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Other Sciences news
The May 2011 issue of Earth Magazine reports on the research of SMU paleontologists in the SMU Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.
Most Canadian teenagers are expected to make their own decisions, while Chinese adolescents are still heavily influenced by their parents, according to a study published in the Journal of Business Research.
In August, new airline regulations from the U.S. government will go into effect. They include refunding passengers checked bag fees if luggage is lost, increasing the compensation bumped passengers receive and imposing time limits on how long planes making international flights can wait on the tarmac.
Punishing Presidents at the polls could be on the increase with 'off-shoring' of US jobs set to rise
The loss of American jobs can cost incumbent presidents dearly at the ballot box – particularly if these jobs are shifted overseas.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Employees often suspect that participating in work-family programs could harm their careers, and prior research studies have shown they are right to be worried. Employees who use the programs are at risk of fewer promotions and lower wages than those who do not.
A new approach to evaluating research papers exploits social bookmarking tools to extract relevance. Details are reported in the latest issue of the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions.
Taking their cue from social media, educators at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a social networking application called Classroom Salon that engages students in online learning communities that effectively tap the collective intelligence of groups.
A study by Columbia Business School Professors Amit Khandelwal, a Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business senior scholar and assistant professor, Finance and Economics, and Shang-Jin Wei, director, Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business, and N.T. Wang Professor of Chinese Business and Economy, Finance and Economics, alongside JaeBin Ahn, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Columbia University, provides the first empirical evidence that quantifies the role of intermediary firms in developing and expanding international trade — data that can play an important role shaping US trade policies. Trade intermediaries help local producers import or export their goods and link to international markets.
The most comprehensive study of 20th century children's books ever undertaken in the United States has found a bias towards tales that feature men and boys as lead characters. Surprisingly, researchers found that even when the characters are animals, they tend to be male.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds evidence that the previous assumption that stone and mud-brick buildings built nearly 12,000 years ago were the homes and settlements of the first farmers may not have been homes at all, but community centers.
Nanotechnology news
UCLA scientists have discovered a way to wake up the immune system to fight cancer by delivering an immune system-stimulating protein in a nanoscale container called a vault directly into lung cancer tumors, harnessing the body's natural defenses to fight disease growth.
Physics news
For the first time, scientists have an almost complete sky map of high-energy cosmic rays.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicist Stefano Lepri of the Italian National Research Council and his partner Giulio Casati of the University of Insubria, have published a paper in Physical Review Letters, where they demonstrate through mathematical theory that it should be possible to create asymmetric materials that allow most light or sound waves to pass through in one direction, while mostly preventing them from doing so when going the opposite way.
Optical data carriers such as DVDs, Blu-rays and CD-RWs store data in layers of so-called "phase change materials". In the future, these materials will enable the development of fast, non-volatile and energy-saving main memories. A prerequisite for this is a low thermal conductivity. Phase change materials display a surprisingly low thermal conductivity even in the crystalline state. This is described by an international research team including scientists from Julich and Aachen in the latest edition of the respected journal Advanced Functional Materials. Their findings will facilitate a targeted search for materials with the desired properties.
A Rice University-led team of physicists this week offered up one of the first theoretical explanations of how two dissimilar types of high-temperature superconductors behave in similar ways.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Like a fish paddles its pectoral fins to swim through water, flying insects use the same physics laws to "paddle" through the air, say Cornell physicists.
Space & Earth news
Making your property more sustainable is a trend that seems to get more interest from homeowners every year. Many small changes can greatly improve sustainability and can be fairly simple to do, according to an Iowa State University horticulture expert.
An international team of scientists report on the first observatory experiment to study the dynamic microbial life of an ever-changing environment inside Earth's crust. University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science professor Keir Becker contributed the deep-sea technology required to make long-term scientific observations of life beneath the seafloor.
(AP) -- NASA says the next-to-last space shuttle launch is off for at least another week.
Global climate change is anticipated to bring more extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves that could impact human health in the coming decades. An analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health calculated that the city of Chicago could experience between 166 and 2,217 excess deaths per year attributable to heat waves using three different climate change scenarios for the final decades of the 21st century. The study was published May 1 edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
BP has been fined $25 million and ordered to spend an estimated $60 million to improve pipeline safety in Alaska after a 2006 oil spill there, US authorities said Tuesday.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Since the dawn of the space age, humanity has sent 16 robotic emissaries to fly by some of the solar system's most intriguing and nomadic occupants -- comets and asteroids. The data and imagery collected on these deep-space missions of exploration have helped redefine our understanding of how Earth and our part of the galaxy came to be. But this fall, Mother Nature is giving scientists around the world a close-up view of one of her good-sized space rocks -- no rocket required.
Sponges are a group of common and diverse aquatic creatures, very abundant in coral reefs where they are an important part of the ecosystem. But new research has found that if the balance is disturbed, sponges can outcompete the corals and damage the reef in the long term.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Tornado tracks from last week's powerful tornado outbreak are visible in data from NASA's Aqua satellite and the Landsat satellite.
(AP) -- The ice of Greenland and the rest of the Arctic is melting faster than expected and could help raise global sea levels by as much as 5 feet this century, dramatically higher than earlier projections, an authoritative international assessment says.
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft has reached its official approach phase to the asteroid Vesta and will begin using cameras for the first time to aid navigation for an expected July 16 orbital encounter. The large asteroid is known as a protoplanet – a celestial body that almost formed into a planet.
Chemistry news
Many people reach toward the back of the fresh-produce shelf to find the freshest salad greens with the latest expiration dates. But a study led by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists may prompt consumers to instead look for packages that receive the greatest exposure to light--usually those found closest to the front.
The life science company Cellendes in Germany has developed synthetic hydrogels that make it possible to culture cells in three-dimensional environments. Their invention has fundamental advantages over other hydrogels for three-dimensional cultivation, also on the market.
A common component in webcams may help drug makers and prescribers address a common side-effect of drugs called cardiotoxicity, an unhealthy change in the way the heart beats. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have used the basic webcam technology to create a tool to look at the effects of medications in real time on heart cells, called cardiomyocytes. These findings were published in the journal, Lab on a Chip on April 11, 2011.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
