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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 26, 2014 at 9:23am

 

Helium becomes superfluid and displays amazing properties.

To address all the comments about helium "running out": Most helium on earth is the result of radioactive decay (alpha particle emission and electron capture) over a very long period of time and is captured in the earth's lithosphere (crust). As such, the helium reserves on earth are finite. The main method of helium extraction is distillation from natural gas which contains up to 7% helium. Worldwide reserves and resources of helium are abundant and at the current rate of extraction will last several centuries.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 26, 2014 at 9:14am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 26, 2014 at 8:34am

Redesigning life

This year saw stunning new developments in the emerging field of synthetic biology. In May, scientists in California explained how they had extended the "alphabet of life". All of the planet's lifeforms use four chemical units, or bases, arranged in pairs within DNA. But the US team modified a an E. coli bug to incorporate two additional chemicals not present in nature. The science could eventually be used to make a range of novel drugs and materials.

The work followed hot on the heels of the announcement that scientists had created the first synthetic chromosome for yeast. The genes in the original chromosome were replaced with synthetic versions. It's hoped the work will enable a range of applications from the manufacture of vaccines to more sustainable forms of biofuel.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 24, 2014 at 8:22am

Some science journals may publish papers after cursory or no peer review, despite claiming otherwise. Researchers may send their papers to predatory journals either knowingly or naively buying into the false claims made.
Find here a list of questionable, scholarly open-access standalone journals

Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access journals
http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/
And the list of publishers: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers
http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

Find more information here: http://www.scidev.net/global/publishing/practical-guide/target-jour...

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There’s Something Really Wrong With Science These Days

http://brainblogger.com/2014/12/26/theres-something-really-wrong-wi...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 24, 2014 at 8:15am

When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?
Despite a worldwide obsession with diets and fitness regimes, many health professionals cannot correctly answer the question of where body fat goes when people lose weight. A study published in the British Medical Journal has the surprising answer: we breathe it out.
Where Did The Fat Go? Fat burned during weight loss is breathed out as carbon dioxide and water, but breathing more won’t help you lose weight.
The correct answer is that most of the mass is breathed out as carbon dioxide. It goes into thin air!
In a study and a paper based on their work, the authors show that losing 10 kilograms of fat requires 29 kilograms of oxygen to be inhaled and that this metabolic process produces 28 kilograms of carbon dioxide and 11 kilograms of water.
http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7257

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 24, 2014 at 8:10am

Equivalence of wave–particle duality to entropic uncertainty
Bridging Two Mysteries At The Heart Of Quantum Physics It turns out that wave-particle duality is simply the quantum uncertainty principle in disguise.
Using novel techniques from information theory, researchers from the National University of Singapore have demonstrated a striking and fundamental relationship between two fundamental characteristics of quantum physics—wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle. This research, published in Nature Communications, paves the way for more elegant tests of both phenomena in quantum systems. http://www.asianscientist.com/2014/12/in-the-lab/bridging-mysteries...

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141219/ncomms6814/full/ncomms6814...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 24, 2014 at 7:23am

Clouds may be dining cars for some germs
Germs don’t just hitchhike on clouds, some also treat them as a cafeteria
Researchers have discovered that at least one cloud-dwelling microbe — a bacterium belonging to the Bacillus genus— may dine on sugars while riding the winds in clouds. And this is not just any microbe. It’s one of the types most frequently found in the air and cloud-water droplets, reports a team of European scientists.
Scientists had known for decades that clouds can host diverse communities of microbes. But researchers had suspected those germs, lofted into the air by winds, were just aimlessly hitchhiking rides, sometimes between continents. The new research shows that the germs are not just jetting long distances. Some may treat their cloud ferries like club cars, dining happily as they travel.
https://student.societyforscience.org/article/clouds-may-be-dining-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 24, 2014 at 7:06am

Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness

Abstract

In the past 50 y, there has been a decline in average sleep duration and quality, with adverse consequences on general health. A representative survey of 1,508 American adults recently revealed that 90% of Americans used some type of electronics at least a few nights per week within 1 h before bedtime. Mounting evidence from countries around the world shows the negative impact of such technology use on sleep. This negative impact on sleep may be due to the short-wavelength–enriched light emitted by these electronic devices, given that artificial-light exposure has been shown experimentally to produce alerting effects, suppress melatonin, and phase-shift the biological clock. A few reports have shown that these devices suppress melatonin levels, but little is known about the effects on circadian phase or the following sleep episode, exposing a substantial gap in our knowledge of how this increasingly popular technology affects sleep. Here we compare the biological effects of reading an electronic book on a light-emitting device (LE-eBook) with reading a printed book in the hours before bedtime. Participants reading an LE-eBook took longer to fall asleep and had reduced evening sleepiness, reduced melatonin secretion, later timing of their circadian clock, and reduced next-morning alertness than when reading a printed book. These results demonstrate that evening exposure to an LE-eBook phase-delays the circadian clock, acutely suppresses melatonin, and has important implications for understanding the impact of such technologies on sleep, performance, health, and safety.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/18/1418490112

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 23, 2014 at 9:05am

Researchers at Montana State University and Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany have created a simple mathematical model based on optical measurements that explains the stunning colors of Yellowstone National Park's hot springs and can visually recreate how they appeared years ago, before decades of tourists contaminated the pools with make-a-wish coins and other detritus.
Using a relatively simple one-dimensional model for light propagation, the group was able to reproduce the brilliant colors and optical characteristics of Yellowstone National Park’s hot springs by accounting for each pool’s spectral reflection due to microbial mats, their optical absorption and scattering of water and the incident solar and diffuse skylight conditions present when measurements were taken.
While the basic physical phenomena that render these colorful delights have long been scientifically understood -- they arise because of a complicated interplay of underwater vents and lawns of bacteria -- no mathematical model existed that showed empirically how the physical and chemical variables of a pool relate to their optical factors and coalesce in the unique, stunning fashion that they do.
Using a relatively simple one-dimensional model for light propagation, the group was able to reproduce the brilliant colors and optical characteristics of Yellowstone National Park's hot springs by accounting for each pool's spectral reflection due to microbial mats, their optical absorption and scattering of water and the incident solar and diffuse skylight conditions present when measurements were taken. In the case of Morning Glory Pool, they were even able to simulate what the pool once looked like between the 1880s and 1940s, when its temperatures were significantly higher. During this time, its waters appeared a uniform deep blue. An accumulation of coins, trash and rocks over the intervening decades has partially obscured the underwater vent, lowering the pool's overall temperature and shifting its appearance to a terrace of orange-yellow-green. This change from blue was demonstrated to result from the change in composition of the microbial mats, as a result of the lower water temperature.
A general relationship between shallow water temperature (hence microbial mat composition) and observed colors was confirmed in this study. However, color patterns observed in deeper segments of the pool are caused more by absorption and scattering of light in the water. These characteristics - mats having greater effect on color in shallow water, and absorption and scattering winning out in the deeper areas - are consistent across all the measured pools.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 23, 2014 at 8:56am

Plants are changing their 'eating choices'
A carnivorous plant that is turning vegetarian
The bladderworts (Utricularia) is a species of carnivorous plant that catches and digests tiny animals.

Now, the plant is turning to algae and pollen grains for a balanced nutrition.
The species catches its prey with the help of suction bladders, trap doors and lightning speed.

Once captured by the bladderwort, the animal suffocates, and is then broken down by enzymes and digested.

This is how the plant worked until it discovered vegetarianism.

"Bladderworts are switching to algae and pollen grains," said researchers Marianne Koller-Peroutka and Wolfram Adlassnig from the University of Vienna in Austria.

When bladderworts lived in areas where algae was plenty and animals were scarce, the vegetarian plants were actually larger than the meat eaters.

Consuming animals gave the plants a higher nitrogen content which increased the development of hibernation buds which are critical to helping them survive over cold winters.
The bladderworts (Utricularia) are one of the largest genera (a principal taxonomic category that ranks above species and below family) in carnivorous plants with over 200 species.

The study appeared in the journal Annals of Botany.

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