Half of Australia’s PhD holders are from overseas

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Gl bal education news

July 2013 volume 1, issue 1

SOURCE: GEOFF MASLEN (University World News) http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenover-seasphdholders

Making universities better workplaces for women will improve institutional quality for everyone. Universities have the potential to answer many of the most basic challenges faced by modern societies. We answer them through research (while making new discoveries) and education (while conveying previous discoveries).

Research and education together move societies forward.Yet even though universities hold the key, those of us who work there don’t

deliver results as well as we could. It’s not just our research that can be poorly delivered. Our approaches to education are sometimes so traditional that we lose those who are eager to be taught.

One of the most basic impediments to more effective delivery of research and education is the quality of the workplace at many universities. Academic staff could be equipped to better perform their research and teaching.

Through leadership experiences, staff are able to develop a passion for working towards making their universities better.

I thought that one inevitable effect of improving university workplaces would be the removal of some of the barriers to gender equality. But as I talked with

more women at universities and as I read more research about bias, I came to realise that I had got it exactly backwards.

It’s not that improving the quality of the university workplace generally will necessarily make it better for women. The truth is just the opposite: making universities better workplaces for women will improve institutional quality for everyone.

Although universities in many Western countries are enrolling increasing numbers of Chinese students, few could match the proportionate flood into Australian higher education, where the offspring of parents in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore now number more than 150,000. These Chinese students

represent 45% of the 333,000 student population from around the world who collectively comprise 27% of the 1.22 million students enrolled on Australian university campuses.

As with most international students, the Chinese tend to opt for an undergraduate degree – often in management and commerce, but also in the sciences and medicine – and only a small minority go on to undertake doctoral studies.

In fact, of the 300,000 Australian and international students who were awarded a university diploma or degree in 2011, 108,000 were from overseas and of these a mere 2000 completed a PhD.

Monash University demographer Dr Bob Birrell points out that government amendments to the immigration rules in recent years mean that a student who earns a PhD will now almost certainly qualify for a residency visa.

“Gaining a place in higher education, particularly at postgraduate level, is now seen by international students as a pathway into Australian residency,” Birrell says.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that of the 118,400 people – out of a population of 23 million – who held doctorates in 2011, at least half were born elsewhere around the globe. Nearly 25% of the PhD holders who join the Australian workforce each year are from other countries, either as international PhD students, research postdoctoral students or academics.

These highly educated individuals make a substantial contribution to Australian research, to industry and commerce, to the health and natural sciences, and in boosting the education levels of the overall population.

SOURCE: CURT RICE (University World News)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgengenderbalance

Gender balance can make universities better

A Selection of International Articles and Interest Stories in Higher Education

All stories adapted with permission from listed sources

GLOBAL EDUCATION NEWS July 2013, issue 1

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“Junk” DNA mystery solved: it’s not neededSOURCE: TIA GHOSE (Live Science)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenjunkDNA

Cancers were once named strictly for the tissue where they originated in the breast, prostate or other part of the body. Now, in the age of genetically informed medicine, cancers may also come with a more specific lexicon: the names of mutated genes deep within tumors that cause cells to become cancerous.

New tools and tests help doctors sift through the genetic flaws that lead to cancer. Most of these gene flaws have names like BRAF V600E and are being tested against anticancer drugs. Development of the new drugs has been spurred by the falling cost of decoding DNA and the prospects of premium prices for drugs that specifically attack the molecular drivers of cancer.

Because there are so many genes and mutations, knowing each and every one can be daunting to oncologists. Dr. William Pao, a physician and scientist at Vanderbilt University who studies cancer mutations, said: “There are so many genes and so many mutations, the human brain can’t memorize all those permutations.”

To guide doctors and their patients, many tools have been produced, including one created by Dr. Pao and colleagues: “My Cancer Genome”. The site is maintained by 51 contributors from 20 institutions. It lists mutations in different types of cancer, as well as drug therapies that may or may not be of benefit.

Using this site, doctors can select melanoma and BRAF, and see all types of mutations in the BRAF gene that occur in those instances. The doctor can then check for national and international drug trials aimed at these alterations.

“More than 700 oncology drugs are now in development, many aimed at DNA defects,” Dr. Pao said, “and the number will only accelerate.”

Radioactive bacteria attack cancer

According to research conducted at the University of Buffalo, so-called “junk DNA”, the majority of the genome that doesn’t code for proteins, isn’t needed for a healthy organism.

