Other Sciences news
Archaeologists from Newcastle University (UK) are hoping to excavate an internationally important Roman site in Cumbria.
A research study by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), in collaboration with the State University of Campinas (Brazil), shows that young Spanish people were by 2001 taking six years longer than in 1981 to reach full employment, residential and family independence.
Anyone who cares about the rule of law has to acknowledge that illegal immigration has serious social costs that cannot be casually dismissed, says immigration law expert Stephen Legomsky, JD, DPhil, the John S. Lehmann University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.
The United States has the highest adolescent pregnancy and birth rate among developed countries in the world. Many mistakenly believe that teens who become pregnant do not have aspirations of going to college or finding a good job.
When millions of Egyptians took to the streets to demonstrate against the 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak, they rocked the delicate political ecosystem of the Middle East. What should America do?
A team of engineers from Imperial College London have developed a contraption made of human hair, enabling presenters from the world’s longest running children’s television program to test the theory behind a fairytale.
Access to information technology benefits female research scientists more than their male counterparts, increasing research productivity and collaboration, according to a new study co-authored by Assistant Professor Waverly Ding of the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
One factor, little-known by borrowers, can play a large role in whether banks are willing to renegotiate mortgages with homeowners who are struggling to meet payments.
Archaeologists have unearthed a set of six marble sculptures in Rome that likely belonged to a high-ranking official of the Roman Empire, Italy's culture ministry said Wednesday.
A joint research project between the University of Alberta's Faculty of Education and the Department of Computing Science has found that, for high-school girls, the fun is in making video games, not just playing them.
It’s that time of year -- with the Oscars and Fashion Week drawing close, stilettos that reach for the sky are marching out from the pages of magazines to the glitz of the red carpet.
The Internet is buzzing with the story of a new study that today's students are so gullible they will believe anything they see on the Internet, and are even willing to believe in the existence of an elusive tree octopus when shown the website for this "endangered species." (The website states it is linked to the "Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society.")
Eight small teeth found in a cave near Rosh Haain, central Israel, are raising big questions about the earliest existence of humans and where we may have originated, says Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam. Part of a team of international researchers led by Dr. Israel Hershovitz of Tel Aviv University, Qaum and his colleagues have been examining the dental discovery and recently published their joint findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Nanotechnology news
The wonder of science often comes from the endless possibilities opened up by each successive discovery and the unexpected findings that result. Scientists at the University of Bristol now have a new tool that will yield yet more and unprecedented levels of information – and crucially, without disturbing the natural, physical state of the object under scrutiny.
Solar cells are a key technology in the drive toward cleaner energy production. Unfortunately, solar technology is not yet economically competitive and the cost of solar cells needs to be brought down. One way to overcome this problem is to reduce the amount of expensive semiconductor material used, but thin-film solar cells tend to have lower performance compared with conventional solar cells.
Lithium-ion batteries are used to power a wide range of electronic devices, including computers, cameras, digital audio players and calculators. Tremendous effort has been devoted to the development of lithium-ion batteries, especially in improving the efficiency and integrity of the battery electrodes. This is because during the discharging and charging processes, lithium ions are repeatedly incorporated into and extracted from the electrodes by alloy formation or chemical conversion. These recurring events are known to cause the progressive degradation of the electrodes, irreversibly damaging battery performance.
A new combination of nanoparticles and graphene results in a more durable catalytic material for fuel cells, according to work published today online at the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The catalytic material is not only hardier but more chemically active as well. The researchers are confident the results will
help improve fuel cell design.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Microsponges derived from seaweed may help diagnose heart disease, cancers, HIV and other diseases quickly and at far lower cost than current clinical methods. The microsponges are an essential component of Rice University's Programmable Bio-Nano-Chip (PBNC) and the focus of a new paper in the journal Small.
Coating a lattice of tiny wires called Nanonets with iron oxide – known more commonly as rust – creates an economical and efficient platform for the process of water splitting, an emerging clean fuel science that harvests hydrogen from water, Boston College researchers report in the online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Engineers and scientists collaborating at Harvard University and the MITRE Corporation have developed and demonstrated the world's first programmable nanoprocessor.
