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Other Sciences news
Do those who know more also know that they know more? And does a student's confidence level correlate to academic performance? These questions have long inspired researchers in the fields of decisionmaking and education to study confidence. New research from Kansas State University professor Candice Shoemaker looked at the psychological constructs of "confidence" and "self-efficacy" to evaluate the effectiveness of targeted learning objectives on student achievement.
The current focus on assessment means the public debate is overlooking how schools are engaging young people and preparing them for the future, according to Lyn Yates, Professor of Curriculum in the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education.
Descendents of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. may be making better socioeconomic progress than many studies indicate, according to research published in the April issue of The Journal of Labor Economics.
Americans will need to pay much heavier taxes and accept less from public healthcare to put state finances on a sustainable track, according to an IMF study published Monday.
A system that aims to compare, assess and improve teacher candidates and teacher training programs will be the subject of three papers presented by the University of California, Riverside's director of teacher education at a national education conference during the next week.
A new study of telephone customer service representatives shows just how important it is for employees to start the workday in a good mood.
Recent efforts to improve teacher performance by linking pay to student achievement have failed because such programs often rely on metrics that were never intended to help determine teacher pay, contends Derek Neal, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago.
There is a considerable amount of interest among researchers, educationalists and from the games industry in the educational possibilities offered by video and computer games. Some of the arguments about this educational potential are about so called open-ended games, games where the players set their own goals or plans and chooses which way the game goes. Now a thesis from the University of Gothenburg reveals that as a mean to challenge pupils' ideas and values, then these open-ended games are not appropriate.
(PhysOrg.com) -- In a study to be published this month in the Proceedings of the Athens Archaeological Society, archaeologist Michael Cosmopoulos of the University of Missouri-St. Louis shares his discovery of a clay tablet showing the earliest known writing in Europe.
(PhysOrg.com) -- It's known as the Antikythera mechanism, a metal gear driven device found over a century ago on a sunken Roman ship, near the island of Antikythera, that for just as many years has had scientists analyzing, scratching their heads and offering suggestions as to its purpose.
Nanotechnology news
Chemists at UC San Diego have produced the first high resolution structure of a nano-scale square made from ribonucleic acid, or RNA.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers may soon be singing, "I'm going to wash that gray right out of my nanowires," thanks to a colorful discovery by a team of researchers from Harvard University and Zena Technologies. In contrast to the somber gray hue of silicon wafers, Kenneth B. Crozier and colleagues demonstrated that individual, vertical silicon nanowires can shine in all colors of the spectrum.
Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have achieved a breakthrough in the field of nanoscience by successfully altering nanocrystal properties with impurity atoms -- a process called doping – thereby opening the way for the manufacture of improved semiconductor nanocrystals.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from IBM and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology discovered a nanomedicine breakthrough in which new types of polymers were shown to physically detect and destroy antibiotic-resistant bacteria and infectious diseases like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Materials scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and SiEnergy Systems LLC have demonstrated the first macro-scale thin-film solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC).
Physics news
(PhysOrg.com) -- Inside the Plasma Spray-Physical Vapor Deposition, or PS-PVD, ceramic powder is introduced into the plasma flame, which vaporizes it and then condenses it to form the ceramic coating.
A joint cooperation between three research groups at nanoGUNE reports an innovative method to focus infrared light with tapered transmission lines to nanometer-size dimensions. This device could trigger the development of novel chemical and biological sensing tools, including ultra-small infrared spectrometers and lab-on-a-chip integrated biosensors.
Using a simple glass capillary, atomic physicists at RIKEN are developing an ultra-narrow ion beam that pinpoints a part of organelles in a living cell, enabling biologists to visualize how the damage affects cell activities.
Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have developed a method to steer waves on precisely defined trajectories, without any loss. This way, sound waves could be sent directly to a target, avoiding possible eavesdroppers.
Flat out wrong. That’s what a team of Duke researchers has discovered, much to its surprise, about a long-accepted explanation of how nuclei collide to produce charged particles for electricity – a process receiving intense interest lately from scientists, entrepreneurs and policy makers in the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis.
Space & Earth news
Nine national governmental and research organisations have today established a Founding Board for the global Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK signed a Letter of Intent in Rome, declaring their common ambition to see the SKA built, and agreed to work together to secure funding for the next phase of the SKA project. The new Board has announced that the SKA Project Office (SPO) will be based at the Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester in the United Kingdom. This new management structure will guide the project into the next phase of development.
Commitments by most developed countries to cut carbon emissions are likely to expire at the end of next year without a new round of legally binding pledges, the UN's climate chief warned Monday.
NASA has announced the winners of the 18th annual NASA Great Moonbuggy Race -- and it's Puerto Rico's year.
BP will resume deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in July, some 15 months after the British energy giant was thrown into crisis after a fatal oil spill in the region, a newspaper said Sunday.
(AP) -- NASA engineers are putting the finishing touches on a mega-rover to Mars before shipping it off to Florida for launch later this year.
A study coordinated by Universitat Autònoma Barcelona (UAB) on the origin and evolution of peculiar morphologies created by ancient subterranean springs in the central pre-Pyrenees of Catalonia (Spain) pose new questions for planetary geomorphology research. Similar to small volcanoes, these formations until now had only been described in Australia and closely resemble gigantic forms found on Mars. The study may shed new light on the origin of these formations and the search for water on the red planet.
NASA on Monday said it will delay the shuttle Endeavour's launch by 10 days, setting a new date for April 29 to avoid a conflict with a Russian capsule's arrival at the International Space Station.
