TechLuver.com

BERKELEY, Calif — In the middle of the South Pacific, about 12 miles west of Tahiti, is a tropical island that soon will emerge as a model ecosystem, thanks to the efforts of a U.S.-French research team led by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.

Moorea, home of the UC Berkeley Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station and France’s Centre de Recherches Insulaires et Observatoire de l’Environnement (CRIOBE), will be the site of an ambitious project to create a comprehensive inventory of all non-microbial life on the island. Supported by a new $5.2 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Moorea Biocode Project over the next three years will send researchers climbing up jagged peaks, trekking through lush forests and diving down to coral reefs to sample the French Polynesian island’s animal and plant life.

“This is the first effort to catalog and barcode an entire tropical ecosystem, from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the mountains,” said George Roderick, UC Berkeley professor of environmental science, policy and management, curator of the campus’s Essig Museum of Entomology and co-principal investigator of the project.

“We’re constructing a library of genetic markers and physical identifiers for every species of plant, animal and fungi on the island, then making that database publicly available as a resource for ecologists and evolutionary biologists around the world,” he said. Roderick is a former director of the Gump Station, where the National Science Foundation has established one of its 26 Long Term Ecological Research sites (the Moorea Coral Reef LTER).

The work will expand upon a 2005 pilot biocode project at Moorea, also funded by the Moore Foundation, which tested the feasibility of such a large undertaking. That project was limited to genetic barcoding of the fishes, geckos and selected insects.

In the spirit of leaving no stone unturned, larvae and contents of animals’ guts will be fair game in the full project. “We’ll check the gut contents of a gecko, spider or fish to find out what it’s eating,” said Chris Meyer, who managed the pilot project while he was a researcher at UC Berkeley.

There are an estimated 5,000 plant, animal and fungal species on Moorea, although that number may change as cryptic communities and organisms are sampled and genetic markers reveal novel species. “I’d be disappointed if we don’t hit at least 10,000 species,” said Meyer.

The number of species on the 51-square-mile island of Moorea is small compared with that on larger islands and continents. In California, for example, the number of insect species alone tops 30,000. Yet, the researchers say Moorea provides the right balance of being small enough to be studied manageably while being sufficiently complex to reliably serve as a microcosm of the challenges faced in larger ecosystems.

At the end of the three-year project, the Moorea Biocode Project will have sequenced a whole tropical ecosystem. “Like the Human Genome Project, however, this unprecedented accomplishment is, in some ways, merely a necessary first step,” said Davies. “Its goal is to accelerate progress on the larger questions: how to maintain a healthy ecosystem and what to do when things go wrong.” More at UC Berkeley, Berkeley.edu/Biocode. Photo Credits: UC Berkeley.

Cataloging an ecosystem
UC Berkeley biologist George Roderick talks about working on the South Pacific island of Moorea and an ambitious project to create a genetic inventory of all non-microbial life in the island’s ecosystem. (2:06 min. Flash video)

Nanotubes may have high-tech applications, study involving UCR engineers reports.

RIVERSIDE, Calif — Dec 07, ‘07 — Two engineers at the University of California, Riverside are part of a binational team that has found semiconducting nanotubes produced by living bacteria – a discovery that could help in the creation of a new generation of nanoelectronic devices.

The research team believes this is the first time nanotubes have been shown to be produced by biological rather than chemical means. It opens the door to the possibility of cheaper and more environmentally friendly manufacture of electronic materials.

Study results appear in today’s issue of the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team, including Nosang V. Myung, associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering in the Bourns College of Engineering, and his postdoctoral researcher Bongyoung Yoo, found the bacterium Shewanella facilitates the formation of arsenic-sulfide nanotubes that have unique physical and chemical properties not produced by chemical agents.

“We have shown that a jar with a bug in it can create potentially useful nanostructures,” Myung said. “Nanotubes are of particular interest in materials science because the useful properties of a substance can be finely tuned according to the diameter and the thickness of the tubes.”

The whole realm of electronic devices which power our world, from computers to solar cells, today depend on chemical manufacturing processes which use tremendous energy, and leave behind toxic metals and chemicals. Myung said a growing movement in science and engineering is looking for ways to produce semiconductors in more ecologically friendly ways.

