“Mixing Biology and the Arts - KOMU” plus 3 more |
- Mixing Biology and the Arts - KOMU
- At Harvard, reengineering science - Boston Globe
- NASA IceBite Blog: University Valley - SpaceRef
- Berea dentist's talk has some teeth to it: Around The ... - Cleveland Plain Dealer
| Mixing Biology and the Arts - KOMU Posted: 13 Mar 2010 08:26 AM PST The sixth annual MU Life Sciences and Society Symposium is underway on the MU campus. About 75 people gathered Friday to participate in a discussion led by Pullitzer Prize winner Tim Page and author and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. The discussion centered around the various roles music plays in our lives, including what really happens when you listen to music you like... "It activiates a portion in the very center of th brain assoicated with pleasure. The same part of the brain that is activated when you have sex or when you take drugs, so it's kind of like the sex, drugs and rock and roll center of the brain," says neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. From Art to Biology and Back Again runs through Sunday. You can register for free to participate in the remaining discussions, book signings and free buffet lunch by going to the link on our website KOMU.com.
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| At Harvard, reengineering science - Boston Globe Posted: 13 Mar 2010 02:43 AM PST The new emphasis at Harvard, which has educated or employed generations of acclaimed scientists, including a number of Nobel Prize recipients in chemistry and physics, mirrors an increase being seen at other elite institutions. Yale, Princeton, and Stanford universities are also reporting a steady rise in science majors. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| NASA IceBite Blog: University Valley - SpaceRef Posted: 13 Mar 2010 06:53 AM PST | NASA IceBite Blog: University Valley
STATUS REPORT Date Released: Saturday, March 13, 2010 Source: NASA Astrobiology Institute Dec. 1, 2009. McMurdo Station Back in McMurdo after a productive and fun week at Lake Joyce, now we have only 2 days to get everything organized and packed for our second field site: University Valley. At Lake Joyce we could use the camp infrastructure that was already set up by Dale Andersen and his team, but at University Valley we need to bring absolutely everything ourselves. Food tent, work tent, chairs, tables, stove, water, food, pots & pans - everything we will need for 10 days. It is surprisingly hard to think of everything you will need for 10 days of science and exploration. Something as simple as not having the right pliers or screwdriver could put a serious damper on our science. But we also have to be careful not to bring too much - helicopter flight hours are precious, and we already expect that we'll need three helicopter loads to get set up. Because University Valley will also be much colder, we need to adjust some of our thinking to deal with that. For example, we'll bring out as much water with us as we can. This is because out in the field we will have to melt snow for any extra water we need, and this is very energy and time expensive. We are also keeping track of all the items that we can't allow to freeze - chemicals, liquids in glass bottles, personal items. All of these items need to be put into a "warm box" as soon as we get there. On the other hand, all the frozen food we're bringing we can just toss anywhere and not really worry about it. Well I'm off to get everything ready and lugging heavy boxes! University Valley, here we come :)
Image: McMurdo Station, a major Antarctic research base, is like a small town. During the summer there are over a 1,000 people living there. About 200 people "winter over," preparing everything for the next summer season. Credit: M. Marinova Dec. 7, 2009. University Valley University Valley (elevation: 1677 meters, about 1 mile) is our second field site for the season. This is one of the most Mars-like places on Earth! It's cold and dry, and mostly lifeless. And that's why we are here: by studying this Mars analogue on Earth, we can better understand what's happening on Mars. We are here to study the subsurface ice table, look at the biology and how and where it survives, and also to explore this little-studied valley. University Valley is more than a kilometer higher than Lake Joyce, which makes it about 10*C (18*F) colder, giving a temperature of about -13*C (8*F) throughout the day. And that's in summer! When the sun is shining it is nice and pleasant, but with wind the cold can quickly become painful. University Valley rarely sees air temperatures above freezing. So while at Lake Joyce we had to be careful about falling into the lake moat that had been melted by the day's warm temperatures, at University Valley we can only get water for drinking by melting snow! At University Valley our main goals are to set up a weather station, map the depth from the ground surface to the ice-cemented ground, explore the area to understand its geology and history better, and collect ice, snow, and dirt samples for isotope, biology and chemistry analyses. Setting up a weather station to record weather data year-round is a direct way of understanding a system. While we can make pretty good guesses at what the overall weather patterns are like, the details can be very important.
