Clipmarks | BobbyDelray's 'penn state' clips

World's smallest snake found in Barbados

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:45:06 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

The world's smallest species of snake, with adults averaging just under four inches in length, has been identified on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

The species -- which is as thin as a spaghetti noodle and small enough to rest comfortably on a U.S. quarter --was discovered by Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State. Hedges and his colleagues also are the discoverers of the world's smallest frog and lizard species, which too were found on Caribbean islands.

Hedges determined that the Barbados species is new to science on the basis of its genetic differences from other snake species and its unique color pattern and scales.

Hedges determined that this species, which he named Leptotyphlops carlae, is the smallest of the more than 3,100 known snake species.

Hedges thinks the Barbados snake may be at or near the minimum possible size for snakes, though he cannot say for sure that no smaller species exists -- several other snake species are nearly as small.

Tags: animal life, biology, snakes

How Were The Egyptian Pyramids Built?

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:29:19 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Plain english explanation.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2008) — The Aztecs, Mayans and ancient Egyptians were three very different civilizations with one very large similarity: pyramids. However, of these three ancient cultures, the Egyptians set the standard for what most people recognize as classic pyramid design: massive monuments with a square base and four smooth-sided triangular sides, rising to a point. The Aztecs and Mayans built their pyramids with tiered steps and a flat top.

The ancient Egyptians probably chose that distinctive form for their pharaohs' tombs because of their solar religion, explained Donald Redford, professor of Classics and ancient Mediterranean studies at Penn State. The Egyptian sun god Ra, considered the father of all pharaohs, was said to have created himself from a pyramid-shaped mound of earth before creating all other gods. The pyramid's shape is thought to have symbolized the sun's rays.

Tags: ancients, were, clever, without, extra-terrestials

What makes somebody a morning person or a night owl?

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:32:18 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: I am a night owl

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Probing Question: What makes somebody a morning person or a night owl?

Photo: iStock

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool morning guy: up at 5, nodding off by 9 p.m. My college-freshman son, on the other hand, is the proverbial night owl: up around noon, and I don't even want to know when he gets to bed.

"There is a strong genetic component determining whether a person is an evening or a morning type in their activity times," said Penn State psychology professor Frederick Brown. "Everyone has an inborn basic biological rhythm -- also called a circadian rhythm. Across the population, that rhythm averages about 24.1 hours long."

During that cycle, many "phase relationships" play themselves out. One is body temperature. Average normal body temperature is about 98.6 degrees F. "Our normal temperature is at its lowest phase about two hours before we waken," Brown said. "In some individuals, it drops to nearly 96 degrees. Every day our body temperature slowly increases until its highest phase may top out at well above 99. Later in the evening and into the night, our temperature drifts slowly downward again to its lowest phase."

It turns out that the temperature rhythm is representative of what else is going on in the body. Physical vigor, for instance: A person is physically stronger in the afternoon, when temperature is higher. "Mood is higher in the afternoon for most people," Brown said. Fatigue? "A temporary slump of tiredness normally sets in between 4 and 6 in the afternoon -- assuming the person gets up at 7 and goes to bed at 11."

Tags: science, research, circadian rythms, biology

World's smallest snake discovered...

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:24:06 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

By Jennifer Carpenter
Science reporter, BBC News

The world's smallest snake, averaging just 10cm (4 inches) and as thin as a spaghetti noodle, has been discovered on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

The snake, found beneath a rock in a tiny fragment of threatened forest, is thought to be at the very limit of how small a snake can evolve to be.

Females produce only a single, massive egg - and the young hatch at half of their adult body weight.

This new discovery is described in the journal of Zootaxa.

The snake - named Leptotyphlops carlae - is the smallest of the 3,100 known snake species and was uncovered by Dr Blair Hedges, a biologist from Penn State University, US.

The snake's habitat is usually under rocks eating termites

Modern genetic fingerprinting is often the only way to tell species apart.

By having a single egg at a time, the snake's young are one-half the length of the adult. That would be like humans giving birth to a 60-pound (27kg) baby

Lazy People In Bad Moods Get The Most Creative Spark From Video Games

Sun, 25 May 2008 10:07:40 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.scientificblogging.com

Video games that energize players and induce a positive mood could also enhance creativity, according to media researchers. However, the study also finds that players who were not highly energized and had a negative mood, registered the highest creativity.

"You need defocused attention for being creative," said S. Shyam Sundar, professor of film, video and media studies at Penn State. "When you have low arousal and are negative, you tend to focus on detail and become more analytical."

"Video games are not just for entertainment alone," says Sundar. "We are trying to figure out how they can aid in education as well."

"We looked at two emotional variables: arousal and valence," said Hutton. "Arousal is the degree of physical excitation -- as measured through skin conductance -- and valence, which is the range of positive or negative feeling."

the study appears to indicate that after playing the game, happy or sad people are most creative, while angry or relaxed people are not.

Tags: creativity, video games, emotions

Simple Artificial Cell Created From Scratch To Study Cell Complexity

Sat, 17 May 2008 10:38:07 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

A team of Penn State researchers has developed a simple artificial cell with which to investigate the organization and function of two of the most basic cell components: the cell membrane and the cytoplasm--the gelatinous fluid that surrounds the structures in living cells. The work could lead to the creation of new drugs that take advantage of properties of cell organization to prevent the development of diseases.

