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Other Sciences news
A new captorhinid reptile, Gansurhinus qingtoushanensis, gen. et sp. nov., was found from Xidagou Formation (Middle Permian) at Qingtoushan (Dashankou) locality near Yumen, Gansu Province, and from Naobaogou Formation (Late Permian) in Baotou, Nei Mongol, China, as reported in the recent issue of Naturwissenschaften 98, 2011. The find provides new evidence for further studies on the evoluting and paleogeography of captorhinid reptiles.
With teen moms being debated heavily in popular culture today, it's easy to neglect the effects of fatherhood. However, recent research shows that young, disadvantaged men also affect a family and society. In fact, by age 30, between 68 and 75 percent of young men with a high school degree or less are fathers.
Most people would probably agree that quality of life means more than just material welfare, and it is becoming increasingly common for politicians to be interested in letting people's subjective well-being guide policy. The economist Yonas Alem's research from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, a city of three million people, shows that decision-makers make widely differing guesses about what the citizens themselves consider to make them satisfied with life.
Economist Christopher Cotton from the University of Miami (UM), uses game theory to explore two of the most famous military bluffs in history. The findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Peace Research.
How well a family recovers from a natural catastrophe may be tied to the household's pre-disaster make up and socio-economic status. In a recent study, Dr. Michael Rendall of the RAND Corporation compared the number of households in New Orleans, LA that broke up following Hurricane Katrina to the national rate of household break-ups over an equivalent period. An estimated 1.3 million people fled the Gulf Coast during that emergency in 2005 – the largest urban evacuation America has ever seen. The results are published today in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Personal inventories spanning three centuries are helping researchers unlock the mysteries of how economies edge towards growth and prosperity.
College educators around the nation who are discovering the unique value of research experiences for undergraduate students now have a new tool available to them – a "program in a box" detailing exactly how such experiences can be created, used and implemented.
Game-worn football faceshields are more susceptible to breaking when subjected to high-velocity impact than are new faceshields, according to recent research.
Sweden and the US are two countries in which increased leisure use of computers by children leads to poorer reading ability. This is the conclusion from research carried out at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Changes due to new technologies take time and are difficult to overview. This is a conclusion made in a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg. The author of the thesis, researcher Sara Hjelm Lidholm, studied a company's transition from mail order to e-commerce over a period of 10 years. The results of the transition include an entirely new organisation and an increased customer focus with stronger customer relations.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The famous Inca city of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes was rediscovered by American explorer Hiram Bingham in July 1911 and the area plans to hold a special 100 year celebration this year. However, the famous city and the Inca civilization have already hit the spotlight in a new study published in Antiquity that links the use of llama dung to the Inca success in high altitude agriculture.
Advertising is everywhere people look. It's along the highway, in storefronts, and online. It can be funny or poignant; it can be annoying. New research shows it can also encourage people to recall things that never happened to them.
Nanotechnology news
Scientists from Argonne National Laboratory CNM's Nanofabrication and Electronic and Magnetic Materials and Devices groups, working with users from the University of Wisconsin-Stevenson Point, discovered a fast, simple, scalable technique for solution-based, electrochemical synthesis of patterned metallic and semiconducting nanowires from a reusable, non-sacrificial, ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) template.
Researchers at the Technion have discovered the nature of nanometer-thick layers between different materials and found that they have both solid and liquid properties. By doing so, the researchers made a crucial addition to Gibbs' theory which describes the fundamental aspects of the thermodynamics of interfaces.
Laboratory studies by chemical engineers at UC Santa Barbara may lead to new experimental methods for early detection and diagnosis -- and to possible treatments -- for pathological tissues that are precursors to multiple sclerosis and similar diseases.
Sequencing DNA base pairs – the individual molecules that make up DNA – is key for medical researchers working toward personalized medicine. Being able to isolate, study and sequence these DNA molecules would allow scientists to tailor diagnostic testing, therapies and treatments based on each patient's individual genetic makeup.
(PhysOrg.com) -- While molecules have already been used to perform individual logic operations, scientists have now shown that a single molecule can perform 13 logic operations, some of them in parallel. The molecule, which consists of three chromophores, is operated by different wavelengths of light. The scientists predict that this system, with its unprecedented level of complexity, could serve as a building block of molecular computing, in which molecules rather than electrons are used for processing and manipulating information.
