Lithium-ion battery packs are expected to last the lifetime of the trucks as much as 150000 miles for the drive cycles tested.
and Molecular Medicine Laboratory developed a pig model that closely mimics the human gastric environment.
#oepigs have greater anatomic physiologic and immunologic similarities to humans than mice the main animal model used in biomedical research said Raquel Hontecillas co-director of the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine
and waterways by agricultural chemicals as well as carbon costs because of vehicles and artificial fertiliser necessary to maintain the pasture.
While we applaud China's rapid development in clean energy we must be cautious about this simultaneous high-carbon leapfrogging.
but scientifically simplistic perception that biofuels such as ethanol are inherently carbon neutral meaning that the heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas emitted
Decicco's direct carbon accounting examines carbon sources and sinks (storage sites such as forests or crop fields) separately an approach that lends greater clarity about options for addressing carbon dioxide emissions from liquid fuels.
Neutral particles from space travel through the electrons and ions in the solar boundary and swap electrons with the plasma inside the boundary to generate another highly energized hydrogen atom called an energetic neutral atom (ENA.
It's the IBEX satellite that's the hawk mapping the whole of space from its Earth orbit based on energetic neutral particles that stream in to it from outer space.
Eric has sophisticated the most model to address energetic neutral atoms and the ability to use them to probe the physics of the very local interstellar medium and its magnetic field.
and his team have completed the first comprehensive genomic analysis of the molecular changes behind that adaptation.
#Densest array of carbon nanotubes grown to datecarbon nanotubes'outstanding mechanical electrical and thermal properties make them an alluring material to electronics manufacturers.
The high density aspect is overlooked often in many carbon nanotube growth processes and is an unusual feature of our approach says John Robertson a professor in the electronic devices
High-density forests are necessary for certain applications of carbon nanotubes like electronic interconnects and thermal interface materials he says.
Robertson and his colleagues grew carbon nanotubes on a conductive copper surface that was coated with co-catalysts cobalt and molybdenum.
In microelectronics this approach to growing high-density carbon nanotube forests on conductors can potentially replace
In the future more robust carbon nanotube forests may also help improve thermal interface materials battery electrodes and supercapacitors.
Previously wood had to be dried coated with carbon and put under a high vacuum to be studied at the nanolevel.
and ultimately the rate at which carbon is cycled as it is returned to the atmosphere. In wood products the sealed wood fiber cells are
Acid rain forms when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides--gases produced from the burning of fossil fuels--react with water molecules in the air.
and collagen-like Yarger and his team had to examine the biopolymers tiny molecular structures that serve as the building blocks for the silk using the Biocars sector 14 at the Argonne National Laboratory-based APS.
The crystalline structures in the silk are so small that Yarger says it is impossible to look at the molecular makeup of the silk with conventional X-rays.
They found that at the molecular level caddisfly silk differs greatly from other terrestrial spun silks such as those from spiders or silkworms.
Caddisfly silk is phosphoratelated meaning that after the amino acid chain that makes up the silk is created phosphate molecules bond to the chain.
and then using one of the world's most powerful light sources to examine the molecular structure of its muscle movement in real time.
when a moth flaps its wings a bit of a tug of war is happening at a molecular level.
At a molecular level a moth's muscle is not very different than a human's meaning that elastic energy may serve a much larger role in human muscle function than researchers previously thought.
#Plant community plays key role in controlling greenhouse gas emissions from carbon rich moorlandsdifferent moorland plants particularly heather
The findings published this week in the journal Ecology Letters show valuable carbon stores which lie deep below peaty moorlands are at risk from changes in climate
But the study found that the make-up of the plant community could also play a key role in controlling greenhouse gas emissions from these carbon rich ecosystems as not all vegetation types respond in the same way to warming.
This means that the way we manage peat land vegetation will strongly influence the way that peat land carbon sink strength responds to future climate change.
when looking at how global change affects carbon cycling she added. Otherwise a vital part is missing--the biology is a key ingredient.
If this is true then we can expect similar responses in other carbon rich systems in the Arctic and Boreal regions.
or soil particles blow in the air. Practices such as washing food well before eating and covering soils with mulch can help decrease these risks.