Two members of the research team, Hor-Gil Hur and Ji-Hoon Lee from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Korea, first discovered something unexpected happening when they attempted to remediate arsenic contamination using the metal-reducing bacterium Shewanella. Myung, who specializes in electro-chemical material synthesis and device fabrication, was able to characterize the resulting nano-material.

The photoactive arsenic-sulfide nanotubes produced by the bacteria behave as metals with electrical and photoconductive properties. The researchers report that these properties may also provide novel functionality for the next generation of semiconductors in nano- and opto-electronic devices.

In a process that is not yet fully understood, the Shewanella bacterium secretes polysacarides that seem to produce the template for the arsenic sulfide nanotubes, Myung explained. The practical significance of this technique would be much greater if a bacterial species were identified that could produce nanotubes of cadmium sulfide or other superior semiconductor materials, he added.

“This is just a first step that points the way to future investigation,” he said. “Each species of Shewanella might have individual implications for manufacturing properties.” More at University of California, Riverside.

PASADENA, Calif — Dec 06, ‘07 –  The California Institute of Technology and the University of California have received a $200 million commitment over nine years from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation toward the further development and construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT). Funding under this commitment will be shared equally between the two universities, with matching gifts from the two institutions expected to bring the total to $300 million. When built, TMT will be the largest telescope in the world.

The telescope design is being developed by a U.S.-Canadian team that includes the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA), with completion of the design development expected by March 2009.

With the TMT, astronomers will be able to locate and analyze the light from the first stellar systems born soon after the Big Bang, determine the physical processes governing the formation and evolution of galaxies like our own Milky Way, study planet formation around nearby stars, and make observations that test the fundamental laws of physics. However, it is the unexpected discoveries that TMT will make that will likely be the most exciting.

TMT will consist of a primary mirror with 492 individual 1.45-meter segments that together measure 30 meters in diameter, providing more than eight times the collecting area of the current largest telescope. All segments will be under precision computer control so that they will work together as a single mirror. This revolutionary technology was developed for the 10-meter mirrors in the two Keck telescopes in Hawaii.

The TMT will not only be the largest optical-infrared telescope in the world, but it will also be at the forefront of technology in virtually every aspect of its design. Adaptive optics (AO) will allow the TMT to achieve a resolution superior to that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The TMT AO system will use six laser beams to create six luminous spots in a layer of sodium atoms high in Earth’s upper atmosphere. These bright artificial stars serve as references for measuring the turbulence in the atmosphere, allowing the AO system to compensate for blurring of starlight by Earth’s fluctuating atmosphere. This technology was pioneered at the Lick Observatory 3-meter telescope and has been developed further at the Palomar 5-meter and Keck 10-meter telescopes. More at Caltech.

IRVINE, Calif — Dec 05, ‘07 — The herbal extract of a yellow-flowered mountain plant indigenous to the Arctic regions of Europe and Asia increased the lifespan of fruit fly populations, according to a University of California, Irvine study.

Flies that ate a diet rich with Rhodiola rosea, an herbal supplement long used for its purported stress-relief effects, lived on an average of 10 percent longer than fly groups that didn’t eat the herb. Study results appear in the online version of Rejuvenation Research.

“Although this study does not present clinical evidence that Rhodiola can extend human life, the finding that it does extend the lifespan of a model organism, combined with its known health benefits in humans, make this herb a promising candidate for further anti-aging research,” said Mahtab Jafari, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences and study leader. “Our results reveal that Rhodiola is worthy of continued study, and we are now investigating why this herb works to increase lifespan.”

In their study, the UC Irvine researchers fed adult fruit fly populations diets supplemented at different dose levels with four herbs known for their anti-aging properties. The herbs were mixed into a yeast paste, which adult flies ate for the duration of their lives. Three of the herbs – known by their Chinese names as Lu Duo Wei, Bu Zhong Yi Qi Tang and San Zhi Pian – had no effect on fruit fly longevity, while Rhodiola was found to significantly reduce mortality. On average, Rhodiola increased survival 3.5 days in males and 3.2 days in females.

