Latest Isotopes of carbon Stories
New research in The FASEB Journal, based on carbon-14 dating, shows that despite repeated high-impact loading, the Achilles tendon is not renewed, but stays the same throughout adult life Notorious among athletes and trainers as career killers, Achilles tendon injuries are among the most devastating. Now, by carbon testing tissues exposed to nuclear fallout in post WWII tests, scientists have learned why: Like our teeth and the lenses in our eyes, the Achilles tendon is a tissue that does...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A research team from Oxford University's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit has found a more accurate benchmark for dating materials, especially for older objects, from a series of radiocarbon measurements from Japan's Lake Suigetsu. As far back as 1993, researchers realized sediment cores from Lake Suigetsu would be useful for radiocarbon dating. However, the initial efforts encountered technical problems. The current team extracted...
In an effort to identify the thousands of John/Jane Doe cold cases in the United States, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher and a team of international collaborators have found a multidisciplinary approach to identifying the remains of missing persons. Using "bomb pulse" radiocarbon analysis developed at Lawrence Livermore, combined with recently developed anthropological analysis and forensic DNA techniques, the researchers were able to identify the remains of a missing...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study is challenging current models of long-term carbon storage in lakes and rivers by revealing that a significant amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from lakes and rivers in Southern Quebec, Canada is approximately 1,000 to 3,000 years old. Current models and previous studies have shown there to be a tight coupling between the terrestrial and aquatic environment. So tight, in fact, that they expect aquatic bacteria...
Our solar system is four and a half billion years old, but its formation may have occurred over a shorter period of time than we previously thought, says an international team of researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and universities and laboratories in the US and Japan. Establishing chronologies of past events or determining ages of objects require having clocks that tick at different paces, according to how far back one looks. Nuclear clocks, used for dating, are based on...
Individual atoms of a certain chemical element can be very stubborn when it comes to separation, mainly because techniques rely on a difference in chemical and physical properties — atoms are almost identical in both regards. However, if you peer closely enough into the atoms, there are subtle differences that can have very big effects. These "different" atoms, called isotopes, are heavily relied on in areas of medicine and nuclear energy and now researchers have proposed a novel way of...
At the end of the last Ice Age, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose rapidly as the planet warmed; scientists have long hypothesized that the source was CO2 released from the deep ocean. But a new study using detailed radiocarbon dating of foraminifera found in a sediment core from the Gorda Ridge off Oregon reveals that the Northeast Pacific was not an important reservoir of carbon during glacial times. The finding may send scientists back to the proverbial drawing board looking for...
While enthusiasts across the world pored over the Voynich manuscript, penned by an unknown author in a language no one understands, a research team at the University of Arizona solved one of its biggest mysteries: When was the book made?University of Arizona researchers have cracked one of the puzzles surrounding what has been called "the world's most mysterious manuscript" "“ the Voynich manuscript, a book filled with drawings and writings nobody has been able to make sense of to...
AKRON, Ohio, Jan. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A number of new ventures, funded with millions of dollars by large oil companies and major investors, are growing algae to produce biodiesel, jet fuel and other biofuels. Many of these processes use fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) to "feed" their photosynthetic algae, which as a side effect could help reduce global warming. But a potentially greater advantage from using fossil fuel CO2 to grow algae is that it can create a wide variety of safer,...
AKRON, Ohio, Jan. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A new method of child and maternal nutrition could prevent a specific type of genetic damage that would otherwise occur in up to 160 million brain cells in each person over their lifetime. Preventing this genetic damage could have significant implications related to aging and cancer. Most people are unaware that every type of food currently eaten is measurably contaminated with a radioactive material from the air known as carbon-14, or radiocarbon....
