Jul

2

BELLA: Building a Table-Top Accelerator

July 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment

BELLA: Accelerating Science by Accelerating Electrons: Berkeley Lab scientists stunned the world in 2006 when they proved they could accelerate electrons to very high energies (1 GeV, or a billion electron volts) in a distance of centimeters rather than hundreds of meters. Using the same concepts, those scientists plan to take the project to the next level and build a laser-based accelerator capable of zapping electron beams to energies exceeding 10 GeV in a distance of just one meter.

When completed in about four years, the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator, or BELLA, will demonstrate the promise of a novel and compact method of accelerating high-energy particles, by making use of a series of synchronized laser systems. The results will be of interest not only to high-energy particle physicists but also to chemists, biologists, doctors, and national security officials.

Related reading from Berkeley Labs: BELLA – The Next Stage in Laser Wakefield Acceleration

Popularity: 1% [?]

Jun

30

How Chemistry can Reveal the Secrets of Ancient Worlds

June 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment

How Chemistry can Reveal the Secrets of Ancient Worlds: The day-to-day lives of prehistoric humans have been revealed following new research developed by chemists at the University of Bristol. The research, which combines archaeology with cutting-edge chemistry allowing scientists to reconstruct the past, will be presented at the Royal Society’s annual Summer Science Exhibition [30 June 2009].

Led by Professor Richard Evershed from the University’s School of Chemistry, the team has developed new methods of forensic-style chemistry enabling the extraction of chemical information from organic molecules that have been preserved in archaeological artefacts and geological deposits for hundreds, thousands or even millions of years. Using this information the team is able to unravel key aspects of the lives of ancient peoples, particularly their diet and agricultural practices.

Richard Evershed, Professor of Biogeochemistry at the University, said: ”While the archaeological record is extraordinarily incomplete, by combining molecular, isotopic and archaeological information we can build up pictures of how people lived in a way that was impossible until now. We use the latest analytical chemical techniques in a forensic approach because of the thousands of years that have passed since the evidence was left behind.”

The latest state-of-the-art analytical chemical techniques are required to reveal and identify the invisible ancient molecules ― ‘biomarkers’ ― which are then matched to modern reference materials. These molecular and isotopic ‘fingerprints’ can be used to trace human activities, adding important new pieces to the jigsaw puzzle of past life on Earth.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Jun

30

New Fluorescent Silicon Nanoparticles

June 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment

University of Leicester researchers discover new fluorescent silicon nanoparticles. Researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester have developed a new synthesis method, which has led them to the discovery of fluorescent silicon nanoparticles and may ultimately help track the uptake of drugs by the body’s cells.

Dr Klaus von Haeften explained: “A key advantage of the new method is the independent control of the nanoparticles’ size and their surface properties. The method is extremely versatile and produces the fluorescent suspensions in one go. The findings may revolutionise the performance of electronic chips while satisfying the increasing demand for higher integration densities.”

The nanoparticles contain just a few hundred silicon atoms and their fluorescence were discovered after mixing them with water. This resulted in stability in fluorescence intensity over more than a three month period.

Popularity: 1% [?]

May

11

Enviro-Health Links – 2009 H1N1 Flu

May 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Enviro-Health Links – 2009 H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) is a huge collection of links to H1N1 Flu related materials. These links are presented in several categories like Federal and Local Response, International Resources, Guidance for Professionals, Maps, News, Twitter, Webcasts, Information from the National Library of Medicine (drugs information, consumer health information, biomedical journal literature, influenza virus sequence database), Veterinary Resources and Full text Journals and Books.

This valuable collection of links was compiled by the Specialized Information Services (SIS) of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).

Popularity: 8% [?]

May

10

Weekend Quick Picks

May 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Popularity: 8% [?]

May

7

Christine Laine Named Editor of Annals of Internal Medicine

May 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment

The American College of Physicians (ACP) has named Christine Laine editor of its flagship journal, Annals of Internal Medicine. A former vice president and senior deputy editor of Annals, Christine Laine succeeds Harold C. Sox who will retire in July.

The Annals of Internal Medicine New Editor is the youngest editor in the history of Annals of Internal Medicine and brings a unique perspective to the journal. She plans to continue the tradition of excellence established by her predecessors, while striving to chart new and innovative courses that will help to make the journal invaluable to general internists and subspecialists alike.

Christine Laine, a widely respected name in the field of medical journalism, is Secretariat for the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Vice President of the Council of Science Editors, and a member of the Ethics Committee of the World Association of Medical Editors. She is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Internal Medicine at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia where she continues to teach and see patients.