Rhodiola rosea, also known as the golden root, grows in cold climates at high altitudes and has been used by Scandinavians and Russians for centuries for its anti-stress qualities. The herb is thought to have anti-oxidative properties and has been widely studied.

Soviet researchers have been studying Rhodiola since the 1940s on athletes and cosmonauts, finding that the herb boosts the body’s response to stress. And earlier this year, a Nordic Journal of Psychiatry study on people with mild-to-moderate depression showed that patients taking a Rhodiola extract called SHR-5 reported fewer symptoms of depression than did those who took a placebo.

Jafari said she is evaluating the molecular mechanism of Rhodiola by measuring its impact on energy metabolism, oxidative stress and anti-oxidant defenses in fruit flies. She is also beginning studies in mice and in mouse and human cell cultures. These latter studies should help understand the benefits of Rhodiola seen in human trials. More at University of California, Irvine.

Single carbon nanotube is fully functional radio, receiving music over standard radio bandwidth. Oct 31, ’07 — National Science Foundation – 

Harnessing the electrical and mechanical properties of the carbon nanotube, a team of researchers has crafted a working radio from a single fiber of that material. 

Fixed between two electrodes, the vibrating tube successfully performed the four critical roles of a radio–antenna, tunable filter, amplifier and demodulator–to tune in a radio signal generated in the room and play it back through an attached speaker.  

Functional across a bandwidth widely used for commercial radio, the tiny device could have applications far beyond novelty, from radio-controlled devices that could flow in the human bloodstream to highly efficient, miniscule, cell phone devices.  

Developed at the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems, a research team led by Alex Zettl of the University of California at Berkeley announced the findings online on Oct. 31, 2007 (http://pubs.acs.org/journals/nalefd/index.html). The findings are scheduled to be printed in Nano Letters in November.  

“This breakthrough is a perfect example of how the unique behavior of matter in the nanoworld enables startling new technologies,” says Bruce Kramer, a senior advisor for engineering at NSF and the officer overseeing the center’s work. “The key functions of a radio, the quintessential device that heralded the electronic age, have now been radically miniaturized using the mechanical vibration of a single carbon nanotube.” 

The source content for the first laboratory test of the radio was “Layla,” by Derek and the Dominos, followed soon after by “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys. 

The new device works in a manner more similar to the vacuum tubes from the 1930s than the transistors found in modern radios. In the new radio, a single carbon fiber a few hundred nanometers (billionths of a meter) long, and only a few molecules thick, stands glued to a negatively charged base of tungsten that acts as a cathode. Roughly one millionth of a meter directly across from the base lies a positively charged piece of copper that acts as an anode.  

Power in the form of streaming electrons travels from an attached battery through the cathode, into the nanotube, and across a vacuum to the anode via a field-emission tunneling process.  

The researchers believe it would be easy to produce such nanotube radios for receiving signals in the 40-400 megahertz range, a range within which most FM radio broadcasts fall.  

The researchers fine tune the nanoradio to a frequency, akin to a channel, by using the electrostatic field between the cathode and anode to tighten or loosen the nanotube, a process the researchers relate to the tightening or loosening of a string on a guitar. According to Zettl, the sensitivity of the nanotube radio can be enhanced by attaching an external antenna or by using an array of nanotubes that maintain the extremely small size. 

Adds Bruce Kramer, “The application of a fully functioning radio receiver less than 50 millionths of an inch in length and one millionth of an inch in diameter potentially allows the radio control of almost anything, from a single receiver in a living cell to a vast array embedded in an airplane wing. More at NSF.

The world’s tiniest radio is a step closer to reality. US scientists have unveiled a detector thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair that can translate radio waves into sound.

According to a University of California team, the study marks the first time that a nano-sized detector has been demonstrated in a working radio system. Made of carbon nanotubes a few atoms across, it is almost 1,000 times smaller than current radio technology. Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen incorporated the microscopic detector into a complete radio system.

They used it to transmit classical music wirelessly from an iPod to a speaker several metres away from the music player. Full details of their findings will be published next month in the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters.

“Though we have only demonstrated the critical component of the entire radio system out of a nanotube (the demodulator), it is conceivable in the future that all components could be nanoscale, thus allowing a truly nanoscale wireless communications system,” they write.

More at BBC News