July 28, 2006, 10:10 PM CT

From Farm Waste To Bio-oil

Samy Sadaka reached into a garbage bag, picked up a mixture of cow manure and corn stalks, let it run through his fingers and invited a visitor to do the same.

It wasn't that bad.

That mix of manure and corn stalks had spent 27 days breaking down in a special drying process. The end result looked like brown yard mulch with lots of thin fibers. There wasn't much smell. And it was dry to the touch.

"That's about 20 percent moisture," said Drew Simonsen, an Iowa State University sophomore from Quimby who's working on the research project led by Sadaka, an associate scientist for Iowa State's Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies.

Other Iowa State researchers working on the project are Robert Burns, an associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering; Mark Hanna, an Extension agricultural engineer; Robert C. Brown, director of the Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies and Bergles Professor in Thermal Science; and Hee-Kwon Ahn, a postdoctoral researcher for the department of agricultural and biosystems engineering.

The project is being supported by $190,000 in grants from the Iowa Biotechnology Byproducts Consortium.

The researchers are working to take wastes from Iowa farms -- manure and corn stalks -- and turn them into a bio-oil that could be used for boiler fuel and perhaps transportation fuel.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

July 28, 2006, 9:39 PM CT

Cell-shaped Building In Making

An innovative cell-shaped building will house a new biomedical research institute in Chengdu, China, thanks to an unusual crossdisciplinary collaboration between Shuguang Zhang, a world-renowned bioengineer and scientist at MIT, and his former student, architecture major Sloan Kulper.

Kulper (S.B. 2003) designed the cell-shaped building for the Institute for Nanobiomedical Technology and Membrane Biology in Chengdu, China, the regional capital of Sichuan province in southwestern China. The proposed new facility will contain 170,000 square feet of laboratory, research and meeting spaces; it is slated for construction over the next three years. The building is intended to look like a cell from the outside and to include an assortment of forms inspired by molecular biology inside.

Shuguang Zhang, associate director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering, will serve as founding advisor of the new Nanobiomedical Institute, to be sited at Chengdu's Sichuan University, where Zhang received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry.

Zhang met Kulper in 2002, when he took Zhang's course, "Molecular Structure of Biological Materials: Structure, Foundation and Self-assembly."

In the class, Zhang frequently discusses the striking similarities between architecture and biological structures, he said. "Nature has produced abundant magnificent, intricate and fine molecular and cellular structures through billions of years of molecular selection and evolution.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 26, 2006, 9:03 PM CT

Cougar Teh Mountain Lion

The cougar or mountain lion is a large and potentially dangerous animal that is a natural and rather common - but not often observed - inhabitant of Mount Rainier National Park. The scientific name of the cougar, Felis concolor, means "cat of one color." The animal is identified by its large size, cat-like appearance, uniformly gray to reddish-tan body color, and long tail - nearly three feet (1 m) long and a third of its total length. The muzzle and chest are white and there are black markings on the face, ears and tip of the tail; young kittens have black spots on the body. Adult male cougars can weigh over 150 lbs. (70 kg), females from 90 to 110 lbs. (40-50 kg), and sub-adults 40 to 80 lbs. (20-40 kg). Adult males often have a larger head, neck and shoulders and more husky appearance; females and subadults are often more lean and slender. Click on the picture of the cougar for a larger photograph.

Generally, adult cougars are solitary animals and come together only for mating. Kittens stay with their mother for up to two years. Females first breed at 18-24 months of age. The gestation period is 92 days, and kittens are born at two-to-three year intervals. Kittens are born with blue eyes and a spotted coat, but the spots gradually fade and disappear by age two. During late spring and summer, one to two-year old cougars become independent of their mothers. While attempting to find a home range, these young cougars may roam widely in search of unoccupied territory. This is when cougars are most likely to conflict with humans.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink

July 26, 2006, 5:39 PM CT

Coexistence Among Desert Rodents

The warm deserts of North America are hopping with multiple species of kangaroo rats and pocket mice despite limited seed resources. Why doesn't one species win out in the rat race? Ecologist Mary Price (University of California, Riverside and University of Arizona) and theoretical biologist John Mittler (University of Washington) teamed up to explore their hunch that coexistence might follow from the propensity of these rodents to store harvested seeds and to steal from one another's caches.