University Valley with the snowpack at the head of the valley. Note the little bits of remaining snow: the amount of snow on the ground is greatest near the snowpack and decreases towards the mouth of the valley. Credit: M. Marinova NASA's IceBite project will spend three austral summers in Antarctica testing ice-penetrating drills for a future mission to Mars. A team of seven scientists recently returned from the first field season, installing scientific probes in the ice and frozen ground, and scouting for sites where the drills will be tested the following year. One of the team members, Margarita Marinova, wrote a blog of the team's activities. In this third set of entries, she describes the team's return from Lake Joyce to McMurdo Station, and work at a second field site, University Valley. An example of how small differences can be very important is the "degree days above zero": the number of degrees the temperature climbs above freezing (0*C) multiplied by the amount of time that the temperature is above zero. Even a few degree days above zero - such as at Lake Joyce - can cause widespread melting of surface and subsurface ice, changing the distribution of ice dramatically over a very short period of time. In theory, University Valley sees no degree days above freezing, but no-one knows for sure. If the temperature were to rise above zero, surface runoff would recharge subsurface reservoirs tens or hundreds of times faster than would the common process of vapor diffusion, in which molecules of water vapor in the atmosphere diffuse down through the soil and freeze. This is why are setting up sensors to collect a multi-year, year-round record of the weather conditions, so we can understand the processes that create the type of permafrost we see there. An interesting feature at University Valley is the change in depth to ice-cemented permafrost ground along the valley floor. Permafrost is commonly defined as soil whose temperature never gets above freezing. In most places around the world, permafrost soil is cemented by ice: water melted at the soil surface trickles down into the pores of the permafrost soil and fills them. As the water freezes, the soil becomes ice-cemented. The term "cemented" is quite appropriate, as this soil is incredibly hard. In University Valley, however, because of the exceptionally dry atmosphere and the lack of surface melting due to the cold, there is a dry permafrost layer and then an ice-cemented permafrost layer below it. As the name suggests, the dry permafrost layer is soil - no ice - that never gets to temperatures above freezing. There is an ice-cemented layer below the dry permafrost layer, because with time even the tiny amounts of moisture in the atmosphere will make their way (diffuse) into the subsurface and freeze, molecule by molecule. At University Valley we see an interesting gradient: the depth to the ice-cemented ground increases with the distance from the snowpack at the head of the valley. We think this relationship results from the most snow collecting at the head of the valley, and less and less snow collecting on the ground with distance from the snowpack. Snow on the ground acts as an accelerant for putting water molecules in the subsurface; thus prolonged or more frequent snow cover means more ice in the subsurface and so a shallower depth to the ice-cemented ground. After digging numerous pits, we have shown that this trend of ice-cemented ground depth increasing with distance from the snowpack is quite robust. (And after digging the many, many pits, dinner tasted incredibly good!) With any extreme environment, studying the biology of the area can give us many insights into what the limits of life are and how biology evolved. The limits of life are of special interest since they tell us about whether Earth-like life could survive on other planets. If Earth life could survive there, then it's more reasonable to think that alien life forms could have developed, or even still be surviving, on these planets.
