Research from North Carolina State University demonstrates that a relatively new microscopy technique can be used to improve our understanding of human tissues and other biomedical materials. The study focused specifically on eye tissues, which are damaged by scarring in diabetic patients.
Earth
VERNON – Biomass gasification is being considered as a possible technology for converting at least 10 million acres of Texas brush into biofuel, according to Dr. Jim Ansley, Texas AgriLife Research rangeland ecologist in Vernon.
Botswana's Okavango Delta is a sensitive ecosystem that could be affected detrimentally by climate change. Given the Delta's prominence in the country's tourist industry, such negative impacts could wreak havoc on its economy and affect the lives of its inhabitants.
A geoengineering solution to climate change could lead to significantrainfall reduction in Europe and North America, a team of Europeanscientists concludes. The researchers studied how models of the Earth ina warm, CO2‑rich world respond to an artificial reduction in the amountof sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. The study is published todayin Earth System Dynamics, an Open Access journal of the EuropeanGeosciences Union (EGU).
Top-down advocacy on health and climate at the UN level needs to be mirrored by bottom-up public health actions that bring health and climate co-benefits according to international experts writing in this week's PLoS Medicine.
Human health and health ethics considerations must be given equal status to economic considerations in climate change deliberations and furthermore, the health community, led by health ministers and the World Health Organization, must play a central role in climate change deliberations, argues an international expert in this week's PLoS Medicine.
Alexandria, VA – In the Late Quaternary, Australia was home to an array of megafauna. The half-ton Palorchestes azael, the rhinoceros-sized Diprotodon, and even the giant koala, Phascolarctos stirtoni, roamed Australia's interior. However, between 50,000 and 45,000 years ago, they all vanished. Although recent studies indicate human colonization as a potential cause of their extinction, the exact mechanism has never been resolved. Now, geologist Gifford Miller from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his colleagues believe they have uncovered the answer.
Diamond anvil cells (DACs) are used routinely in laboratories to apply extreme pressure to materials, recreating conditions that normally only occur deep in planetary interiors or during certain industrial manufacturing techniques. Under these conditions, however, it is difficult to measure how materials conduct heat.
LIVERMORE, Calif. -- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have for the first time simulated and quantified the early stages of radiation damage that will occur in a given material.
"A full understanding of the early stages of the radiation damage process provides knowledge and tools to manipulate them to our advantage," said Alfredo Correa, a Lawrence Fellow from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Quantum Simulations Group.
Quito, Ecuador, is not considered a global leader by most measures. But there is one way in which Quito is at the forefront of metropolises worldwide: in planning for climate change. For more than a decade, officials in Ecuador's mountainous capital have been studying the effects of global warming on nearby melting glaciers, developing ways of dealing with potential water shortages and even organizing conferences on climate change for leaders of other Latin American cities.
Researchers from the University of Bonn have just shown how a single atom can be split into its two halves, pulled apart and put back together again. While the word "atom" literally means "indivisible," the laws of quantum mechanics allow dividing atoms - similarly to light rays - and reuniting them. The researchers want to build quantum mechanics bridges by letting the atom touch adjacent atoms while it is being pulled apart so that it works like a bridge span between two pillars.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Researchers at the Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials of the University of Maryland have developed a new type of hot electron bolometer a sensitive detector of infrared light, that can be used in a huge range of applications from detection of chemical and biochemical weapons from a distance and use in security imaging technologies such as airport body scanners, to chemical analysis in the laboratory and studying the structure of the universe through new telescopes.
Boulder, Colo., USA – New Lithosphere science posted online 4 June 2012 includes a study of the Valles Marineris fault zone, Mars, and asks why such a trough system occurs there, when such structures on Earth are mainly associated with plate tectonics. Other papers discuss landslides in the Pyrenees; first evidence of a "missing" Cretaceous arc assemblage in the Iraqi segment of the Zagros orogenic belt; and new information on the age of the Okanagan Valley shear zone, Canada.
SANTA CRUZ, CA--Giant insects ruled the prehistoric skies during periods when Earth's atmosphere was rich in oxygen. Then came the birds. After the evolution of birds about 150 million years ago, insects got smaller despite rising oxygen levels, according to a new study by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists studying neutrinos have found with the highest degree of sensitivity yet that these mysterious particles behave like other elementary particles at the quantum level. The results shed light on the mass and other properties of the neutrino and prove the effectiveness of a new instrument that will yield even greater discoveries in this area.