“At least for a plant, junk DNA really is just junk — it’s not required,” said study co-author Victor Albert, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo.

For decades, scientists have known that the vast majority of the genome is made up of DNA that doesn’t contain protein-coding genes. The thinking went that most of this terrain of dark DNA consisted of genetic parasites that copy segments of DNA and paste themselves repeatedly in the genome. Researchers refer to this as “junk DNA”.

The genome of the carnivorous bladderwort plant, which the researches studied extensively, is just 3 percent “junk DNA” – an indication that such non-coding DNA is not crucial for complex life.

“Nobody’s really known what junk DNA does or doesn’t do,” Albert told LiveScience.But in recent years, researchers have debated whether “junk” might be a misnomer

and if this mysterious DNA might play some role. A massive project called ENCODE, which aimed to uncover the role of the 3.3 billion base pairs of DNA in the human genome that don’t code for proteins, found that in test tubes, about 80 percent of the genome seemed to have some biological activity.

SOURCE: ANNE EISENBERG (The New York Times)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgengenevariations

Bringing two dangerous things together might make an effective treatment for one pancreatic cancer. In a mouse model, researchers have shown that bacteria can deliver deadly radiation to tumours – exploiting the immune suppression that normally makes the disease so intractable.

Fewer than one in 25 people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are alive five years later. Therapies and surgeries are ineffective, largely because the disease has already spread to other organs by the time it is detected.

Ekaterina Dadachova of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York studies how radioactive isotopes can be used as anti-cancer weapons.

Her colleague Claudia Gravekamp looks at whether weakened bacteria can be used to carry compounds that provoke a patient’s white blood cells into attacking the cancer. They decided to combine the power of radiation and live bacteria to fight cancer.

The bacterium Listeria monocytogenes can cause severe infection, but is usually wiped out by the immune system. Exploiting the fact that cancer cells tend to suppress the immune reaction to avoid being destroyed, the two researchers and their collaborators decided to coat Listeria with radioactive antibodies and injected the bacterium into mice with pancreatic cancer that had spread to multiple sites.

After several doses, the mice that had received the radioactive bacteria had 90% fewer metastases than the mice that had received radiation alone. “That was the first time we’d seen such a big effect,” says Gravenkamp.

The work, still in its preliminary stages, is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

SOURCE: MONYA BAKER (Nature)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenradioactivebacteria

Variations on a gene, and tools to find them

GLOBAL EDUCATION NEWS

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University demands that students learn ZuluSOURCE: NICOLA JENVEY (University World News) http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenzululanguagelearning

In many languages around the world the “Who does What to Whom” pattern is not expressed through word order such as in English, but instead through case marking on words which is similar to the differences in roles marked by “he – him – his”.

According to research, it turns out that on average, languages which managed to retain a case system only have 16% of its

speakers learn it after childhood, while the comparable number for no-case languages is 44%. Adults are bad at learning grammatical case systems, so it is forgotten if many adult learners speak the language.

Gary Lupyan and Rick Dale published a paper in which they looked at over 2,000 languages across the globe and quantified how difficult they are by looking at their morphological complexity. Morphological complexity refers to how difficult it is to say a word in its correct form (“went” rather than “go-ed”). Its simpler counterpart is usually the use of more words to say the same thing (compare the sometimes irregular past like ‘gone’ with the always regular future “will go”). Using these principles Lupyan and Dale could show that languages which are spoken by more people tend to be simpler.

When languages grow big, they tend to get simple. This is because language is not an invention of a single person. Instead, it is a communication tool shaped by the people using it.

Are some languages easier than others?

The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s decision that all new students register for a compulsory Zulu course from next year has thrown the proverbial cat among the pigeons. While details of the initiative – a first for South African higher education – are unclear, the university believes that students must demonstrate bilingualism to earn their

degrees.

Professor Renuka Vithal, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said that at a university with more than 60% of students being Zulu-speaking, the institution was obliged to ensure linguistic choices resulted in effective learning solutions.

South Africa’s 2011 census reflected Zulu as the mother tongue for 23% of the population, making it the most widely spoken language in the country, and it is the dominant language of the KwaZulu-Natal province.

