season they give competitive non-Bt hybrids a try on some of their acres
because they could see better profits from growing non-Bt hybrids. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Penn State.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#New role for milk: Delivering polyphenols with anticancer activitypolyphenols found in tea manifest anticancer effects
and around the Great lakes using a citizen scientist data base--the Project Feeder Watch --which showed that the numbers of three woodpecker species
and tracked them 24/7 via an automated telemetry system on Barro Colorado Island. Agoutis were most active in the daytime.
because the method most commonly used to assess cancer-related behaviors--annual telephone surveys--isn't fine-grained enough to tell researchers which events are influencing respondents'answers.
By mining Google news archives the team found Brazilian news coverage of quitting increased as much as 500 percent immediately after the diagnosis
At the same time Brazilian Google searches related to quitting smoking increased by 67 percent. However long after the media stopped covering Lula's diagnosis the public had forgotten not.
Two weeks after the diagnosis quitting-related Google searches remained 153 percent higher than expected and remained 130 percent and 71 percent higher three and four weeks respectively after Lula's announcement.
Interest in quitting smoking as indicated by Google searches reached its highest recorded level after Lula's diagnosis even
which is controlled not by commercial transgenic hybrids that express Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) Cry1ab but partial control has been observed by corn varieties that express Cry1 F toxins.
Huge grains of copper promote better graphene growthto technology insiders graphene is certified a big deal.
Graphene-based electronics promise advances such as faster internet speeds cheaper solar cells novel sensors space suits spun from graphene yarn and more.
and Technology (NIST) in Boulder Colo. may help bring graphene's promise closer to reality.
While searching for an ideal growth platform for the material investigators developed a promising new recipe for a graphene substrate:
--but their relative bulk enables them to survive the high temperatures needed for graphene growth explained NIST researcher Mark Keller.
The inability of most copper films to survive this stage of graphene growth has been one problem preventing wafer-scale production of graphene devices Keller said.
To demonstrate the viability of their giant-grained film the researchers successfully grew graphene grains 0. 2 millimeters in diameter on the new copper surface.
Onuchic and his team integrated its direct coupling analysis (DCA) method based on genomic databases with structure-based models (SBM) of proteins to produce simulations of how proteins progress through different functional states.
and a public-access Web portal hosted at Oregon State university. The work is expected to accelerate basic and applied research leading to better monitoring
The posting of the genome and comparative sequence analysis on the publicly accessible Spottedwingflybase Web portal could lead to more species-specific weapons to combat the destructive pest Chiu said.
and we hope our efforts in presenting our genomic data in a user-friendly Web portal will democratize the sequence data
The Spottedwingflybase Web portal has drawn more than 3000 page views from 20 countries including the United states France Italy Belgium China Spain Japan Germany and Great britain.
The researchers who report their findings in the online version of the Renewable Energy Journal used databases from the U s. Energy Information Administration to estimate that there are 163000 industrial and commercial boilers in use in the United states. Of those they found that there were 31776
#Delaying resistance to Bt corn in western corn rootwormcorn that contains proteins that protect it from insect damage has been grown in the U s. since the mid-1990s.
Known as Bt corn because the proteins are derived from a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis these plants have been grown widely by farmers.
While Bt corn has been highly effective against the European corn borer it has been less so against the western corn rootworm
which has been documented to show resistance to the Bt proteins. In a new article in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management--an open-access peer-reviewed extension journal--the authors explain why this has occurred
In Resistance to Bt Corn by Western Corn Rootworm (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) in the U s. Corn belt Drs.
Aaron Gassmann (Iowa State university) Michael Gray (University of Illinois) Eileen Cullen (University of Wisconsin) and Bruce Hibbard (University of Missouri) examine why Bt corn has been more effective against the European corn borer
First Bt proteins intended for the European corn borer are produced at a higher dose than the ones intended for rootworms;
which increases the chances of potentially resistant insects mating with non-resistant ones that have not been exposed to Bt proteins;
One approach to IRM is not necessarily optimal for all insect pests according to the authors who recommend that growers use the following IPM approaches to delay further rootworm resistance to Bt corn:
-Occasionally rotate to a non-Bt corn hybrid and consider use of a rootworm soil insecticide during planting.
-Consider using corn that contains different Bt proteins than ones that may have performed poorly in the past. -Consider using pyramided Bt hybrids
which is defined as corn that contains multiple Bt proteins targeting corn rootworm. -If crop rotation is not an option
and corn containing multiple Bt proteins is not available suppression of rootworm adults by using insecticides for one
or two growing seasons may be an appropriate remediation step. -Most importantly implement a long-term integrated approach to corn rootworm management based on scouting information and knowledge of corn rootworm densities that uses multiple tactics such as rotation with other crops
rotation of Bt proteins and the use of soil insecticides at planting with a non-Bt hybrid.
and emissions reduction actions we recommend the establishment of an international database of mitigation and adaptation options that builds upon this European study writes Reckien.
For the new research the scientists were able to tap databases from two well-known ongoing observational studies that collect data on diet and other lifestyle factors and various health outcomes.