"I gave up on traditional explanations when we couldn't find size-related tradeoffs in foraging rates or predator avoidance under different environmental conditions" says Price, who has spent more than twenty years exploring niche-partitioning explanations for the remarkable diversity of desert rodent communities. "I always had a suspicion that caching was important because heteromyids are so obsessive about it".

Using resource-processing models of coexistence where feeding by one species creates a modified resource another can use, the scientists observed that thievery actually promotes stable coexistence if one species excels at harvesting while to other excels at stealing.

"We can't conserve biodiversity if we don't understand the processes that maintain it," Price says. "There are far more ecological interactions to understand than there are ecologists, but fortunately, we can often extrapolate from one system to others".........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 26, 2006, 5:25 PM CT

Worker Ants Store Fat To Share

In a fascinating new study from the September/October 2006 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, Daniel A. Hahn (University of Florida) explores the ability of ants to store excess fat and pass it to colony members through lipid-rich oral secretions or unfertilized eggs. For perennial organisms, such as ant colonies, investing heavily in nutrient stores when food availability is high is a potential bet-hedging strategy for dealing with times of famine.

"Understanding the regulation of nutrient reserves, particularly fat storage, at the individual and colony levels is critical to understanding both the division of labor characteristics of social insect colonies and the evolution of important colony life-history traits such as the timing of reproduction, founding mode, and over-wintering behaviour," explains Hahn.

In order to better understand how individual fat storage tactics translated into colony-level resources, Hahn captured queens of different species and reared colonies under controlled laboratory conditions in nests for two years, feeding the ants a combination of frozen cockroach and moth eggs, mixed with honey, vitamins, and salt. He then sampled five colonies each of the two different species, and found that, despite similar environments, darker workers and soldiers stored more fat per unit of lean mass than lighter ants did, but the lighter colony involved a greater proportion of soldiers in storage.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 26, 2006, 5:14 PM CT

Evolutionary Origin Of Fins, Limbs

Gainesville, Fla. -- Performance on the dance floor may not always show it, but people are rarely born with two left feet. We have genes that instruct our arms and legs to grow in the right places and point in the right directions. They also provide for the spaces between our fingers and toes and every other formative detail of our limbs.

Evolutionarily speaking, the genetic instructions used to construct and position our limbs were being perfected more than half a billion years ago in fishes, not along the sides of the body where the fins that preceded human arms and legs sprouted, but at the midline that runs along the backbone and belly.

This midline -- think of the dorsal, tail and anal fins of a fish - is where the genetic template to produce fins originated, about 100 million years before paired fins evolved and about 200 million years before paired fins evolved into limbs, according to University of Florida genetics researchers. The findings, published online today in the journal Nature, also provide insight into the evolutionary history of genes involved in human birth defects.

"Given that paired fins made their evolutionary debut at a particular location on the sides of the body, intuitively one would think the genetic tools for fin development would be brought together in that place," said developmental biologist Martin Cohn, Ph.D., an associate professor with the UF departments of zoology and anatomy and cell biology and a member of the UF Genetics Institute. "We've discovered that the genetic circuitry for building limbs first appeared in an entirely different place - the midline of the animal".........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 25, 2006, 8:10 PM CT

Chinese Tallow Tree For Building

A preliminary study by USDA FS Southern Research Station (SRS) researchers and cooperators shows that Chinese tallow tree, a nonnative invasive plant in the southeastern United States, holds promise as a material for bio-based composite building panels. In a technical note in the June 2006 issue of Forest Products Journal, the researchers report positive results from tests on 3 different types of panels made from Chinese tallow tree.

Because Chinese tallow tree grows rapidly, has seeds rich in oils, abundant flowers, and colorful fall foliage, it has been widely planted both as an ornamental and a crop across the Southeast. Now considered a noxious pest by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the plant has become a serious problem in east Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, where is establishes dense stands that quickly out compete most other tree species.

