Science360 News Service: Combined

Accurate Distance Measurement Resolves Major Astronomical Mystery

Fri, 24 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Sometimes astronomy is like real estate -- what's important is location, location, and location. Astronomers have resolved a major problem in their understanding of a class of stars that undergo regular outbursts by accurately measuring the distance to a famous example of the type. The researchers used the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array and the European VLBI Network to precisely locate one of the most-observed variable-star systems in the sky -- a double-star system called SS Cygni -- at 370 light-years from Earth. This new distance measurement meant that an explanation for the system's regular outbursts that applies to similar pairs also applies to SS Cygni.

Image credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Breathing Space

Fri, 24 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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The U.S. flag flutters over holes built into the roof of the dome of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The five circular holes provide ventilation, preventing heat buildup that would melt ice on the interior, threatening the structures below. This enormous dome is geodesic in design and provides shelter for several smaller buildings located underneath it.

Image credit: National Science Foundation, USAP

Pinpointing How Nature's Benefits Link To Human Well-Being

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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The things that people take from nature -- water, food, timber, inspiration, relaxation -- are so abundant, nature’s benefits seem self-evident. At least until you try to quantitatively understand how and to what extent they contribute to human well-being. In today's world, where competition for and degradation of natural resources is increasing globally, it becomes ever more crucial to quantify the value of ecosystem services -- the precise term that defines nature's benefits -- and even more important to link how different types of ecosystem services affect various components of human well-being. Scientists at Michigan State University's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, in two parallel papers published in this week's journal PLOS ONE, develop an entirely new integrated approach to quantify both human dependence on ecosystem services and human well-being so as to promote the understanding of the linkages between them -- an important step toward improved understanding, monitoring and management of coupled human and natural systems.

Image credit: Thinkstock

Miniature Spider Species Discovered

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Two minute spider species have been newly discovered in Sichuan and Chongqing, China. The tiny spiders are both less than 2 mm in length, with Trogloneta yuensis being as little as 1.01 mm and Mysmena wawuensis (shown at left) measuring 0.75 mm, which earns it the distinction of being among the smallest spiders known. The two species described in the open access journal Zookeys both have a bizarre morphology, with a disproportionately large spherical posterior section.

Image credit: Shuqiang Li

Thunderstorm In Mato Grosso, Brazil

Wed, 22 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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A thunderstorm looms over a soybean field at Tanguro Ranch in Mato Grosso, Brazil. This location was the primary field site of a study by Brown University researchers of three soybean-growing regions -- the state of Iowa, Mato Grosso in Brazil and Buenos Aires in Argentina -- that focused on the relationship between soils and phosphorus, a key agricultural nutrient. While the scarcity of phosphorus is a concern, the overuse of it can pose another problem: harmful algal blooms in waterways. "Too much, and our waterways are choked with algae; too little, and we cannot produce enough food," said Stephen Porder, assistant professor of biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown and co-author of the study.

Image credit: Christopher Neill, Marine Biological Laboratory

Amazon River Exhales Virtually All Carbon Taken Up By Amazon Rain Forest

Wed, 22 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Until recently people believed much of the rain forest’s carbon floated down the Amazon River and ended up deep in the ocean. However, a new study has shown that bacteria digest the woody plant matter floating in the river and cause the release of huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.

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The Amazon rain forest, popularly known as the lungs of the planet, inhales carbon dioxide as it exudes oxygen. Plants use carbon dioxide from the air to grow parts that eventually fall to the ground to decompose or get washed away by the region’s plentiful rainfall. Until recently people believed much of the rain forest’s carbon floated down the Amazon River and ended up deep in the ocean. University of Washington research showed a decade ago that rivers exhale huge amounts of carbon dioxide – though left open the question of how that was possible, since bark and stems were thought to be too tough for river bacteria to digest. A study published this week in Nature Geoscience resolves the conundrum, proving that woody plant matter is almost completely digested by bacteria living in the Amazon River, and that this tough stuff plays a major part in fueling the river’s breath.

Image credit: NASA

Principles Of Ant Locomotion In Confined Spaces Could Help Robot Teams Work Underground

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Ants in confined spaces use their antennae for locomotion as well as for sensing the environment, according to scientists.

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Future teams of subterranean search and rescue robots may owe their success to the lowly fire ant, a much-despised insect whose painful bites and extensive networks of underground tunnels are all-too-familiar to people living in the southern United States. By studying fire ants in the laboratory using video tracking equipment and X-ray computed tomography, researchers have uncovered fundamental principles of locomotion that robot teams could one day use to travel quickly and easily through underground tunnels. Among the principles is building tunnel environments that assist in moving around by limiting slips and falls, and by reducing the need for complex neural processing. Among the study's surprises was the first observation that ants in confined spaces use their antennae for locomotion as well as for sensing the environment.

