science wire

Faster and lighter aircraft could be built using an incredible super-thin material just one atom thick, according to new research conducted at The University of Manchester. Writing in the journal Advanced Materials , a team of materials scientists and physicists say graphene has the potential to replace carbon fibres in high performance materials that are used to build aircraft.

WASHINGTON - NASA's first dedicated oceanographic field campaign goes to sea June 15 to take an up-close look at how changing conditions in the Arctic are affecting the ocean's chemistry and ecosystems that play a critical role in global climate change.

MEDIA ADVISORY : M10-088 WASHINGTON - NASA will hold a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, June 8 to preview the agency's first dedicated oceanographic research voyage.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Paul Barone, a postdoctoral researcher in MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, and professor Michael Strano are working on a new type of blood glucose monitor that could not only eliminate the need for finger pricks but also offer more accurate readings. 'Diabetes is an enormous problem, global in scope, and despite decades of engineering advances, our ability to accurately measure glucose in the human body still remains quite primitive,' says Strano, the Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering.

MIT researchers have designed a fluorescent probe that can be targeted to different locations within a cell.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Paul Barone, a postdoctoral researcher in MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, and professor Michael Strano are working on a new type of blood glucose monitor that could not only eliminate the need for finger pricks but also offer more accurate readings. 'Diabetes is an enormous problem, global in scope, and despite decades of engineering advances, our ability to accurately measure glucose in the human body still remains quite primitive,' says Strano, the Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Since the 1990s, a green fluorescent protein known simply as GFP has revolutionized cell biology.

Cylindrical structures such as fibres or filaments with nanoscale dimensions are rapidly attracting interest for use in a variety of potentially important applications ? the controlled delivery of drugs to the body, for instance.

On May 24, 2010, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft captured this false-color, high-resolution view of the very tip of the Mississippi River delta.

PASADENA, Calif.—Biologists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Yale University have identified two genes, the leucokinin neuropeptide and the leucokinin receptor, that appear to regulate meal sizes and frequency in fruit flies. Both genes have mammalian counterparts that seem to play a similar role in food intake, indicating that the steps that control meal size and meal frequency are not just behaviorally similar but are controlled by the same genes throughout the animal kingdom.

The University of Birmingham is launching a major new initiative that will exploit state of the art technologies and high performance computing to unravel mechanisms of complex diseases, discover new diagnostic markers, and ultimately improve patient treatment and care.

In video interviews, Imperial scientists explain how the state-of-the-art technology will help their research - News By Lucy Goodchild Tuesday 18 May 2010 A new laser laboratory that will help scientists see how proteins become activated at a molecular level launched at Imperial College London on 29 April 2010.

Supermarket lamb curry ready-made meals eaten in the UK amount to an annual carbon footprint equivalent to 5,500 car trips around the world or 140 million car miles.

About a month and a half after its last double flyby, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be turning another double play this week, visiting the geyser moon Enceladus and the hazy moon Titan.

By helping them understand how these batteries behave under different conditions the new method - which involves Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy - could help researchers solve the fire safety problems that have dogged the development of these batteries. Lithium-ion battery technology has enabled the development of many electronic devices we now take for granted, such as laptop computers and mobile phones.

Food waste at South Kensington Campus will be used for compost thanks to the College's new composting unit, the CompPod- News release For immediate use Friday 13 May 2010 A tonne of food waste, includ

Tiny sensors tucked into cell phones could map airborne toxins in real time May 13, 2010 By Susan Brown A tiny flake of silicon can be engineered to respond to a wide range of chemical hazards.

Kat Suddaby, 20, is studying Natural Sciences at Pembroke College. She was brought up near Leeds and went to Boston Spa School.

With new fossil fuel power stations being built every week, and the idea of burying CO2 [ carbon sequestration ] regarded by many scientists as unproven or even unworkable, coming up with an alternative solution to what to do with CO2 is more pressing than ever.

Cambridge, Mass. May 13, 2010 - David Charbonneau, an international leader in the search for planets orbiting stars other than our sun, has been named professor of astronomy at Harvard University.

PASADENA, Calif.—A team of scientists from Columbia University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have programmed an autonomous molecular "robot" made out of DNA to start, move, turn, and stop while following a DNA track.

Perhaps no other researcher has had as much success as UCLA's James Liao in developing technology to turn carbon dioxide into products essential for the green economy.

To help mark the centenary of Dorothy Hodgkin's birth a special play will be performed next week at Oxford University's Lady Margaret Hall.

UCLA researchers report in the April 30 edition of the journal Cell that they have imaged a virus structure at a resolution high enough to effectively "see" atoms, the first published instance of imaging biological complexes at such a resolution. The research team, led by Hong Zhou, UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, used cryo-electron microscopy to image the structure at 3.3 angstroms.

The Precourt Institute for Energy (PIE) at Stanford University has handed out its first research grants, totaling $1.8 million in seed funding.

For insight into what can happen when the Earth's carbon cycle is altered - a cause and consequence of climate change - scientists can look to an event that occurred some 720 million years ago. New data from a Princeton University-led team of geologists suggest that an episode called "snowball Earth," which may have covered the continents and oceans in a thick sheet of ice, produced a dramatic change in the carbon cycle.

Made in IBM Labs: IBM Research creates world's smallest 3D map; brings low cost and ease of use to the fabrication of nanoscale objects Zurich, Switzerland, and San Jose, CA, 22 April 2010—IBM (NYSE: IBM) scientists have created a 3D map of the earth so small that 1,000 of them could fit on one grain of salt.

PASADENA, Calif.—A group of scientists led by researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has engineered a type of artificial optical material—a metamaterial—with a particular three-dimensional structure such that light exhibits a negative index of refraction upon entering the material.

The University of Bristol has been selected as a Strategic Alliance Partner by leading defence firm AWE. The alliance, which was confirmed at an official signing ceremony, will see the two organisations working closer together across a range of research areas.

Matt Fortnam in the Department of Earth Sciences talks to Professor Vala Ragnarsdottir, co-ordinator of the European SoilCritZone project, about the importance of soil, and draws comparisons between the global financial crash and the impending global soil crisis.

When John Phillips raised concerns about the effects of DDT and other chemicals on fish, ocean plants and pelicans, the idea that pollutants from the land and air could harm marine life was unexpected and astonishing.

Researchers heat algae in a device that acts like a pressure cooker to turn the algae into a crude biooil.

Yeast cells decide whether to have sex with each other within two minutes of meeting, according Dr. Vahid Shahrezaei of Imperial College London, whose new insights into how yeast cells decide to mate could be helpful for researchers looking at how cancer cells and stem cells develop.

Groves, a chemistry professor at Princeton University, told a panel of business leaders gathered on campus April 8 that a new technology he helped develop could catch dangerous side effects of drugs in the earliest stages of development, long before they would be tested in humans.

Professor Dek Woolfson is based in the School of Chemistry and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Biochemistry, because his research is done at the interface between chemistry and biology.

Researchers visit desert in the Middle East to explore storing greenhouse gases deep underground Imperial scientists document recent field trip to Oman, and the work they are carrying in $70 million international research project, in new video ?

Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, demonstrates a virus-templated catalyst solution used in harnessing energy from water. Photo: Dominick Reuter CAMBRIDGE, Mass. A team of MIT researchers has found a novel way to mimic the process by which plants use the power of sunlight to split water and make chemical fuel to power their growth.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Two notorious Great Lakes invaders—the zebra mussel and the round goby—now play a central role in transferring toxic chemicals called PCBs up the food chain and into Saginaw Bay walleyes, one of that region's most popular sport fish.