Science & Technology

Amazonian tree with human-sized leaves finally Identified as new species

Shreya Dasgupta
Monga Bay
Fri, 22 Nov 2019 12:00 UTC

At the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) in Manaus, Brazil, a framed exhibit of a massive dried leaf has been a local attraction for decades. But the complete identity of the tree it belongs to remained unresolved — until now.

Researchers have known that the tree is a species of Coccoloba, a genus of flowering plants that grow in the tropical forests of the Americas. Botanists from INPA first encountered an individual of the unknown Coccoloba tree in 1982 while surveying the Madeira River Basin in the Brazilian Amazon. They spotted more individuals of the plant over subsequent expeditions in the 1980s. But they couldn't pinpoint the species at the time. The individual trees weren't bearing any flowers or fruits then, parts that are essential to describing a plant species, and their leaves were too large to dehydrate, press and carry back to INPA. The researchers did take notes and photographs.

Comment: See also:

Also check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology

Music therapy: Underwater loudspeakers could help restore damaged coral reefs

Amanda Kooser
Cnet
Sat, 30 Nov 2019 13:00 UTC

The sweet sounds of a healthy coral reef are enough to convince young fish to move into the neighborhood.

© Harry Harding/University of Bristol
University of Exeter marine biology doctoral student Tim Gordon sets up a loudspeaker on a coral reef

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is suffering from the impacts of warming water temperatures, overfishing and pollution. Scientists may have a discovered a new tool to help with coral reef restoration efforts. It involves playing the dulcet sounds of nature under the waves.

Scientists know the quietness of damaged coral reefs is keeping fish away. Those fish are a key part of the reef ecosystem. A team of researchers led by marine biologists at the University of Exeter in the UK set up underwater loudspeakers to play recorded sounds of healthy reefs in an effort to lure young fish to come hang out in areas where the coral had degraded.

The experiment went swimmingly.

"The study found that broadcasting healthy reef sound doubled the total number of fish arriving onto experimental patches of reef habitat, as well as increasing the number of species present by 50%," the University of Exeter said in a release on Friday.

Living in the Mootrix: Russian cows try out VR headsets to lighten their mood

RT
Thu, 28 Nov 2019 14:04 UTC

Theories that we all live in a simulated world are debatable, but it may actually become a thing for Russian cows as farmers believe virtual reality could be used to trick the animals into giving more milk.

It was a cold and murky November day in the Moscow Region, but the cows at one farm were absolutely sure they were grazing a green field in the middle of summer.

The first trials of VR headsets, specially designed for the cattle, has shown a decrease in the level of anxiety and improved mood among the test subjects, an article on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Moscow Region said.

Researchers discover mysterious protein central to the functioning of DNA

Cay Leytham-Powell
University of Colorado, Boulder
Tue, 26 Nov 2019 00:55 UTC

It's long been known that the proteins that package DNA — like students at a high school dance — require a chaperone. But what exactly that guardian looks and acts like has been a mystery — until now.

A team of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder has cracked the puzzle of the 'Facilitates Chromatin Transcription' (or FACT) protein structure. This protein is partly responsible for making sure everything goes smoothly and no improper interactions take place when DNA temporarily sheds and replaces its guardian proteins, or histones.

These findings, which are the result of a project five years in the making at CU Boulder and out today in the journal Nature, will have ripple effects for not only our understanding of the genome and gene transcription, but for our understanding of cancer and the development of anti-cancer drugs.

"This is just the start for this protein. It's not the end," said Yang Liu, a research associate at CU Boulder and one of the study's lead authors.

Ever since its discovery in 1998, the FACT protein has been of great interest for those who study DNA, largely because of the possibilities it presents. But, despite decades of effort, many of the central questions of how the protein works remain unanswered.

Astronomers locate a galaxy containing three supermassive black holes at the center

Evan Gough
universetoday.com
Mon, 25 Nov 2019 00:00 UTC

NGC 6240 is a puzzle to astronomers. For a long time, astronomers thought the galaxy is a result of a merger between two galaxies, and that merger is evident in the galaxy's form: It has an unsettled appearance, with two nuclei and extensions and loops.

NGC 6240 is about 400 million light years away, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Even though it's been studied intensely, it's a very dusty place, and certain details have been obscured. But a new study using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT,) along with the advanced 3D MUSE Spectrograph, has opened up a new window into NGC 6240, and revealed a big surprise.

The galaxy is the result of not two galaxies merging, but three. And as a result, it's home to not two supermassive black holes, but three. "Up until now, such a concentration of three supermassive black holes had never been discovered in the universe." Dr Peter Weilbacher, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics.

How the sun affects temperatures on Earth: Interview with Professor Valentina Zharkova

Stuart McNish
Conversations That Matter
Thu, 10 Oct 2019 19:00 UTC

The sun is going through a stage known as a solar or Maunder Minimum. This is where the solar activity that ignites solar flares or sun spots has decreased. It's a normal cycle and one that has been linked to the mini ice age that lasted more than 50 years starting in the mid-1600s.

According to space weather since 2015, the number of days without a recordable sun spot has been rising year over year. NOAA, NASA and others all appear to agree the sun is entering a solar minimum phase.

What it means is open to interpretation because as Professor William Happer pointed out when I asked him about the growing number of people and agencies that suggest a solar minimum could lead to a cooling off period, he directed me the Danish proverb: "It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."

