Carnegie’s Scott Sheppard and his long-time colleague Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University received The Europlanet Society’s 2019 Paolo Farinella Prize for “outstanding collaborative work for the observational characterization of the Kuiper belt and the Neptune-trojan population.”
When considering the synthesis of new structures, some of the possible spatial configurations of atoms are energetically favorable—meaning they are easy to maintain—and others are more difficult. Picture these energy states as hills that must be surmounted and valleys that can be coasted through effortlessly. What if there were a kind of a GPS that would improve the ability of scientists to navigate through these different states and predict the best routes for obtaining a particular material?
Plant genetic diversity in Central Europe could collapse due to temperature extremes and drought brought on by climate change, according to a new paper in Nature led by Moises Exposito-Alonso, who joins Carnegie next month. Because only a few individuals of a species are already adapted to extreme climate conditions, the overall species genetic diversity could be greatly diminished, according to the team's findings.
Taxing carbon emissions would drive innovation and lead to improved energy efficiency, according to a new paper from Carnegie and the University of Waterloo. It has long been theorized that raising carbon prices would provide an incentive to reduce emissions. To investigate this question, the research team looked at historical data to determine how cost increases have affected energy use efficiency in the past.
From February to April, we solicited name suggestions for five recently discovered moons of Jupiter and the submissions ranged from the scholarly to the silly. We combed through them all—even the ones that blatantly disregarded the rules—and passed the best ones on to the International Astronomical Union. Today, the IAU is publishing the winners.
Carnegie plant scientists Devaki Bhaya and Arthur Grossman received a nearly $2 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.K. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to study photosynthetic microbes from Yellowstone National Park’s Octopus Spring.
Carnegie plant biologists Sue Rhee and David Ehrhardt will lead one of 25 teams awarded a total of $64 million this week by the U.S. Department of Energy to pursue genomic research of potential biofuel crops. “This study will be the first of its kind, revealing the full suite of a plant’s metabolic enzymes and their relationships to each other inside a living cell,” said Rhee of the project, which will map the metabolic networks of he cereal plant sorghum, which is also a biofuel crop, and the wheat relative Brachypodium, which is a model organism for grasses, including those that are used for biofuels.
Carnegie scientists Michael Walter and Robert Hazen have been elected 2019 Fellows of the American Geophysical Union. Fellows are recognized for visionary leadership and scientific excellence that has fundamentally advanced research in the Earth and space sciences. “Their breadth of interests and the scope of their contributions are remarkable and often groundbreaking,” said the organization in its announcement of the n
The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) will name a mentorship award in honor of legendary Carnegie plant scientist Winslow Briggs, who died in February. “The outpouring of love and support as news spread of Winslow’s death is a testament to how many lives he touched,” said Zhiyong Wang, Acting Director of Carnegie’s Department Plant Biology. “I can think of no better way for ASPB to honor his memory than to reward examples of outstanding mentorship in others.”
Some volcanoes take their time—experiencing protracted, years-long periods of unrest before eventually erupting. This makes it difficult to forecast when they pose a danger to their surrounding areas, but Carnegie’s Diana Roman and Penn State’s Peter LaFemina are trying to change that.
Major volcanic eruptions spew ash particles into the atmosphere, which reflect some of the Sun’s radiation back into space and cool the planet. But could this effect be intentionally recreated to fight climate change? A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters investigates.
Sometimes there is more to a planetary system than initially meets the eye. Ground-based observations following up on the discovery of a small planet by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) revealed two additional planets in the same system, one of which is located far enough from its star to be potentially habitable. These findings were announced in Astronomy & Astrophysics by an international team including several Carnegie astronomers and instrumentation specialists.
A newly developed technique that shows artery clogging fat-and-protein complexes in live fish gave investigators from Carnegie, Johns Hopkins University, and the Mayo Clinic a glimpse of how to study heart disease in action. Their research, which is currently being used to find new drugs to fight cardiovascular disease, is now published in Nature Communications.
Carnegie’s K. Decker French was recognized by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific with its Robert J. Trumpler Award, which is presented to a recent Ph.D. graduate “whose research is considered unusually important to astronomy.”
The House approved yesterday a bill to name the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in honor of late Carnegie scientist Vera Rubin, who confirmed the existence of dark matter.
Carnegie’s Sue Rhee and David Ehrhardt, along with NYU’s Kenneth Birnbaum, argue that we must drastically improve our understanding of plant cell structure, function, and physiology in order to mitigate the assaults to human health, the economy, and the environment brought on by climate change. Originally published by Trends in Plant Science, their editorial calling for a Plant Cell Atlas is now part of Cell Press special collection on conservation. Today they are launching a project website calling for a kick-off workshop to convene leaders from diverse fields to brainstorm how best to create this community resource.
The phenomenon of magnetic resonance was first revealed in the classic Stern-Gerlach experiment in 1922.
The discovery that genome engineering could be accomplished by harnessing the bacterial CRISPR-Cas9 immune defense system is one of the most-import
Microbial life does not always depend on access to sunlight. In fact, most microbial cells on Earth are buried
Symbiosis refers to mutually beneficial interactions between different organisms.
On New Year’s Day in 1925, a young Edwin Hubble released his finding that the Milky Way was not alone but instead accompanied by billions of