#Massive carbon credit sale announced in Madagascarthe Government of Madagascar and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today that 705588 carbon credits are certified for sale from the Makira Forest REDD+Project.
WCS estimates that it will prevent the release of more than 32 million tons of CO2 over the next thirty years.
Through carbon credit sales from avoided deforestation the Makira REDD+Project will finance the long-term conservation of one of Madagascar's most pristine remaining rainforest ecosystems harboring rare and threatened plants and animals
This sale is a major step forward for the Government of Madagascar in advancing the use of carbon credits to fight climate change
REDD+is an international framework that assigns a financial value to the carbon stored in forests offering compensation to developing countries for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation while investing in low-carbon paths
REDD+additionally includes the role of conservation sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
Along with its benefits to wildlife the sale will directly benefit local communities living around the protected area by allocating 50 percent of the net revenues of carbon sales to improve local infrastructure provide health
Thus the sale of carbon stored in the protected forests of Makira Natural Park provides a significant financial opportunity for Madagascar.
The sale of these carbon credits has triple bottom-line benefits; it helps wildlife local people
and fights climate change said Todd Stevens Vice president of the Makira Carbon Company a nonprofit subsidiary of WCS.
and verified by the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and has received a'Gold'level validation by the Climate Community and Biodiversity Alliance.
Scientists estimate that up to 17 percent of annual carbon emissions--more that the entire U s. generates each year--are caused by destruction of forests especially in tropical areas.
and is perceived to hold little value for timber carbon or biodiversity. Dr Struebig Lecturer in Biological Conservation from DICE explains:'
and characterized a new organism that will help scientists understand the molecular mechanisms and ancestral genetic toolkit that enabled animals
Genomic analyses of single cell organisms that are specifically related to multicellular lineages often provide clues to understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in the evolution of multicellular life.
and molecular data to examine the risks of E coli O157 transmission from cattle to humans
Similar environmentally extended input-output models combined with life cycle impact assessment methods have been used to calculate carbon footprints
#Tropical forest carbon absorption may hinge on an odd couplea unique housing arrangement between a specific group of tree species
The findings suggest that the role of tropical forests in offsetting the atmospheric buildup of carbon from fossil fuels depends on tree diversity particularly in forests recovering from exploitation.
carbon sink or carbon-storage capacity. Tracts of land that were pasture only 12 years before had accumulated already as much as 40 percent of the carbon found in fully mature forests.
Legumes contributed more than half of the nitrogen needed to make that happen the researchers reported.
These fledgling woodlands had the capacity to store 50 metric tons of carbon per hectare (2. 47 acres)
Though the legumes'nitrogen fertilizer output waned in later years the species nonetheless took up carbon at rates that were up to nine times faster than non-legume trees.
By nurturing bigger healthier trees that take up more carbon legumes have realized a newly importance when it comes to influencing atmospheric carbon dioxide said second author Lars Hedin a Princeton professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and the Princeton Environmental Institute.
Scientists have recently put numbers on how much carbon forests as a whole absorb with a recent paper suggesting that the world's forests took up 2. 4 quadrillion tons of carbon from 1990 to 2007.
Tropical forests are a huge carbon sink. If trees could just grow and store carbon you could have a rapid sink
but if they don't have enough nitrogen they don't take up carbon said Hedin adding that nitrogen-fixing trees are uncommon in temperate forests such as those in most of North america and Europe.
Legumes are a group of plants that perform a valuable function but no one knew how much they help with the carbon sink Hedin said.
This work shows that they may be critical for the carbon sink and that the level of biodiversity in a tropical forest may determine the size of the carbon sink.
First author Sarah Batterman a postdoctoral research associate in Hedin's research group said legumes
or nitrogen fixers are especially important for forests recovering from agricultural use logging fire or other human activities The researchers studied 16 forest plots that were formerly pasture
Computer models that calculate the global balance of atmospheric carbon dioxide also must factor in sinks that offset carbon such as tropical forests.
And if forests take up carbon differently depending on the abundance and diversity of legumes models should reflect that variation she said.
and improve predictions about the carbon sink Batterman said. Batterman and Hedin worked with Michiel van Breugel an STRI postdoctoral fellow;
Other research has shown that deep-rooted productive Brachiaria grasses capture large amounts of atmospheric carbon--on a scale similar to that of tropical forests--a further plus for climate change mitigation.