Image credit: Gary Meek, Georgia Tech

It's Weigh-In Time

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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A mother giant petrel watches while her baby is weighed by U.S. Antarctic Program participant Ryan Wallace. Program participants assist scientific research in the Palmer Station area. Giant petrels can reach almost 40 inches in length (100 cm) with wingspans reaching 80 inches (205 cm). Bird surveys are conducted to track population numbers, size, and other characteristics.

Image credit: Jeff Otten, National Science Foundation

World's Smallest Droplets

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Physicists may have created the smallest drops of liquid ever made in the lab.

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Physicists may have created the smallest drops of liquid ever made in the lab. That possibility has been raised by the results of a recent experiment conducted by Vanderbilt physicist Julia Velkovska and her colleagues at the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider located at the European Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics in Switzerland. Evidence of the minuscule droplets was extracted from the results of colliding protons with lead ions at velocities approaching the speed of light. According to the scientists’ calculations, these short-lived droplets are the size of three to five protons. To provide a sense of scale, that is about one-100,000th the size of a hydrogen atom or one-100,000,000th the size of a virus.

Image credit: Thinkstock

U.S. Arctic LTER Greenhouse In Autumn

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Pictured at left is the U.S. Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site at Toolik Lake in northern Alaska. This LTER site is the longest-running climate warming study in the tundra. The ecosystem-warming greenhouse experiment was started in 1989 to observe the effects of sustained warming on the Arctic environment. UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Seeta Sistla and her adviser, environmental studies professor Josh Schimel, traveled to this location not long ago to study how long-term warming in the Arctic affects carbon storage. "The Arctic is the most rapidly warming biome on Earth, so understanding how permafrost soils are reacting to this change is of major concern globally," Sistla said. What the researchers initially found was typical of Arctic warming: low-lying, shallow-rooted vegetation giving way to taller plants with deeper roots; greater wood shrub dominance; and increased thaw depth. What they weren't expecting was that two decades of slow and steady warming had not changed the amounts of carbon in the soil, despite changes in vegetation and even the soil food web.

Image credit: Sadie Iverson, UC Santa Barbara

Moth-Inspired Nanostructures Take The Color Out Of Thin Films

Fri, 17 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Inspired by the structure of moth eyes, researchers have developed nanostructures that limit reflection at the interfaces where two thin films meet, suppressing the “thin-film interference” phenomenon commonly observed in nature.

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Inspired by the structure of moth eyes, researchers at North Carolina State University have developed nanostructures that limit reflection at the interfaces where two thin films meet, suppressing the “thin-film interference” phenomenon commonly observed in nature. This can potentially improve the efficiency of thin-film solar cells and other optoelectronic devices. Thin-film interference occurs when a thin film of one substance lies on top of a second substance. For example, thin-film interference is what causes the rainbow sheen we see when there is gasoline in a puddle of water. The phenomenon is a problem for devices that use multiple layers of thin films, like thin-film solar cells, because it means that some wavelengths of light are being reflected – or “lost” – at every film interface. The more thin films a device has, the more interfaces there are, and the more light is lost. “We were inspired by the surface structure of a moth’s eye, which has evolved so that it doesn’t reflect light,” says Dr. Chih-Hao Chang, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research. “By mimicking that concept, we’ve developed a nanostructure that significantly minimizes thin-film interference.”

Image credit: Thinkstock

The Nathaniel B. Palmer

Fri, 17 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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This research vessel, named after Nathaniel Brown Palmer, an American merchant marine and ship builder who is credited with first seeing Antarctica, is a first-rate platform for global change studies, including biological, oceanographic, geological, and geophysical components. It can operate safely year-round in Antarctic waters that often are stormy or covered with sea ice. It accommodates 37 scientists, has a crew of 22, and is capable of 75-day missions. The image shows the icebreaking research ship in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, in 2011.

Image credit: Peter Rejcek / NSF

Scientists Discover Oldest Evidence Of Split Between Old World Monkeys And Apes

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Two fossil discoveries from the East African Rift reveal new information about the evolution of primates.

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Two fossil discoveries from the East African Rift reveal new information about the evolution of primates, according to a paper published this week in the journal Nature. Findings by scientists at Ohio University and their colleagues document the oldest fossils of two major groups of primates: the group that today includes apes and humans (hominoids) and the group that includes Old World monkeys such as baboons and macaques (cercopithecoids). The research underscores the integration of paleontological and geological approaches that are essential for deciphering complex relationships in vertebrate evolutionary history, the scientists said. Geological analyses of the study site indicate that the finds are 25 million years old, significantly older than fossils previously documented for either of the two groups.

