Posts tagged researchers

Scientists measure methane at the source: In a lush pasture near Buenos Aires, this cow and its compatriots are digesting important information: how much methane—a greenhouse gas 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide—is released by the country’s 55 million bovines. Researchers from Argentina’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology connected inflatable tanks to the cows’ first stomach, where methane is made, through a small hole between their ribs.

By measuring methane production directly inside each cow, biologist Silvia Valtorta hopes to more accurately determine the country’s overall agricultural contribution to global warming. According to the data, an average cow releases more than 70 gallons of the stuff every day. But a change in diet could reduce that. Cows that eat mostly grain produce 20 to 25 percent less methane than grazing cows, and adding tannin—a bitter chemical found in wine—to the feed could lower it further.

(Source: futurenow321)

If you’ve ever wondered what beer from the mid-1800s might taste like a group of researchers in Finland may soon be answering your prayers.

Scientists from the VTT Technical Research Centre said they analyzed two bottles of beer discovered in 2010 that came from a ship believed to have sunk in the 1840s off the Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea, Reuters reported.The researchers said they found living bacteria in the bottles that helped them retain a pale golden color and could originally have had hints of rose, almond and cloves. They said it’s possible that a smoky flavor in beer was appreciated at the time.Scientists said the discovery is the key to recreating the beer.”Based on the chemical analysis we made of the beer and with the help from a master brewer, it would be possible to try to make beer that would resemble it as much as possible,” researcher Annika Wilhelmson told Reuters.The beer bottles were found in the same wreck that contained the world’s oldest champagne still considered drinkable which has since been auctioned off.

(Source: futurenow321)

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider submitted a paper to Physical Review Letters claiming that they’d discovered a new Baryon particle. This is the Xi_b^*0  which is composed of three quarks: astrange quark, a beauty quark, and either an up or down quark.

What makes this finding unique is that this is the first ‘beauty’ baryon a baryon comprised with a beauty quark, that’s been discovered in its excited state. A baryon in its excited state has energy above the ground state, which is the minimum amount of energy the particle can have.

Researchers at the LHC looked for the Xi_b^*0 particle by looking for its decay products, because the standard model of particle physics predicts that the Xi_b^*0 will decay quickly into several different products of lesser mass. The researchers found the decay products, then worked backwards to reconstruct the Xi_b^*0 particle.

If confirmed by peer review, this will mark the second particle discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in the last few months. Last December, they’d discovered the Chi-b(3P), which had been predicted but not discovered.

Although this might seem a little esoteric, discovery of this baryon provides further proof of the validity of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and helps contribute to our understanding of atomic interactions.

(Source: futurenow321)

Hopper is working on the big stuff: climate change, clean energy, astrophysics, particle physics… its home, the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, offers its services to more than 3,000 researchers in the fields of climate research, chemistry, new material development and other crucial fields.

(Source: futurenow321)

A new treatment helped rabbits born with cerebral palsy regain near-normal mobility, offering hope of a potential breakthrough in treating humans with the incurable disorder, researchers said Wednesday. 

The method, part of the growing field of nanomedicine, worked by delivering an anti-inflammatory drug directly into the damaged parts of the brain via tiny tree-like molecules known as dendrimers.

“The importance of this work is that it indicates that there is a window in time, immediately after birth, when neuroinflammation can be identified and when treatment with a nanodevice can reverse the features of cerebral palsy,” said co-author Roberto Romero, an obstetrician at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 

Cerebral palsy affects about 750,000 children and adults in the United States, and its prevalence rate is about 3.3 per 1,000 births

(Source: futurenow321)