Column in Biological News

Ocean islands fuel productivity and carbon sequestration through natural iron fertilization

... Crozet, the researchers reasoned that iron could be entrained in the water column as it flows over the plateau. First, they needed a way to understand how ... the plateau and into deeper water. The distribution of radium in the water column demonstrated that the source of the iron was the island and the sediments ...

Genome Medicine: Bridging the gap between research and clinical practice

... Stuart Orkin, a geneticist at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The first column examines the significance of genome-wide association studies, suggesting ... therapies will emerge from the associations that have been made. The column goes on to suggest that researchers must always focus most of their ...

ESA tests laser to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide

... mission would employ an innovative method of measuring total atmospheric column carbon dioxide from space to improve our understanding of the carbon ... comparison of the reflected signals from both wavelengths yields the total column concentration of carbon dioxide. This novel approach implies that the ...

Dissolved organic matter in the water column may influence coral health

... dissolved organic matter. Dissolved organic matter in the water column near Florida Keys coral reefs comes from a variety of natural sources, ... of experiments to more closely evaluate the chemical nature of the water column dissolved organic matter surrounding the corals in the Florida Keys and ...

2007 ozone hole 'smaller than usual'

... a unit of measurement that describes the thickness of the ozone layer in a column directly above the location being measured. For instance, if an ozone column of 300 Dobson Units is compressed to 0 C and 1 atmosphere (the pressure at ...

Scientists discover Amazon river is 11 million years old

... study the exact age of the Amazon, one of the two largest rivers in the world, was not known. Until recently the Amazon Fan, a submarine sediment column around 10km thick, had proven difficult to penetrate. New exploration efforts by Petrobas, however, have lea to two new boreholes being drilled near ...

Healing wounds with lasers, vehicles that drive themselves, other cutting-edge optics

... each light up with a particular color. Because fabricating 33 million of these devices is a tricky endeavor, the E&S projector only uses a single column of 4,000 pixels, powered by a beam of laser light. This rapidly-changing vertical stripe of colors is swept across a screen faster than the eye can ...

Springer launches SpringerExemplar.com

... The user searches for a specific term, which retrieves a list of results of where and how the keyword is used in published Springer content. The left column displays lists of different categories: the year the article was published, the top subject areas in which the term is used, the highest ...

Case Western Reserve University engineers hit pay dirt with clay mixture

... happened. He says the graduate student replied: "The same thing seven days in a row." While he thought he had made a new discovery, a 1-inch column of copy in an old journal article from the 1940s described a similar substance made with a different kind of clay. Schiraldi knew he was on to ...

Genes from tiny algae shed light on big role managing carbon in world's oceans

... could give Michael Phelps a run for his money. Unlike other algae genera sequenced to date, these swift swimmers can cut through the water column at a rate of 50 body lengths per second, and are phototactic, meaning that they can swim towards the sunlight from which they derive their energy. ...

2009 AIBS Media Award

... health, dating, relationships, and other topics of interest. He is the author of Dear Playboy Advisor: Questions from Men and Women to the Advice column of Playboy Magazine. An honorable mention was awarded to Martin Enserink, contributing correspondent to Science magazine, for his article ...

April 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... or in decline, a massive, even catastrophic growth in the number and variety of marine species began. The previously largely uninhabited water column became thick with plankton and the predators that fed on them, while the lifeless substrate to the ocean floor suddenly teamed with burrowing fauna. ...

Lohafex provides new insights on plankton ecology

... the notorious Roaring Forties. The scientists fertilized a 300 square kilometre patch of ocean inside the core of an eddy (a clockwise rotating water column with an area of about 10,000 square kilometres) with six tonnes of dissolved iron. They followed the effects of the fertilization on the plankton ...

AGU journal highlights -- March 12, 2009

... versa. To investigate the two-way ozone-SAM relationship, Fogt et al. analyze records dating from 1962 to 2004. They find that austral spring total column ozone above the South Pole is significantly correlated to the SAM, with delay times of up to four months. The austral spring SAM is also linked to ...

