Rising sea levels to impact low areas
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 11 (UPI) -- Scientists at a Denmark conference say rising sea levels will have a major negative impact on 1-in-10 humans living in the Earth's low-lying coastal areas.
Research presented during this week's International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen shows the upper range of sea level rise by 2100 could be in the range of about 1 meter (3 feet) or possibly more. At the lower end of the spectrum, studies show it is increasingly unlikely sea level rise will be much less than 50 centimeters (19 inches) by 2100.
That, the scientists said, means if emissions of greenhouse gases aren't reduced quickly and substantially even the best-case scenario will hit low-lying coastal areas housing 1-in-10 humans on the planet "hard."
"Unless we undertake urgent and significant mitigation actions, the climate could cross a threshold during the 21st century committing the world to a sea level rise of meters", said John Church of the Center for Australian Weather and Climate Research. "Our study centered on Australia showed that coastal flooding events that today we expect only once every hundred years will happen several times a year by 2100."
The preliminary conclusions from the congress will be presented Thursday during the event's closing session and will be included in a synthesis report to be published in June.
High metabolism doesn't shorten life span
GRONINGEN, Netherlands, March 11 (UPI) -- Dutch scientists say they've used lab mice to determine the theory that a higher metabolism results in a shorter lifespan is unfounded.
Lobke Vaanholt of the University of Groningen, who led the study, said she and her colleagues discovered mice with increased metabolism live just as long as those with slower metabolic rates.
The live-fast, die-young premise, scientifically known as the rate-of-living theory, was first proposed in the 1920s, Vaanholt said. The hypothesis was that aging is the inevitable byproduct of energy expenditure and the faster the energy is expended, the faster aging occurs and the sooner death occurs.
Vaanholt and her team followed two groups of mice through their entire lives, with one group's environment kept at 71 degrees Fahrenheit and the other group at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The colder group had to expend more energy to maintain body temperature and, if the rate-of-living theory was correct, should have died sooner.
"Despite a 48 percent increase in overall daily energy expenditure and a 64 percent increase in mass-specific energy expenditure throughout adult life, mice in the cold lived just as long on average as mice in warm temperatures," the researchers said.
The study appears in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.
Scientists set record for smallest letters
STANFORD, Calif., March 11 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've set a record for the world's smallest letters by pushing individual molecules into specifically arranged patterns.
Stanford University researchers said their achievement shattered the long-held belief that one bit per atom was the limit for encoding information.
Assistant Professor Hari Manoharan and graduate student Christopher Moon said they were able to encode 35 bits of information per electron and write letters so small they are composed of subatomic bits of 0.3 nanometers, roughly one-third-of-a-billionth of a meter.
The researchers said the small size of the letters could enable information to be stored more densely, thereby providing greater computer speed and storage capacity.
"In this experiment we've stored some 35 bits per electron to encode each letter," said Manoharan. "We write the letters so small that the bits that comprise them are subatomic in size. So one bit per atom is no longer the limit for information density. There's a grand new horizon below that, in the subatomic regime. Indeed, there's even more room at the bottom than we ever imagined."
The research appears in the March 1 issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Malaria parasite mechanism is identified
RICHMOND, Va., March 11 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've identified the way in which the malaria parasite enters human red blood cells -- a finding that might lead to a malaria vaccine.
Virginia Commonwealth University researchers said although scientists have long known a molecule called glycophorin B, which is found on the surface of human red blood cells, is important for the invasion of the malaria parasite, the specific molecule by which the malaria parasite attaches itself to invade the host was not known.
Using a biochemical test that looks specifically at how the parasite and host bind to each other, the scientists examined how the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, interacts with red blood cells. The findings showed the EBL-1 molecule is the specific attachment site used by the parasite on glycophorin B.
"We have now identified how the parasite binds to glycophorin B on the red blood cells," said Assistant Professor Ghislaine Mayer, who led the research. "Down the road, the EBL-1 molecule could be used as a vaccine target against malaria as part of a multivalent vaccine, or vaccine cocktail,"
The study appears in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
