Welcome, welcome. Magical, marvelous Monday is here. The time has come to gather around and take a well deserved hiatus from all the politics of the day. Science talk is here. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Over the fold are selections from the past week from a few of the many excellent science news sites around the world. Today's tidbits include a larger role for plants in cleaning the atmosphere than thought, a bit of good news from the Gulf oil spill, scientists open an electrical link to living cells, a new way to weigh planets, and taste receptors in the lungs. Come in, sit down, and relax. There is plenty of room for everyone. Settle in for one more session of Dr. Possum's science education and entertainment.
Featured Stories
Scientists have always known plants play an important part in cleaning the atmosphere.
Vegetation plays an unexpectedly large role in cleansing the atmosphere, a new study finds.
The research, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., uses observations, gene expression studies, and computer modeling to show that deciduous plants absorb about a third more of a common class of air-polluting chemicals than previously thought.
Recent observation of Gulf coral found less damage than expected from the recent oil spill.
So far, it appears the area dodged a bullet, but more research is needed. Some of the deep sea
corals near the spill site were only discovered just last year.
in these locations, we haven't seen a large scale damage to the coral habitats.
The bionic human is ever closer to reality with news of an electrical link formed to living cells.
Coaxing electrons across a cellular membrane is not trivial: attempts to pull an electron from a cell may disrupt its function, or kill the entire cell in the process. What’s more, current techniques to transfer cellular electrons to an external source lack a molecular roadmap, which means even if electrons do turn up outside a cell, there is no way to direct their behavior, see where they stopped along the way, or send a signal back to the cell’s interior.
The latest approach uses genetic engineering to form an electrical conduit.
Folks concerned with their personal body weight should be heartened by astronomer's fixation on the weight of planetary systems.
Until now, astronomers have weighed planets by measuring the orbits of their moons or of spacecraft flying past them. That’s because mass creates gravity, and a planet’s gravitational pull determines the orbit of anything that goes around it – both the size of the orbit and how long it takes to complete.
The new method is based on corrections astronomers make to signals from pulsars – small spinning stars that deliver regular ‘blips’ of radio waves.
In the search for a treatment for asthma researchers have discovered receptors in the lungs which respond like taste buds.
The airways are the pathways that move air in and out of the lungs, one of several critical steps in the process of delivering oxygen to cells throughout the body. In asthma, the smooth muscle airways contract or tighten, impeding the flow of air, causing wheezing and shortness of breath.
The taste receptors in the lungs are the same as those on the tongue. The tongue's receptors are clustered in taste buds, which send signals to the brain. The researchers say that in the lung, the taste receptors are not clustered in buds and do not send signals to the brain, yet they respond to substances that have a bitter taste.
Other Worthy Stories of the Week
Evidence for widespread water ice on the moon
Anoter winter of extremes in store for US as La Nina strengthens
Sea levels rising around Falkland IslandsA new hypothesis about how complex life arose on Earth
Arctic region continues to warm at an unprecedented rate
New batteries smaller than salt grains
For even more science news:
General Science Collectors:
Alpha-Galileo
BBC News Science and Environment
Eureka Science News
LiveScience
New Scientist
PhysOrg.com
SciDev.net
Science/AAAS
Science Alert
Science Centric
Science Daily
Scientific American
Space Daily
Blogs:
A Few Things Ill Considered Techie and Science News
Cantauri Dreams space exploration
Coctail Party Physics Physics with a twist.
Deep Sea News marine biology
Laelaps more vertebrate paleontology
List of Geoscience Blogs
ScienceBlogs
Space Review
Techonology Review
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Science Insider
Scientific Blogging.
Wired News
Science RSS Feed: Medworm
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe--a combination of hard science and debunking crap
Daily Kos regular series:
Daily Kos University, a regular series by plf515
This Week in Science by DarkSyde
This Week in Space by nellaselim
Overnight News Digest:Science Saturday by Neon Vincent. OND tech Thursday by rfall.
Weekend Science by AKMask
All diaries with the DK GreenRoots Tag.
All diaries with the eKos Tag
NASA picture of the day. For more see the NASA image gallery or the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive.
Sunspot 1112, NASA, Public Domain