In a new study the team of 15 university Google and government researchers reports a global loss of 2. 3 million square kilometers (888000 square miles) of forest between 2000 and 2012
Their study published online on November 14 in the journal Science documents the new database including a number of key findings on global forest change.
The analysis was made possible through a collaboration with colleagues from Google earth Engine who implemented the models developed at UMD for characterizing the Landsat data sets.
Google earth Engine is a massively parallel technology for high-performance processing of geospatial data and houses a copy of the entire Landsat image catalog.
What would have taken a single computer 15 years to perform was completed in a matter of days using Google earth Engine computing.
This mapping database which will be updated annually quantifies all forest stand-replacement disturbances whether due to logging fire disease or storms.
#Meteor Raspberry Pi cluster used to teach parallel computingresearchers at the San diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California San diego have built a Linux cluster using 16 Raspberry Pi computers as part of a program to teach children
Currently the majority of computer science degree curriculums contain relatively few courses in parallel programming and distributed architecture at the undergraduate level and below but the basic concepts aren't difficult said Wagner.
With the start of the Fall 2013 term Wagner in collaboration with Brett Stalbaum a UC San diego researcher specializing in information theory database
A free app called KA Lite can now deliver educational videos and exercises from the popular Khan Academy to anyone in any part of the world thanks to the Foundation for Learning Equality a group of UC San diego undergraduates graduate students
and requires the cooperation of the system's key generator and internet service provider's registration database.
and the internet service provider's registration database and use this data with the message's AFGH re-encryption key to determine the source of the message.
Whereas the treatment for tobacco dependence has typically been delivered in primary care settings linking mental health facilities with state and county tobacco control programs allows smoking cessation education to be incorporated into counseling
but WISE was reactivated recently to hunt asteroids a project called NEOWISE (see http://www. jpl. nasa. gov/news/news. php?
The research is a collaboration between the Nerve-Gut Research Laboratory (University of Adelaide) and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals Inc the developers of Linaclotide.
The research is signed by professors Toni Monleã n-Getino and Martã n RÃ os from the Department of Statistics of the University of Barcelona and experts Oriol Vall Carme Puig Ãcar
Professor Martã n RÃ os states that asthma is caused an illness by several factors (genetic propensity environment food etc.
Toni Monleã n Getino and Martã n RÃ os experts from the Multivariate and Computational Statistical Modelling Research Group of the UB and authors of other epidemiological studies
rivals that of professional forestersas global forest and climate experts gather at the Oslo REDD Exchange 2013 to ramp up international efforts to protect carbon-storing forests in the developing world a recent study
The sequence is accessible online at the Kiwifruit Genome Database. Cornell University has television and ISDN radio studios available for media interviews.
Two genetic loci Bi and Bt are known to confer bitterness in cucumber. In this study researchers found that the Bt locus was delimited to a 442-kb region on chromosome 5 that harbors 67 predicted genes.
They further investigated the genomic basis of divergence among the cultivated populations for identifying genes controlling important traits.
The event spawned a geomagnetic storm that caused telegraph systems in Europe and North america to fail throwing sparks from pylons and even giving some telegraph operators shocks.
The raw results of the tests are sent by cell phone to a central website. Then calculations are made
Remember your initial irritation upon encountering the names YAHOO GOOGLE and WIKIPEDIA for the first time; now they are imprinted in your brain.
#Mix of graphene nanoribbons, polymer has potential for cars, soda, beera discovery at Rice university aims to make vehicles that run on compressed natural gas more practical.
By adding modified single-atom-thick graphene nanoribbons (GNRS) to thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) the Rice lab made it 1000 times harder for gas molecules to escape Tour said.
The researchers acknowledged that a solid two-dimensional sheet of graphene might be the perfect barrier to gas
but the production of graphene in such bulk quantities is not yet practical Tour said. But graphene nanoribbons are already there.
Tour's breakthrough unzipping technique for turning multiwalled carbon nanotubes into GNRS first revealed in Nature in 2009 has been licensed for industrial production.
But the overlapping 200-to 300-nanometer-wide ribbons dispersed so well that they were nearly as effective as large-sheet graphene in containing gas molecules.
The GNRS'geometry makes them far better than graphene sheets for processing into composites Tour said.
Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science at Rice.
The Air force Research Laboratory through the University Technology Corp. the Office of Naval Research MURI graphene program and the Air force Office of Scientific research MURI program supported the research.
That makes it a true one-dimensional material unlike atom-thin sheets of graphene that have a top
and is double that of graphene. Scientists had calculated already it would take an elephant on a pencil to break through a sheet of graphene.*
*It has twice the tensile stiffness of graphene and carbon nanotubes and nearly three times that of diamond.*
*Stretching carbyne as little as 10 percent alters its electronic band gap significantly.**If outfitted with molecular handles at the ends it can also be twisted to alter its band gap.
You could look at it as an ultimately thin graphene ribbon reduced to just one atom
Artyukhov said the nominal specific area of carbyne is about five times that of graphene. Researchers are now taking a more rigorous look at the conductivity of carbyne
#White graphene halts rust in high temps: Nano-thin films of hexagonal boron nitride protect materials from oxidizingatomically thin sheets of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) have the handy benefit of protecting
One or several layers of the material sometimes called white graphene keep materials from oxidizing
They also grew h-BN on graphene and found they could transfer sheets of h-BN to copper and steel with similar results.
