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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 26, 2016 at 7:08am

How planet X was found...

Researchers inferred Planet X's presence from the peculiar clustering of six previously known objects that orbit beyond Neptune. 

They say there's only a 0.007% chance, or about one in 15,000, that the clustering could be a coincidence. 

Instead, they say, a planet with the mass of 10 Earths has shepherded the six objects into their strange elliptical orbits, tilted out of the plane of the solar system.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 22, 2016 at 8:59am

When you see a bad moon rising, expect an ever-so-slightly wetter day. The lunar gravitational pull imperceptibly boosts rainfall when the moon is on the horizon and somewhat reduces rainfall when the moon is overhead or on the opposite side of the Earth, a new analysis of global rainfall concludes.

The cause is the atmospheric equivalent of ocean tides, researchers propose in a paper to be published in Geophysical Research Letters. Air gathers on Earth’s moon-facing side and on the opposite end of the globe. Scientists noticed that this pileup increases atmospheric pressure and predicted that atmospheric tides could alter precipitation rates as well. Scouring 15 years of global precipitation data, the researchers have discovered that the effect is present, but tiny: an approximately one micrometer per hour change in rainfall rate.
The moon’s gravitational pull, which is responsible for ocean tides, also creates atmospheric tides. As more air gathers during atmospheric high tide, atmospheric pressure increases. Satellites now offer global coverage of where and when rain falls.
The data revealed that during atmospheric high tide, rising air pressure slightly increases air temperature. That temperature boost allows the air to hold more water vapor, lowering the relative humidity and making rain less likely. During low tide, pressures drop slightly, cooling the air, raising the relative humidity and making rain more likely. This effect amounts to about a hundredth that of the typical background weather variability.
Understanding the lunar influence on rainfall won’t change how we predict the weather. The effect is so small that it quickly disappears into the background noise with time.
- Science News.Org

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 22, 2016 at 7:23am

Adding pollinators could boost small-farm yields
Analysis shows bees, bugs could significantly increase crop production in poor-performing farms.
Coaxing more bees, beetles and other pollinators to buzz around small fields could on average boost crop yields enough to close the gap between the worst and the best of these farms by almost a quarter, says agroecologist Lucas Alejandro Garibaldi of the National University of Río Negro and Argentina’s CONICET research network.
To see whether improving pollination could make a noticeable difference, Garibaldi and an international network of researchers carefully used the same sampling protocols to observe 344 fields on large and small farms in Africa, Asia and South America over the course of five years. Looking at 33 crops that need pollinators — raspberries, apples, coffee and so on — the researchers monitored pollinator visits and diversity as well as the ultimate yields.

The low-yielding farms on average produced only 47 percent of the yield that the best did, a notable gap. On the small operations, the sheer density of pollinators visiting crop flowers made a bigger difference in the amount of food produced, the researchers found. On larger farms, pollinator diversity mattered more: Those farms with a greater variety of pollinators produced more food.
Analyzing the way yields responded to the number of pollinators shows that improving pollination could help close the yield gap, Garibaldi and his colleagues say in the Jan. 22 Science.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 20, 2016 at 9:09am

More than 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gas pollution since the 1970s has wound up in the oceans, and research published Monday revealed that a little more than a third of that seafaring heat has worked its way down to depths greater than 2,300 feet (700 meters).
Plunged to ocean depths by winds and currents, that trapped heat has eluded surface temperature measurements, fueling claims of a “hiatus” or “pause” in global warming from 1998 to 2013. But by expanding cool water, the deep-sea heat’s impacts have been indirectly visible in coastal regions by pushing up sea levels, contributing to worsening high-tide flooding.
The research, published in Nature Climate Change, was led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 20, 2016 at 8:14am

Q:How can we receive digital imagery of Pluto so quickly from across the solar system?

Answer: Pluto is about 4.9 billion kilometers away from earth. The digital imagery is transmitted via wireless communication, which is based on electromagnetic radiation which travels with light speed, e.g. about 300.000 kilometers per second in the vacuum of space. Which means signals need about 4 1/2 hours to earth. It takes additional time to actually transmit all the data, but probably not too much. Five hours all in all are enough.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 16, 2016 at 7:21am

How can plants grow in space?

