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Other Sciences news
By breaking down traditional barriers between disciplines, two University of Alberta researchers say opportunities could develop that may change how we experience music. And that’s just the start of possibilities.
Switching from rigid, linear textbooks to technology such as iPads alone won’t boost student performance – so a team of Wake Forest researchers has turned the classroom upside down, allowing students to tailor each course to their own learning style.
Having successfully navigated her way through select high school classrooms in North Georgia for more than two years while capturing the attention of hundreds of students, “Osy Osmosis” has now entered the competitive world of mobile apps.
A new study finds important differences in math curricula across U.S. states and school districts. The findings, published in the May issue of the American Journal of Education, suggest that many students across the country are placed at a disadvantage by less demanding curricula.
A study of how University of Washington graduate students integrated an Amazon Kindle DX into their course reading provides the first long-term investigation of e-readers in higher education. While some of the study's findings were expected – students want improved support for taking notes, checking references and viewing figures – the authors also found that allowing people to switch between reading styles, and providing the reader with physical cues, are two challenges that e-readers will need to address in cracking the college market.
The public favors equal custody for children of divorce, according to findings in a pair of studies by Arizona State University researchers that will appear in the May 2011 journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.
The mummy is indeed a lady - one who didn't make it to adulthood.
(PhysOrg.com) -- With their discovery, the scientists Johan Lindgren, Per Uvdal, Anders Engdahl, and colleagues have demonstrated that remains of type I collagen, a structural protein, are retained in a mosasaur fossil.
(PhysOrg.com) -- For decades, a 2.3 million- to 1.2 million-year-old human relative named Paranthropus boisei has been nicknamed Nutcracker Man because of his big, flat molar teeth and thick, powerful jaw. But a definitive new University of Utah study shows that Nutcracker Man didn’t eat nuts, but instead chewed grasses and possibly sedges – a discovery that upsets conventional wisdom about early humanity’s diet.
Nanotechnology news
MIT chemical engineers have designed a new type of drug-delivery nanoparticle that exploits a trait shared by almost all tumors: They are more acidic than healthy tissues.
Physics news
At the Vienna University of Technology, sophisticated atomchips have been used to create pairs of quantum mechanically connected atom-twins. Until now, similar experiments were only possible using photons.
Invisibility appears to be the next possible advance in the use of Terahertz radiation in medicine, security, and communications.
Gamma rays are the most energetic type of light wave and can penetrate through lead and other thick containers. A powerful new source of gamma rays will allow officials to search for hidden reactor fuel/nuclear bomb material.
For many practical applications involving lasers, it's important to be able to control the direction of the laser beams. Just ask Han Solo, or the captain of the Death Star. Researchers from North Carolina State University have come up with a very energy-efficient way of steering laser beams that is precise and relatively inexpensive.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A data memory can hardly be any smaller: researchers working with Gerhard Rempe at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have stored quantum information in a single atom. The researchers wrote the quantum state of single photons, i.e. particles of light, into a rubidium atom and read it out again after a certain storage time. This technique can be used in principle to design powerful quantum computers and to network them with each other across large distances.
A joint study by academics in Switzerland, Germany and at Boston University sheds new light on the formation of financial bubbles and crashes. Wild fluctuations in stock prices caused by bubbles bursting have had a dramatic impact on the world economy and the personal fortunes of millions of us in the last few years.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A matchbook-sized atomic clock 100 times smaller than its commercial predecessors has been created by a team of researchers at Symmetricom Inc. Draper Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Building a nuclear gamma-ray laser has been a challenge for scientists for a long time, but a new proposal for such a device has overcome some of the most difficult problems. In the new study, Eugene Tkalya from the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Moscow State University has theoretically proven how the stimulated gamma emission of thorium nuclei can emit coherent visible light. Although the nuclear gamma-ray laser emits light based on stimulated emission, it operates a bit differently than a normal laser.
Space & Earth news
Mining industry explorers, earthquake and climate change scientists and members of the public can now access a 'stack' of information about Australia's geology at the click of a button.
Nitrogen is essential for plant growth. Despite the abundance of nitrogen in the atmosphere as N2 gas, plants must rely on a series of chemical reactions to convert atmospheric and other forms of nitrogen into usable forms. Plants have achieved this goal primarily by evolving relationships with associated organisms. The varied, complex interactions involving nitrogen, plants, and the environment are the focus of a new book co-edited by University of Missouri professor of biochemistry Joseph C. Polacco.
Iceland saw its first May snowfall for almost a decade over the weekend, with more than 16 centimetres falling on the capital Reykjavik, meteorologists said Sunday.
In a recent Geology paper geologists from the universities of Innsbruck and Leeds report on ancient cave systems discovered near the summits of the Allgau Mountains that preserved the oldest radiometrically dated dripstones currently known from the European Alps.
A group of scientists are hunched over, their eyes intently scanning the jumble of rocks on the ground. Every now and then, someone picks one up for closer inspection, turning it over and over again in their hand.
One of the first known stars to host an extrasolar planet, was that of 55 Cancri. The first planet in this system was reported in 1997 and today the system is known to host at least five planets, the inner most of which, 55 Cnc e, was recently discovered to transit the star, giving new information about this planet.
No wonder it is called Red River: it looks like it could be on the red planet rather than in Spain. The landscape and terrain make it a perfect place for simulating a Mars sortie.
Engineers have identified the technical problem that caused the delay of the Endeavour shuttle launch last week, and expect it will take several days to fix, NASA said Monday.
NASA's space shuttles are dragging their tails toward retirement.
Deadly tornadoes raked across Alabama on April 27, 2011, killing as many as 210 people as of April 29. The hardest-hit community was Tuscaloosa. In an image acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on April 28, three tornado tracks are visible through and around the city.
The mention of cosmic-scale magnetic fields is still likely to met with an uncomfortable silence in some astronomical circles – and after a bit of foot-shuffling and throat-clearing, the discussion will be moved on to safer topics. But look, they’re out there. They probably do play a role in galaxy evolution, if not galaxy formation – and are certainly a feature of the interstellar medium and the intergalactic medium.
The production of wind energy in the U.S. over the next 30-50 years will be largely unaffected by upward changes in global temperature, say a pair of Indiana University Bloomington scientists who analyzed output from several regional climate models to assess future wind patterns in America's lower 48 states.
Chemistry news
Scientists have engineered a cheap, abundant alternative to the expensive platinum catalyst and coupled it with a light-absorbing electrode to make hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