The rapid expansion of the Chinese tallow tree into Southern forests has lead to a call to investigate its possible uses in the forest products industry. "The low density and light color of the wood make it an ideal candidate for producing composite panels, especially oriented strandboard, medium density fiberboard and particleboard," said Les Groom, project leader for the SRS Utilization of Southern Forest Resources unit in Pineville, LA, and co-author of the article with SRS research scientist Tom Eberhardt and technologist Chung Hse.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 24, 2006, 11:20 PM CT

Vanishing Species

See this site with excellent paintings on vanishing species!

The artist writes:

In my recent work, I explore the dimensionality - emotional, perceptive and symbolic - of vanishing species and traditions. Wildlife and people are reverently depicted, using maps in unique ways to convey the importance of place. These paintings signal the fundamental dichotomy of the beauty and value of wildlife and the longing for resolution of that which is threatening them.

My paintings reflect a balance between the reality of representational shapes and forms juxtaposed with abstract backgrounds. The addition of maps weaves a distinctive tapestry that adds complexity and texture.

My affection for wildlife often reveals, at the same time, the violence and the tenderness of our times. I search for new ways to express the singularity and the diversity of our fragile world.

About the Artist

Sklar's recent body of "Vanishing Species" works builds on her ongoing exploration of landscapes and wildlife, mainly using watercolors. She took up art seriously only 11 years ago, attending workshops throughout the Bay Area and training with a private watercolor master in Madrid. She draws inspiration from her extensive travels to such wildlife-rich places as Peru, the Galapagos (Ecuador) and most recently, Namibia in Southern Africa. An avid birdwatcher, Sklar often has to go no farther than the Bay Area's own backyard - its Bay and many preserves and natural areas - to find material for her paintings.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 24, 2006, 11:02 PM CT

Giant Velvet Worm

Tasmania's largest velvet worm; mature females can be 75 mm long when fully extended. A specimen of T. barretti from St Marys was photographed more than 60 years ago (Barrett 1938), but the first museum specimens were collected in 1984. Very young T. barretti are pale and can be confused with the all-white Tasmanipatus anophthalmus. Use a strong hand-lens or low-power microscope to check for a dark-coloured eye at the base of the antenna; the eye is missing in T. anophthalmus.

T. barretti is listed as 'Rare' under the Tasmanian Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 and its biology and conservation have been relatively well-studied. It has a range of ca. 600 km2 in the northern portion of the East Coast, and occurs in dry eucalypt forest, wet eucalypt forest and rainforest. T. barretti is only rarely found outside rotting logs, particularly in the warm, dry, open forests of the Avenue and Scamander River catchments, where it is surprisingly common. When disturbed, T. barretti extends itself and attempts to escape.

Eventhough T. barretti colonies will tolerate selective logging and controlled burning of their forest habitat, they are eliminated by plantation establishment and have not been found to recolonise plantation sites. This threat to their survival has been carefully analysed in a recent study of forestry operations in the T. barretti range (Fox et al. 2004).........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

July 24, 2006, 6:50 AM CT

Life on Earth More Than 3.8 Billion Years Ago

Ten years ago, an international team of researchers reported evidence, in a controversial cover story in the journal Nature, that life on Earth began more than 3.8 billion years ago-400 million years earlier than previously thought. A UCLA professor who was not part of that team and two of the original authors will report in late July that the evidence is stronger than ever.

Craig E. Manning, lead author of the new study and a professor of geology and geochemistry in the UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences, painstakingly mapped an area on Akilia Island in West Greenland where ancient rocks were discovered that may preserve carbon-isotope evidence for life at the time of their formation. Manning and his co-authors-T. Mark Harrison, a UCLA professor of geochemistry, director of UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and University Professor at the Australian National University; and Stephen J. Mojzsis, assistant professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder-conducted new geologic and geochemical analysis on these rocks. Their findings will be published in the new issue of the American Journal of Science. Harrison and Mojzsis were co-authors on the Nov. 7, 1996, study in Nature.

"This paper shows, with far greater confidence than we ever had before, that these rocks are older than 3.8 billion years," said Manning, who has conducted extensive research in Greenland. "We have shown that the rocks are appropriate for hosting life.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

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