http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/science-blog.html Science blog from networlddirectory, the place for information. Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT en-us http://www.networlddirectory.com/images/blogs/science-blog.jpg http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/science-blog.html 128 85 http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/10-2011/oil-spill-and-microbes.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/10-2011/oil-spill-and-microbes.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT In the results of a newly released study, researchers explain how they used DNA to identify microbes present in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill--and the particular microbes responsible for consuming natural gas immediately after the spill. Water temperature played a key role in the way bacteria reacted to the spill, the scientists found........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/9-2011/cryogenic-catering-truck.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/9-2011/cryogenic-catering-truck.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT Until now, servicing the state-of-the-art superconducting receivers inside an ALMA telescope has mandatory hauling the entire 115-ton telescope from its observing site at 16,500 feet down to a support facility at 9,500 feet. The dangerous 40-mile roundtrip, atop a monster truck called the ALMA Transporter, uses hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel, and the telescope's absence from scientific observing can be as long as four days........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2011/math-ability-is-inborn.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2011/math-ability-is-inborn.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT We accept that some people are born with a talent for music or art or athletics. But what about mathematics? Do some of us just arrive in the world with better math skills than others? It seems we do, at least as per the results of a study by a team of Johns Hopkins University psychology experts. Led by Melissa Libertus, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the study -- published online in a recent issue of Developmental Science -- indicates that math ability in preschool children is strongly associated with their inborn and primitive "number sense," called an "Approximate Number System" or ANS........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2011/carbon-hitches-a-ride-from-field-to-market.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2011/carbon-hitches-a-ride-from-field-to-market.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT Today, farming often involves transporting crops long distances so consumers from Maine to California can enjoy Midwest corn, Northwest cherries and other produce when they are out of season locally. But it isn't just the fossil fuel needed to move food that contributes to agriculture's carbon footprint........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/junk-energy-into-useful-power.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/junk-energy-into-useful-power.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT A University at Buffalo-led research team has developed a mathematical framework that could one day form the basis of technologies that turn road vibrations, airport runway noise and other "junk" energy into useful power. The concept all begins with a granular system comprising a chain of equal-sized particles -- spheres, for instance -- that touch one another........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/a-heavy-relative-of-the-neutron.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/a-heavy-relative-of-the-neutron.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT Researchers of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced the observation of a new particle, the neutral Xi-sub-b (?b0). This particle contains three quarks: a strange quark, an up quark and a bottom quark (s-u-b). While its existence was predicted by the Standard Model, the observation of the neutral Xi-sub-b is significant because it strengthens our understanding of how quarks form matter. Fermilab physicist Pat Lukens, a member of the CDF collaboration, presented the discovery at Fermilab on Wednesday, July 20........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/what-keeps-the-earth-cooking.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/what-keeps-the-earth-cooking.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT What spreads the sea floors and moves the continents? What melts iron in the outer core and enables the Earth's magnetic field? Heat. Geologists have used temperature measurements from more than 20,000 boreholes around the world to estimate that some 44 terawatts (44 trillion watts) of heat continually flow from Earth's interior into space. Where does it come from?........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/non-africans-are-part-neanderthal.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/non-africans-are-part-neanderthal.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT Some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals and is found exclusively in people outside Africa, as per an international team of scientists led by Damian Labuda of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center. The research was reported in the recent issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. ....... ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/wildfires-still-a-wide-open-climate-question.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/wildfires-still-a-wide-open-climate-question.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT How the frequency and intensity of wildfires and intentional biomass burning will change in a future climate requires closer scientific attention, as per CSIRO's Dr Melita Keywood. 5 July 2011. Dr Keywood said it is likely that fire - one of nature's primary carbon-cycling mechanisms - will become an increasingly important driver of atmospheric change as the world warms........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/how-hot-did-earth-get-in-the-past.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2011/how-hot-did-earth-get-in-the-past.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT The question seems simple enough: What happens to the Earth's temperature when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase? The answer is elusive. However, clues are hidden in the fossil record. A newly released study by scientists from Syracuse and Yale universities provides a much clearer picture of the Earth's temperature approximately 50 million years ago when CO2 concentrations were higher than today. The results may shed light on what to expect in the future if CO2 levels keep rising........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/2004-sumatra-earthquake-deadliest-in-history.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/2004-sumatra-earthquake-deadliest-in-history.