Lowell Observatory Participates in Heritage Preservation’s Conservation Assessment Program
December 29, 2009
Flagstaff, Ariz. — Lowell Observatory and Heritage Preservation are pleased to announce that the Observatory has been chosen to participate in the 2010 Conservation Assessment Program (CAP). Lowell Observatory joins 2,700 museums that have participated in CAP in its 20-year history of serving small museums. Heritage Preservation’s CAP is supported through a cooperative agreement with the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. CAP assists museums by providing funds for professional conservation and preservation specialists to identify conservation needs of their collections and historic buildings and recommend ways to correctly improve collections and the conditions of buildings. “Lowell Observatory is making the vital work of caring for collections and sites a priority, even in these challenging financial times, and is helping ensure that they are available to present and future generations,” said Lawrence L. Reger, Historic Preservation’s President.
“We have taken the first step in identifying and preserving our collections and historic buildings,” said Antoinette Beiser, manager of Lowell Observatory’s library and archives.
Through this program, CAP will provide a general conservation assessment of the Observatory’s collections and historic buildings. A professional conservator will spend two days surveying Lowell’s Mars Hill campus and three days writing a comprehensive report to identify conservation priorities. The on-site consultation will enable Lowell Observatory to evaluate its current collections care policies, procedures and environmental conditions. The assessment report will allow the Observatory to seek funding to make appropriate improvements for the immediate, mid-range, and long-term care of important historic structures and collections.
About Historic Preservation
Historic Preservation is a national non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of the United States. By identifying risks, developing innovative programs, and providing broad public access to expert advice, Heritage Preservation assists museums libraries, archives, historic preservation and other organizations, as well as individuals, in caring for our endangered heritage. To learn more, visit www.heritagepreservation.org.
About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. To learn more, visit www.imls.org.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Please Contact:
Steele Wotkyns, Public Relations Manager, Lowell Observatory, (928) 233-3232, steele[at]lowell[dot]edu
or:
Antoinette Beiser, Manager, Library and Archives, Lowell Observatory, (928) 233-3216, asb[at]lowell[dot]edu
Women Have a Better Sense of Touch
December 28, 2009
People who have smaller fingers have a finer sense of touch, according to new research in the Dec. 16 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. This finding explains why women tend to have better tactile acuity than men, because women on average have smaller fingers.
“Neuroscientists have long known that some people have a better sense of touch than others, but the reasons for this difference have been mysterious,” said Daniel Goldreich, PhD, of McMaster University in Ontario, one of the study’s authors. “Our discovery reveals that one important factor in the sense of touch is finger size.”
To learn why the sexes have different finger sensitivity, the authors first measured index fingertip size in 100 university students. Each student’s tactile acuity was then tested by pressing progressively narrower parallel grooves against a stationary fingertip — the tactile equivalent of the optometrist’s eye chart. The authors found that people with smaller fingers could discern tighter grooves.
“The difference between the sexes appears to be entirely due to the relative size of the person’s fingertips,” said Ethan Lerner, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, who is unaffiliated with the study. “So, a man with fingertips that are smaller than a woman’s will be more sensitive to touch than the woman.”
The authors also explored why more petite fingers are more acute. Tinier digits likely have more closely spaced sensory receptors, the authors concluded. Several types of sensory receptors line the skin’s interior and each detect a specific kind of outside stimulation. Some receptors, named Merkel cells, respond to static indentations (like pressing parallel grooves), while others capture vibrations or movement.
When the skin is stimulated, activated receptors signal the central nervous system, where the brain processes the information and generates a picture of what a surface “feels” like. Much like pixels in a photograph, each skin receptor sends an aspect of the tactile image to the brain — more receptors per inch supply a clearer image.
To find out whether receptors are more densely packed in smaller fingers, the authors measured the distance between sweat pores in some of the students, because Merkel cells cluster around the bases of sweat pores. People with smaller fingers had greater sweat pore density, which means their receptors are probably more closely spaced.
“Previous studies from other laboratories suggested that individuals of the same age have about the same number of vibration receptors in their fingertips. Smaller fingers would then have more closely spaced vibration receptors,” Goldreich said. “Our results suggest that this same relationship between finger size and receptor spacing occurs for the Merkel cells.”
Whether the total number of Merkel cell clusters remains fixed in adults and how the sense of touch fluctuates in children as they age is still unknown. Goldreich and his colleagues plan to determine how tactile acuity changes as a finger grows and receptors grow farther apart.
The research was supported by the National Eye Institute and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in Canada.
_____
Source: Society for Neuroscience
Photo: nesharm / iStockphoto
Skull Bone May Hold the Key to Tackling Osteoporosis
December 22, 2009
Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London have uncovered fundamental differences between the bone which makes up the skull and the bones in our limbs, which they believe could hold the key to tackling bone weakness and fractures.