Image credit: Mauricio Anton

An APEX View Of Star Formation In The Orion Nebula

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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This dramatic composite image of cosmic clouds in the constellation Orion reveals a "fiery" ribbon in the sky. The orange glow is from grains of cold interstellar dust that emit very long wavelength light that is not detectable by the unaided human eye. The clouds were observed by the European Southern Observatory-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment in Chile. In this image, the submillimeter-wavelength orange glow of the dust clouds is overlaid on a visible-light image of the region from the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The large bright cloud in the upper right of the image is the well-known Orion Nebula, also called Messier 42.

Image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2

Human Disease Leptospirosis Identified In New Species, The Banded Mongoose, In Africa

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Scientists find widespread but neglected disease is significant health threat in Botswana.

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The newest public health threat in Africa, scientists have found, is coming from a previously unknown source: the banded mongoose. Leptospirosis, the disease is called. And the banded mongoose carries it. Leptospirosis is the world's most common illness transmitted to humans by animals. It's a two-phase disease that begins with flu-like symptoms. If untreated, it can cause meningitis, liver damage, pulmonary hemorrhage, renal failure and death.
"The problem in Botswana and much of Africa is that leptospirosis may remain unidentified in animal populations but contribute to human disease, possibly misdiagnosed as other diseases such as malaria," said disease ecologist Kathleen Alexander of Virginia Tech. With a grant from the National Science Foundation's Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program, Alexander and colleagues found that the banded mongoose in Botswana is infected with Leptospira interrogans, the pathogen that causes leptospirosis.

The study’s results were published this week in a paper in the journal Zoonoses and Public Health.

Image credit: B. Fairbanks, Virginia Tech

Coral Atolls

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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This is a Landsat-7 satellite image of coral atolls in the South Pacific, looking here like a string of pearls with hues of blue and green. Coral atolls surround lagoons and typically are products of volcanic islands that have nearly completely eroded away. The coral ring is the remnant of the volcano's crater. The structure and extent of coral reefs are being monitored globally using Landsat-7 data.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC

Physicists Light 'Magnetic Fire' To Reveal Energy's Path

Tue, 14 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Physicists have uncovered how energy is released and dispersed in magnetic materials in a process akin to the spread of forest fires, a finding that has the potential to deepen our understanding of self-sustained chemical reactions.

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New York University physicists have uncovered how energy is released and dispersed in magnetic materials in a process akin to the spread of forest fires, a finding that has the potential to deepen our understanding of self-sustained chemical reactions. Forest fires spread because an initial flame or spark will heat a substance—a trunk or branch—causing it to burn, which releases heat that causes the fire to spread to other trunks or branches, turning a small spark into a self-sustained, propagating front of fire that can be deadly and is irreversible. In the study, the researchers sought to understand how energy is sustained and spreads in magnetic materials—“magnetic fire.” Such knowledge is important in designing magnetic materials for energy storage applications.

Image credit: iStockPhoto.com/asm_Zealot

'Save Our Earth. Let's Go Green'

Tue, 14 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Hair-like fibers stretch to latch onto a green sphere. Alone each fiber is powerless, but together they grip and support the orb, embodying cooperation at a microscopic scale. This electron microscope photograph catches self-assembling polymers in action, but it could also represent people's cooperative efforts to save the Earth, says Joanna Aizenberg, a materials scientist. "Each hair represents a person or an organization," she says. "It shows our collaborative effort to hold up the planet and keep it running." Aizenberg and her colleagues design self-assembling polymers in hopes of creating energy-efficient materials. They have snapped many similar photos of micrometer-scale cooperation. This image shows hair-like fibers of epoxy resin assembling around a polystyrene sphere, which is about 2 micrometers in diameter.

Image credit: Sung Hoon Kang, Joanna Aizenberg and Boaz Pokroy; Harvard University

Scientists Use Crowd-Sourcing To Help Map Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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A first-of-its kind project aims to empower citizen scientists with a simple tool that can help climate science researchers locate all the power plants around the world and quantify their carbon dioxide emissions.

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Climate science researchers from Arizona State University are launching a first-of-its kind online "game" to better understand the sources of global warming gases. By engaging "citizen scientists," the researchers hope to locate all the power plants around the world and quantify their carbon dioxide emissions (CO2). The game officially launches today and is housed on a website called "Ventus." Ventus (the Latin word for wind) has a simple interface in which users enter basic information about the world's power plants. By playing the game, people around the globe can help solve the climate change problem.

Image credit: Thinkstock

Measuring Gravity At Laguna Del Maule

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 GMT

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Using a gravimeter and other instruments, NSF-funded researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison measure gravity at the Laguna del Maule, a volcanic field in Chile where the surface has risen 1.5 meters since 2007. Such a rapid rise could foretell an eruption in a volcanic complex that has erupted 36 times in 20,000 years. If it was repeated today, an eruption from 950,000 years ago could be large enough to change the climate and history.

Image credit: David Tenenbaum/The Why Files/University of Wisconsin-Madison