Saturday 6 September 2014

Scientists win race to find structure of rare nematode virus

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Rice University researchers have determined the crystal structure of the Orsay virus known to infect at least one type of nematode. The structure of the viral shell known as a capsid, seen in a computer model, will help scientists understand how such viruses infect their targets. Courtesy of the Tao Laboratory Rice University scientists have won a race to find the crystal structure of the first virus known to infect the most abundant animal on Earth. The Rice labs of structural biologist Yizhi Jane Tao and geneticist Weiwei Zhong, with help from researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Washington University, analyzed the Orsay virus that naturally infects a certain type of nematode, the worms that make up 80 percent of the living animal population. Rice researchers, from left, Professors Weiwei Zhong and Yizhi Jane Tao and graduate student Yusong Guo, have won a race to determine the structure of the first virus known to naturally infect nematodes. Photo by Jeff Fitlow The research reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences will help scientists study how viruses interact with their nematode hosts. It may also allow them to customize the virus to attack parasitic or pathogenic worms. The

The post Scientists win race to find structure of rare nematode virus has been published on Technology Org.

 
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2014 ORBITAL CALENDAR: Solar System Poster

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: astronomy poster, circular calendar, phases of the moon, spacetime, calendar cycles, timespace

Astronomy Science Poster EARTH-MOON w/ SOLAR SYSTEM ~ Your Year In Space! ~ Astronomically-correct TimeSpace, MILKY WAY Galaxy in background Perfect for S.T.E.M Education: TEACH astronomy in a flash... . ...from Earth to Moon to Sun, celestial math. Use Dry Erase markers to add your data, meteor showers, study cycles, National Calendar Awards for: Most Original, Most Educational Best Graphic Design

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China censorship filters are hamstringing posts that help their cause

Science Focus

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Censorship of the Internet in China is a heavily studied but little-understood process, driven by both private networks and government employees and having effects that are hard to measure. To better understand it, a group of researchers tested censors and filters by attempting to post over a thousand bits of content on various social networking sites. They found that there was an aggressive pre-filtering process that holds a high number of submissions for review before they're posted—and that the results are actually undermining China's censorship mission. The filters tend to hamstring pro-government content as often as they block anti-government writing.

Part of the authors' process involved setting up a social media site of their own within China to see what standards they would be subjected to and what tools they would have to use in order to comply with the country's censorship requirements. They found that sites have an option to install automated review tools with a broad range of filter criteria. Censorship technology is decentralized, they wrote, which is a technique for "[promoting] innovation" in China.

Most research that has been done on Chinese censorship is largely based on what posts exist on the Internet at one point and then do not at a later time, indicating that they were pulled by censors. While that behavior is easily observed, there is another layer to the censorship system whereby users' posts get held for review by censors before they're made public. This new study attempted to figure out what sort of posts would get held for review, what would eventually make it through, and what might escape suspicion at either the posting or review stage, only to be removed later.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/u-viN8z8SAY/
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Explaining the shape of freezing droplets

Science Focus

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This image shows the freezing front, resulting in a pointy shape. A water droplet deposited onto an icecold surface clearly has more effect than a drop in the ocean: the droplet will freeze in a peculiar way, forming a pointy tip. Scientists of the University of Twente have, in cooperation with colleagues from Paris, Brussels and Munich, found an explanation for this remarkable shape. They used video images and advanced mathematics for this. Insight into this process is also useful for understanding processes like 3D printing. The results are published in the August 1 issue of Physical Review Letters. It is typically a ‘do try this at home’ experiment that can be performed using a deep-frozen plate (colder than minus 15 degrees Celsius, preferably) and some water at room temperature. A droplet falling on the plate, will freeze starting at the bottom. It will not stay round, but turn into a conical shape. Existing theories could not explain this shape transformation. Read more at: Phys.org  

The post Explaining the shape of freezing droplets has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/wynMNL9Z2Iw/
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The battle for anonymity on the web

Science Focus

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At a time when many are concerned that governments and corporations can monitor our every move, Horizon meets the hackers and scientists fighting back. 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29032399#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Monogram - Cigar Galaxy - Messier 82 Round Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: stars, galaxies, outer space, envelope sealers, monogram initials, agmet, galaxies and stars, hubble, chandra, messier 82, cigar galaxy, active galaxies

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

Composite of images of the active galaxy Messier 82 from the three Great Observatories: Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and Spitzer Space Telescope. X-ray data recorded by Chandra appears here in blue, infrared light recorded by Spitzer appears in red. Hubble's observation of hydrogen emission appears in orange. Hubble's bluest observation appears in yellow-green.

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Image code: agmet

Image credit: Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope

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Moonbow Beach

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Like a rainbow at night, a beautiful moonbow shines above the western horizon in this deserted beach scene from Molokai Island, Hawaii, USA, planet Earth. Captured last June 17 in early morning hours, the lights along the horizon are from Honolulu and cities on the island of Oahu some 30 miles away. So where was the Moon? A rainbow is produced by sunlight internally reflected in rain drops from the direction opposite the Sun back toward the observer. As the light passes from air to water and back to air again, longer wavelengths are refracted (bent) less than shorter ones resulting in the separation of colors. And so the moonbow is produced as raindrops reflect moonlight from the direction opposite the Moon. That puts the Moon directly behind the photographer, still low and rising over the eastern horizon, a few days past its full phase.

Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Hubble Sees a Cosmic Caterpillar Cases For iPad

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Architect merges virtual reality with big data

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Karen Kensek thinks of buildings as living organisms, self-adjusting and self-correcting, as they transmit a constant stream of data about themselves. Unlike most living organisms, however, many of a building’s attributes can be predicted before construction. Kensek, assistant professor at the USC School of Architecture, is a pioneer in these predictions, using computer applications to model a building’s features. It’s a career that started when she learned programming during her undergraduate days at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A summer research project at MIT on buildings and daylight led her to envision the future of digital tools in architecture. She went on to earn a master’s degree in architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, where she then taught in newly developed computer application courses and in computer-aided design (CAD) studios. Always an early adopter, she ushered in the successor to CAD: a system called building information modeling (BIM), which provides live views of three-dimensional virtual models that are rich with data. The benefits of BIM BIM used with analysis software can predict a building’s energy consumption, how structural components will perform, warn of clashes between mechanical systems, estimate costs and oversee a completed building’s maintenance, among other tasks. As

The post Architect merges virtual reality with big data has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Carina Nebula in Argo Navis constellation Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: stars, galaxies, astronomy, peel off, carina nebula, argos navis constellation, carina the keel, star formation, gas clouds, carnebngcttst, ngc 3372

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Hubble's view of the Carina Nebula shows star birth in a new level of detail. The fantasy-like landscape of the nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. In the process, these stars are shredding the surrounding material that is the last vestige of the giant cloud from which the stars were born. The immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina the Keel (of the old southern constellation Argo Navis, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, from Greek mythology).
The original image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of ionized hydrogen. Colour information was added with data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.

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image code: carnebngcttst

Image credit: Hubble Space Telescope; colour data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile

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Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) Cover For iPad

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