Electronic Components

Rocket-launched camera reveals highways and sparkles in the solar atmosphere With partners in the United States and Russia, the UCLan team used a sounding rocket to launch the NASA High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, USA. During its short flight, the Hi-C team obtained images of the solar atmosphere (the solar corona) five times sharper than anything seen before and acquired data at a rate of about one image every five seconds. The new camera observed the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light and focused on a large, magnetically-active sunspot region. Images from Hi-C reveal a number of new features in the corona, including 'blobs' of gas ricocheting along 'highways' and bright dots that switch on and off rapidly which the group call 'sparkles'. In the new images, small clumps of electrified gas (plasma) at a temperature of about one million degrees Celsius are seen racing along highways shaped by the Sun's magn...

Different neuronal groups govern right-left alternation when walking Most land animals can walk or run by alternating their left and right legs in different coordinated patterns. Some animals, such as rabbits, move both leg pairs simultaneously to obtain a hopping motion. In the present study, the researchers Adolfo Talpalar and Julien Bouvier together with professor Ole Kiehn and colleagues, have studied the spinal networks that control these movement patterns in mice. By using advanced genetic methods that allow the elimination of discrete groups of neurons from the spinal cord, they were able to remove a type of neurons characterized by the expression of the gene Dbx1. "It was classically thought that only one group of nerve cells controls left right alternation," says Ole Kiehn who leads the laboratory behind the study at the Department of Neuroscience. "It was then very interesting to find that there are actually two specific neuronal populations involved, and on to...

How 'parrot dinosaur' switched from four feet to two as it grew June 28, 2013 — Tracking the growth of dinosaurs and how they changed as they grew is difficult. Using a combination of biomechanical analysis and bone histology, palaeontologists from Beijing, Bristol, and Bonn have shown how one of the best-known dinosaurs switched from four feet to two as it grew. Share This: Psittacosaurus , the 'parrot dinosaur' is known from more than 1000 specimens from the Cretaceous, 100 million years ago, of China and other parts of east Asia. As part of his PhD thesis at the University of Bristol, Qi Zhao, now on the staff of the Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology in Beijing, carried out the intricate study on bones of babies, juveniles and adults. Dr Zhao said: "Some of the bones from baby Psittacosaurus were only a few millimetres across, so I had to handle them extremely carefully to be able to make useful bone sections. I also...

Munich Calling: Quiet, engineers at work? MUNICH, Germany – The biennial Electronica exhibition and conference got off to a quiet start here on Tuesday (Nov. 13). While the "A" halls, that are home to the semiconductor exhibitors seemed busy enough, certain key indicators, such as the crowds on the subway and in the atrium area prior to the initial opening of the show, seemed smaller than in previous years. In fact there were empty seats on my U-bahn train as I made my way toward the Messe fairground at about 9:00am on Tuesday. I have never experienced that and I have been coming to Munich for more years than I care to mention. In other years it has been standing room only and sometimes it was not physically possible to get on a train at the stops close to the Messe forcing would-be attendees to travel back into the city center to try and get "upstream" of the crowds and be able to board a train. People tell me Wednesday and Thursday will be the busier. For now this...

Europe asks if it is time for an Airbus of chips Further evidence of the European Commission's interest in re-invigorating microelectronics on the European continent – and microelectronics manufacturing in particular – has come from Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner responsible for the digital agenda. Kroes, one of the senior bureaucrats within the Commission, used the opportunity of a keynote speech presented to the IMEC Technology Forum, held in Brussels last month, to ask whether Europe should consider the creation of an Airbus of chips. Readers may remember that Malcolm Penn of Future Horizons Ltd. was one of the co-authors of a report recently presented to the European Commission that discussed various requirements for, and ways towards, hosting manufacturing on 450-mm diameter wafers . However, while interest is high in Brussels – the home of the European Commission – because of its potential job- and wealth-creation benefits, the idea seems to be less urgent for a number o...

