Scientific News
Here are some news items related to recent events in the world of science. Scientific advances tend to spillover into the medical world.
Team Detects 'Top Quark,' a Basic Constituent of Matter reports a finding of the top quark; the heaviest known elementary particle. The top quark is one of nature's fundamental building blocks but does not occur naturally. Instead it must be generated in a high energy particle accelerator. A group of 50 physicists led by Ann Heinson produced the top quark without also producing its antimatter counterpart. This was described as an extremely rare event. As the article explains: "The discovery of the single top quark could help scientists better explain how the universe works and how objects acquire their mass, thereby assisting human understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe."
Climate experts search for answers in the oceans refers to projects intended to gather data related to sea-surface temperatures and global ocean color in order to better understand their influence on climatic changes. The article explains the profound impact oceans have on climate by virtue of the fact that they absorb half the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. The absorption results from photosynthesis occuring in organisms known as phytoplankton which are described as sensitve to environmental changes.
The beauty of a rainbow can be more clinically viewed as evidence for the composite nature of electromagnetic waves. X-Ray Rainbow reveals how, like visible light, x-rays can yield rainbows of their own. This is apparent thanks to the efforts of physicists using the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Lab, in Illinois. While intrinsically interesting the x-ray rainbow also is expected to produce practical benefits in optics. Higher-resolution X-ray spectrometers, development of X-ray monochomators capable of producing X-rays of particular wavelegths or color and X-ray pulse compression are anticipated benefits.
Some like it hot as, Microbe fixes nitrogen at a blistering 92 C, reveals. The heat lover is an archaea organism able to fix nitrogen i.e. process nitrogen gas, which is unusable to life in its atmospheric form. Usable nitrogen compounds are obtained through a process involving a specific enzyme and its encoding gene.
Nitrogen is an element common to life forms. Indeed life as we know it would not exist without nitrogen compounds. Interestingly nitrogen is a key component of both enzymes and nucleic acids; both of which are essential to fix nitrogen. The article emphasizes the evolutionary significance of the nitrogen fixation function in high-temperature archaea by speculating that the capacity, which is also found in bacteria, was initially acquired by bacteria from archaea through common descent. This is an attempt at an answer that raises additional questions specifically, how would functions, involved in generating amino acids and nucleic acids, evolve prior to the point in time that a nitrogen fixation capacity existed?
Team Detects 'Top Quark,' a Basic Constituent of Matter reports a finding of the top quark; the heaviest known elementary particle. The top quark is one of nature's fundamental building blocks but does not occur naturally. Instead it must be generated in a high energy particle accelerator. A group of 50 physicists led by Ann Heinson produced the top quark without also producing its antimatter counterpart. This was described as an extremely rare event. As the article explains: "The discovery of the single top quark could help scientists better explain how the universe works and how objects acquire their mass, thereby assisting human understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe."
Climate experts search for answers in the oceans refers to projects intended to gather data related to sea-surface temperatures and global ocean color in order to better understand their influence on climatic changes. The article explains the profound impact oceans have on climate by virtue of the fact that they absorb half the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. The absorption results from photosynthesis occuring in organisms known as phytoplankton which are described as sensitve to environmental changes.
The beauty of a rainbow can be more clinically viewed as evidence for the composite nature of electromagnetic waves. X-Ray Rainbow reveals how, like visible light, x-rays can yield rainbows of their own. This is apparent thanks to the efforts of physicists using the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Lab, in Illinois. While intrinsically interesting the x-ray rainbow also is expected to produce practical benefits in optics. Higher-resolution X-ray spectrometers, development of X-ray monochomators capable of producing X-rays of particular wavelegths or color and X-ray pulse compression are anticipated benefits.
Some like it hot as, Microbe fixes nitrogen at a blistering 92 C, reveals. The heat lover is an archaea organism able to fix nitrogen i.e. process nitrogen gas, which is unusable to life in its atmospheric form. Usable nitrogen compounds are obtained through a process involving a specific enzyme and its encoding gene.
Nitrogen is an element common to life forms. Indeed life as we know it would not exist without nitrogen compounds. Interestingly nitrogen is a key component of both enzymes and nucleic acids; both of which are essential to fix nitrogen. The article emphasizes the evolutionary significance of the nitrogen fixation function in high-temperature archaea by speculating that the capacity, which is also found in bacteria, was initially acquired by bacteria from archaea through common descent. This is an attempt at an answer that raises additional questions specifically, how would functions, involved in generating amino acids and nucleic acids, evolve prior to the point in time that a nitrogen fixation capacity existed?
posted by Paul at 3:08 PM
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