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News | Archive (8 November 2007)
Violent black holes linked to high-energy cosmic rays
— 19:00 GMT | AstronomyUniversity of Adelaide scientists are among a leading international research group that has made an important discovery about the highest-energy cosmic rays that hit the Earth - and the discovery leads back to supermassive black holes. The scientists, in the University's School of Chemistry and Physics, are among researchers from 17 countries participating in the Pierre Auger Collaboration, using the largest cosmic ray observatory in the world, the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina…
Seaweed transformed into stem cell technology
— 19:00 GMT | BiologyEngineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have transformed a polymer found in common brown seaweed into a device that can support the growth and release of stem cells at the sight of a bodily injury or at the source of a disease. The findings, which are detailed in the December 2007 edition of Biomaterials, mark an important step in efforts to develop new medical therapies using stem cells…
Scientists help solve mystery of cosmic rays
— 19:00 GMT | AstronomyUsing data-gathering equipment designed and tested at Michigan Technological University, scientists from 17 countries have identified Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) - containing massive black holes - as the most likely source of the highest-energy cosmic rays. Three years of data collection and analysis is helping to bring the Pierre Auger Collaboration - an international team of scientists and engineers working from an observatory in Argentina - closer to understanding the mystery of the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays…
A genetic identity card for Plasmodium populations to improve control strategies
— 19:00 GMT | BiologyWho figures show that malaria currently affects between 300 and 600 million people in various parts of the world. Several malaria-hit regions are experiencing an advance of the disease owing to the parasite's increasing resistance to most antimalarial drugs. Any increase in efficacy of medical treatments, with optimal limitation of resistance, requires that scientists unravel the evolutionary strategies of the enemy they are fighting…
Adult brain cells are movers and shakers
— 17:00 GMT | BiologyIt's a general belief that the circuitry of young brains has robust flexibility but eventually gets 'hard-wired' in adulthood. As Johns Hopkins researchers and their colleagues report in the 8 November issue of Neuron, however, adult neurones aren't quite as rigidly glued in place as we suspect…
Exceptions prove rule of tropical role in biodiversity
— 08:00 GMT | BiologyEven a group of shellfish that appear to violate the overarching pattern of global biodiversity actually follows the same biological rules as other marine organisms, confirming a general theory for the spread of life on Earth. The University of Chicago's David Jablonski and his colleagues present this finding this week in the advanced online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…
New Raider Amethyst prairie verbena: conserves water, drought-tolerant
— 08:00 GMT | BiologyPrairie verbena, a common wildflower, grows from the Mississippi River to Arizona and from Southern Mexico to South Dakota. This beautiful native plant can be seen covering large areas of plains, prairies, pastures, and roadsides, often from March through October…
La Nina persists
— 08:00 GMT | EnvironmentThe tropical Pacific Ocean remains in the grips of a cool La Nina, as shown by new data of sea-level heights from mid-October of 2007, collected by the U.S-French Jason altimetric satellite. This La Nina, which has slowly strengthened for the past nine months, is indicated by the blue area in the centre of the image along the equator. Blue indicates lower than normal sea level (cold water)…
Engineered weathering process could mitigate global warming
— 07:15 GMT | EnvironmentResearchers at Harvard University and Pennsylvania State University have invented a technology, inspired by nature, to reduce the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human emissions…
Paying peanuts for clean water
— 07:15 GMT | EnvironmentResearchers in Turkey have turned to peanut husks to help them clean up industrial effluent. Writing in the Inderscience publication the International Journal of Environment and Pollution, the team describes how this readily available waste material can be used to extract toxic copper ions from waste water. The discovery offers a useful alternative to simple disposal of this ubiquitous food industry waste product…
Physicists confirm the existence of electrical activity on Titan
Researchers demonstrate highly directional semiconductor lasers