Researchers Discover Species-Recognition System in Fruit Flies June 27, 2013 — A team led by UC San Francisco researchers has discovered a sensory system in the foreleg of the fruit fly that tells male flies whether a potential mate is from a different species. The work addresses a central problem in evolution that is poorly understood: how animals of one species know not to mate with animals of other species. Share This: For the common fruit fly D. melanogaster, the answer lies in the chemoreceptor Gr32a, located on sensory neurons on the male fly's foreleg. "In nature, this sensory system would prevent the creation of hybrids that may not survive or cannot propagate, thereby helping the species preserve its identity," said senior author Nirao M. Shah, MD, PhD, a UCSF associate professor of anatomy. The work is reported in a paper published online in Cell on June 27, 2013. Before mating, the researchers found, the male approaches...

What makes a video go viral? More than just good content June 27, 2013 — If you want your homegrown video to go viral, you'd better have more than just good content. Find someone to endorse it, the more well known the better, according to research at Kansas State University. Share This: "The content has to make people stay and want to watch it and pass it on to others," said Lindsey Elliott, a May 2013 master's graduate in journalism and mass communications. "But with billions of videos on YouTube, people won't see it if they don't know it's out there." Elliott studied what makes a nonprofessional video go viral by looking at "I'm Farming and I Grow It," a musical parody of LMFAO's "I'm Sexy and I Know It." The video was created by Greg Peterson, a May 2013 Kansas State University graduate, and his younger siblings, of Assaria. The video touts the importance of farming. The ...

Potential boost for world's food supply: Resistance gene found against Ug99 wheat stem rust pathogen June 27, 2013 — The world's food supply got a little more plentiful thanks to a scientific breakthrough. Share This: Eduard Akhunov, associate professor of plant pathology at Kansas State University, and his colleague, Jorge Dubcovsky from the University of California-Davis, led a research project that identified a gene that gives wheat plants resistance to one of the most deadly races of the wheat stem rust pathogen -- called Ug99 -- that was first discovered in Uganda in 1999. The discovery may help scientists develop new wheat varieties and strategies that protect the world's food crops against the wheat stem rust pathogen that is spreading from Africa to the breadbaskets of Asia and can cause significant crop losses. Other Kansas State University researchers include Harold Trick, professor of plant pathology; Andres Salcedo, docto...

World's food supply got a little more plentiful: Resistance gene found against ug99 wheat stem rust pathogen June 27, 2013 — The world's food supply got a little more plentiful thanks to a scientific breakthrough. Share This: Eduard Akhunov, associate professor of plant pathology at Kansas State University, and his colleague, Jorge Dubcovsky from the University of California-Davis, led a research project that identified a gene that gives wheat plants resistance to one of the most deadly races of the wheat stem rust pathogen -- called Ug99 -- that was first discovered in Uganda in 1999. The discovery may help scientists develop new wheat varieties and strategies that protect the world's food crops against the wheat stem rust pathogen that is spreading from Africa to the breadbaskets of Asia and can cause significant crop losses. Other Kansas State University researchers include Harold Trick, professor of plant pathology; Andres Salced...

Key step in protein synthesis revealed "This is something that the whole field has been pursuing for the past decade," said Harry Noller, Sinsheimer Professor of Molecular Biology at UC Santa Cruz. "We've trapped the ribosome in the middle of its movement during translocation, which is the most interesting, profound, and complex thing the ribosome does." Understanding ribosomes is important not only because of their crucial role as the protein factories of all living cells, but also because many antibiotics work by targeting bacterial ribosomes. Research on ribosomes by Noller and others has led to the development of novel antibiotics that hold promise for use against drug-resistant bacteria. Noller's lab is known for its pioneering work to elucidate the atomic structure of the ribosome, which is made of long chains of RNA and proteins interlaced together in complicated foldings. Using x-ray crystallography, his group has shown the ribosome in different conf...