Tag:

Blog

Thrills and Spills: The Keystone XL Pipeline

Turning on the tap for a clean glass of water is a luxury many Americans take for granted. Though TransCanada Corporation promises minimal spillage and environmental impact through improved safety features in its plans to install a 1169-mile-long, 36-inch-wide pipe through the grasslands of Canada and the United States, risking this natural resource is one of the many considerations President Obama examined before vetoing the … Continue reading Thrills and Spills: The Keystone XL Pipeline

9 Comments
Blog

Can we send a message to the future with DNA?

Ever wonder how we can relay messages to future populations? So do scientists. Recent news suggests DNA embedded in glass might be the answer to efficiently storing information for millions of years! Yet, storing large amounts of information is still limited by the price of DNA synthesis. And who knows what infrastructure we’ll have to read DNA millions of years from now? DNA is currently … Continue reading Can we send a message to the future with DNA?

1 Comment
Blog

Are genetically-modified organisms now safer?

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have amazing potential for improving lives, from providing nutrients to undernourished populations to cleaning up pollutants to synthesizing drugs on large scales. Yet escape of GMOs into the environment could upset nature’s balance, just as invasive species can cause extinctions of native species. Recently, researchers have effectively encoded safety locks into the genomes of these organisms to prevent their proliferation into … Continue reading Are genetically-modified organisms now safer?

Leave a comment
Credit: Geralt (Pixabay).
Blog

Big Role for Bacteria in Human Population Dynamics?

The age distribution of human populations is unique among animal species. Children remain dependent on their parents for an extended time, and the elderly live long after the end of their reproductive period. Some scientists now speculate that microorganisms may be responsible for this unusual aspect of human nature. To test this idea, researchers created mathematical models of early hunter-gatherer societies and divided each population … Continue reading Big Role for Bacteria in Human Population Dynamics?

Leave a comment
The Chemical Structure of DNA
Blog

New route to the origin of life? Probably not.

From Scientists recreate what may be life’s first spark How did life originate? This puzzle has been studied by scientists for hundreds of years. Authors of a >new paper in PNAS claim to have found a clue: they bombarded a chemical (formamide) found on the earth around the time life arose with high energy laser to simulate a meteor impact. They then looked for and … Continue reading New route to the origin of life? Probably not.

Leave a comment
Blog

An easier way to break down Cellulose for energy?

Humans can’t digest cellulose. Similarly, we’ve found it hard to efficiently break down cellulose in biomass for energy applications, until now. Researchers show a more efficient breakdown of cellulose than current methods that require energy-intensive pretreatment steps to separate the parts that can be easily broken down from those that cannot, consuming more energy than they yield. Here, no pretreatment steps are required. In this … Continue reading An easier way to break down Cellulose for energy?

Leave a comment
Blog

Why the blue LED should light up your life (and won a Nobel Prize)

What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘green technology’? Do solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars come to mind? What about light-emitting diodes (LEDs)? Unlike many costly green technologies, LEDs are accessible to the majority of Individuals who want to help the environment and save money. Using an LED for 50,000 hours of white-light home lighting (i.e. LED light bulbs for … Continue reading Why the blue LED should light up your life (and won a Nobel Prize)

3 Comments
Seminars

The Physics of Evolution: Equations shed new light on nature’s mysteries

Presented by Jeong-Mo Choi, Bryan Weinstein, and Amy Gilson Did you know that principles and equations from physics can be used to study evolution? We’ll describe how physics-based models can be used to predict evolution, on the level of individual molecules and whole populations. First, Jeong-Mo will describe how scientists began to use quantitative models to study evolution and explain some of the things we’ve … Continue reading The Physics of Evolution: Equations shed new light on nature’s mysteries

Leave a comment
Blog

An Alternative to Antibiotics?

Scientists offer an alternative method to fight bacteria in an effort to combat antibiotic resistance. They generated liposomes, or very small particles that look much like cell membranes. Because of this similarity, liposomes, instead of the host cells, can draw in bacterial toxins and allow the resulting non-toxic bacteria to be defeated by the body’s natural immune defense. However, this is just the beginning- for … Continue reading An Alternative to Antibiotics?

Leave a comment
Seminars

Fracking: How cheap energy is reshaping America’s environment

Presented by Jared Atkinson, Natasha Goss, and Jordan Wilkerson The advent of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, has led to the development of previously inaccessible resources, significantly increasing world gas and oil reserves. Despite the positive impact on energy reserves, questions about the long-term environmental effects of these extraction methods are unanswered. The technical details involved in fracking and the associated … Continue reading Fracking: How cheap energy is reshaping America’s environment

1 Comment