SOURCE: RICHARD KUNERT (Brain’s Idea)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenlanguagestudy

GLOBAL EDUCATION NEWS July 2013, issue 1

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SOURCE: SHEFALI SABHARANJAK (United Academics)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgengrowyourownbones

Massachusetts General Hospital researcher, Harald Ott, has managed to grow rat kidneys in the lab that actually managed to produce urine when transplanted into living rats. This is an important step towards the production of customised organs for transplanting into people with kidney failure, which in turn could

replace donor organ transplants. Kidneys were taken from dead rats and, stripped of cells by using a

detergent, leaving an intact kidney-shaped protein scaffold with all the complex microscopic vascular and tubular kidney structures. The kidneys were then coated with new cells, and twelve days later they started producing urine.

Patients with kidney failure can be treated with dialysis, but can only be cured with a kidney transplant, yet we know that any form of organ transplant is risky. The transplant list is so long that patients may wait up to five years for a donor kidney, and many others lose their lives during that time.

Harald and his team take a different approach than that of other unsuccessful attempts – they hope to grow kidneys in the laboratory using the patient’s own cells. This would put an end to donor organ shortage and immune rejection problems. “If this works, there wouldn’t be any need for immunosuppression or dialysis anymore; it would be a revolution,” says Raymond Vanholder, a nephrologist at the Ghent University Hospital and president of the European Renal Association-European Dialysis and Transplant Association (ERA-EDTA).

When the team transplanted the regenerated kidneys into living rats that had one of their kidneys removed, the new kidneys immediately filled with the rats’ blood, without clot formation or bleeding, and produced urine.

This process would completely change the lives of patients with kidney failure. But unfortunately it is still a long way down the line. Vanholder says, “I think this is very beautiful research, but it has to be confirmed independently by other studies, and before it can be used in the human clinical situation it will take many years.”

Kidneys grown in the lab work in animals

Bone fractures are a painful part of life – and one that may demand considerable attention in our increasingly greying world. In young adults, precursor bone cells (called osteoblasts) create new material at the site of a fracture, while debris from damaged bones is scavenged by destructive cells (named osteoclasts). Together, these processes repair

a fractured bone in an interdependent, complex manner. But for the elderly, post-fracture repairs can be messy, problematic and painful.

That’s one of the reasons why German and Chinese scientists collaborated to examine ways of getting bone to grow in place. In a paper published earlier this year, Drs. Wang, Muller and colleagues identified two materials – biophosphate (bio-polyP) and bio-silica – that could help heal broken bones. Both substances are produced by deep-sea sponges, are easy to produce, and allow for fine control of bone growth.

The researchers showed that bio-polyP (along with calcium chloride) can stimulate the production of hydroxyapatite (the mineral component of bones) by bone cancer cells. Experiments conducted on bone cancer cell lines show that bio-polyP can tip the balance between bone-forming and bone-destroying processes in favour of the constructive one.

Experiments with bio-silica also showed that hydroaxyapatite nodules are produced by bone cancer cells when grown on this substrate. Sea sponges produce bio-silica with the help of the enzyme silicatein. Incorporation of silicatein and its substrate (ortho silicate) into microspheres could provide an elegant way of manipulating the formation of a matrix.

In their experiments, Dr. Wang and colleagues used vertebrate thigh bones as a base material, adding the silica-silicatein microspheres and polyethylene glycol to observe, after an hour, a silica scaffold being formed on the bone surface – which was porous, allowing for the passage of bone cells and blood vessels as well as deposition of hydroxyapatite, thereby facilitating the development of bone tissue on the surface of a fractured bone.

Interestingly, the researchers say, the scaffold could also be deposited in specific designs using a 3D printer, which means that it may be possible to mimic the actual ultrastructure of a bone, and ultimately “design” the scaffolding to resemble it very closely – in other words, regrowing bones to order.

Of course, this isn’t going to make breaking a bone any less painful – but at least it won’t be too long before you’re back on your feet.

SOURCE: ISABEL TORRES (Science in the clouds)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenlabgrownkidneys

A kidney in a bioreactor after seeding with cells. After transplantation it filtered blood and produced urine. Photograph: Ott Lab/Center for Regenerative Medicine

New orthopedic methods help regrow broken bones

GLOBAL EDUCATION NEWS

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Google searches about mental illness follow seasonal patterns

It’s not the sugar that rots teeth

Injectable nanogel can monitor blood-sugar levels and secrete insulin when needed

SOURCE: ELSEVIER (via AlphaGalileo)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgengooglesearch

SOURCE: ANDREW PORTERFIELD (United Academics)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgensugarandteeth

Astudy in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine examined Google searches in the United States and Australia for 2006 through 2010 for all major mental illnesses, and found that they actually follow a seasonal pattern – usually fewer searches in summer for bipolar, ADHD, OCD, suicide, anxiety, and several other mental illnesses. This suggests that

mental illness may be more strongly linked with seasonal patterns than previously thought.

