January 10, 2007, 9:31 PM CT

But Now You Can Touch It

Engineers have developed a system that uses a simple water purification technique that can eliminate 100 percent of the microbes in New Orleans water samples left from Hurricane Katrina. The technique makes use of specialized resins, copper and hydrogen peroxide to purify tainted water.

The system--safer, cheaper and simpler to use than a number of other methods--breaks down a range of toxic chemicals. While the method cleans the water, it doesn't yet make the water drinkable. However, the method may eventually prove critical for limiting the spread of disease at disaster sites around the world.

National Science Foundation-funded scientists Vishal Shah and Shreya Shah of Dowling College in Long Island, New York, collaborated with Boris Dzikovski of Cornell University and Jose Pinto of New York's Polytechnic University in Brooklyn to develop the technique. They will publish their findings in Environmental Pollution.

"After the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, researchers have had their backs against the wall trying to develop safeguards," said Shah. "No one knows when a similar situation may arise. We need to develop a therapy for decontaminating flood water before it either comes in contact with humans or is pumped into natural reservoirs".

The therapy system that the scientists are in the process of developing is simple: a polymer sheet of resins containing copper is immersed in the contaminated flood water. The addition of hydrogen peroxide generates free radicals on the polymer. The free radicals remain bound to the sheet, where they come in contact with bacteria and kill them.........

Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

January 10, 2007, 9:19 PM CT

Age Is More Than A Number

Fluctuations in weather and the environment affect survival and reproduction of animals. But are all individuals within a population equally susceptible? Theory on the evolution in age-structured populations suggests not - those life stages that are more important for overall fitness should be less susceptible to environmental variation than other life stages. Empirical support for this prediction is rare because detailed data need to be collected over many years, and true variation tends to be inflated through the way in which natural populations are sampled.

In the recent issue of The American Naturalist, Res Altwegg (University of Cape Town and University of Victoria), Michael Schaub (Swiss Ornithological Institute and University of Bern), and Alexandre Roulin (University of Lausanne), examined temporal variation in survival and reproduction of barn owls in western Switzerland that had been observed over the past fifteen years. Using recently developed statistical tools, they were able to show that those fitness components that experienced stronger selection were indeed less variable over the years.

"Our results help explain why certain age classes are more susceptible to adverse weather, and they will help us understand how climatic variation affects populations of organisms in nature. This is important for predicting the effect of climate change on populations," the authors said.........

Posted by: Ashley      Read more         Source

January 10, 2007, 9:04 PM CT

Automated System Installs Pavement Markers

On rainy nights in Georgia and across the nation, drivers greatly benefit from small, reflective markers that make roadway lanes more visible. A new automated system for installing the markers is expected to improve safety for workers and drivers.

There are more than three million of these safety devices, called raised pavement markers (RPMs), in service on Georgia highways. They are installed and then need to be replaced about every two years by road crews who consider the task one of the riskiest they face. Workers typically ride on a seat cantilevered off the side of a trailer just inches from highway traffic.

Manual RPM placement is not only risky for personnel, but it is also expensive and time-consuming. A typical RPM placement operation includes four vehicles and a six-person crew. All the vehicles must stop at each marker location, so there is tremendous wear on the equipment and increased fuel use.

The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) believed there was a better way to do it and funded the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) to develop a first-of-its-kind system capable of automatically placing RPMs along the lane stripes while in motion. After almost three years of research and development, GTRI expects to deliver a prototype system early this year. Because of widespread interest in the system, scientists will present a report on their project on Jan. 23 at the National Research Council's Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.........

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January 10, 2007, 4:55 AM CT

New Project To Protect Biodiversity

The world's biodiversity is vanishing at an unprecedented rate - around 100 species every day - due to factors such as land use change and pollution. Addressing this threat, world governments agreed through the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to reduce significantly the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. To support this initiative, ESA has kicked off its new DIVERSITY project.

Biodiversity, the variety of life including ecosystems, species, populations and genes, is of grave importance for sustaining the planet's six billion people. The loss of biodiversity threatens our food supplies, energy and medicines. For instance, up to 80% of the world's population currently relies on plant and animal-based medicines for their primary health care needs. The sustainable use of biodiversity's components will not only save ecosystems and species, but it may also save the foods and medicines of tomorrow.