#Carbon farming schemes should consider multiple cobenefitscarbon markets and related international schemes that allow payments to landholders for planting trees sometimes called carbon farming are intended to support sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere.
But they will have harmful effects such as degrading ecosystems and causing food supply problems if other benefits and disbenefits from revegetating agricultural landscapes are taken not also into account in land-use decisions according to an article published in the October issue of Bioscience.
Brenda B. Lin of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and her colleagues assessed a variety of ways that people have attempted carbon farming.
Simple maximization of profit can lead landholders accessing carbon markets to create monoculture plantations which do not support biodiversity
--and revegetation of marginal or crop land can sequester carbon while also yielding a broad spectrum of environmental benefits.
Lin and her colleagues urge organizers of carbon farming schemes to move beyond a carbon-only focus
The protein is strongly insecticidal to the cotton bollworm an important agricultural pest according to research published September 11 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Glenn King and Maggie Hardy from the Institute of Molecular
It will have far-reaching consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage. To test whether trees are migrating northward having faster turnover
and colleagues present first evidence of a functional interaction between an important class of signaling molecule called A g protein which binds receptors and an unexpected class of cell-surface receptors.
Using chemistry's latest analytical tools Collins'team found that a single whiskey sample can contain hundreds of nonvolatile compounds the ones that tend to stay in the liquid rather than evaporate off.
Added up across multiple samples the number of compounds comes to about 4000 total a scientific testament to the complex molecular mingling that occurs as a spirit ages sometimes for decades in a 53-gallon oak barrel.
and other compounds that infuse flavors of vanilla caramel and others. Lastly how long a spirit ages plays an important role in its final character.
Of the thousands of compounds in the resulting products the scientists narrowed the field down to 50 to 100 contributors including fatty acids alcohols
#Calculating the carbon footprint of Californias productsnow that California's greenhouse gas cap -and-trade policy is law attention is shifting to recognizing industry efficiency.
The methods to calculate the carbon intensity of individual products--from tomato paste and milk to beer and wine--will help California more accurately determine the number of allowances allocated to these manufacturing facilities.
Some genes in the cuticle for instance produce substances that tear apart the molecular backbone of insecticides rendering them harmless.
#Interstellar winds buffeting our solar system have shifted directionscientists including University of New hampshire astrophysicists involved in NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission have discovered that the particles streaming into the solar system from interstellar space have changed likely direction over the last 40 years.
The data from the IBEX spacecraft show that neutral interstellar atoms are flowing into the solar system from a different direction than previously observed.
Interstellar atoms flow past Earth as the interstellar cloud surrounding the solar system passes the sun at 23 kilometers per second (50000 miles per hour.
IBEX and Ulysses directly measured neutral helium atoms as they coursed through the inner solar system.
and plays an important role for the water and carbon balance including greenhouse gases. Even though it was clear that major problems were occurring in Mongolia in the past 20 years researchers were uncertain
when they are immature they may contain low levels of many of volatile compounds and therefore will not have the characteristic blueberry flavor.
Dr. Dickinson's research currently focuses on how sulforaphane--a naturally occurring compound in broccoli with established chemopreventive properties--could possibly be used to help patients reduce their risk for skin cancer.
if the compound is effective in the context of solar simulated light. Previous studies have shown that the extract is quite safe for both topical and oral administration.
if biorefineries receive money in the form of carbon credits for reducing pollution incentives for farmers should be included in contracts
but the biorefinery gets carbon credit for those sustainable practices. This should be worked into the contract--that
Rice chemist Lon Wilson and his colleagues are inserting bismuth compounds into single-walled carbon nanotubes to make a more effective contrast agent for computed tomography (CT) scanners.
Wilson said his team's studies showed stem cells readily absorb Bi@US-tubes without affecting their function The cells adjust over time to the incorporation of these chunks of carbon
Bismuth ions appear to get into the nanotubes by capillary action and we think we can improve on the process to at least double the contrast maybe more he said.