“The Internet is a game changer,” said lead investigator John W. Ayers, PhD,

MA, of the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University. “By passively monitoring how individuals search online we can figuratively look inside the heads of searchers to understand population mental health patterns.”

The research shows alarming rates of the different mental illnesses and found that eating disorders in the U.S went down by 37 percent in summers versus winters, and 42 percent in summers in Australia. Schizophrenia searches decreased 37 percent during U.S. summers and by 36 percent in Australia.

Searches for suicide declined 24 and 29 percent during U.S. and Australian summers and anxiety searches had the smallest seasonal change -- down 7 percent during U.S. summers and 15 percent during Australian summers.

“It is very exciting to ponder the potential for a universal mental health emollient, like Vitamin D (a metabolite of sun exposure). But it will be years before our findings are linked to serious mental illness and then linked to mechanisms that may be included in treatment and prevention programs,” said Ayers.

You’ve been hearing it for years: don’t eat too much sugar, because sugar rots your teeth. But this is not completely true. Researchers, looking at the bacteria responsible for dental cavities, have found a molecule that can stop these common dental problems.

Researchers from Yale University, and from the

University of Chile, identified the new molecule, called Keep32, that kills the Streptococcus mutans bacteria and halts tooth decay.

The bacteria usually work by metabolising sugar in your mouth, turning it into lactic acid. It’s the lactic acid, and not the sugar that attacks tooth enamel and causes decay. Keep32 is very effective at killing Streptococcus mutans.

Since the discovery, there has been a race to make a product which could hinder plans to make the molecule available in about a year. Also, if it’s classified as an antibiotic, it will have to go through more clinical trials, like any new drug.

Injectable nanoparticles developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may eliminate the need for patients with Type 1 diabetes to monitor their blood-sugar levels and inject themselves with insulin.

The nanoparticles were designed to sense glucose levels in the

body and respond by secreting the appropriate amount of insulin, thereby replacing the function of pancreatic islet cells, which are destroyed in patients with Type 1 diabetes.

“Insulin really works, but the problem is people don’t always get the right amount of it. With this system of extended release, the amount of drug secreted is proportional to the needs of the body,” says Daniel Anderson, an associate professor of chemical engineering and member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

Currently, people with Type 1 diabetes prick their fingers several times a day to draw blood for testing their blood-sugar levels. When levels are high, these patients

inject themselves with insulin, which breaks down excess sugar. In recent years, many researchers have sought to develop insulin-delivery systems that could act as an “artificial pancreas”, automatically detecting glucose levels and secreting insulin. The MIT team set out to create a sturdy, biocompatible system that would respond more quickly to changes in glucose levels and would be easy to administer.

Their system consists of an injectable gel-like structure with a texture similar to toothpaste, says Zhen Gu, lead author of the paper and now an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and molecular pharmaceutics at the University of North Carolina. The gel contains a mixture of oppositely charged nanoparticles that attract each other, keeping the gel intact and preventing the particles from drifting away once inside the body.

In tests with mice that have Type 1 diabetes, they found that a single injection of the gel maintained normal blood-sugar levels for an

average of 10 days. The particles are biocompatible and degrade in the body. Before testing the particles in humans, the researchers plan to further develop the system’s delivery properties and to work on optimising the dosage that would be needed for use in humans.

Mg/DL Fasting After eating 2-3 hours after eating

Normal 80-100 170-200 120-140

Impaired Glucose 101-125 190-230 140-160

Diabetic 126plus 220-300 200 plus

BLOOD SUGAR LEVELS

SOURCE: ANNE TRAFTON (Medical News Today) http://tinyurl.com/uwcgeninjectablenanogel

GLOBAL EDUCATION NEWS July 2013, issue 1

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Study shows gap between research use and classroom adoption of technology

SOURCE: CARL STRAUMSHEIM (Inside Higher Ed) http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenresearchgap

Researchers from the University of Western Australia, Liverpool John Moores University, and Swansea University had 15 children aged 9-11 years participate in exergaming, using active console video games that track player movement to control the game (e.g., Xbox-Kinect, Wii). This has become popular, and may provide

an alternative form of exercise to counteract sedentary behaviours. The children were tested on low intensity exergaming, high intensity

exergaming, and the treadmill. Exergaming measured energy expenditure and vascular function and health, and found that high intensity exergaming is roughly the equivalent of moderate intensity exercise energy expenditure-wise, and that it also may improve vascular health.

