Saturday 13 September 2014

Going to Extremes for Enzymes: Researchers Look to Nature and Nurture for Biofuel Cellulases

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In the age-old nature versus nurture debate, Douglas Clark, a faculty scientist with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley, is not taking sides. In the search for enzymes that can break lignocellulose down into biofuel sugars under the extreme conditions of a refinery, he has prospected for extremophilic microbes and engineered his own cellulases. Speaking at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Francisco, Clark discussed research for the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) in which he and his collaborators are investigating ways to release plant sugars from lignin for the production of liquid transportation fuels. Sugars can be fermented into fuels once the woody matter comprised of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin is broken down, but lignocellulose is naturally recalcitrant. “Lignocellulose is designed by nature to stand tall and resist being broken down, and lignin in particular acts like a molecular glue to help hold it together” said Clark, who holds appointments with Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division and UC Berkeley’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department where he currently serves as dean of the College of Chemistry. “Consequently, lignocellulosic biomass must undergo either chemical or enzymatic deconstruction to release the sugars that can be

The post Going to Extremes for Enzymes: Researchers Look to Nature and Nurture for Biofuel Cellulases has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Horse head Nebula Poster

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


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The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1500 light years from Earth. It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of the shape of its swirling cloud of dark dust and gases, which is similar to that of a horse's head when viewed from Earth.

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Meet Hydra, the shape-shifting Dr. Manhattan of the animal kingdom

Science Focus

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The Conversation

In the comic series Watchmen, physicist Jon Osterman is blown apart in a science experiment gone awry. But his "consciousness" is able to pull his body back together atom by atom, becoming the radiating, blue-skinned Dr. Manhattan. It took him months to reform, and in that time I wonder if he learned that trick from a tiny pond animal. For few creatures in fiction, and even fewer in real life, are capable of surviving being ripped to bits. But for hydras, it is an everyday affair.

Hydras are tiny freshwater animals, with column-shaped bodies ringed at the top with tentacles around a mouth...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/264852/meet-hydra-the-shape-shifting-dr-manhattan-of-the-animal-kingdom
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Computers trained to understand music

Science Focus

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New software presented at the British Science Festival aims to give music producers the power to manipulate sounds more intuitively. 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29146655#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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The next pandemic

Science Focus

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How likely is a pandemic?
Epidemiologists believe we're statistically overdue for a global viral outbreak, which occurs every generation or so. This year's Ebola crisis is probably just a dress rehearsal: Though the virus has killed at least 1,420 people in Africa in the last five months, Ebola is transmitted only through intimate contact with bodily fluids and doesn't have the global reach of a true pandemic, such as Spanish influenza in 1918. Humanity had no prior exposure or immunity to the Spanish flu, which is believed to have incubated in birds and pigs. So it spread like wildfire, infecting...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/267190/the-next-pandemic
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Name, Eagle Nebula, Intriguing Outer Space Wrapping Paper

Get your out-of-this-world gift wrap here! Perfect for Christmas gifts for anyone who is fascinated by what the universe holds in store for us!


tagged with: young stars clusters, star forming nebulae, messier 16 ngc 6611, pillars of creation, inspirational, eagle nebula, astronomy pictures, outer space images, star galaxies, hrbstslr eglneb, heavens, eso, european southern observatory, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A breathtaking outer space picture showing a spectacular three-colour composite mosaic image of the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16, or NGC 6611). It's based on images obtained with the Wide-Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory.

At the centre, the so-called “Pillars of Creation” can be seen and this wide-field image shows not only the central pillars, but also several others in the same star-forming region, as well as a huge number of stars in front of, in, or behind the Eagle Nebula.

The cluster of bright stars to the upper right is NGC 6611, home to the massive and hot stars that illuminate the pillars. The “Spire” - another large pillar - is in the middle left of the image.
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image code: eglneb

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Enlarged Region of The Omega Nebula Sticker

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


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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Like the fury of a raging sea, this bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen, oxygen, and sulphur gas lies in the extremely massive and luminous molecular nebula Messier 17.
This Hubble photograph captures a small region within Messier 17 (M17), a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation.
Ultraviolet radiation is carving and heating the surfaces of cold hydrogen gas clouds and the warmed surfaces glow orange and red. The intense heat and pressure causes some material to stream away from the surface, creating the glowing veil of even hotter green-coloured gas that masks background structures. The colours in the image represent various gases. Red represents sulphur; green, hydrogen; and blue, oxygen.