However most of this Bt corn has been used for animal feed or processed into corn meal starch or other products.
Due to pressure from activist groups some grocery stores have refused to carry Bt sweet corn. However a new study published in the Journal of Economic Entomology suggests that Bt sweet corn is better for the environment
because it requires fewer pesticide applications than conventional corn. Our data suggest that using Bt sweet corn will dramatically reduce the use of traditional insecticides the authors wrote.
Based on the performance of Bt field corn growers should realize increased profits and there will be less risk to nontarget organisms including natural enemies that help suppress pest densities.
The study Multi-State Trials of Bt Sweet corn Varieties for Control of the Corn earworm (Lepidoptera:
Noctuidae) analyzed the performance of Bt sweet corn comparing its rate of infestation and marketability to genetically identical varieties that lacked Bt proteins.
In 2010 and 2011 sweet corn trials were conducted in New york Minnesota Maryland Ohio and Georgia locations that differ in climate management practices and pest pressure.
The authors found that for pest management of the corn earworm Bt sweet corn consistently performed better than its non-Bt counterparts even those that were sprayed with conventional insecticides.
Across multiple states and multiple years Bt sweet corn performed better and required fewer sprays to meet market standards said Cornell entomology professor Anthony Shelton.
One of the most spectacular examples occurred in New york plots in 2010: the Bt sweet corn had 99 to 100 percent marketable ears without any sprays
and even with eight conventional insecticide sprays the non-Bt corn had only 18 percent marketable ears.
This wasn't much better than the 6 percent marketable ears produced in the plots that received no sprays at all.
The authors predict that growers could realize increased profits with Bt sweet corn because of lower inputs and higher marketability while simultaneously conserving populations of beneficial insects that keep damaging pests at bay.
The use of Bt vegetables could significantly reduce the use of conventional insecticides and in turn reduce occupational and environmental risks that arise from intensive insecticide use Shelton said.
even if you hope to excel in one sport and playing different sports definitely helps with that said Rosenbaum who has been a team physician for the U s. Soccer Federation's under-20
However until recently scientists believed that growing the high density of tiny graphene cylinders needed for many microelectronics applications would be difficult.
#African caterpillars resistant to GM maizelike many other transgenic crops Bt maize synthesises its own pesticide:
Notwithstanding the success of these strategies IRD scientists and their South african partners have revealed now that a major pest of maize the moth Busseola fusca has developed an unusual defense mechanism against Bt toxin in South africa.
and should go beyond the simple implementation of refuges for Bt-susceptible moths. Bt maize and resistance developmentgenetically engineered maize is created by introducing a gene into the plant genome that expresses a toxic protein from a bacterium i e.
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt. Both the leaves and stems of Bt maize produce this toxin which destroys the gut of any moth larvae eating the plant.
The technique is effective and unlike wide spectrum pesticides it only targets larvae of moths.
However sooner or later insect species may be able to develop a mechanism of resistance against any pesticides.
Bt maize is not fundamentally different in this regard and in order to delay the evolution of resistance in pest populations the concept of maintaining refuges for Bt susceptible moths was developed.
Non-Bt maize fields are protecting Bt maize fieldsthe refuge strategy consists of planting a small proportion of land with non-Bt maize;
the aim being to maintain pockets of insects that remain susceptible to the toxin. In line with other known cases of Bt-resistance resistance in Busseola fusca was expected to involve modification of the cells in the gut wall
which prevents the toxin from binding. Crucially this type of adaptation is inherited recessively: both parents must be resistant to produce fully resistant offspring.
Since the probability of resistant individuals arising in the field is low any resistant insects surviving on Bt maize will mate with one of the many Bt-susceptible individuals originating from the refuge area
and their progeny will not survive in the Bt-maize field. This tactic has been successful especially in North america where the first Bt maize has been planted
since 1995 with resistance yet to develop among lepidopteran pests. The exception to the rulehowever about seven years after Bt maize was introduced to South africa in the late 1990's scientists observed resistant Busseola fusca caterpillars
and more importantly these resistant insects seemed to reproduce and spread rapidly. To explain this phenomenon scientists in South africa together with IRD researchers crossed resistant South african moths with susceptible moths imported from Kenya where Bt maize is commercialized not yet.
The offspring developed perfectly on Bt maize and were as resistant as the South african resistant parents.
Unlike everything known so far this resistance evolved in the field was inherited as a dominant trait.
A likely new resistance mechanismthis result shows for the first time that resistance to Bt maize can be inherited in a dominant rather than recessive way.
Implicationsin South africa most farmers are still cultivating single-toxin Bt maize. In many cases they need to apply at least one pesticide spray which makes planting of Bt varieties less attractive.
As a result of the study the planting of refuges needs to be reconsidered in South africa and a possibility exists that the refuge strategy may totally change in the future.
In the medium term single-toxin Bt maize is being replaced progressively by a stacked variety producing two different toxins
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