[Updates] Space Exploration - Astronomy - Physics - Geoscience - History - Anthropology - Archeology - Paleontology & more...
For more information about Updates, Click on the titles:
Other Sciences news
Consumer confidence among Floridians dropped four points in March to 72 as many economic indicators for Florida continue to show signs of weakness, according to a new University of Florida survey.
First-generation West African immigrants from Nigeria and Ghana transition smoothly into major societal institutions, such as the workplace and the neighborhood, but have not built stable, mutually beneficial friendships and intimate relationships with native-born Americans, said Northeastern University professor Mindelyn Buford II.
The UK can realise a £10 billion economic opportunity through adopting a new, holistic approach to nuclear energy that would tackle concerns over security of energy supply, rising oil prices and safety issues, says a new Oxford University report.
Public interest in the issue of teenage childbearing has recently increased, largely due to increases in both the teen pregnancy rate and the teen birth rate. A new study from Economic Inquiry examines the negative educational and economic outcomes of teenage fatherhood, a topic far less researched than teenage motherhood.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Americans who are more conscientious have higher lifetime earnings and save more for retirement, according to researchers at the University of Michigan Retirement Research Center.
(AP) -- A shortage of auto parts and other components after Japan's earthquake has stirred unease about two pillars of manufacturing: the country's role as a crucial link in the global supply chain and "just in time" production.
The American dream of owning a home with a white picket fence may stay a dream for many, according to a recent study by a Kansas State University economist.
Long before the Italians rediscovered original Greek sources during the Renaissance, Arab scholars recognized the importance of ancient science and philosophy and began translating precious writings into Arabic. Now, Classics Professor Mark Schiefsky wants to transform those ancient Greek texts and their Arabic translations into an open-access digital corpus that could provide important insight into the development of science in the classical world.
They say the best things in life are free, but when it comes to online scientific publishing, a new research report in The FASEB Journal suggests otherwise. In the report, Philip M. Davis from Cornell University shows that free access to scientific journal articles leads to increases in downloads, but not to increases in citations (their use), a key factor used in scientific publishing to assess a research article's relative importance and value. This study should help scientists make informed decisions about where they publish their work and assist governments, granting institutions and universities with evaluating whether or not their open access policies are leading to greater dissemination of useful scientific knowledge.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Union College (Schenectady, N.Y.) have found that people's death anxiety can influence them to support theories of intelligent design and reject evolutionary theory.
Research from Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Bristol calls into question people's ability to form their own judgements about their preferred election candidate after finding voters could be heavily swayed by 'the worm' - a continuous response tracking measure this is increasingly being used in live election debates around the world.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Duke researchers measured innovative performance using the number of U.S. patent applications produced by employees.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the University of York and Manchester have successfully extracted protein from the bones of a 600,000 year old mammoth, paving the way for the identification of ancient fossils.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Florida researcher has helped describe the earliest known fossil remains of a flowering plant from China that has a direct evolutionary relationship with most plants humans depend on today.
Nanotechnology news
Researchers from North Carolina State University have investigated the viability of a technique called "spincasting" for creating thin films of nanoparticles on an underlying substrate – an important step in the creation of materials with a variety of uses, from optics to electronics.
Physics news
University of Washington physicists are detecting radioactivity from Japanese nuclear reactors that have been in crisis since a mammoth March 11 earthquake, but the levels are far below what would pose a threat to human health.
(PhysOrg.com) -- When most of us think of entanglement, our minds jump immediately to quantum communication. "Entanglement has become very well known and useful in quantum communication," Robert Prevedel tells PhysOrg.com. Prevedel, a scientist at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, believes that entanglement can be used in classical communication as well.
Space & Earth news
Scientists at Queen's University have won almost £2 million in grants for a range of world-leading projects to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
Treated stormwater is safe to use on your humble household vegetable patch according to a new report by the Center for Water Sensitive Cities at Monash University.
A new National Research Council report presents a 20-year road map for increasing U.S. resilience to earthquakes, including a major earthquake that could strike a highly populated area. The report was mostly written prior to the March 11 earthquake in Japan, but the committee of experts who authored it noted that the Japanese experience is a reminder of the devastation that can occur even in a country acknowledged as a leader in implementing earthquake-resilience measures.
The University of Alabama in Huntsville’s moon buggy may not go from 0 to 60 in five seconds, but it can handle the lunar regolith like nobody’s business. And that’s no small feat, says mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Dr. Christina L. Carmen.
Programs that allow facilities to buy and sell emission allowances have been popular and effective since they were introduced in the U.S. two decades ago. But critics worry the approach can create heavily polluted "hot spots" in low-income and minority communities.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at UQ, in collaboration with JCU, may have found a way to offset up to 2.5 percent of Australia's annual greenhouse gas emissions and secure economic benefits for regional communities.