Multiple route bone marrow stem cell injections show promise to treat spinal cord injury

... Luis Vernaza in Ecuador, have determined that injecting a patient's own bone marrow-derived stem cells (autologous BMCs) directly into the spinal column using multiple routes can be an effective treatment for spinal cord injury (SCI) that returns some quality of life for SCI patients without serious ...

Low levels of vitamin B12 may increase risk for neural tube defects

... to make sure they are receiving adequate amounts of B12. Dr. Mills explained that critical events in the formation of the brain and spinal column occur very early in pregnancyin the first 28 days after conceptionbefore many women even realize they are pregnant. He added that the U.S. Public ...

Marine scientists to assess environment before offshore drilling begins in US arctic waters

... the Arctic Ocean," says Dunton, professor of marine sciences at UTMSI. He says much of the organic matter produced by phytoplankton in the water column sinks to the bottom, and this supports huge populations of organisms on the seabed, including crustaceans, mollusks and echinoderms, such as sea ...

Polarstern expedition 'LOHAFEX' can be conducted

... and physical parameters will be continuously measured inside and outside the fertilised area, and ecological changes in all layers of the water column from the surface to the seafloor in 3,800 metres depth will be monitored for 40 days. The plankton community biomass is expected to increase ...

UNH researchers track lobster migrations to improve population estimates

... females could impact where larvae are released and the path they travel when carried by ocean currents during the three weeks they are in the water column prior to settlement. They've found the drifters, which are fitted with satellite transmitters so they can monitor them remotely, travel as far away ...

October 2008 GEOLOGY and GSA TODAY media highlights

... isotopes indicate that there is a well-defined threshold value of sulfide concentration above which the scavenging from molybdenum from the water column is complete. This determination of the threshold value provides a fundamental parameter for future studies of the oxygen history in the geological ...

Entomological Society of America names new Fellows for 2008

... Dr. Parrella is the author of more than 375 publications, with more than 200 of these appearing in trade journals. For 10 years he wrote a monthly column for Greenhouse Manager and GrowerTalks magazines. Dr. Parrella's laboratory has been an incubator for the development of other research/extension ...

Prominent German biologist wins EMBO Communication Award

... as well as my personal desire to communicate with the public," commented Axel Meyer. He writes concise and opinion-strong articles in his weekly column for the largest German business newspaper Handelsblatt, where he tackles current dilemmas such as the brain drain in German research and industry, ...

Old growth giants limited by water-pulling ability

... trying to get errant air bubbles to enter. "Higher and higher in the tree, the valves are able to withstand more pulling force from the long heavy column of water before air bubbles can be sucked through," Lachenbruch said. "But the problem is that the valves become less efficient at letting water ....

AGU journal highlights -- August 6, 2008

... tops. This creates strong vertical wind shear at low latitudes. Poleward of 55 degrees latitude, westward wind speeds are constant throughout the air column and decrease at a steady rate until the pole is reached. This creates a vertically coherent vortex structure of winds swirling about the poles. ...

UNH researchers tag first-ever free-swimming leatherback turtles in New England

... marine debris and injuries from boat propellers are the major threats to their survival. "Understanding where they travel and how they use the water column will help us mitigate these human interactions," says Dodge. Emerging research indicates that climate change likely has a large impact on the ...

Discovery of a mechanism that regulates cell movement

... have studied the mechanisms that control cell movements during trachea development in the fly Drosophila. In this process, cells that initially form column of two cells deep, change their position to line up one after the other in a single file. A key element in the regulation of these movements is the ...

Leatherback turtles' newly discovered migration route may be roadmap to salvation

... he said. Given that leatherbacks have been recorded diving as deeply as 1,280 meters, they have ample choice as far as where in the water column they choose to feed. And considering that they can grow to over 6 feet in length and weigh up to 2,000 pounds, it seems like a safe bet that they're ...

