A University of Surrey team led by Professor Ravi Silva has demonstrated a new method of growing carbon nanofibres at room temperature. Published in this week’s Nature Materials, the technique they have used involves substituting the thermal energy requirements for growth with plasma decomposition of methane on the Ni catalyst.
Professor Silva said “We believe that vapour-grown carbon fibres would offer the most cost-effective means of producing discontinuous carbon fibres using large-scale
Pill count has the greatest impact on adherence, survey reports
The total number of pills that need to be taken every day in HAART therapy has the greatest impact on adherence of 10 characteristics studied, according to a survey of HIV positive individuals, nearly two-thirds of whom had experienced at least three treatment regimens. The findings of the Perspectives on Adherence and Simplicity for HIV+ Patients on Antiretroviral Therapy (PASPORT) survey were presented here today at the
Get ready to rewrite those biology textbooks – again. Although the “lowly” blue-green algae, or Cyanobacteria, have long been credited as one of Earth’s earliest life forms and the source of the oxygen in the early Earth’s atmosphere, they might be neither.
By creating a new genetic family tree of the world’s most primitive bacteria and comparing it to the geochemistry of ancient iron and sulfur deposits, Carrine Blank of Washington University has found evidence that instead of Cyanobacter
Antibiotics have been used against infectious diseases with great success and have been a part of agriculture for many years. Agricultural uses of antibiotics include the treatment and prevention of diseases in animals and plants and the promotion of growth in food animals. But scientists have long recognized a down side. The concentrated and widespread use of antibiotic agents has resulted in the emergence of drug-resistant organisms, some of which can now survive most commercially available antibio
Brachiopods, the most common shellfish in Paleozoic times, now live primarily in the chilly waters of northern fjords and the Antarctic shelf, except for an abundant population in the tropic waters of the continental shelf off southeast Brazil.
The Brazilian brachiopods are the best modern analogy for the life and times of the critter that was so pervasive over 250 million years ago, says David Rodland, Ph.D. student in geological sciences at Virginia Tech. He has been studying the p
Robotic Carbon Explorers test the “iron hypothesis” in nature
In the spring of 2001, two robotic Carbon Explorer floats recorded the rapid growth of phytoplankton in the upper layers of the North Pacific Ocean after a passing storm had deposited iron-rich dust from the Gobi Desert. The carbon measurements, reported in the October 25 issue of Science, are the first direct observation of wind-blown terrestrial dust fertilizing the growth of aquatic plant life.
A group of scie