News

Embryology

Embryology
Monday, April 29, 2013

Mammalian females ovulate periodically over their reproductive lifetimes, placing significant demands on their ovaries for egg production. Whether mammals generate new eggs in adulthood using stem cells has been a source of scientific controversy. If true, these “germ-line stem cells” might allow novel treatments for infertility and other diseases. However, new research from Carnegie’s Lei Lei and Allan Spradling demonstrates that adult mice do not use stem cells to produce new eggs.

Geophysical Laboratory

Geophysical Laboratory
Tuesday, April 9, 2013

A team led by Carnegie researcher Wenge Yang has made a major breakthrough in measuring the structure of nanomaterials under extremely high pressures. They developed a new way to get around the severe distortions of high-energy X-ray beams that are used to image the structure of a gold nanocrystal. The technique could lead to advancements of new nanomaterials created under high pressures and a greater understanding of what is happening in planetary interiors.

Global Ecology

Global Ecology
Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Carnegie staff scientist Greg Asner has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates from 14 countries elected “in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” The total number of active members now stands at 2,179.

Observatories

Observatories
Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Blazars are the brightest of active galactic nuclei, and many emit very high-energy gamma rays. New observations of a blazar known as PKS 1424+240 show that it is the most-distant known source of very high-energy gamma rays. But its emission spectrum appears highly unusual. A team including Carnegie’s Michele Fumagalli used data from the Hubble Space Telescope to set a lower limit for the blazar's redshift (z ≥ 0.6035). An object’s redshift value is a measurement of how much the wavelength of the light from it that reaches Earth is stretched by the expansion of the Universe. Thus, it reveals the object’s age and distance. This blazar’s redshift corresponds to a distance of at least 7.4 billion light-years.

Plant Biology

Plant Biology
Wednesday, May 1, 2013

An international team of 12 leading plant biologists, including Carnegie’s Wolf Frommer, say their discoveries could have profound implications for increasing the supply of food and energy for our rapidly growing global population. All of their work focuses on the mechanisms that plants use for transporting small molecules across their membranes and thus for controlling water loss, resisting toxic metals and pests, increasing salt tolerance, and storing sugar.
 

Terrestrial Magnetism

Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
Thursday, May 9, 2013

Water is perhaps the most important molecule in our solar system. Figuring out where it came from and how it was distributed within and among the planets can help scientists understand how planets formed and evolved. New research from a team including Carnegie’s Erik Hauri demonstrates that water from the interiors of the Earth and Moon has a common origin.