Most Powerful Laser in the World Fires Up
The Texas Petawatt laser reached greater than one petawatt of laser power on Monday morning, March 31, making it the highest powered laser in the world, Todd Ditmire, a physicist at The University of Texas at Austin, said.The Texas Petawatt is the only operating petawatt laser in the United States.
Ditmire says that when the laser is turned on, it has the power output of more than 2,000 times the output of all power plants in the United States. (A petawatt is one quadrillion watts.) The laser is brighter than sunlight on the surface of the sun, but it only lasts for an instant, a 10th of a trillionth of a second (0.0000000000001 second).
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April 8, 2008 | Filed Under Technology | Leave a CommentHow Our Amino Acid Signature Came from Outer Space
Flash back three or four billion years — Earth is a hot, dry and lifeless place. All is still. Without warning, a meteor slams into the desert plains at over ten thousand miles per hour. With it, this violent collision may have planted the chemical seeds of life on Earth.Scientists presented evidence today that desert heat, a little water, and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the first prerequisites for life: The dominance of “left-handed” amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet.
In a report at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, Ronald Breslow, Ph.D., University Professor, Columbia University, and former ACS President, described how our amino acid signature came from outer space.
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April 7, 2008 | Filed Under Biology | Leave a CommentNew Strategy for Treating Cocaine Addiction
New research in monkeys suggests the feasibility of treating cocaine addiction with a “replacement” drug that mimics the effects of cocaine but has less potential for abuse – similar to the way nicotine and heroin addictions are treated.
Reporting at the annual meeting of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics in San Diego, Calif., scientists from Wake Forest University School of Medicine said treating monkeys with amphetamine significantly reduced their self-administration of cocaine for up to a month.
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April 7, 2008 | Filed Under Medical | Leave a CommentAlligator Blood - Potential Lifesavers in Medicine
Despite their reputation for deadly attacks on humans and pets, alligators are wiggling their way toward a new role as potential lifesavers in medicine, biochemists in Louisiana reported at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society. They described how proteins in gator blood may provide a source of powerful new antibiotics to help fight infections associated with diabetic ulcers, severe burns, and “superbugs” that are resistant to conventional medication.
Their study, described as the first to explore the antimicrobial activity of alligator blood in detail, found a range of other promising uses for the gator’s antibiotic proteins. Among them: combating Candida albicans yeast infections, which are a serious problem in AIDS patients and transplant recipients, who have weakened immune systems, the scientists say.
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April 7, 2008 | Filed Under Medical | Leave a CommentA Boost for Bamboo-based Blouses and Blankets
Rising interest in “sustainable” fabrics is fostering a bamboo boom, in which bamboo-based fabrics are hitting the market as a leading eco-friendly textile.Chemists in Colorado now are reporting solutions to two major problems with bamboo fabrics that may speed adoption of this amazing plant — which grows like Jack’s beanstalk without special care — in garments and other consumer products.
Reporting at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, Subhash Appidi and Ajoy Sarkar, Ph.D., from Colorado State University have discovered a way of making bamboo fabric that is resistant to the sun’s damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation and has anti-bacterial properties.
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April 7, 2008 | Filed Under Chemistry | Leave a CommentNew Method for Identifying Presence of Gunshot Residue
Scientists in Texas are reporting development of an highly dependable, rapid, and inexpensive new method for identifying the presence of gunshot residue (GSR). The test fills a GSR-detection gap that results from wider use of “green” — lead free — ammunition.It requires only a single speck of GSR smaller than the period at the end of this sentence and could boost the accuracy of one of the most widely used tests employed at crime scenes involving gunplay.
In a poster presented here today at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, graduate student Garrett Lee Burleson and his advisor, chemist Jorn Chi Chung Yu, Ph.D., of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, described their new method. It extracts almost all components of gunpowder residue from particles about 15 times smaller than the width of a human hair, without the use of chemical reagents. After extraction, gas chromatography coupled with a nitrogen phosphorus detector is used to separate and identify the analytes.
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April 7, 2008 | Filed Under Chemistry | Leave a CommentDental Professor Discovers Biological Clock
Why do rats live faster and die younger than humans? A newly discovered biological clock provides tantalizing clues.
This clock, or biological rhythm, controls many metabolic functions and is based on the circadian rhythm, which is a roughly 24-hour cycle that is important in determining sleeping and feeding patterns, cell regeneration, and other biological processes in mammals.
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April 6, 2008 | Filed Under Biology | Leave a CommentHuman Values Key to the Development of New Technologies
Emerging computer technologies will change our lives for the better by 2020. But we need to retain control to ensure that these developments do not impact negatively on basic human values, according to a new report co-edited by a University of Nottingham academic.
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April 5, 2008 | Filed Under Technology | Leave a CommentOld Galaxies Stick Together in the Young Universe
UK astronomers have developed the most sensitive infrared map of the distant universe ever produced, revealing the origins of the most massive galaxies in the cosmos.
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April 5, 2008 | Filed Under Astronomy | Leave a CommentExactly How Much Housework Does a Husband Create?
Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women, according to a University of Michigan study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. families.
For men, the picture is very different: A wife saves men from about an hour of housework a week.
Popularity: 15% [?]
April 5, 2008 | Filed Under Humans | Leave a Comment