Moreover, the kids found low intensity and high intensity gaming about equally enjoyable, and with high intensity exergaming increasing the heart rate and the amount of energy burned, it is surprising that participants reported similar enjoyment levels with both intensities of exergaming this indicates that children may be equally likely to continue playing the high intensity games as they see it as a fun way to keep fit and healthy.

Using active videogaming (exergaming) to improve children’s health

Astudy conducted by consulting and research non-profit organisation Ithaka S+R tracked how faculty members at a variety of American universities incorporated technology into their research, teaching and communication for more than a decade. The survey shows that professors are growing more comfortable using technology to discover

and use scholarly sources, but the trend has yet to fundamentally alter how they disseminate research and teach courses. There has been a lot of rapid technological progress on the parts of the academics, in how they find, access, share and analyse information...but the students are still going old-school much of the time, and technology has yet to significantly alter the method of lecturing and tutoring at most universities. Academics in the Humanities have been slower to adopt the new technologies available, with only 40% of survey respondents supporting a move away from print – though that’s still nearly double the number reported in a 2009 survey.

SOURCE: BECKY LINDEMAN (Medical News Today)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenactivevideogaming

GLOBAL EDUCATION NEWS

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“Making teens start school in the morning is ‘cruel,’ brain doctor claims.” So declared a British newspaper headline in 2007 after a talk given by myself, Russell Foster, at an academic conference. One reader responded: “This man sounds brain-

dead.” That was a typical reaction to work I was reporting at the time on teenage sleep patterns and their effect on performance at school. Six years on, there is growing acceptance that the structure of the academic day needs to take account of adolescent sleep patterns. The latest school to adopt a later start time is the UCL Academy in London; others are considering following suit.

The biology of human sleep timing changes as we age. As puberty begins, bedtimes and waking times get later. This trend continues

until 19.5 years in women and 21 in men. Then it reverses. At 55 we wake at about the time we woke prior to puberty. This means that for a teenager, a 7 a.m. alarm call is the equivalent of a 5 a.m. start for people in their 50s.

However, biology is only part of the problem. Additional factors include a more relaxed attitude to bedtimes by parents, a disregard for the importance of sleep, and access to TVs, DVDs, PCs, and cell-phones, all of which promote alertness and keep you awake. The amount of sleep teenagers get varies between countries, geographic region, and class, but studies show that they are going to bed later and not getting as much sleep as they need due to early school starts.

Mary Carskadon at Brown University, who is a pioneer in the area of adolescent sleep, has shown that teenagers need about nine hours a night to maintain full alertness and academic performance. My own observations suggested many were getting just five hours on a school night. Unsurprisingly, teachers reported students dozing in class.

Research has demonstrated sleep’s critical role in memory consolidation and our ability to generate innovative solutions to complex problems. Sleep disruption increases the level of the stress hormone cortisol. Impulsive behaviours and lack of empathy may result, and sense of humour and mood are then affected.

Starting school later makes teenagers happier and smarter

Artificial intelligence is smarter than your doctor

Cheating the reaper: years of life added by exercise now quantified

SOURCE: RUSSELL FOSTER (New Scientist)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenstartingschoollater

SOURCE: ZACHARY URBINA (United Academics)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenartificialintelligence

SOURCE: ERIN O’DONNELL (Harvard Magazine)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgencheatingthereaper

Indiana University researchers have developed a predictive computer model that uses aggregated health data to prescribe cheaper (but still effective) treatments than regular doctors might. Markov decision processes and dynamic decision networks are used to determine the best course of action to achieve the most favourable outcome. In 500 simulated sample cases, the model saved about 58.5%, and also improved patient

outcomes.This is a big step as the trends towards self-diagnosed and self-service

health that began with sites such as WebMD are not likely to stop anytime soon. Moreover, these automated types of systems can make some form of health care feasible for those with limited monetary resources. The predictive modelling effort reported results indicating a 50% reduction in costs, with 40% higher-quality patient outcomes.

Epidemiologist I-Min Lee, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, led a study, along with her colleagues, that pooled data from six large studies that included information on the leisure activities and body mass index of more than 650,000 people older than 40 years of age,

each of whom was followed for an average of 10 years. As a result, they were able to find that subjects who completed the equivalent of 75

minutes of brisk walking each week—roughly 11 minutes a day—lived 1.8 years longer than those who didn’t do the exercise, among other things. It was also found that those who got the (US federally recommended minimum) of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week—22 minutes every day, or 30 minutes a day, five days a week—gained 3.4 years of life.