Jen Heldmann taking a core of the large snowpack. This is a completely manual process of twisting a big tube (with cutters on the bottom) into the ice. The depth of our core was about a meter (3-4 ft). Credit: M. Marinova Because of the great similarity of University Valley to Mars, understanding the biology here is of special interest to studying the Red Planet. We are collecting many samples to bring back with us to look for how many and what kinds of organisms are present in the soil. During one of our evening discussions, I learned that some organisms can be alive in temperatures down to about -10*C (15*F)! This may seem crazy since every organism needs liquid water to live! But these organisms have learned how to use slight changes in the bonding structure between the "frozen" water molecules to help them treat the cold water molecules as being liquid. It's incredible how life figures out how to do this! Another fascinating adaptation of biology is endoliths: these are organisms which live in rocks! Sandstone rock is very porous, so algae and fungi can squeeze inside (in this case the algae and fungi form a mutually beneficial, or symbiotic, relationship). The rock provides a good habitat because rock surfaces get much warmer than the air temperature (think of how hot the sand on a beach is on a sunny day), which helps the organisms stay warm and metabolize. In addition, the porous nature of the rock causes water to be sucked in and trapped in its pores, providing a nice supply to the organisms. And the icing on the cake is that the layer of overlying rock shields the organisms from the damaging UV of sunlight but lets enough light through for the algae to photosynthesize. Now it's time for another hot chocolate and then off to the super comfy sleeping bag :)
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| Berea dentist's talk has some teeth to it: Around The ... - Cleveland Plain Dealer Posted: 13 Mar 2010 07:51 AM PST By Rich Heileman, Sun NewsMarch 13, 2010, 10:52AM Berea dentist Mark Hans delivered a talk to colleagues from around the world recently at the International Orthodontic Congress in Sydney, Australia. He said dentists, for the last 25 years, have mostly focused on "the mechanical aspects of treatment," but that there is now increased interest in "the underlying biology of facial growth. New, low-cost, high-resolution scanning techniques have fueled the change," he said. This technology provides researchers and clinicians with the tools to study three-dimensional changes in the head and face associated with growth and with clinical care, he said. Temporary anchoring devices, known as TADS, give dental clinicians the "ability to move teeth" in any direction. Hans said, "With greater control comes increased responsibility." He said technicians using TADS "need to know how teeth drift within the mouth and how they influence this natural process." To achieve the best results, he said, clinicians are now required to study craniofacial biology in general "and facial growth in particular." Hans serves as professor and chairman of the Department of Orthodontics and as associate dean of graduate studies at Case Western Reserve University. BEREA'S ANIMAL RESCUE FUND has set an informational meeting for area residents to hear about volunteer opportunities. It will be 6:30-7:30 p.m. March 18 at the Berea library, 7 Berea Commons. Anyone 18 years or older interested in learning how they can help homeless animals through volunteering a few hours weekly, or every other week, are welcome to attend. Volunteering for the shelter is set to fit individual's schedules and interests. For more information, visit the group's Web site at bereaanimalrescue.com or call (440) 234-2034. BEREA AUTHOR PAT MOTE will share selections from her newest book, "Tapestry, Collected Writing," at the Berea Bonnet Belles' monthly luncheon Wednesday at Bucci's Restaurant - Berea, 1 Berea Commons. Although known as a writer of local history, in her new book, Mote delves into her own treasury of memories. Some pieces are humorous, some introspective, and some react to historical events. Since her retirement from teaching in 1991, Mote has written seven books, including "Dorothy Fuldheim: The First Lady of Television News;" "Berea: Upon the Rock;" a novel set in the 1890s; and "Cleveland's Playhouse Square." She is also a freelance writing consultant and editor. AN AUCTION of selected works on paper from The Baldwin-Wallace College Collection is set for 9:30 a.m. March 20 and 10 a.m. March 21 at Rachel David Fine Arts, 1301 W. 79th St., Cleveland. On March 20, works will include Old Masters as well as 19th century European, British and American artists and 20th century European and contemporary pieces. Twentieth-century American works will be featured at the March 21 auction. Previews are set at 3 p.m. Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. March 17 and 18, and from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 19. A complete online catalog is available at racheldavisfinearts.com and liveauctioneers.com.
Contact Heileman at richatsun@gmail.com. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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