"The United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (UNCBD) agreed on a set of headline indicators to assess the progress made towards this target. DIVERSITY will make a contribution to the required monitoring efforts that will help us to determine whether we are making progress and which management and policy measures are most effective and thereby support decision-making," the UNCBD Secretariat Robert Hoft said.........

Posted by: Ashley      Read more         Source

January 9, 2007, 9:56 PM CT

Story Of A Star Death

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have created a stunning new image of one of the youngest supernova remnants in the galaxy. This new view of the debris of an exploded star helps astronomers solve a long-standing mystery, with implications for understanding how a star's life can end catastrophically and for gauging the expansion of the universe.

Over 400 years ago, sky watchers -- including the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler -- noticed a bright new object in the night sky. Since the telescope had not yet been invented, only the unaided eye could be used to watch as a new star that was initially brighter than Jupiter dimmed over the following weeks.

Chandra's latest image marks a new phase in understanding the object now known as Kepler's supernova remnant. By combining nearly nine days of Chandra observations, astronomers have generated an X-ray image with unprecedented detail of one of the brightest recorded supernovas in the Milky Way galaxy.

The explosion of the star that created the Kepler remnant blasted the stellar remains into space, heating the gases to millions of degrees and generating highly energized particles. Copious X-ray light, like that shining from many supernova remnants, was produced.

Astronomers have studied Kepler intensively over the past three decades with radio, optical and X-ray telescopes, but its origin has remained a puzzle. On the one hand, the presence of large amounts of iron and the absence of a detectable neutron star points toward a so-called Type Ia supernova. These events occur when a white dwarf star pulls material from an orbiting companion until the white dwarf becomes unstable and is destroyed by a thermonuclear explosion.........

Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

January 9, 2007, 9:39 PM CT

Pancreatic Cancer Surgery Five-Year Survivors

A new study shows that pancreatic cancer patients 65 or older who live at least five years after surgery have nearly as good a chance as anyone else to live another five years.

Researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia reviewed the records of 890 patients with pancreatic cancer who underwent the standard pancreaticoduodenectomy, or Whipple procedure, which entails the removal of the gallbladder, common bile duct, part of the duodenum, and the head of the pancreas, between 1970 and 1999 at Johns Hopkins University. They identified those who lived for five years, and compared those who lived for at least an additional five years to the "actuarial" - or estimated - survival of the general population beginning at age 70.

Reporting in the journal Surgery, they found that 201 patients (23 percent) lived five years after surgery, at least half of whom were 65 years old or older at the time of surgery. Of those five-year survivors, an estimated 65 percent lived at least an additional five years. In the general population, roughly 87 percent of the same age group live another five years.

The study has an important message, says Charles Yeo, M.D., Samuel Gross Professor and Chair of Surgery at Jefferson Medical College, who led the work. "A decade ago, many clinicians thought that there was little reason to operate on patients with pancreatic ductal cancer, that surgery does little to extend life and improve the quality of life," says Dr. Yeo. "Not too long ago, few lived for five years after diagnosis. Today that's not true. There's been a paradigm shift in the way we treat and think about this disease".........

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January 9, 2007, 9:32 PM CT

Dust Around Nearby Star Like Powder Snow

Astronomers peering into the dust surrounding a nearby red dwarf star have found that the dust grains have a fluffiness comparable to that of powder snow, the ne plus ultra of skiers and snowboarders.

This is the first definitive measurement of the porosity of dust outside our solar system, and is akin to looking back 4 billion years into the early days of our planetary system, say researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. That was the era after the formation of planets, but before the remaining snowball- or softball-sized rubble was ground into dust by collisions and blown out of the inner solar system.

"We believe that this porosity is primordial, and reflects the agglomeration process whereby interstellar grains first assembled to form macroscopic objects," said James Graham, UC Berkeley professor of astronomy.

The grains are probably microscopic dirty snowballs, a mixture of ice and rock.