Engineering scientists at the University of Southampton have reached above the clouds in a first-of-its-kind experiment to develop new technologies that probe the stratosphere using an unmanned vehicle.
Radiation levels recorded at a village outside the evacuation zone around the quake-striken Fukushima nuclear plant are above safe levels, the UN atomic watchdog said Wednesday.
Japan’s HTV-2 Kounotori resupply ship undocked from the International Space Station at 15.45 GMT on March 28, and will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere sometime early Wednesday March 31. Back in January, the craft brought five metric tons of equipment and supplies to the station, but now it is loaded with trash and unneeded equipment and packing materials. Most of the HTV will likely disintegrate as it passes through the atmosphere, but any pieces left over will find a watery grave in a remote area in the Central Pacific. But sensors on board the HTV-2 will provide data on how the craft behaves during its fiery demise.
Wow. This remarkable visualization shows every Kepler planetary candidate host star with its transiting companion in silhouette. Jason Rowe from the Kepler science team created the image, and the sizes of the stars and transiting companions are properly scaled.
NASA on Tuesday released the first picture taken of Mercury's surface by the US space agency's orbiting Messenger craft.
The vivid red cloud in this new image from ESO's Very Large Telescope is a region of glowing hydrogen surrounding the star cluster NGC 371. This stellar nursery lies in our neighboring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud.
(PhysOrg.com) -- In an exciting experiment with major implications for food production under climate change, CSIRO and University of Sydney scientists have found allowing ants and termites to flourish increased a wheat crop's yield by more than one third.
(PhysOrg.com) -- On March 29, 1807, German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers spotted Vesta as a pinprick of light in the sky. Two hundred and four years later, as NASA's Dawn spacecraft prepares to begin orbiting this intriguing world, scientists now know how special this world is, even if there has been some debate on how to classify it.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The first issue of a new journal in the prestigious Nature series, Nature Climate Change (issue 1; April 2011) highlights how one plant species in the Antarctic appears to be taking advantage of climate change.
Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society have stumbled upon a geological colossus in a remote corner of Afghanistan: a natural stone arch spanning more than 200 feet across its base.
Think the moon has many craters? New photos from the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury show the tiny inner planet has far more impressive battle scars from regular high-speed peltings by space rocks.
NASA's Kepler Mission is giving astronomers such a clear view of changes in star brightness that they can now see clues about what's happening inside red giant stars.
If you're sitting on a bench in New York City's Central Park in winter, you're probably freezing. After all, the average temperature in January is 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But if you were just across the pond in Porto, Portugal, which shares New York's latitude, you'd be much warmer—the average temperature is a balmy 48 degrees Fahrenheit.
Chemistry news
Scientists today reported discovery of the active ingredients in an herb used in traditional Chinese medicine for skin whitening, changing skin color to a lighter shade. The ingredients are poised for clinical trials as a safer, more effective alternative to skin whitening creams and lotions that millions of women and some men use in Asia and elsewhere, they said. The report was among more than 9,500 presentations this week at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
(PhysOrg.com) -- Are our bodies vulnerable to some pollutants whose lack of solubility in water, or "hydrophobicity," has always been thought to protect us from them? New Tel Aviv University research has discovered that this is indeed the case.
Ultraviolet A (UVA) radiation is now known to cause skin cancers. The first information on the way in which UVA radiation acts directly on DNA has been revealed by a CNRS team from the Laboratoire Francis Perrin in collaboration with a CEA-Inac laboratory in Grenoble. The interaction between UVA and DNA results from the collective behavior of the bases of the DNA double helix, which causes chemical lesions that can induce carcinogenic mutations. This work is published on-line on 18 March 2011 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Encapsulating antibiotics inside nanofibers, like a mummy inside a sarcophagus, gives them the amazing ability to destroy drug-resistant bacteria so completely that scientists described the remains as mere "ghosts," according to a report today at the the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
(PhysOrg.com) -- A method for detecting such diverse substances as antibiotics, narcotics and explosives - a universal detector, so to speak - has been developed by German researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz.
University of Rhode Island researcher Navindra Seeram has discovered 34 new beneficial compounds in pure maple syrup and confirmed that 20 compounds discovered last year in preliminary research play a key role in human health.
Golfers on the high seas can breathe a little easier -- and so can the marine life around them -- thanks to researchers at the University of Maine. In conjunction with The Lobster Institute, UMaine Biological and Chemical Engineering Professor David Neivandt and undergraduate student Alex Caddell of Winterport, Maine, have developed a biodegradable golf ball made from lobster shells. The ball is intended for use on cruise ships.
The most recently discovered amino acid, pyrrolysine, is produced by a series of just three chemical reactions with a single precursor – the amino acid lysine, according to new research.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