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image code: eroton

Image credit: NASA, the ACS Science Team

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Median Mashup: Hubble's Top 100

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Now, as you sip your cosmic latte you can view 100 Hubble Space Telescope images at the same time. The popular scenes of the cosmos as captured from low Earth orbit are all combined into this single digital presentation. To make it, Hubble's top 100 images were downloaded and resized to identical pixel dimensions. At each point the 100 pixel values were arranged from lowest to highest, and the middle or median value was chosen for the final image. The combined image results in a visual abstraction - light from across the Universe surrounded by darkness.

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Planets of the Solar System Wall Stickers

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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ImageID: CB061976 / Corbis / Planets of the Solar System/ /

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Star Cluster N90 Hubble Space iPad Folio Case

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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This beautiful Hubble space photograph shows a cluster of newly formed stars in the N90 star forming region. Shiny twinkling stars are surrounded by brown dust clouds and dark black sky.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

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Getting graffiti off a masterpiece

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Works of art can take years to create and just seconds to deface. It happened to Mark Rothko’s “Black on Maroon” while on display at the Tate Modern gallery in London in 2012. A vandal tagged the painting, landing him two years in jail. Restoration experts teamed up with Dow Chemical to create a cleanser that would get rid of the graffiti and leave the art intact. Learn all about it in this episode of Speaking of Chemistry. Speaking of Chemistry is a production of Chemical & Engineering News, a weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society.  Source: ACS

The post Getting graffiti off a masterpiece has been published on Technology Org.

 
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NASAs - Pink Pleiades Poster

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


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The Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades, seem to float on a bed of feathers in a new infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Clouds of dust sweep around the stars, swaddling them in a cushiony veil. The Pleiades, located more than 400 light-years away in the Taurus constellation, are the subject of many legends and writings. Greek mythology holds that the flock of stars was transformed into celestial doves by Zeus to save them from a pursuant Orion. The 19th-century poet Alfred Lord Tennyson described them as "glittering like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid."

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Name, Spiral Galaxy NGC 1232, Deep space image Gift Wrapping Paper

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tagged with: star clusters, inspirational, star forming regions, spgxy1232, young blue stars, galactic arms, astromomy image, spiral galaxies, star galaxies, outer space images, european southern observatory, heavens, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic image that reveals a little of the wonder that is our universe.
This spectacular image of the large spiral galaxy NGC 1232 was obtained on September 21, 1998, during a period of good observing conditions. It is based on three exposures in ultra-violet, blue and red light, respectively. The colours of the different regions are well visible : the central areas contain older stars of reddish colour, while the spiral arms are populated by young, blue stars and many star-forming regions. Note the distorted companion galaxy on the left side, shaped like the greek letter "theta".

NGC 1232 is located 20º south of the celestial equator, in the constellation Eridanus (The River). The distance is about 100 million light-years, but the excellent optical quality of the VLT and FORS allows us to see an incredible wealth of details. At the indicated distance, the edge of the field shown corresponds to about 200,000 light-years, or about twice the size of the Milky Way galaxy.
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image code: spgxy253

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Enlarged Region of The Omega Nebula Rectangle Stickers

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


tagged with: stars, galaxies, astronomy, universe, outer space, eroton, galaxies stars, gas clouds, star forming activity, green hydrogen, blue oxygen, omega nebula m17, ultraviolet radiation, young massive stars, red sulpher

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Like the fury of a raging sea, this bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen, oxygen, and sulphur gas lies in the extremely massive and luminous molecular nebula Messier 17.
This Hubble photograph captures a small region within Messier 17 (M17), a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation.
Ultraviolet radiation is carving and heating the surfaces of cold hydrogen gas clouds and the warmed surfaces glow orange and red. The intense heat and pressure causes some material to stream away from the surface, creating the glowing veil of even hotter green-coloured gas that masks background structures. The colours in the image represent various gases. Red represents sulphur; green, hydrogen; and blue, oxygen.

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image code: eroton

Image credit: NASA, the ACS Science Team

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Heart and Soul nebulae infrared mosaic NASA Wall Graphics

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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The Heart and Soul nebulae are seen in this infrared mosaic from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Also visible near the bottom of this image are two galaxies, Maffei 1 and Maffei 2. Maffei 1 is the bluish elliptical object and Maffei 2 is the spiral galaxy. All four infra-red detectors aboard WISE were used to make this image. Colour is representational: blue and cyan represent infra-red light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust.

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