"Many scientists are trying to understand cells by turning off genes, one at a time, and are observing the effects on cell function, but we're doing the opposite," said Associate Professor of Chemistry Christine D. Keating, who led the research. "We're starting from scratch, adding in components to find out what is needed to simulate the most basic cell functions.

This new structure exhibited the type of complexity that the team had been looking for; it exhibited polarity. "Polarity is critical to development,"

Tags: biology, cell biology

A Novel Bacterial Species Is Found Trapped In 120,000-year-old Ice

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:36:54 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: The ultra-small size of the new species could be one explanation for why it was able to survive for so long in the Greenland glacier. Called Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, the species is related genetically to certain bacteria found in fish, marine mud, and the roots of some plants. The organism is one of only about 10 scientifically described new species originating from polar ice and glaciers.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

A team of Penn State scientists has discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles. The microorganism's ability to persist in this low-temperature, high-pressure, reduced-oxygen, and nutrient-poor habitat makes it particularly useful for studying how life, in general, can survive in a variety of extreme environments on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the solar system.

This new species is among the ubiquitous, yet mysterious, ultra-small bacteria, which are so tiny that the cells are able to pass through microbiological filters. In fact, some species have been found living in the ultra-purified water used for dialysis. "Ultra-small cells could be unknown contaminants in media and medical solutions that are thought to have been sterilized using filters," said Loveland-Curtze.

Tags: bacteria, life

Bacterial species is found trapped in 120,000-year-old ice

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:51:33 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

The microorganism's ability to persist in this low-temperature, high-pressure, reduced-oxygen, and nutrient-poor habitat makes it particularly useful for studying how life, in general, can survive in a variety of extreme environments on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the solar system.

This new species is among the ubiquitous, yet mysterious, ultra-small bacteria, which are so tiny that the cells are able to pass through microbiological filters.

n fact, some species have been found living in the ultra-purified water used for dialysis.

Tags: bacteria, species

What Happened Before the Big Bang?

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 10:47:15 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: physorg.com

New discoveries about another universe whose collapse appears to have given birth to the one we live in today will be announced in the early on-line edition of the journal Nature Physics on 1 July 2007 and will be published in the August 2007 issue of the journal's print edition.

"My paper introduces a new mathematical model that we can use to derive new details about the properties of a quantum state as it travels through the Big Bounce, which replaces the classical idea of a Big Bang as the beginning of our universe," said Martin Bojowald, assistant professor of physics at Penn State. Bojowald's research also suggests that, although it is possible to learn about many properties of the earlier universe, we always will be uncertain about some of these properties because his calculations reveal a "cosmic forgetfulness" that results from the extreme quantum forces during the Big Bounce.

Tags: science, physics, universe, big bang, math model, quantum state

Waste water plus bacteria make hydrogen

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:09:29 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Hydrogen at the moment, is generally produced from Hydrocarbons and can also produce greenhouse gases. The Bacteria produce hydrogen from vinegar in a way that is environmentally friendly,and is a method of using renewable organic material, It uses 10% of the energy that is used in Hydrolysis, where hydrogen is produced only using an electric current

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Deborah Zabarenko

Bacteria that feed on vinegar and waste water zapped with a shot of electricity could produce a clean hydrogen fuel to power vehicles that now run on petrol, researchers report.

It's a long way from powering a hydrogen car. But scientists have produced bubbles of hydrogen in a microbial fuel cell using vinegar and acid-loving bugs

These so-called microbial fuel cells can turn almost any biodegradable organic material into zero-emission hydrogen gas fuel, says Professor Bruce Logan of Penn State University.

This would be an environmental advantage over the current generation of hydrogen-powered cars, where the hydrogen is most commonly made from fossil fuels.

Even though the cars themselves emit no greenhouse gases, the manufacture of their fuel does.

In research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Logan and colleague Dr Shaoan Cheng used naturally-occurring bacteria in an electrolysis cell with acetic acid, the acid found in vinegar.

Tags: hydrogen, fuel, bacteria, waste, electricity, bugs

Astronomers Find New Kind of Black Hole

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 15:52:48 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Gamma-ray burst but no supernova? Puzzling indeed!

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Astronomers find new kind of black hole

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- U.S. astronomers have discovered a new kind of cosmic explosion -- a "hybrid gamma-ray burst" -- that's unlike any other such event ever seen.

The scientists discovered the burst using NASA's Swift satellite June 14. The event has since been studied with more than a dozen telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope and large ground-based observatories around the world, the astronomers said Wednesday.

"This burst -- unlike all other long gamma-ray bursts we have seen at close distance -- was not accompanied by a supernova, for reasons we do not yet fully understand," said Derek Fox, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University.

The scientists say the hybrid burst is likely signaling the birth of a black hole, but it's unclear what kind of object or objects exploded or merged to create the black hole or, perhaps, something even more bizarre.

The hybrid burst, called GRB 060614 after the date it was detected, was 1.6 billion light years away in the constellation Indus.