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT An international team of georesearchers has discovered an unusual geological formation that helps explain how an undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in December 2004 spawned the deadliest tsunami in recorded history. Instead of the usual weak, loose sediments typically found above the type of geologic fault that caused the earthquake, the team found a thick plateau of hard, compacted sediments. Once the fault snapped, the rupture was able to spread from tens of kilometers below the seafloor to just a few kilometers below the seafloor, much farther than weak sediments would have permitted. The extra distance allowed it to move a larger column of seawater above it, unleashing much larger tsunami waves........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/upping-the-anti.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/upping-the-anti.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT Science fiction is fast approaching science fact as scientists are progressing rapidly toward "bottling" antimatter. In a paper published online today by the journal Nature Physics, the ALPHA experiment at CERN, including key Canadian contributors, reports that it has succeeded in storing antimatter atoms for over 16 minutes. While carrying around bottled antimatter like in the movie Angels and Demons remains fundamentally far-fetched, storing antimatter for long periods of time opens up new vistas for researchers struggling to understand this elusive substance. ALPHA managed to store twice the antihydrogen (the antimatter partner to normal hydrogen) 5,000 times longer than the prior best, setting the stage, for example, to test whether antihydrogen and normal hydrogen fall the same way due to gravity........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/carbon-release-to-atmosphere.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/carbon-release-to-atmosphere.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, as per an international team of geologists. Rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/thomas-edison-also-invented-the-concrete-house.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2011/thomas-edison-also-invented-the-concrete-house.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT Afficionados of modern poured-concrete design were in for a rude awakening last month when they heard NJIT Assistant Professor Matt Burgermaster's presentation at the 64th annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians. "Edison's 'Single-Pour System: Inventing Seamless Architecture" illustrated how Thomas Edison invented and patented in 1917 an innovative construction system to mass produce prefabricated and seamless concrete houses. Typically most people associate this style of architectural design and type of building technology with the European avant-garde of the early 20th century........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/seeing-hidden-building-blocks-of-life.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/seeing-hidden-building-blocks-of-life.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT Researchers from Finland and France have developed a new synchrotron X-ray technique that may revolutionize the chemical analysis of rare materials like meteoric rock samples or fossils. The results have been published on 29 May 2011 in Nature Materials as an advance online publication. Life, as we know it, is based on the chemistry of carbon and oxygen. The three-dimensional distribution of their abundance and chemical bonds has been difficult to study up to now in samples where these elements were embedded deep inside other materials. Examples are tiny inclusions of possible water or other chemicals inside martian rock samples, fossils buried inside a lava rock, or minerals and chemical compounds within meteorites........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/tiny-bubbles-signal-to-coral-reefs.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/tiny-bubbles-signal-to-coral-reefs.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT A newly released study from University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science researchers Chris Langdon, Remy Okazaki and Nancy Muehllehner and his colleagues from the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Max-Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Gera number of concludes that ocean acidification, along with increased ocean temperatures, will likely severely reduce the diversity and resilience of coral reef ecosystems within this century........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/bird-crocodile-family-trees-split.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/bird-crocodile-family-trees-split.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT A fossil unearthed in China in the 1970s of a creature that died about 247 million years ago, originally believed to be a distant relative of both birds and crocodiles, turns out to have come from the crocodile family tree after it had already split from the bird family tree, as per research led by a University of Washington paleontologist........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/potential-for-great-earthquake.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/potential-for-great-earthquake.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT The region east of the central Andes Mountains has the potential for larger scale earthquakes than previously expected, as per a newly released study posted online in the May 8th edition of Nature Geoscience Prior research had set the maximum expected earthquake size to be magnitude 7.5, based on the relatively quiet history of seismicity in that area. This newly released study by scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) and his colleagues contradicts that limit and instead suggests that the region could see quakes with magnitudes 8.7 to 8.9........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/air-pollution-near-michigan-schools.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/air-pollution-near-michigan-schools.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT -Air pollution from industrial sources near Michigan public schools jeopardizes children's health and academic success, as per a newly released study from University of Michigan researchers. The scientists observed that schools located in areas with the state's highest industrial air pollution levels had the lowest attendance rates---an indicator of poor health---as well as the highest proportions of students who failed to meet state educational testing standards........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/analysis-of-national-petroleum-reserve-in-alaska.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2011/analysis-of-national-petroleum-reserve-in-alaska.html Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:01:48 GMT "The USGS conducts evaluation updates to re-evaluate petroleum potential as new data and information become available," said USGS Energy Resources Program Coordinator Brenda Pierce. "Understanding how much undiscovered, technically recoverable resource might be present serves as a basis for calculating how much might be economically developed."....... ]]>