Established in 1927 by the American College of Physicians (ACP), the Annals of Internal Medicine is the leading journal for studies in internal medicine. The purpose of the journal is to promote excellence in the clinical practice of internal medicine. Annals of Internal Medicine is one of the most widely cited peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. The journal accepts only 7 percent of the original research studies submitted for publication.

Popularity: 8% [?]

May

6

Nature’s Scitable

May 6, 2009 | 1 Comment

scitable-science-nature

Scitable is an open online teaching/learning portal combining high quality educational articles authored by editors at Nature Publishing Group with technology-based community features to fuel a global exchange of scientific insights, teaching practices, and study resources. Scitable currently contains articles in the field of genetics, and is intended for college undergraduate faculty and students. Future plans involve extension of Scitable to other fields within the life sciences, as well as to other audiences.

Popularity: 8% [?]

May

6

FluTracker: Tracking the Progress of H1N1 Swine Flu

May 6, 2009 | 1 Comment

FluTracker: Tracking the Progress of H1N1 Swine Flu. The map and the data behind it were compiled by Dr. Henry Niman, a biomedical researcher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, using technology provided by Rhiza Labs and Google. The map was compiled using data from official sources, news reports and user-contributions.

flutracker_maps

Popularity: 9% [?]

May

5

Is the Climate Warming or Cooling?

May 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Climate Experts Warn that Short-Term Snapshots of Temperature Data Can Be Misleading: Focus Instead on the Bigger Picture. In the hotly debated arena of global climate change, using short-term trends that show little temperature change or even slight cooling to refute global warming is misleading, write two climate experts in a paper recently published by the American Geophysical Union — especially as the long-term pattern clearly shows human activities are causing the earth’s climate to heat up.

In their paper Is the climate warming or cooling? David R. Easterling of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center and Michael Wehner of the Computational Research Division at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory note that a number of publications, websites and blogs often cite decade-long climate trends, such as that from 1998-2008, in which the earth’s average temperature actually dropped slightly, as evidence that the global climate is actually cooling.

However, Easterling and Wehner write, the reality of the climate system is that, due to natural climate variability, it is entirely possible, even likely, to have a period as long as a decade or two of “cooling” superimposed on the longer-term warming trend. The problem with citing such short-term cooling trends is that it can mislead decision-makers into thinking that climate change does not warrant immediate action. The article was published April 25 in Geophysical Research Letters.

Popularity: 9% [?]

May

4

ScienceWatch: The Hottest Research of 2007-08

May 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment

ScienceWatch: The Hottest Research of 2007-08. ‘It’s time again for Science Watch from Thomson Reuters to take its annual look back at the hottest of recent research. The first table below lists the researchers who, during 2008, accounted for the the highest numbers of Hot Papers published over the preceding two years. The second table features the papers published during 2008 (aside from reviews) that were most cited by year’s end.

Among the scientists, none fielded more Hot Papers during 2008 than Kuo-Chen Chou of the Gordon Life Sciences Institute and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His 17 Hot Papers published since 2007 cover a variety of sequencing tools for predicting protein location (e.g., “Euk-mPloc: a fusion classifier for large-scale eukaryotic protein subcellular location prediction by incorporating multiple sites,” J. Proteome Res., 6[5]: 1728-34, 2007). Thirteen of these reports were coauthored with another of the featured scientists, Hong-Bin Shen.’

Scientists with Multiple Hot Papers.

The Red-Hot Research Papers of 2008.

Popularity: 9% [?]

May

4

All H1N1 Related Articles Published in PNAS Freely Available Online

May 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Seen on Liblicense – All H1N1 (swine flu) related articles published in PNAS are now freely available online: In light of the current alert about H1N1 (swine flu) issued by the World Health Organization and the public health emergency declared by the United States government, PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) has made related research articles free online at www.pnas.org to assist with research on this topic.

Twelve research articles published within the past 6 months are now freely available online. All PNAS articles are accessible at no charge after 6 months.

Read also: Free access to assist H1N1 (swine flu) effort.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Apr

27

HealthMap – Global Disease Alert Map

April 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Healthmap: Global Disease Alert Map

HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health. This freely available Web site integrates outbreak data of varying reliability, ranging from news sources (such as Google News) to curated personal accounts (such as ProMED) to validated official alerts (such as World Health Organization). Through an automated text processing system, the data is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for user-friendly access to the original alert. HealthMap provides a jumping-off point for real-time information on emerging infectious diseases and has particular interest for public health officials and international travelers.

Also from HealthMap: Swine flu alerts on Twitter.

Popularity: 9% [?]