In particular researchers have struggled to find an electrolyte which conducts ions between a battery's electrodes that won't break down
while allowing ions to pass through). Our innovation has been to identify an unconventional electrolyte/separator system that remains stable at high temperatures Ajayan said.
The researchers analyzed the stable carbon isotopes within each tree ring as a recorder of physiological changes through time.
Nippert's Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at Kansas State university analyzed the samples. Researchers analyzed tree rings back to the early 1900s when sulfur dioxide deposition throughout the Ohio river Valley began to increase.
and whether trees stored less carbon as a result of winter injury U s. Forest Service and University of Vermont scientists came up with a surprising result--three decades later the canary is feeling much better.
and had a significant impact on carbon storage. They also found something they did not expect.
The study Quantifying the legacy of foliar winter injury on woody aboveground carbon sequestration of red spruce trees was published earlier this year in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.
and his colleagues also answered the question they set out to answer--how did the foliar damage associated with the 2003 winter injury affect carbon storage?
and resulted in cumulative reductions across the landscape equivalent to the carbon produced by burning 280 million gallons of gasoline.
According to the researchers this type of forest is a unique carbon sink containing the most abundant land carbon stocks on the planet.
Old-growth forests sequester carbon pollution and support the world's most diverse ecosystems. Mill Creek is an old-growth forest located in Del Norte Calif. in a geographically limited coastal redwood forest bioregion
and often debilitating osteoarthritis. The researchers found that mice fed a diet rich in the compound had significantly less cartilage damage
The researchers discovered that sulforaphane blocks the enzymes that cause joint destruction by stopping a key molecule known to cause inflammation.
if the compound got into joints in sufficient amounts to be effective and their findings are published today in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.
because it is about how diet might work in osteoarthritis. Once you know that you can look at other dietary compounds which could protect the joint
whether the compound has altered joint metabolism and if it can be detected in the replaced joints.
#New technique for measuring tree growth cuts down on research timetree growth is measured to understand tree health fluxes in carbon sequestration and other forest ecosystem functions.
The swamps provide vital ecosystem functions like carbon storage and water purification. We wanted to be able to look at how baldcypress trees respond to changes in their environment such as differences in temperature water salinity
#Oxygen-generating compound shows promise for saving tissue after severe injurythe same compound in a common household clothes detergent shows promise as a treatment to preserve muscle tissue after severe injury.
Researchers at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine hope the oxygen-generating compound could one day aid in saving
SPO is a combination of sodium carbonate and hydrogen peroxide molecules. In the presence of water it decomposes into oxygen and other salts.
Our surprising finding was that even after exercising isolated leg muscles in the absence of oxygen the muscles injected with the SPO compound could generate 20 percent more force than untreated muscles said Harrison.
and within the body is the first to demonstrate that an oxygen-generating compound helps preserve muscle function
The major implication of these findings is that oxygen-generating compounds can potentially reduce the magnitude of the permanent functional deficits resulting from traumatic injury to muscle said George Christ Ph d. co-author and professor of regenerative medicine at Wake Forest Baptist.
Over time spans of 25 to 60 years two-thirds of the rivers had become significantly more alkaline
and agricultural fertilizers speed up the dissolving of surfaces that are naturally high in alkaline minerals.
and even concrete sidewalks dissolving alkaline particles that wash off into streams and rivers. Scientists have studied the effects of increased chemical weathering in small mountain streams tainted by acid runoff where the process can actually help rebalance streams'ph levels.
But we're also seeing antacid compounds increasing downriver. And those sites are not acidic
Much of the Eastern U s. is also underlain by porous alkaline limestone and other carbonate rocks making the region more prone to the types of water chemistry changes that the researchers found.
The researchers also found that the chemical weathering of these carbonate rocks adds to the carbon burden in rivers
Much of modern agriculture relies on biologically available nitrogenous compounds made by an industrial process developed by German chemist Fritz Haber in 1909.
because that's where the energy-storing ATP molecules are produced. In effect the goal is to convert all crop plants not just the legumes into nitrogen fixers.
Amazing cycling chemistryall cyanobacteria photosynthesize storing the energy of sunlight temporarily in ATP molecules and eventually in carbon-based molecules but only some of them fix nitrogen.
