Claim OwnershipPress Releases - 2014
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Press Releases - 2014
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A team of researchers working on a Carnegie expedition in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has documented that coral growth rates have plummeted 40 percent since the mid-1970s. The scientists suggest that ocean acidification may be playing an important role in this perilous slowdown.
New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Greg Asner shows the limitations of long-used research methods in tropical rainforest ecology and points to new technological approaches for understanding forest structures and systems on large geographic scales. For decades, the primary method of studying tropical forests has been field inventory plots—specially selected areas assumed to represent their surrounding forested landscapes.The Carnegie team used advanced three-dimensional forest mapping techniques provided by the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) to determine how representative typical field plots actually are of their surroundings in forested landscapes.
The climate warming caused by a single carbon emission takes only about 10 years to reach its maximum effect. This is important because it refutes the common misconception that today’s emissions won’t be felt for decades and that they are a problem for future generations. For the first time, a study has evaluated how long it takes to feel the maximum warming effect caused by a single carbon emission.
As animals age, their immune systems gradually deteriorate, a process called immunosenescence. It is associated with systemic inflammation and chronic inflammatory disorders, as well as with many cancers. The causes underlying this age-associated inflammation, and how it leads to diseases, are poorly understood. New work sheds light on one protein’s involvement in suppressing immune responses in aging fruit flies.
New work has for the first time elucidated the atomic structures of the bacterial prototype of sugar transporters, termed “SWEET” transporters, found in plants and humans. These bacterial sugar transporters are called SemiSWEETs, because they are just half the size of the human and plant ones. The findings have potential practical applications for improving crop yields as well as for addressing human diseases such as diabetes.
We would not expect a baby to join a team or participate in social situations that require sophisticated communication. Yet, most developmental biologists have assumed that young cells, only recently born from stem cells and known as “progenitors,” are already competent at inter-communication with other cells. New research shows that infant cells have to go through a developmental process that involves specific genes before they can take part in the group interactions that underlie normal cellular development and keep our tissues functioning smoothly.
Cells often face low-oxygen conditions at night. When this happens, some organisms such as the single-cell alga Chlamydomonas are able to generate cellular energy from the breakdown of sugars without taking up oxygen.Although critical to the survival of common aquatic and terrestrial organisms that are found all over the planet, many of the details regarding this low-oxygen energy creation process are poorly understood.
When it comes to cellular architecture, function follows form. Plant cells contain a dynamic cytoskeleton which is responsible for directing cell growth, development, movement, and division. So over time, changes in the cytoskeleton form the shape and behavior of cells and, ultimately, the structure and function of the organism as a whole. New work hones in on how one particular organizational protein influences cytoskeletal and cellular structure in plants, findings that may also have implications for cytoskeletal organization in animals.
A key to understanding Earth’s evolution is to look deep into the lower mantle—a region some 400 to 1,800 miles (660 to 2,900 kilometers) below the surface, just above the core. Data have suggested that deep, hot, fluid magma oceans of melted silicates, a major Earth material, may reside above the core-mantle boundary. Researchers including Carnegie’s Alex Goncharov have found that the deep Earth materials conduct far less heat under increasing pressure than previously thought. The results indicate the presence of dense, dark magma heat traps that could affect the flow of heat across the core-mantle boundary revealing a different model of heat transport in this region.
Water was crucial to the rise of life on Earth and is also important to evaluating the possibility of life on other planets. Identifying the original source of Earth’s water is key to understanding how life-fostering environments come into being and how likely they are to be found elsewhere. New work found that much of our Solar System’s water likely originated as ices that formed in interstellar space.
Natural gas power plants produce substantial amounts of gases that lead to global warming. Replacing old coal-fired power plants with new natural gas plants could cause climate damage to increase over the next decades, unless their methane leakage rates are very low and the new power plants are very efficient.
Hydrogen is the most-abundant element in the cosmos. With only a single electron per atom, it is deceptively simple. As a result, hydrogen has been a testing ground for theories of the chemical bond since the birth of quantum mechanics a century ago. Understanding the nature of chemical bonding in extreme environments is crucial for expanding our understanding of matter over the broad range of conditions found in the universe.
A new high-resolution mapping strategy has revealed billions of tons of carbon in Peruvian forests that can be preserved as part of an effort to sequester carbon stocks in the fight against climate change. A team led by Carnegie’s Greg Asner developed this new approach for prioritizing carbon conservation efforts throughout tropical countries. The low cost of conducting their project means that the same approach can be rapidly implemented in any country, thereby supporting both national and international commitments to reduce and offset carbon emissions.
Proteins are the machinery that accomplishes almost every task in every cell in every living organism. The instructions for how to build each protein are written into a cell’s DNA. But once the proteins are constructed, they must be shipped off to the proper place to perform their jobs. New work describes a potentially new pathway for targeting newly manufactured proteins to the correct location.
A team has, for the first time, discovered how to produce ultra-thin "diamond nanothreads" that promise extraordinary properties, including strength and stiffness greater than that of today's strongest nanotubes and polymer fibers. Such exceedingly strong, stiff, and light materials have an array of potential applications, everything from more-fuel efficient vehicles or even the science fictional-sounding proposal for a “space elevator.”
Silicon is the second most-abundant element in the earth's crust. When purified, it takes on a diamond structure, which is essential to modern electronic devices—carbon is to biology as silicon is to technology. A team of Carnegie scientists led by Timothy Strobel has synthesized an entirely new form of silicon, one that promises even greater future applications.
New modeling studies demonstrate that most of the stars we see were formed when unstable clusters of newly formed protostars broke up. These protostars are born out of rotating clouds of dust and gas, which act as nurseries for star formation. Rare clusters of multiple protostars remain stable and mature into multi-star systems. The unstable ones will eject stars until they achieve stability and end up as single or binary stars.
Plants grow in environments where the availability of light fluctuates quickly and drastically, for example from the shade of clouds passing overhead or of leaves on overhanging trees blowing in the wind. Plants thus have to rapidly adjust photosynthesis to maximize energy capture while preventing excess energy from causing damage. So how do plants prevent these changes in light intensity from affecting their ability to harvest the energy they need to survive? The response has to be extremely swift.
A two-person team of Carnegie's Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory has discovered a new active asteroid, called 62412, in the Solar System's main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is the first comet-like object seen in the Hygiea family of asteroids. Active asteroids are a newly recognized phenomenon. 62412 is only the 13th known active asteroid in the main asteroid belt. Sheppard and Trujillo estimate that there are likely about 100 of them in the main asteroid belt, based on their discovery.
Hydrogen responds to pressure and temperature extremes differently. Under ambient conditions hydrogen is a gaseous two-atom molecule. As confinement pressure increases, the molecules adopt different states of matter—like when water ice melts to liquid. Scientists, including Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov, combined hydrogen with its heavier sibling deuterium and created a novel, disordered, “Phase IV”-material. The molecules interact differently than have been observed before, which could be valuable for controlling superconducting and thermoelectric properties of new hydrogen-bearing materials.
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