Lee was somewhat surprised that even small amounts of movement made such a difference. “What we found is really encouraging,” she says. “If you do a little, you get a fairly good gain in years.”

GLOBAL EDUCATION NEWS July 2013, issue 1

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Anew paper describes complex predominantly chemosynthetic microbial ecosystems in microscopic cracks in Earth’s oceanic crust. Supports other studies showing life of this basic nature in deep mine shafts and around seafloor hydrothermal vents, and extends beyond them – this could be the largest ecosystem on Earth,

including that inhabited by surface life.Deep beneath the ocean floor off the Pacific Northwest coast, scientists have

described the existence of a potentially vast realm of life, one almost completely disconnected from the world above.

Persisting in microscopic cracks in the basalt rocks of Earth’s oceanic crust is a complex microbial ecosystem fuelled entirely by chemical reactions with rocks and seawater, rather than sunlight or the organic by products of light-harvesting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems such as life above the ground.

Such modes of life, technically known as chemosynthetic, are not unprecedented, having also been found deep in mine shafts and around seafloor hydrothermal vents. Never before, though, have they been found on so vast a scale. In pure geographical area, these oceanic crust systems may contain the largest ecosystem on Earth.

If what the researchers found resembles what’s found elsewhere below Earth’s oceans, explained geomicrobiologist Mark Lever of Denmark’s Aarhuis University, “the largest ecosystem on Earth, by volume, is supported by chemosynthesis.”

The paper represents the culmination of findings that have gathered over the last two decades, starting in the 1990s with the discovery of strange microscopic holes in the basalt rocks that form much of Earth’s outer crust, floating above the planet’s viscous upper mantle and below seafloor sediments.

The holes looked as though they were made by bacterial activity, but there wasn’t supposed to be any life there. The crust isn’t just hot, deep, dark and dense, but mostly devoid of the organic compounds, supplied by plants and plankton and other sunlight-fueled organisms, on which life relies elsewhere.

Other researchers found DNA traces of microbes in the oceanic crusts, further making the case for life, but just what the microbes were doing remained uncertain.

Parallel universe of life described far beneath the bottom of the sea

Skybugs: ecosystems above and below

How much does anti-matter weigh?

SOURCE: BRANDON KEIM (Wired)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenparalleluniverseatsea

SOURCE: DAVE GOLDBERG (iO9)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenweightofanti-matter

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have performed a fairly comprehensive study of skybugs – microbes that spend most of their life cycle in the air, feeding and growing and reproducing while held aloft. Natasha Deleon-Rodriguez and her colleagues hitched a ride on a project researching tropical hurricanes and sampled cloud water

10km above open ocean off the coast of California as well as over the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Midwestern Atlantic, they then extracted DNA, sequenced gene fragments and compared them to known sequences.

This allowed them to perform a species diversity count which allowed them to get a basic picture of the communities in the air. The studies also included information on how these skybugs react to storms and seed clouds and interestingly enough, it was found that different altitudes have slightly different community composition.

The study authors believe that the 17 species which were present in all samples might be the core members of the microbiome of the clouds which are capable of surviving for long periods at very high altitudes of the clouds and where harsh conditions such as UV light, dessication and oxidation present daunting challenges to most life.

This amazing research has proven that there are growing cloud-borne eco-systems in addition to those on land.

Anti-matter is one of those big mysteries in the world which we have known about for nearly a century but we are still slowly learning about it. it is mysterious, dangerous and rare. The ALPHA Collaboration at CERN captured 434 anti-hydrogen atoms (single anti-protons with orbiting positrons) in a magnetic trap; they were then released from the trap

and measured in a detector to determine if they have positive gravitational mass (we know that anti-matter has inertial mass, but we hadn’t been able to test them for gravitational mass before). The results were a little unhelpful, though, as they showed a ratio of gravitational mass to inertial mass that could be anywhere from -65 to 110, meaning that the anti-atoms may experience antigravity or may experience normal gravity, or some mixture of the two. But now that we can do the test, time will reduce those error bars until we can get some proper values.

A sample of oceanic crust basalt (left) and a microscopic cross-section (right) denoting changes of concentration in sulfur, an element used by microbes. Credit: Spencer et al./Science

SOURCE: SEDEER EL-SHOWK (Inspiring Science)http://tinyurl.com/uwcgenecosystemsabove-beyond