During the day the cells photosynthesize as fast as they can storing the carbon molecules they create in granules.
Then during the night they burn the carbon molecules as fast as they can. This uses up all the oxygen in the cell creating the anaerobic conditions needed for nitrogen fixation.
However a growing concern is that these particles could pose a potential health risk to humans and the environment.
and the smaller particles were able to penetrate the skin and reach the pear pulp.
This will have a major impact on how carbon escapes from cow pats into the atmosphere. You see the important thing here is not just how much carbon is released explains Tomas Roslin head of the research team.
The question is rather in what form it is released. If carbon is first taken up by plants as carbon dioxide then emitted in the same format by the cows eating the plants then the effect of plants passing through cattle will be small in terms of global warming.
But if in the process the same carbon is converted from carbon dioxide to methane--a gas with a much higher impact on climate--it is then that we need to worry.
If the beetles can keep those methane emissions down well then we should obviously thank them
The coal waste contains chemical elements that can be ionised by the biofertiliser making nutrients which are essential to growth available for uptake by the plants.
and the carbon concentration is lowered. The overuse of chemical fertilisers causes the soil to lose both its ability to hold water
The proportion of these compounds correlated with antioxidant properties of the fruit extracts when experimentally tested.
The authors conclude Such fruits can provide a source of new bioactive compounds with functional properties beneficial to health which should stimulate the pharmaceutical
According to Johnson the scientists'in vitro study in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research is the first to show that apigenin treatment can lead to an increase in interleukin 17s in pancreatic cells showing its potential relevance in anti-pancreatic cancer activity.
A plant cell wall mainly consists of lignin and sugar molecules such as cellulose. Cellulose can be converted to glucose
Lignin is a kind of cement that embeds the sugar molecules and thereby gives firmness to plants.
Unfortunately lignin severely reduces the accessibility of sugar molecules for biofuel production. The lignin cement has to be removed via an energy-consuming and environmentally unfriendly process.
Increasing insight into this process can lead to new strategies to improve the accessibility of the cellulose molecules.
#Options for molecular imaging expandeda Rice university laboratory has improved upon its ability to determine molecular structures in three dimensions in ways that challenge long-used standards.
By measuring the vibrations between atoms using femtosecond-long laser pulses the Rice lab of chemist Junrong Zheng is able to discern the positions of atoms within molecules without the restrictions imposed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging.
The technique can capture the structure of molecules at room temperature or very low or high temperatures and in many kinds of samples including crystals powders gels liquids and gases.
and Oak ridge National Laboratory analyzed variations of a model molecule 4#-methyl-2#nitroacetanilide (MNA) and compared the results with computer-generated and XRD models.
But the one-of-a-kind spectrometer developed by Zheng uses very short laser pulses to read the vibrational energies inherent to every atom.
Those energies determine how atoms bond to form a molecule and a measurement of the length and angles of those bonds can be extracted from the vibrations themselves he said The infrared
and terahertz lasers used for the experiment captured information about a molecular angle in a mere 100 femtoseconds.
The important part of this paper is to demonstrate that our method can determine three-dimensional molecular structures no matter
Typically when organic chemists synthesize a molecule they know its makeup but have no idea
Their first option is to make a single crystal of the molecule and use XRD to determine the precise structure.
But the trouble with many molecules is the solubility is really bad. Insoluble molecules can't be read well by either method.
The Rice technique dubbed multiple-dimensional vibrational spectroscopy is able to capture the conformation of small molecules--for starters--with great accuracy Zheng said.
The spectrometer reads only intramolecular interactions among vibrations and ignores interactions between molecules he said.
The atoms in every molecule are always vibrating and each bond between atoms vibrates at a certain frequency
and in a certain direction he said. We found that if we can measure the direction of one vibration
and already know through Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy how many vibrational frequencies are contained in a given molecule.
For now as a proof of concept Zheng and his team analyze molecules for which the structure is known already.
Over time the technique should be able to analyze much larger molecules like viruses that contain thousands
or tens of thousands of atoms he said. This is just the first demonstration that this method works he said.
These are simple molecules 23 or 24 atoms. I think it will take some time to get to proteins.
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