COLUMBIA, Mo. – Polyhedral boranes, or clusters of boron atoms bound to hydrogen atoms, are transforming the biomedical industry. These manmade materials have become the basis for the creation of cancer therapies, enhanced drug delivery and new contrast agents needed for radioimaging and diagnosis. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has discovered an entirely new class of materials based on boranes that might have widespread potential applications, including improved diagnostic tools for cancer and other diseases as well as low-cost solar energy cells.
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A long-term study by UCSB scientists and colleagues demonstrates that failing kelp forests can be rescued by nearby neighbors.
After big winter storms, clumps of kelp forests often wash ashore along the Southern California coast. Contrary to the devastation these massive piles of seaweed might indicate, new research suggests the kelp may rebound pretty quickly, with help from neighboring beds.
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Scientists seeking an oceanic counterpart to the tree rings that document past weather patterns on land have found one in the subtropical waters of Dry Tortugas National Park near the Florida Keys, where long-lived boulder corals contain the chemical signals of past water temperatures. By analyzing coral samples, USGS researchers and their colleagues have found evidence that an important 60- to 85-year-long cycle of ocean warming and cooling has been taking place in the region as far back as the 1730s.
The cycle called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO, is linked to rainfall over most of the US, Midwestern droughts, hurricane intensification and landfalls, and the transfer of ocean heat from the tropical Caribbean Sea to the North Atlantic Ocean by way of the Gulf Stream. It interacts with ongoing climate change in poorly understood ways, and it is very hard to spot in pre-20th century records.
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An important new research paper, titled “Response of Sediment Bacterial Communities to Sudden Vegetation Dieback in a Coastal Wetland,” examines the consequences of plant disappearance and changes in salt marsh soil communities following Sudden Vegetation Dieback (SVD).
The paper, published in Phytobiomes, an open-access journal of The American Phytopathological Society, is written by Wade Elmer, Peter Thiel, and Blaire Steven, scientists at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven. The setting for this study was the marshes of Connecticut’s Hammonasset Beach State Park.
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Changing rainfall patterns may be depleting India’s groundwater storage more than withdrawals for agricultural irrigation, says a new study published in January by Nature Geoscience.
While India’s diminishing groundwater is widely attributed to over extraction, especially in the northern agricultural belts of Punjab and Haryana, the study holds decline in rainfall caused by the rise in the temperatures in the Indian Ocean — a major factor in monsoonal rainfall patterns over the Indo-Gangetic Plain — to be a more important cause.
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Using a novel approach for computing real-time game strategy, engineers have developed an artificial Ms. Pac-Man player that chomps the existing high score for computerized play.
In the popular arcade game, Ms. Pac-Man must evade ghost enemies while she collects items and navigates an obstacle-populated maze. The game is somewhat of a favorite among engineers and computer scientists who compete to see who can program the best artificial player.
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