"The difference between a snowflake and a hailstone - both are ice but with very different porosities - occurs because they form very differently," he added. "Hailstones grow in violent thunderstorms; snowflakes grow under much more sedate meteorological conditions. Similarly, we conclude that the dust grains in the AU Mic debris disk formed by gentle agglomeration".........

Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

January 9, 2007, 9:05 PM CT

Forest Fires Release Mercury

Forest fires release more mercury into the atmosphere than previously recognized, a multidisciplinary research project at the University of Michigan suggests.

The study, which has implications for forest management and global mercury pollution, was published online today (Jan. 9) in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

Doctoral student Abir Biswas, the paper's lead author, came up with the idea for the project when he was a student at U-M's Camp Davis Rocky Mountain Field Station near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Wildfires were burning all around the station that summer, and smoke blanketed the camp. Around that time, Biswas happened to read a new scientific paper suggesting the possible role of fires in global mercury emissions.

"There I was, watching forest fires around our field camp, and it seemed like the ideal place to study the problem," he said.

The study Biswas read investigated mercury emissions from the combustion of foliage at locations around the USA and extrapolated to estimate mercury release during forest fires. "I'm interested in earth surface geochemistry so I wanted to approach the question differently," Biswas said.

Over the next two summers, under the direction of U-M professor Joel Blum, Biswas collected core samples of forest soil from burned and unburned areas, using sections of PVC pipe sharpened at one end to obtain the cylindrical samples. He and Blum also collaborated with U-M professor Gerald Keeler and former research scientist Bjorn Klaue to take air samples at Camp Davis-measuring mercury and trace metals over two summers-which provided the researchers with a picture of the atmospheric background on which the fires were superimposed.........

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January 9, 2007, 8:42 PM CT

Diamonds From Outer Space

If indeed "a diamond is forever," the most primitive origins of Earth's so-called black diamonds were in deep, universal time, geologists have discovered. Black diamonds came from none other than interstellar space.

In a paper published online on December 20, 2006, in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers Jozsef Garai and Stephen Haggerty of Florida International University, along with Case Western Reserve University scientists Sandeep Rekhi and Mark Chance, claim an extraterrestrial origin for the unique black diamonds, also called carbonado diamonds.

Infrared synchrotron radiation at Brookhaven National Laboratory was used to discover the diamonds' source.

"Trace elements critical to an 'ET' origin are nitrogen and hydrogen," said Haggerty. The presence of hydrogen in the carbonado diamonds indicates an origin in a hydrogen-rich interstellar space, he and his colleagues believe.

The term carbonado was coined by the Portuguese in Brazil in the mid-18th century; it's derived from its visual similarity to porous charcoal. Black diamonds are found only in Brazil and the Central African Republic.

"Conventional diamonds are mined from explosive volcanic rocks [kimberlites] that transport them from depths in excess of 100 kilometers to the Earth's surface in a very short amount of time," said Sonia Esperanca, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research. "This process preserves the unique crystal structure that makes diamonds the hardest natural material known".........

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January 8, 2007, 9:45 PM CT

Jefferson Cardiologists Fix Broken Heart

Unexplained chest pain after a heart attack might be more dangerous than a number of physicians originally think.

In a case study would be reported in the recent issue of the international journal Clinical Cardiology, physicians at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia report on a seemingly healthy 55-year-old man who had a silent heart attack and subsequent unexplained chest pain.

Once he was admitted to the hospital, it was discovered that the man actually had a rarely diagnosed complication called subepicardial aneurysm, which, if not quickly treated, could be fatal.

"The chest pain was a rupture of the heart wall about to happen--the most feared complication of a heart attack," explains Michael Savage, M.D., director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. "The rupture occurs from a tear in the muscle that has already been damaged by a heart attack. The heart muscle breaks and the wall bursts commonly causing cataclysmic death soon after".

The Jefferson scientists recommend that when a patient experiences unexplained pain after a heart attack, physicians should consider the possibility of a subepicardial aneurysm.

Diagnosis of a subepicardial aneurysm is extremely rare, says Dr. Savage, who is also associate professor of Medicine, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. Only 20 cases have ever been published in the medical literature and a number of patients were diagnosed after death. It is highly likely that a number of more patients have died from this complication but the cause of death was unrecognized.........

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