Scientists integrate data in three dimensions to study climate effects on young fish

... Marine Sciences Laboratory in Sandy Hook, N.J. "People look at the ocean floor as the habitat, but don't think about the connection with the water column above it and how ocean fronts, like atmospheric weather, move through to create a constantly changing environment that affects fish and other marine ...

Genome sequence of small marine creature sheds light on vertebrate origins

... of eyes, limbs, and ears. A member of the chordata phylum along with tunicates (sea squirts) and vertebrates, amphioxus lacks the backbone or spinal column characteristic of vertebrate animals, yet shares the same basic body plan. Amphioxus is therefore an excellent model for investigating how ...

Environmental fate of nanoparticles depends on properties of water carrying them

... grains of soil or sand. Traditional theories regarding the activity of such packed-bed filters suggest that particles would build up near the column entrance, with concentrations falling off thereafter. The study findings suggest that the predictions of filter theory will have to be modified to ...

2008 Ocean Sciences Meeting -- media advisory 2

... as a result of coastal landscapes rapidly changing from increasing human populations. Findings discussed here suggest that variations in the water column pool of dissolved organic matter may alter bacterial communities associated with corals and adversely affect coral health. Participants: Andrea ...

Scripps expedition provides new baseline for coral reef conservation

... Dinsdale and Forest Rohwer of San Diego State University, found 10 times more microbial cells and virus-like particles in the Kiritimati water column compared with Kingman. The microbes around Kiritimatis reefs, which had the highest percentage of coral disease and smallest coverage of corals, ...

Antarctic expedition provides new insights into the role of the Southern Ocean for global climate

... In addition, the new data show the effect of the plankton bloom on the species community at the seafloor. For the first time ever the complete water column of the Southern Ocean from the surface to the seafloor was sampled simultaneously and comprehensively. The current inventory of the flora and fauna ...

Variable light illuminates the distribution of picophytoplankton

... species. Dr Doug Campbell, Canadian Research Chair in Environmental Processes and co-author explains, "Phytoplankton are entrained in the water column and are thus subject to rapid changes in light as they mix through the upper layer of the ocean." Dr Christophe Six adds, Phytoplankton need ...

December GEOLOGY and GSA TODAY media highlights

... this warm period, by carbon removal from the atmosphere to the deep ocean. The chemical characteristics of barite indicate that records the water column productivity conditions, and not other unrelated processes. Rapid fluid-rock interaction in oilfield reservoirs Stephanie Houston et al., ...

Climate change and life in the Southern Ocean

... various regions of the Southern Ocean at several thousand meters of depth with the primary goal of analysing interactions among atmosphere, water column and seafloor. "Since deep sea research continues to take us to unknown worlds, we are expecting some new and fascinating insights regarding ...

Marine scientists warn human safety, prosperity depend on better ocean observing system

... vast extents of the surface of the oceans; fixed stations taking continuous measurements on the seafloor or as floats and buoys moored in the water column and at the surface; small robot submarine ocean monitors, some drifting with the currents, others motoring along programmed routes; marine animals ...

Human safety, prosperity depend on better ocean observing system: Scientists

... extents of the surface of the oceans; fixed stations taking continuous measurements on the seafloor or as floats and buoys moored in the water column and at the surface; small robot submarine ocean monitors, some drifting with the currents, others motoring along programmed routes; marine ...

Dinosaur from Sahara ate like a 'mesozoic cow'

... each cutting tooth, so that when one wore out, another immediately took its place. There were more than 500 teeth in total, with a new tooth in each column joining the scissors edge every month. Among dinosaurs, Sereno said, Nigersaurus sets the Guinness record for tooth replacement. Sereno and ...

Yellowstone viruses 'jump' between hot pools

... Since subterranean water temperatures are so high, underground migration seemed unlikely. Following a hunch, the researchers found viruses in the air column above pools, suggesting the viruses might be buoyed from pool to pool in droplets of steam. Strangely, viruses thrived in pools even if their ...