Gizmorama
September 8, 2010
------------------------------------------------------------
Save 75 PERCENT MORE Space! Large, clear, re-usable storage
bags you can vacuum seal by hand.
http://pd.gophercentral.com/u/4090/c/186/a/474
------------------------------------------------------------
Good Morning,
In this issue, scientists are scanning the skies for planets
with volcanic activity. Read all the details including what
method is being used in the last article.
Until Next Time,
Erin
Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
Email your comments
P.S. You can discuss this issue or any other topic in the new
Gizmorama forum. Check it out here...
http://gizmorama.gophercentral.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Study: Pollination down with bee decline
TORONTO - A decline in the world's bee population has been
accompanied by a drop in pollination critical to the world's
food supplies, a Canadian researcher says. A University of
Toronto scientist has found the first evidence of a downward
trend in pollination and a possible link to climate change
as a cause, a university release says. James Thomson, a sci-
entist with U of T's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology, has spent 17 years examining the wild lily in the
Rocky Mountains of Colorado and has found a decline in
pollination, especially early in the growing season. "Bee
numbers may have declined at our research site, but we sus-
pect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when
flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more
important factor," Thomson says. "This is sobering because
it suggests that pollination is vulnerable even in a rela-
tively pristine environment that is free of pesticides and
human disturbance but still subject to climate change," he
said. Thomson's research, one of the longest-term studies
of pollination ever done, has been published in Philosoph-
ical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Biomass could yield chemical bonanza
AMES, Iowa - U.S. researchers say they've produced high-value
chemicals from biomass rather than traditional petroleum
sources. Scientists at Iowa State University looking to pro-
duce sugar derivatives from cellulose and other forms of bio-
mass were surprised when their process yielded significant
amounts of ethylene glycol and propylene glycol, a university
release said. "It was a real surprise," chemistry Professor
Walter Trahanovsky said. "These products were unexpected,
so we never looked for them. But they were always there."
Ethylene glycol is used in auto antifreeze, polyester fabrics
and plastic bottles. Propylene glycol can be used as a food
additive, a solvent in pharmaceuticals, a moisturizer in
cosmetics and as a coolant in liquid cooling systems. "There
is potential here," Trahanovsky said. "It's not a wild dream
to think this could be developed into a practical process."
The method, using biomass materials in alcohol at high temp-
eratures and pressures, works without the usual expensive
reagents such as acids, enzymes, catalysts or hydrogen gas.
"The starting materials for this are cheap," Trahanovsky
said. "And the products are reasonably high-value chemicals."
Brain 'atlas' could help in treatments
TEL AVIV, Israel - Israeli researchers say they're creating
an "atlas" of human brain connections that may give insights
into conditions such as autism and schizophrenia. Yaniv Assaf
of Tel Aviv University's Department of Neurobiology is inves-
tigating how different parts of the human brain "connect" to
turn this information into a "brain atlas," a release from
the university says. Disorders like autism and schizophrenia
are not localized, researchers say -- there is no one place
in the brain they can be found. Assaf hopes a brain atlas
will help in understanding how parts of our brain connect to
other parts within, leading to a deeper understanding of
these diseases. In the research, Assaf and an international
team of scientists are looking at clusters of brain wiring
to help researchers produce a better working map of the brain
for future research. Their aim is to better understand con-
nections in the brain and how they change over time. The goal
is to be better able to predict the onset, then more effect-
ively treat, brain-related diseases. "Currently, we can map
the healthy human brain past the age of puberty. But once we
will assemble this atlas, we could do this scan before pub-
erty -- and maybe even in utero -- to determine who's at
risk for disorders like schizophrenia, so that an early in-
tervention therapy can be applied" Assaf said.
Astronomers seeking space volcanoes
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - U.S. scientists studying planets outside
the solar system say they think they could spot volcanoes on
the distant worlds by their atmospheric signature. Although
astronomers are at least a decade away from being able to
capture images of the surface of an exoplanet, they have
been able to detect the atmospheres of gas giants dubbed "hot
Jupiters," and any volcanic gases detected in those atmos-
pheres could tell researchers something about the underlying
surface, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics said Tuesday. "You would need something truly
earthshaking, an eruption that dumped a lot of gases into the
atmosphere," Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger said.
"Using the James Webb Space Telescope, we could spot an erup-
tion 10 to 100 times the size of Pinatubo for the closest
stars." The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philip-
pines spewed about 17 million tons of sulfur dioxide into
the stratosphere, the layer of air 6 miles to 30 miles above
Earth's surface. Sulfur dioxide from a very large, explosive
eruption is potentially measurable because a lot is produced
and it is slow to wash out of the atmosphere, Kaltenegger
said. "Our first sniffs of volcanoes from an alien Earth
might be pretty rank!" Kaltenegger said. "Seeing a volcanic
eruption on an exoplanet will show us similarities or dif-
ferences among rocky worlds."
------------------------------------------------------------
Check out Viral Videos on the Net at EVTV1.com
http://www.evtv1.com/
EVTV1.com