Yes, they have a problem in space...Zero Gravity!

The complication that needs to be overcome is that plants make use of gravity when planted to orient themselves (as they can't rely on being planted the right way up), so that their roots go down and their sprouts go up. Without gravity, they will tend to just stay at around the same depth and not sprout. One astronaut reported that this was simple enough to fix, however, just by plucking the ends out of the soil, pulling them to the surface, when they first sprout. From this point, the plant can orient itself using light and will continue to grow. Roots don't suffer as much, as they just grow away from the seed and avoid light (the surface), so develop relatively normally.

After this, growth is mostly normal. The resulting plants can look a little unusual because they don't have the usual drooping from gravity, so will tend to be more upright.
Crew members aboard the International Space Station have been growing  plants and vegetables for years in their "space garden." A space station study is helping investigators develop procedures and methods that allow astronauts to grow and safely eat space-grown vegetables.

Surprises in microgravity research are not unusual, though, and it turned out that overwatered traditional module sprouted and developed leaves about twice as fast.

The second surprising result was discovered when the root modules were unpacked on the ground. The new fertilizer being tested had a slower and more even release rate, which had helped lower the plants' accumulation of salts during ground studies. Investigators expected to see higher salt accumulation in the space modules, but the opposite occurred.

The current theory is that the extra water and larger plant uptake of fertilizer caused the root modules to remove nutrients faster and release fertilizer faster, thus preventing the salt accumulations that were observed in the slower-growing ground studies.

The space station's ability to provide on-the-spot adjustments to experiment conditions or opportunities to quickly repeat microgravity experiments with new conditions are a big plus for researchers.

Read more here:
Growing Plants and Vegetables in a Space Garden

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 16, 2016 at 7:09am

Astronomers have discovered the brightest star explosion ever, a super supernova that easily outshines our entire Milky Way. An international team revealed “the most powerful supernova observed in human history” Thursday in the latest Science journal. The astronomers used a network of telescopes around the world to spot the record-breaking supernova last year.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 15, 2016 at 11:34am

Researchers have confirmed that a toxic chemical in the fruit of the Asian lychee tree (Litchi chinensis) is responsible for outbreaks of a fatal brain sickness in children in India’s Bihar state where the fruit is commercially grown. Methylene cyclopropyl-glycine (MCPG) or hypoglycin G was detected in both semi-ripe and ripe lychee fruit by a team of virologists led by T. Jacob John at the Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, in Tamil Nadu. The findings were published in Current Science. The chemical is akin to another toxin methylene cyclopropylalanine (MCPA), which is found in ackee (Blighia sapida), a West Indian fruit. Both lychee and ackee come from the Sapindaceae (soapberry) family of plants. MCPG is known to cause hypoglycaemic encephalopathy, a metabolic illness that affects the brain when body sugar levels are low due to fasting or undernourishment.

Only undernourished children living near lychee orchards appeared to suffer and during May and June, when the fruit is harvested.

MCPG forms compounds with carnitine and coenzyme A and makes them less available for important metabolic reactions in the body. Both carnitine and coenzyme A are essential for fatty acid metabolism. When a person is fasting, stored glycogen is released initially for energy production. Later, body fat is mobilized and this requires breakdown of fatty acids aided by carnitine and coenzyme. When this metabolism is impaired, hypoglycaemia develops.The toxin is seen in high concentrations in the seed and semi-ripe pulp. Children who are malnourished are most vulnerable as they have low glycogen stores  While MCPG was known to be present in lychee seeds, the study established its presence in the flesh of the fruits as well. Immediate treatment for victims includes administration of glucose.

http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/109/12/2195.pdf

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 14, 2016 at 10:12am

A new half-solid, half-liquid material can heal itself ...
A new half-solid, half-liquid adaptive material created by scientists in the US displays a number of amazing properties, including the ability to self-heal – stitching itself back together once divided – and self-stiffen back into its original shape after being compressed.

The material, called SAC – which stands for self-adaptive composite – is composed of a mass of sticky, micron-scale rubber balls that cling together to create a solid matrix. The composite is capable of healing itself repeatedly when cracked, and behaves kind of like a sponge, regaining its original form after being disturbed.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 10, 2016 at 10:47am

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