| Notizie dal Mondo della Scienza |
NEW YORK--The prevailing view among astronomers used to be that Mercury, the smallest and innermost planet in the solar system, was a static and unevolving world, baked to infernal temperatures by its proximity to the sun. Mariner 10, the first spacecraft to fly by Mercury, offered some tantalizing evidence of volcanic activity in 1974 and 1975. Now MESSENGER, a NASA spacecraft that has passed by Mercury in the past year and will go into orbit in 2011, has confirmed Mariner 10's observations by imaging young lava plains indicative of recent volcanic activity on the planet. MESSENGER has also detected rapid variations in Mercury's magnetic shield and found a surprising distribution of elemental atoms and ions in its exosphere, the extremely tenuous atmosphere of gases that surrounds the planet. [More] What if the brainpower used playing video games could be channeled toward something more productive, such as helping scientists solve complex biological problems? [More]
 We are no longer completely at sea when it comes to the creatures that thrive beneath the ocean's surface, thanks to a decadelong effort to document marine diversity. The Census of Marine Life , an ambitious project to catalogue sea life, was prompted by estimates that science had sampled marine biota in only 0.1 percent of the volume of the world's oceans. The results compiled from this global collaboration of more than 2,700 scientists from 80 nations will be released in October, although some findings have been published in advance in a series of 12 papers available online August 2 in PLoS One . The latest findings profile the diversity and distribution of known species in 25 important marine areas, including temperate, tropical and polar oceanic waters such as the Caribbean, Baltic and Mediterranean Seas as well as the Gulf of Mexico. The data provide a baseline for marine diversity that will be useful when assessing the future impacts of humans and nature on pelagic life. [More]
The tangled web of autism symptoms and genetic markers has left researchers searching for patterns and trends in unusual places. New work examining the subtle symptoms shared by close relatives has underscored the disease's heritability. Findings published online August 2 in Archives of General Psychiatry add to the growing list of familial clues about the disease: shared eye-movement deficits. [More] Improvements in medical imaging technology have made computerized tomography (CT) scans , magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and other tools of radiology a routine part of any trip to the emergency room in the Western world. This is not the case, however, in many developing countries, which often lack the equipment, expertise and/or infrastructure to diagnose and treat health care problems with the help of radiology. [More] Chemists at times look to plants, sea life and other natural sources for the basic ingredients needed to develop the next breakthrough medicine. Unfortunately, nature is not always willing to easily part with its secrets, forcing scientists to rely on sophisticated imaging technology--nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy or mass spectrometry, for example--to decipher the molecular formula of newly discovered organic compounds so they can be replicated in the lab. Sometimes these new compounds defy even the most powerful lab equipment. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen Marine Biodiscovery Center (MBC) in Scotland found this to be the case last year when studying a bacterial species-- Dermacoccus abyssi sp. nov. --found in a mud sample harvested via robotic submarine from the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench , the deepest place on Earth, at about 11,000 meters. When the sample produced a chemical compound they were not able to identify, the researchers tried high-resolution mass spectrometry to determine the chemical compound's components but were unable to figure out its exact molecular structure. [More]
Just six months ago residents of the eastern U.S. were shoveling themselves out of the snowiest winter ever--weather that prompted mockery of global warming among some people . Now, scientists have a new explanation for why such anomalous snowstorms can coexist with global warming: The storms were kicked up by the convergence of two natural, large-scale weather patterns. In order to better understand possible triggers of last year's media-dubbed " snowmaggedon ," a team of scientists from Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory analyzed more than 50 years of snow data as well as measurements of atmospheric pressure and sea-surface temperatures. They found that a combination of El Niño (periodic sea-surface warming in the tropical Pacific Ocean) with an unusual period of decreased variability in atmospheric pressure across the North Atlantic (known as the North Atlantic oscillation , or NAO) frequently results in a pile-up of snow in the mid-Atlantic region. [More]
Viruses do not make good fossils. But advances in genomic technology have allowed scientists to peer into the genetic material of viruses and their hosts to search for clues about their shared evolutionary history. [More] Binge-shoppers and serial daters might perpetually be living at the whim of their latest impulse, and now research is getting to the biological basis of their seemingly random behavior. [More] A new era for nuclear power is taking shape as third-generation reactors, designed to be simpler and safer, inch through the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) design certification process. Much of nuclear's revival hinges on the ability of new reactors to outshine those of yore in terms of safety, economics, construction time and life span. [More] The microscopic plants that form the foundation of the ocean's food web are declining, reports a study published July 29 in Nature . [More] Assistive technology that helps severely paralyzed people navigate the world and communicate with others often taps into whatever abilities the disabled retain, such as blinking or moving the mouth and tongue. Now, for the first time, researchers have invented a device that allows the paralyzed to write, surf the Web and steer an electronic wheelchair--all by sniffing. Initial tests, described July 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ), suggest that many severely paralyzed people can easily master the "sniff controller," which offers certain advantages over other technological aids.
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