It is well know that bones in the arms and legs become weak and vulnerable to breaks when they are not maintained by weight bearing exercise. However skull bone, which bears almost no weight remains particularly resistant to breaking.
The new research published in PLoS ONE* offers an explanation for this phenomenon for the first time. The researchers say that their new understanding of the differences between the two types of bone could lead to new ways to treat or prevent osteoporosis.
Deepest Explosive Eruption on the Sea Floor
December 21, 2009
Oceanographers using the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason discovered and recorded the first video and still images of a deep-sea volcano actively erupting molten lava on the seafloor.
Jason, designed and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for the National Deep Submergence Facility, utilized a prototype, high-definition still and video camera to capture the powerful event nearly 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, in an area bounded by Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.
“I felt immense satisfaction at being able to bring [the science team] the virtual presence that Jason provides,” says Jason expedition leader Alberto (Tito) Collasius Jr., who remotely piloted the ROV over the seafloor. “There were fifteen exuberant scientists in the control van who all felt like they hit a home run. “
First Light Instrument for the Discovery Channel Telescope to Accelerate Outer Solar System Research
December 17, 2009
When Lowell Observatory’s 4.2-meter Discovery Channel Telescope delivers its first science results in a few years, some of those results are expected to help astronomers understand much more about the composition and character of the outer solar system, especially a sparse population of small icy bodies called the Kuiper Belt. This is fitting. Lowell Observatory astronomers have been leading in this area since Pluto was discovered in 1930. This work has continued through a program known as the Deep Ecliptic Survey, ongoing research on the Kuiper Belt, and direct involvement in New Horizons, NASA’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission.
The newest and most advanced tool for this work is called NIHTS (pronounced “nights”), the Near-Infrared High-Throughput Spectrograph. NIHTS will be used to carry out a new research program, the Kuiper Spectral Survey (KSS).
New Goggles Light the Night for LifeFlight
December 17, 2009
Vanderbilt LifeFlight is now using technology once reserved for military operations or secret spy missions.
With the ability to enhance light 10,000 times, the air ambulance service’s new night vision goggles essentially turn night into day.
“You can see a lit cigarette 10 miles away,” said Wilson Matthews, R.N., E.M.T., chief flight nurse for LifeFlight’s base in Lebanon, Tenn., who is part of the night vision transition. “You go from seeing nothing to seeing the texture of tree leaves.”
Matthews said night vision will be most useful when making scene landings because pilots and nurses will be able to see the trees, power lines, rising terrain and other hazards on the ground.
Yellowstone’s Magma Body Bigger than Previously Thought
December 16, 2009
The most detailed seismic images yet published of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano shows a plume of hot and molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims that there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like slowly boiling soup.
A related University of Utah study used gravity measurements to indicate the banana-shaped magma chamber of hot and molten rock a few miles beneath Yellowstone is 20 percent larger than previously believed, so a future cataclysmic eruption could be even larger than thought.
Are Angry Women More Like Men?
December 15, 2009
“Why is it that men can be bastards and women must wear pearls and smile?” wrote author Lynn Hecht Schafran. The answer, according to an article in the Journal of Vision, may lie in our interpretation of facial expressions.
In two studies, researchers asked subjects to identify the sex of a series of faces. In the first study, androgynous faces with lowered eyebrows and tight lips (angry expressions) were more likely to be identified as male, and faces with smiles and raised eyebrows (expressions of happiness and fear) were often labeled feminine.
The second study used male and female faces wearing expressions of happiness, anger, sadness, fear or a neutral expression. Overall, subjects were able to identify male faces more quickly than female faces, and female faces that expressed anger took the longest to identify.
Suzaku Catches Retreat of a Black Hole’s Disk
December 14, 2009
Studies of one of the galaxy’s most active black-hole binaries reveal a dramatic change that will help scientists better understand how these systems expel fast-moving particle jets.
Binary systems where a normal star is paired with a black hole often produce large swings in X-ray emission and blast jets of gas at speeds exceeding one-third that of light. What fuels this activity is gas pulled from the normal star, which spirals toward the black hole and piles up in a dense accretion disk.
Bacteria Engineered to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Liquid Fuel
December 13, 2009
Global climate change has prompted efforts to drastically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels.
In a new approach, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide and produce the liquid fuel isobutanol, which holds great potential as a gasoline alternative. The reaction is powered directly by energy from sunlight, through photosynthesis.
Sponsor
Latest Blog Posts
Latest Science News
- Nuclear Tidal Wave, the tidal wave on the nuclei’s surface
- Thinking about electric vehicles
- Nearsightedness increasing in the United States
- Understanding Ocean Climate
- Syntax in Our Primate Cousins
[ Submit News ] [ See More ]
Connect With Us
 |
Twitter Updates Follow @sciseek on Twitter for all the latest news and updates from SciSeek.com. |
 |
Facebook Become a SciSeek.com Fan and get your news and updates without ever leaving Facebook. |
