A buffet for early human relatives
...vert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into plant matter and oxygen. Carbon isotope ratios reveal the extent to which the relatives of early humans ate so-called C3 plants, which include fruit and leaves from trees in both the forest and savanna, and C4 plants, which grow mostly on the savanna and include ......opogenic CO2 from the atmosphere and it would be a matter of concern if their ability to do this decreased under global warming. If levels continue to increase, to above 500 600 parts per million as many scientists expect to be the case by 2050, then the climate shifts and warming effects and will become...Researchers link ocean organisms with increased cloud cover and potential climate change
... The impact of isoprene on atmospheric particulate matter was previously thought to be important only for terrestrial plants, Nenes said. The researchers stumbled upon the phytoplankton-cloud connection quite accidentally. "While looking at the satellite pictures, I noticed that cloud properties over lar...Novel experiment documents evolution of genome in near-real time
...ity to observe evolution as it is occurring over a matter of days," said Bernhard . Palsson, the senior author of the study and professor of bioengineering at UCSD. "The published genomic sequences of bacteria are like a fossil record and our experiments confirm that these genomes can change quickly as bact...Using an activated-carbon filtering pitcher significantly reduces chemicals in tap water
...tween chlorine used to disinfect water and organic matter normally present in it. "They don't affect the smell or the flavor of water, but in high concentrations they are suspected of increasing the risk of certain types of cancer," points out Rodriguez. Researchers subjected samples collected in private ...Microbes compete with animals for food by making it stink
...den or the rotten bait. Researchers found that, no matter the rotten bait's texture, stone crabs avoided eating the rotted, microbe-laden food, but readily consumed the freshly thawed menhaden containing few microbes. "Even when the stone crabs were handed the rotten fish, they didn't want to eat it," Hay...Researchers to study why dead zone returned to Lake Erie
...bra mussels may shunt the oxygen-consuming organic matter from the near shore to the bottom waters. In the third scenario, global warming has caused the layer of bottom water to become thinner, with less oxygen. The dead zone materialized in Erie's central basin and can cover as much as three quarters of t...Insect population growth likely accelerated by warmer climate
...d have elevated rates of population growth. "No matter which scenario plays out for a given species, local ecosystems will be profoundly altered," Frazier said....Tweedle coat fashions stocky flies
...s them appear compressed. "It's not a trivial matter to put a shell on from the inside," explained Steven Wasserman, a professor of biology who headed the research team. "An insect needs to build up the flexibility, strength and shape of each part before sealing the outside. If you've ever peeled a g...Michigan State researcher traces the evolution of honey bee gender
...to carry over to the next generation. "This is a matter of gene transmission," Huang said. "It is an evolutionary strategy to maximize gene transmission to the next generation."...Carnegie Mellon uses new imaging technique to discover differences in brains of people with autism
...niversity have discovered that the so-called white matter in the brains of people with autism has lower stru...- to measure the structural integrity of the white matter that acts as cables to wire the parts of the brain together. Normally, water molecules move, or diff...Researchers report initial success in promising approach to prevent tooth decay
... harmful bacterial species could be generated in a matter of days. He said all that is needed is the full DNA sequence of a microbe, a unique homing sequence from a pheromone, and an appropriate anti-microbial peptide. "We have a collection of anti-microbial peptides that we usually screen the bacterium t...Two miles underground, strange bacteria are found thriving
... these bacterial communities sustain themselves no matter what happened on the surface? If so, it raises the possibility that organisms could survive even on planets whose surfaces have long since become lifeless." Onstott's team published its results in the Oct. 20 issue of the journal Science. The resea...HYPER-CEST MRI breaks new ground in molecular imaging
.... Said Schrder, "Image acquisition time becomes a matter of minutes as opposed to a matter of days under conventional molecular MRI techniques. Our HYPER-CEST technique is the first rapid m...Story tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, October 2006
...ding . . . Highly detailed images that show how matter organizes first into clusters and then into particles with thousands of atoms are helping researchers better understand catalytic processes. Ultimately, this greater understanding could make these chemical reactions with a wide range of industrial ap...ACS News Service Weekly PressPac -- October 11, 2006
... waters high in DBP precursors and natural organic matter in order to facilitate detection of DBPs. They tested the water for levels of regulated DBPs and 50 unregulated DBPs regarded as posing the greatest health risks. Their report is scheduled for the Dec. 1 issue of the semi-monthly ACS journal, Environ...Learning to live with oxygen on early Earth
...roportions of carbon and other isotopes in organic matter depend on chemical reactions that happen as the carbon wends its way through an organism's metabolism. There are two stable isotopes of carbon found in nature--12C and 13C--which differ only in the number of neutrons in the nucleus. By far the most a...Yale-BioHaven Entrepreneurship Seminar: 454 Life Sciences aiming for the $10K Human Genome
...after performing a single sample preparation -- no matter the size of the genome studied. A single instrument using patented light emitting sequencing chemistries produces sequence information at more than 60-times the capacity of instruments using the current technology. In 2005, the company entered into...Marine life stirs ocean enough to affect climate, says FSU study
...stored by phytoplankton in the form of new organic matter at roughly 63 terawatts, and that's a lot of juice: Just one terawatt equals a trillion watts. In 2001, humans collectively consumed a comparatively measly 13.5 terawatts. What's more, their study found that the marine biosphere the chain of sea ......scale, which is different from our everyday world, matter behaves according to the rules of quantum mechanics. Although the rules are well understood, the tools required to control quantum processes are still under development. Quantum technologies aim to manipulate molecular scale behaviour, in a way not u...