Plants produce toxinsto defend themselves against potential enemies, from herbivorous pests to diseases. Oilseed rape plants produce glucosinolates to serve this purpose. However, due to the content of glucosinolates, farmers can only use limited quantities of the protein-rich rapeseed for pig and chicken feed. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen has developed a method to hinder unwanted toxins from entering the edible parts of the plant.
Tech
ated characters have become so lifelike in appearance and movement that the line separating reality is almost imperceptible at times. "The Matrix" sequels messed with audiences' perceptions of reality (in more ways than one) with action scenes mixing CG characters and real actors. Almost a decade later, superheroes and alien warriors dominate the multiplex. But while bipeds and quadrupeds have reigned supreme in CG animation, attempts to create and control their skeleton-free cousins using similar techniques has proved time-consuming and laborious.
. – Researchers have taken a new look at an old, but seldom-used technique developed by the petroleum industry to recover oil, and learned more about why it works, how it could be improved, and how it might be able to make a comeback not only in oil recovery but also environmental cleanup.
The technology, called "microbial enhanced oil recovery," was first developed decades ago, but oil drillers largely lost interest in it due to its cost, inconsistent results and a poor understanding of what was actually happening underground.
Imaging software is a hot commodity: Just look at Instagram, a company built around image processing that Facebook is trying to buy for a billion dollars. Image processing is also going mobile, as more and more people are sending cellphone photos directly to the Web, without transferring them to a computer first.
Applied DNA Sciences, Inc., a provider of botanical DNA-based product verification solutions, has announced that guitar maker C.F. Martin & Co. ("Martin Guitar") has expanded DNA marking to protect and authenticate its guitar strings. Martin Guitar produces millions of strings per year, and is one of the leading manufacturers of guitar strings in the world.
Infants innately relieve stress by crying, turning their heads or maintaining eye contact. Adults manage emotional tension using problem-solving or by seeking support. A new study by a University of Missouri human development expert describes how adolescents' developing personalities and coping habits affect their behaviors toward others.
Researchers has developed a cheap, rechargeable and eco-friendly battery that could be used to store energy at solar power plants for a rainy day.
Led by Sri Narayan, professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the team developed an air-breathing battery that uses the chemical energy generated by the oxidation of iron plates that are exposed to the oxygen in the air – a process similar to rusting.
It's relatively easy to collect massive amounts of data on microbes. But the files are so large that it takes days to simply transmit them to other researchers and months to analyze once they are received.
Researchers at Michigan State University have developed a new computational technique, featured in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that relieves the logjam that these "big data" issues create.
While the flower may attract the bee and the admiring eye of the passerby, it is the unseen complex network of life below ground where the action is. The microbial community or microbiome that inhabits the rhizosphere and endosphere —the niches immediately surrounding and inside a plant's root—facilitates the shuttling of nutrients and information into and out of the roots within the soil matrix.
Beneath the surface of the earth, an influential community of microbes mingles with plant roots. In the first large-scale analysis of those communities, scientists have now catalogued and compared the hundreds of types of bacteria that associate with the roots of the model plant Arabidopsis under various conditions. The work establishes an experimental framework for examining how plants interact with a microbial community that can influence their growth and development, productivity, and impact on the environment.
Rockville, Md., August 1, 2012 — Two articles recently published in Malaria Journal shed new light on the quality of antimalarial medicines circulating in countries in the Amazon Basin in South America. Researchers from the Promoting the Quality of Medicines (PQM) program, a cooperative agreement between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), in conjunction with country partners, coordinated these studies in the context of the Amazon Malaria Initiative (AMI).
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The male response to depictions of ideal masculinity in advertising is typically negative, which has implications for advertisers and marketers targeting the increasingly fragmented consumer demographic, according to research from a University of Illinois marketing expert.
Scientists are reporting development of a new transparent solar cell, an advance toward giving windows in homes and other buildings the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside. Their report appears in the journal ACS Nano.
URBANA - If you've consulted with a nutrition educator about how best to lose weight or manage your diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol, you may not have learned as much as you could have, said a University of Illinois professor of nutrition extension.
"Only 80 percent of the dietitians we surveyed did any pre-assessment of the client's nutrition literacy, which makes it difficult for educators to target their counseling so clients can understand and act on the information they are given," said Karen Chapman-Novakofski, also a registered dietitian.
Cambridge, Mass. - July 31, 2012 - Watch out, Barbie: omnivorous beasts are assembling in a 3D printer near you.
A group of graphics experts led by computer scientists at Harvard have created an add-on software tool that translates video game characters -- or any other three-dimensional animations -- into fully articulated action figures, with the help of a 3D printer.
The project is described in detail in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Transactions on Graphics and will be presented at the ACM SIGGRAPH conference on August 7.