Astronomers report the event in detail in the Dec. 21 issue of the journal Nature.

Tags: science

Physicists Demonstrate How Information Can Escape From Black Holes

Wed, 14 May 2008 23:24:06 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Hawking's idea was generally accepted by physicists until the late 1990s, when many began to doubt the assertion. Even Hawking himself renounced the idea in 2004. Yet no one, until now, has been able to provide a plausible mechanism for how information might escape from a black hole.

A team of physicists led by Abhay Ashtekar, Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Physics and director of the Penn State Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, now has discovered such a mechanism. Broadly, their findings expand space-time beyond its assumed size, thus providing room for information to reappear.

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Physicists at Penn State have provided a mechanism by which information can be recovered from black holes, those regions of space where gravity is so strong that, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, not even light can escape. The team's findings pave the way toward ending a decades-long debate sparked by renowned physicist Steven Hawking. The team's work will be published in the 20 May 2008 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

In the 1970s, Hawking showed that black holes evaporate by quantum processes; however, he asserted that information, such as the identity of matter that is gobbled up by black holes, is permanently lost. At the time, Hawking's assertion threatened to turn quantum mechanics--the most successful physical theory posited by humankind--on its head, since a fundamental tenet of the theory is that information cannot be lost.

Tags: physics, quantum physics, black holes

Modified Mushrooms May Yield Human Drugs

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:13:41 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Modified Mushrooms May Yield Human Drugs

Science Daily — Mushrooms might serve as biofactories for the production of various beneficial human drugs, according to plant pathologists who have inserted new genes into mushrooms.

"There has always been a recognized potential of the mushroom as being a choice platform for the mass production of commercially valuable proteins," said Charles Peter Romaine, who holds the John B. Swayne Chair in spawn science and professor of plant pathology at Penn State. "Mushrooms could make the ideal vehicle for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals to treat a broad array of human illnesses. But nobody has been able to come up with a feasible way of doing that."

Tags: mushrooms, biology, genes, biotechnology

Links to a Better Education

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:18:05 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: www.chemistrycoach.com

Links to a Better Education

Effective Reading University of Bradford
Effective Reading James Cook University
Reading Effectively East Carolina University
Reading Effectively RMIT
Reading Effectively North Coast Institute
Reading Effectively Allen & Unwin
Reading effectively Flinders University
Reading Effectively Kangan Batman TAFE
Reading Effectively for Study University of Puget Sound
Reading & Listening Effectively Geoff Cutts
Tips For Reading More Effectively DSEA
Reading Skills Penn State - York
Reading to Comprehend and Learn: University of Victoria
Reading Skills for University: York University
Recommended Strategies for Reading Effectively and Making Useful Note or Summaries UNC-Wilmington
Improved Reading Skills How To Study
On the Art of Reading Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
Rapid Reading Cornell
Rapid Reading University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
Speed Reading Techniques Indiana Wesleyan University
Reading Rates and Comprehension University of St.Thomas
Reading Rates and Comprehension University of Dayton
Reading Comprehension: Reading with Confidence University of South Florida
Suggestions for Improving Reading Speed: Virginia Tech
Improving Reading Speed BYU
Five Step Program for Quick Reading Shepard University
Brief Suggestions for Increasing Speed and Effectiveness of Reading: U. Texas, Austin
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Reverse Links to Links to a Better Education
If they are interested in us, perhaps we should be interested in them...

Tags: links to a better education, knowledge, learning

Mysterious Bee Deaths Linked To Pesticides?

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 07:16:11 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Comment hsutton wrote:

Pesticides "in and of itself is probably not the cause of the honeybee's dying. What are you feeding them? If the answer is a combination of high fructose corn syrup and water then it should be noted that some time back a genetic modifier introduced into "corn" is the real culprit. This modifier causes the corn to make it's own "pesticide". Going back to feeding them real Sugar/Water will stop most of the problem. Monsanto and other companies are putting these things in 90% of the vegetable crops in the US, and have been for some time. Whatever it's doing to the honey bees it will also eventually do to us. If this trend continues human beings will start dying from "unknown" causes sometime in the very near future too.

Comment by subscriber:hsutton

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Scientists investigating a mysterious ailment that killed many of the nation's honeybees are concentrating on pesticides and a new pathogen as possible culprits, and some beekeepers are already trying to keep their colonies away from pesticide-exposed fields.

But commercial beekeeper David Hackenberg isn't waiting to take action. He's asking growers whether they use pesticides on fields before bringing his bees for pollination.

Hackenberg, 58, trucks his bees around the country for pollination — from oranges in Florida to blueberries in Maine. He was the first beekeeper to report the disorder to Penn State researchers last fall, having lost nearly 75 percent of his 3,200 colonies.

He said he is convinced pesticides, and in particular a kind of pesticide called neonicotinoids, were harming his bees.

The beekeeper of 45 years is back up 2,400 colonies and doesn't want to lose his bees again.

Hackenberg said he went to the extreme of trying to disinfect many of his hives with radiation.

Tags: colony-collapse disorder, mysterious honeybee disease, pesticides, virus, immune system