It has been suggested that mathematics can establish patterns and back them up with empirical evidence to support a prediction. We reached out to Professor of Mathematics Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University, one of the first people to raise awareness of the decrease in solar activity, for a Conversation That Matters about the sun, its reduced activity and her reading of the impact it will have on temperatures on earth.

Comment: Professor Valentina Zharkova explains and confirms why a "Super" Grand Solar Minimum is upon us

Design from the beginning: It didn't take long for animals to master physics and engineering

Evolution News
Wed, 27 Nov 2019 06:44 UTC

© Marsh Youngbluth [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Bathocyroe fosteri, a ctenophore: The first animal body plans were performing feats that fascinate — and baffle — research scientists.

Ctenophores: Flashing Paddles

Also called sea gooseberries and comb jellies, ctenophores (pronounced TEN-o-fours) are small centimeter-sized marine organisms with rows of cilia, called comb rows or ctenes, which function as paddles for swimming. Though gelatinous and transparent, comb jellies are unrelated to jellyfish (phylum Cnidaria); they have been classified into their own phylum, Ctenophora, characterized by eight of these comb rows. Scientists debate whether ctenophores are the earliest animals that appeared in the Cambrian explosion, as opposed to sponges (phylum Porifera). If so, they arrived with multiple tissues, a nervous system, and a digestive system. That's a lot to account for without any known transitional forms.

Up close, comb jellies look like alien spaceships with flashing lights. Rainbow colors race down the comb rows as the cilia beat in series. There's a puzzle: how do the cilia coordinate their movements? A recent paper in Current Biology by Jokura et al. shows it's not simple.

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Surprising quantum effect discovered in exotic superconductor

Science Daily
Fri, 22 Nov 2019 12:00 UTC

An international team led by researchers at Princeton University has directly observed a surprising quantum effect in a high-temperature iron-containing superconductor.

Superconductors conduct electricity without resistance, making them valuable for long-distance electricity transmission and many other energy-saving applications. Conventional superconductors operate only at extremely low temperatures, but certain iron-based materials discovered roughly a decade ago can superconduct at relatively high temperatures and have drawn the attention of researchers.

Exactly how superconductivity forms in iron-based materials is something of a mystery, especially since iron's magnetism would seem to conflict with the emergence of superconductivity. A deeper understanding of unconventional materials such as iron-based superconductors could lead eventually to new applications for next-generation energy-saving technologies.

Comment: See also:

Global storms on Mars launch dust towers into the sky

Andrew Good, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Phys.org
Wed, 27 Nov 2019 12:00 UTC

© NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Side-by-side movies shows how the 2018 global dust storm enveloped the Red Planet, courtesy of the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This global dust storm caused NASA's Opportunity rover to lose contact with Earth.

Dust storms are common on Mars. But every decade or so, something unpredictable happens: A series of runaway storms breaks out, covering the entire planet in a dusty haze.

Last year, a fleet of NASA spacecraft got a detailed look at the life cycle of the 2018 global dust storm that ended the Opportunity rover's mission. And while scientists are still puzzling over the data, two papers recently shed new light on a phenomenon observed within the storm: dust towers, or concentrated clouds of dust that warm in sunlight and rise high into the air. Scientists think that dust-trapped water vapor may be riding them like an elevator to space, where solar radiation breaks apart their molecules. This might help explain how Mars' water disappeared over billions of years.

Dust towers are massive, churning clouds that are denser and climb much higher than the normal background dust in the thin Martian atmosphere. While they also occur under normal conditions, the towers appear to form in greater numbers during global storms.

Comment: Could part of the reason scientists don't understand these events be similar to why they can't accurately predict the weather on our own planet? And to do both is it that they need to factor in much greater influences such as the activity of our sun, as well as the electro-magnetic nature of such phenomena?

And check out SOTT radio's:

New type of transistor designed by engineering professor

Julie Stewart
University of Delaware
Mon, 25 Nov 2019 23:06 UTC

© Kathy F. Atkinson
Professor Yuping Zeng (right) and graduate student Peng Cui have worked on designs for transistors that could enable cheaper, faster wireless communications.

Many of the technologies we rely on, from smartphones to wearable devices and more, utilize fast wireless communications. What might we accomplish if those devices transmitted information even faster?

That's what Yuping Zeng, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Delaware, aims to discover. She and a team of researchers recently created a high-electron mobility transistor, a device that amplifies and controls electrical current, using gallium nitride (GaN) with indium aluminum-nitride as the barrier on a silicon substrate. They described their results in the journal Applied Physics Express.

Among devices of its type, Zeng's transistor has record-setting properties, including record low gate leakage current (a measure of current loss), a record high on/off current ratio (the magnitude of the difference of current transmitted between the on state and off state) and a record high current gain cutoff frequency (an indication of how much data can be transmitted with a wide range of frequencies).

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Science & Technology

Amazonian tree with human-sized leaves finally Identified as new species

Music therapy: Underwater loudspeakers could help restore damaged coral reefs

Living in the Mootrix: Russian cows try out VR headsets to lighten their mood

Researchers discover mysterious protein central to the functioning of DNA

Astronomers locate a galaxy containing three supermassive black holes at the center

How the sun affects temperatures on Earth: Interview with Professor Valentina Zharkova

Design from the beginning: It didn't take long for animals to master physics and engineering

Surprising quantum effect discovered in exotic superconductor

Global storms on Mars launch dust towers into the sky

New type of transistor designed by engineering professor

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