Physics news
The three Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments that study lead ion collisions all presented their latest results today at the annual Quark Matter conference, held this year in Annecy, France. The results are based on analysis of data collected during the last two weeks of the 2010 LHC run, when the LHC switched from protons to lead-ions. All experiments report highly subtle measurements, bringing heavy-ion physics into a new era of high precision studies.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Japanese researchers, led by Masashi Kawasaki, have discovered that a previously known kind of double layered material created using electrostatic doping can be used as a superconductor.
German scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have succeeded in encoding data at a rate of 26 terabits per second on a single laser beam, transmitting them over a distance of 50 km, and decoding them successfully. This is the largest data volume ever transported on a laser beam. The process developed by KIT allows to transmit the contents of 700 DVDs in one second only.
Electrical engineers at Duke University have determined that unique man-made materials should theoretically make it possible to improve the power transfer to small devices, such as laptops or cell phones, or ultimately to larger ones, such as cars or elevators, without wires.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Roughly 10 billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit, and well past their 30th birthdays, Voyagers 1 and 2 continue their lonely trek into the Milky Way. And they're still functioning—running on power gleaned not from the pinprick sun, but from solid-state devices called thermoelectric generators, which convert heat energy into electricity.
High-temperature superconductivity can be looked at as a fight for survival at the atomic scale. In an effort to reach that point where electrons pair up and resistance is reduced to zero, superconductivity must compete with numerous, seemingly rival phases of matter.
The world's biggest particle collider set a new record early Monday, a feat that should accelerate the quest to pinpoint the elusive particle known as the Higgs Boson, a senior physicist said.
Space & Earth news
(PhysOrg.com) -- The newly-installed Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 is visible at center of the International Space Station's starboard truss.
"Bring It Back," a small and inexpensive microgravity spaceflight kit, has won the do-it-yourself technology and education space competition sponsored by NASA and MAKE Magazine.
An Ariane 5 launcher lifted off this evening from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on its mission to place two telecommunications satellites, ST-2 and GSAT-8, into their planned transfer orbits. Flight VA202 was the third Ariane 5 launch of 2011.
The idea for a 100-year starship has been tossed around recently, and now DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has put out a Request for Information (RFI) looking for ideas about how a long-term human mission to boldly go out to the stars could possibly happen. It’s been estimated that such a mission would cost over $10 billion, and the idea has gotten $100,000 from NASA and $ 1 million from DARPA – which means that as of now it is just that, an idea.
Russia is battling wildfires spreading across Siberia and the Far East, with officials scrambling to prevent a disastrous repeat of last year's deadly blazes, the emergencies ministry said on Monday.
(AP) -- An Icelandic volcano was flinging ash, smoke and steam miles (kilometers) into the air Sunday, dropping a thick layer of gray soot in an eruption far more forceful - but likely far less impactful - than the one that grounded planes across Europe last year.
Two astronauts completed a second of four scheduled space walks of the Endeavour shuttle's final mission to the International Space Station on Sunday, the US space agency said.
Sea levels are set to rise by up to a metre within a century due to global warming, a new Australian report said Monday as it warned this could make "once-a-century" coastal flooding much more common.
The European Union announced Monday it will launch the first two satellites in its long-delayed and hugely over-budget Galileo navigation system from French Guiana on October 20.
If Jocelyne DiRuggiero was looking for life on Mars, she wouldn’t dig in the planet’s red soil. Instead, she’d head where you might not expect.
It looks a lot like a garbage can-–but it's actually a fully functioning laboratory, thrown overboard, to analyze water samples in the open ocean. One day, a machine like it might tell us whether a beach is safe for swimming or water is clean enough to drink. The so-called "Lab in a Can" is nicknamed ESP.
In this field diary, Margarita Marinova takes us on a journey to Antarctica in order to test spacesuits Testing the suits in harsh environments on Earth can help future explorers, who will need protection when investigating Mars and other places in the Solar System.
New visualizations of the Earth from space provide a unique image of how the Earth has changed over the past 750 million years.