Emergency crew at Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear plant used a colour dye Monday to trace the source of a radioactive leak as lower business confidence signalled the disaster's economic impact.
Japan on Monday started to dump more than 10,000 tons of low-level radioactive water into the Pacific as part of emergency operations to stabilise its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Say the words “Moon Hoax” these days, and everyone thinks you are talking about the people who don’t believe the Apollo astronauts ever went to the Moon. But back in 1835 there was the original Moon hoax that thousands of people fell for, despite the tall tale being complete fiction. A series of articles were published in the New York Sun newspaper reporting incredible new astronomical observations of the Moon supposedly made by astronomer Sir John Herschel during an observing run at the Cape of Good Hope with his powerful new telescope. Detailed descriptions of winged beings, plants, animals and a sapphire temple increased sales and subscriptions to the fledgling newspaper.
(PhysOrg.com) -- It might look like an abstract painting, but this splash of colors is in fact a busy star-forming complex called Rho Ophiuchi. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Explorer, or WISE, captured the picturesque image of the region, which is one of the closest star-forming complexes to Earth.
If you fell victim to an April Fool’s prank, then consider that life can play some of the most ironic jokes of all. On April 1, 2011 the Mercury MESSENGER was taking some of its first images from Mercury’s orbit when it accidentally captured the totally unexpected… the ancient Mariner 10.
When high mass stars end their lives, they explode in monumental supernovae. But, when the most massive of these monsters die, theory has predicted that they may not even reveal as much as a whimper as their massive cores implode. Instead, the implosion occurs so quickly, that the rebound and all photons created during it, are immediately swallowed into the newly formed black hole. Estimates have suggested that as much as 20% of stars that are massive enough to form supernovae collapse directly into a black hole without an explosion. These "failed supernovae" would simply disappear from the sky leaving such predictions seemingly impossible to verify. But a new paper explores the potential for neutrinos, subatomic particles that rarely interact with normal matter, could escape during the collapse, and be detected, heralding the death of a giant.
A new analysis, published this week and conducted by a team of scientists led by Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, shows stricter vehicle emission standards would yield major health, agricultural, and climate benefits.
Microscopic remains of dead Phantom midge larvae (Chaoborus spp.) may explain a few hundred years of history of the living conditions of fish, acidification and fish death in Swedish lakes. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have developed a method of using lake-bottom sediments to show when and how fish life disappeared from acidified lakes – invaluable knowledge for lake restorations in acidified regions.
Tropical Depression One W formed on April 2 and was dissipating by April 4 a couple of hundred miles east southeast of Vietnam and NASA's Aqua satellite captured its brief life.
It looks like something is eating the Sun in recent pictures from the Solar Dynamics Observatory — and in recent SDO videos, the Sun suddenly disappears! What is going on? Could it be aliens, Planet X, or the Great Galactic Ghoul?
Trees are outstanding historians. In fact, scientists dating back to Leonardo da Vinci recognized the value of trees. While others had figured out that you could determine the age of a tree by counting its growth rings, da Vinci went beyond that basic knowledge.
(AP) -- Releases of radioactive water into the ocean near Japan's stricken nuclear complex shouldn't pose a widespread danger to sea animals or people who might eat them, experts say.
(PhysOrg.com) -- In light of the Obama administration's decision to effectively end the discussion of using the Yucca mountain site in Nevada as a location for permanent storage of nuclear waste, Sandia National Laboratories, (SNL) headquartered in Albuquerque, NM, has released a paper wherein it calls for new discussions about the possibility of using underground salt deposits to permanently store the nation’s growing stockpile of nuclear waste.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The Kilauea volcano that recently erupted on the Big Island of Hawaii will be the target for a NASA study to help scientists better understand processes occurring under Earth's surface.
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESA’s Mars Express has returned images of mist-capped volcanoes located in the northern hemisphere of the red planet. Long after volcanic activity ceased, the area was transformed by meteor impacts that deposited ejected material over the lower flanks of the volcanoes.
The Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters were perhaps two of the most prominent reminders of how crucial it is that everything work just right for a spacecraft to travel to space and successfully return back to Earth. Whether it was the failure of the seal used to stop hot gases from seeping through, or a piece of foam insulation that damaged the thermal protection system, scientists and engineers must make thousands of predictions of all the things that could go wrong during flight.
Three astronauts on Tuesday blasted off for the International Space Station on a mission honouring the first manned spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin almost 50 years ago.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists from Aberystwyth University, the University of Exeter and Stockholm University, led by Welsh scientist and Professor Neil Glasser, have released at study published in Nature Geoscience showing that the glaciers of Patagonia in South America are melting at a much faster rate than originally thought.
Chemistry news
Researchers from Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory have an enhanced understanding of a common freshwater alga and its remarkable ability to remove strontium from water. Insight into this mechanism ultimately could help scientists design methods to remove radioactive strontium from existing nuclear waste.
(PhysOrg.com) -- An Oxford University scientist has taken our understanding of the origin of life a step further.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Formaldehyde, a poison and a common molecule throughout the universe, is likely the source of the solar system's organic carbon solids—abundant in both comets and asteroids. Scientists have long speculated about the how organic, or carbon-containing, material became a part of the solar system's fabric. New research from Carnegie's George Cody, along with Conel Alexander and Larry Nittler, shows that these complex organic solids were likely made from formaldehyde in the primitive solar system. Their work is published online April 4 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A new study reveals that a group of ancient enzymes adapted to substantial changes in ocean temperature and acidity during the last four billion years, providing evidence that life on Early Earth evolved from a much hotter, more acidic environment to the cooler, less acidic global environment that exists today.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