Physics news
A milestone in the international Avogadro project coordinated by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) has been reached: With the aid of a single crystal of highly enriched 28Si, the Avogadro constant has now been measured as exactly as never before with a relative overall uncertainty of 3 • 10-8. Within the scope of the redefinition of the kilogram, the value NA = 6.02214078(18) • 1023 mol-1 permits the currently most exact realization of this unit. The results have been published in the most recent edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Chemical compounds called manganites have been studied for many years since the discovery of colossal magnetoresistance, a property that promises important applications in the fields of magnetic sensors, magnetic random access memories and spintronic devices. However, understanding -- and ultimately controlling -- this effect remains a challenge, because much about manganite physics is still not known. A research team lead by Maria Baldini from Stanford University and Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory scientists Viktor Struzhkin and Alexander Goncharov has made an important breakthrough in our understanding of the mysterious ways manganites respond when subjected to intense pressure.
Space & Earth news
Our growing reliance on coastal waters for food, trade and tourism means that these delicate ecosystems need to be more closely monitored to guarantee their future sustainability.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist Pat Millner and safety manager David Prevar have worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and private consultants to design and conduct a pilot study for an alternative way to cap landfills.
Brightly-lit Cowboys Stadium during Sunday's Super Bowl XLV may symbolize one of the hottest new pieces of scientific intelligence about air pollution: Researchers have discovered — in a classic case of scientific serendipity — that the bright light from sports stadiums and urban street lights may boost daytime levels of ozone, a key air pollutant in many heavily populated areas. That's among the topics included in a broader article about the chemistry of air pollution in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' newsmagazine.
Australia said Wednesday carbon emissions will rise more than predicted by 2020 in the world's biggest per capita polluter, blaming its Asian-led mining boom.
(AP) -- Musical astronaut Catherine Coleman has plenty of flutes to pick from aboard the International Space Station.
If society wants to address big picture environmental problems, like global climate change, acid rain, and coastal dead zones, we need to pay closer attention to the Earth's coupled biogeochemical cycles. So reports a special issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, published this month by the Ecological Society of America.
Cultivating coca bushes, the source of cocaine, is speeding up destruction of rainforests in Colombia and threatening the region's "hotspots" of plant and animal diversity, scientists are reporting in a new study. The findings, which they say underscore the need for establishing larger protected areas to help preserve biodiversity, appear in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Tool drops at pad, NASA checks for shuttle damage
(AP) -- NASA is checking space shuttle Discovery to see if it was damaged by a dropped tool.
(AP) -- NASA is checking space shuttle Discovery to see if it was damaged by a dropped tool.
From all appearances the first flight of the U.S. Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane was a complete success. As such, the Air Force is planning to launch a second Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) on March 4 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on top of a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas rocket. The Air Force has not yet released a specific launch time.
Last week 30 U.S. states were affected by a massive winter storm. This week satellite images created by NASA provide a snowy panorama of that fallen snow.
A NASA activity developed by Montana State University science educators for teachers is now available free online.
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Stardust spacecraft marked its 12th anniversary in space on Monday, Feb. 7, with a rocket burn to further refine its path toward a Feb. 14 date with a comet.
In communities all across the US, travelers that went to the moon and back with the Apollo 14 mission are living out their quiet lives. The voyagers in question are not astronauts. They're "moon trees."
On Feb. 1, 2011, the Hinode satellite captured this breathtaking image of a coronal hole, seen in the top center of the image. A polar coronal hole can also be seen at the bottom of the image.
Analysis of a comprehensive database has revealed strong links between biological productivity in the surface oceans and patterns of biomass and abundance at the seafloor, helping to explain large regional differences. The research was conducted by an international, multi-institutional research team including scientists from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), and incorporated data from the Census of Marine Life (CoML).
Under our feet and ubiquitous, lowly soil can be easily overlooked when it comes to addressing climate change and population growth. But in the January-February issue of the Soil Science Society of America Journal, a team of scientists say soil is an essential piece of the biosphere and more attention should be paid to protecting it. Strategies for doing so include refocusing and boosting research, and communicating its importance to the public.
Chemistry news
With cholera on the rampage in Haiti and almost 40 other countries, scientists are reporting the development of a key advance that could provide a fast, simple test to detect the toxin that causes the disease. The report appears in ACS' journal Bioconjugate Chemistry. Cholera affects more than 200,000 people annually, mainly in developing countries, and causes about 5,000 deaths. Many involve infants, children, and the elderly.
Scientists are reporting discovery of an environmentally friendly way to make a key industrial material -- used in products ranging from paints to diapers -- from a renewable raw material without touching the traditional pricey and increasingly scarce petroleum-based starting material. Their report on a new catalyst for making acrylic acid appears in ACS Catalysis, the newest in the American Chemical Society's suite of 39 peer-reviewed scientific journals.
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