Geophysicists have simulated when the continents around the Atlantic develop active continental margins with earthquakes and volcanoes. According to the model, ‘real’ fully active subduction zones will not form for another twenty million years at the earliest.
(AP) -- The astronauts circling Earth got another VIP call from Rome on Monday.
La Nina, the disruptive weather pattern behind floods and droughts, is easing and there are no signs suggesting a resurgence in the coming months, the UN weather agency said on Monday.
How unique is the Milky Way? To find out, a group of researchers led by Stanford University astrophysicist Risa Wechsler compared the Milky Way to similar galaxies and found that just four percent are like the galaxy Earth calls home.
(PhysOrg.com) -- In a surprising twist, if you will, Thomas Dame and Patrick Thaddeus, both of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have put forth in a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, the notion that a cluster of gas clouds they've discovered, that lies far from what is currently believed to be the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, is likely the extension of one of the great arms that form our galaxy.
Most gamma-ray bursts come in two flavors. Firstly, there are long duration bursts which form in dense star-forming regions and are associated with supernovae – which would understandably generate a sustained outburst of energy. The technical definition of a long duration gamma-ray burst is one that is more than two seconds in duration – but bursts lasting over a minute are not unusual.
The United States is experiencing the deadliest year for tornadoes in nearly six decades, but a top US weather expert said Monday there is no link between the violent twisters and climate change.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Two UK astronomers have found that the giant black holes in the centre of galaxies are on average spinning faster than at any time in the history of the Universe. Dr Alejo Martinez-Sansigre of the University of Portsmouth and Prof. Steve Rawlings of the University of Oxford made the new discovery by using radio, optical and X-ray data. They publish their findings in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.
Chemistry news
Charles J. Dimitroff, MS, PhD and colleagues in the Dimitroff Lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital, have developed a fluorinated analog of glucosamine, which, in a recent study, has been shown to block the synthesis of key carbohydrate structures linked to skin inflammation and cancer progression. These findings appear in the April 14, 2011, issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
In laboratories at MIT and around the world, scientists are deciphering the molecular structures of proteins involved in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, diabetes, and many other disorders. Much of that research would not be possible without the pioneering nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) work of John Waugh, MIT Institute Professor Emeritus.
It will perhaps be possible, in the near future, to detect cancer by a simple blood or urine test. In fact, biologists from CNRS, Inserm, Paris Descartes and Strasbourg universities have developed a technique capable of detecting minute traces of tumoral DNA present in the biological fluids of patients suffering from cancer. The method consists in carrying out ultra-sensitive molecular analyses in microscopic droplets. Successfully tested on genes involved in various cancers, including cancer of the colon and leukemia, it has the potential of becoming a powerful tool for oncologists, both in making a diagnosis and in prescribing a treatment. A clinical study is already envisaged to evaluate this technique. The work is published on the website of the journal Lab on a chip.
Every year, the world consumes 15 Terrawatts of power. Since the amount of annual harvestable solar energy has been estimated at 50 Terrawatts, students at Stevens Institute of Technology are working on a supercapacitor that will allow us to harness more of this renewable energy through biochar electrodes for supercapacitors, resulting in a cleaner, greener planet.
(PhysOrg.com) -- For the Maya, blue was the color of the gods. For ritual purposes, art objects, and murals, they used Maya blue, a pigment without equal with regard to boldness, beauty, and durability. Maya blue is made of indigo embedded in a special clay mineral called palygorskite.
Led by advances in chemical synthesis, scientists find natural product shows pain-killing properties
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have for the first time accomplished a laboratory synthesis of a rare natural product isolated from the bark of a plant widely employed in traditional medicine. This advance may provide the scientific foundation to develop an effective alternative to commonly prescribed narcotic pain treatments.
Chemical Engineering students at Stevens Institute of Technology are transforming the way that American soldiers power their battery-operated devices by making a small change: a really small change. Capitalizing on the unique properties of microscale systems, the students have invented a microreactor that converts everyday fossil fuels like propane and butane into pure hydrogen for fuel cell batteries. These batteries are not only highly efficient, but also can be replenished with hydrogen again and again for years of resilient performance in the field.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
