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Other Sciences news
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of linguists studying Eastern European youngsters in the UK have found they learn to speak English like locals.
Revolution in Libya. Revolution in Egypt. Revolution in Tunisia. The Middle East and North Africa face unprecedented change as dictatorships crumble and people clamor for democracy.
With Congress at a budget impasse, a new poll suggests the nation's leaders should look more deeply at the public's priorities, particularly regarding proposed cuts to medical, health and scientific research. Research!America urges our nation's leaders to put the public's interest and the nation's future ahead of politics and to move past polarizing budget battles and the uncertainty of continuing resolutions that resolve nothing. Americans are hungry for solutions from Washington.
Since 2003, the antiwar movement in the United States has had much to protest with Americans fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, but the movement—which has dropped off sharply the past two years—may be more anti-Republican than antiwar, says a University of Michigan researcher.
“Japan will recover from the catastrophe that has hit its shores,” says Bernard Bernier, director of the Université de Montréal Department of Anthropology. “This will not be a turning point in the country’s history.”
What effect do low-cost airlines have on airfares overall? Do alcohol taxes reduce drunk-driving fatalities? Under what circumstances do food vendors rip off tourists in Manhattan?
Do you know how risky scuba diving is compared to riding a motorbike? When choosing between a fairly safe option and a slightly riskier one, which do you take? A new study, launched last night on the BBC's Bang Goes the Theory, aims to be the biggest study of risk perception ever undertaken.
Very little was known about Mesozoic birds until nearly complete skeletons began to be discovered in the now famous Jehol Group deposits of northeastern China.
While there is an increasing equality in terms of the likelihood that children from communities and families across the socioeconomic spectrum will be diagnosed with autism, a new study finds that such factors still influence the chance of an autism diagnosis, though to a much lesser extent than they did at the height of rising prevalence.
New research from the University of Minnesota finds that a workplace environment that allows employees to change when and where they work, based on their individual needs and job responsibilities, positively affects the work-family interface and reduces turnover.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Working moms can stop feeling guilty: Research shows that children of women who return to work before their offspring turn 3 are no more likely to act out or fail at school than kids whose mothers are full time homemakers.
Public relations professionals constantly look for ways to most effectively promote their messages to the media. Sun-A Park, a researcher at the University of Missouri School of Journalism surveyed more than 300 health journalists and found that those who cover strokes and stroke prevention tend to hold negative views of corporate pharmacy media relations, while those who regularly read medical journals tend to cover more stories based on corporate press releases. Park says one key factor influencing journalists' attitudes concerning corporate media press releases is the specific health topics they cover.
A new study louses up a popular theory of animal evolution and opens up the possibility that dinosaurs were early – perhaps even the first – animal hosts of lice.
(PhysOrg.com) -- At the recent Society for American Archaeology meeting in Sacramento, California, archaeologist Michael Callaghan from the University of Texas presented his team's findings from the ancient site of K'o (now modern-day Guatemala) and what they believe to be the oldest known royal Mayan tomb.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Although ancient Egyptian royalty didn’t gobble down bacon cheeseburgers or doughnuts dripping with trans fats, smoke cigarettes or spend hours each night in front of the TV, they did share a similar health consequence with people who do these things today: Their coronary arteries were clogged all the same.
Nanotechnology news
Researchers at the University of Warwick have developed a gold plated window as the transparent electrode for organic solar cells. Contrary to what one might expect, these electrodes have the potential to be relatively cheap since the thickness of gold used is only 8 billionths of a metre. This ultra-low thickness means that even at the current high gold price the cost of the gold needed to fabricate one square metre of this electrode is only around £4.5. It can also be readily recouped from the organic solar cell at the end of its life and since gold is already widely used to form reliable interconnects it is no stranger to the electronics industry.
Queen's researchers have discovered that nanoparticles, which are now present in everything from socks to salad dressing and suntan lotion, may have irreparably damaging effects on soil systems and the environment.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Unlike many conventional chemical detectors that require an external power source, Lawrence Livermore researchers have developed a nanosensor that relies on semiconductor nanowires, rather than traditional batteries.
Physics news
Although its name may make many people think of flowers, the element germanium is part of a frequently studied group of elements, called IVa, which could have applications for next-generation computer architecture as well as implications for fundamental condensed matter physics.
Data from a major US atom smasher lab may have revealed a new elementary particle, or potentially a new force of nature that could expand our knowledge of the properties of matter, physicists say.
Battery technology hasn't kept pace with advancements in portable electronics, but the race is on to fix this. One revolutionary concept being pursued by a team of researchers in New Zealand involves creating "wearable energy harvesters" capable of converting movement from humans or found in nature into battery power.
Space & Earth news
Medical and military leaders have come together today to warn that climate change not only spells a global health catastrophe, but also threatens global stability and security.
"Careful -- do not touch anything with your bare hands!" warned the guide as we entered the kindergarten and our Geiger counter hissed like an angry rattlesnake.
Wildlife has still not returned to the area in western Hungary that was devastated by the country's worst chemical accident six months ago, the World Wildlife Fund said Wednesday.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers from UCL Earth Sciences departed today for the Arctic to test how well sea-ice thickness is measured by the European Space Agency’s ice satellite CryoSat-2, which originated at UCL.
Comic strip artist Brian Basset has created a drawing depicting his characters, Red and Rover, racing alongside the space shuttle as it lands for the final time. After 30 years and more than 130 missions, NASA's space shuttle fleet will retire later this year.
Following a closed-door summit at UC Berkeley, leading West Coast seismologists recommended in a news conference today (Tuesday, April 5) the establishment of an earthquake early warning system in California, Oregon and Washington.
For the second consecutive year, high school students from across Australia joined in a competition to obtain scientifically useful (and aesthetically pleasing) images using the Gemini Observatory. The spectacular result of this contest, organized by the Australian Gemini Office (AusGO), is revealed here. As the 2010 winning student team suggested, Gemini targeted an interacting galaxy pair which, they assured, “would be more than just a pretty picture.”
Back in 1989, amateur astronomer Toney Burkhart found out that Clyde Tombaugh was going to be giving a talk in San Francisco, just a short distance from Burkhart’s home. Trouble was, he found out only about 10 minutes before the presentation was going to start, so he rushed over and arrived just in time to hear Tombaugh’s talk, where he told amusing stories of how he found Pluto, and what he went through with night after night in a cold observatory taking photographs and comparing the glass plates, looking for a planet in the outer solar system.
Low-input farming for cocoa, cassava and oil palm has resulted in widespread deforestation and degredation of West Africa's tropical forest area, according to a new study by researchers at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). The study was published online this week in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Management.
(AP) -- South Korea's Unification Ministry says experts from the two Koreas will meet again for rare talks about research into an active volcano touted in the North as leader Kim Jong Il's birthplace.
British billionaire Richard Branson unveiled plans to pilot a "flying" mini-submarine down to the furthest depths of the oceans, in his latest record-breaking adventure.
The huge tsunami triggered by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake destroyed coastal towns near Sendai in Japan, washing such things as houses and cars into the ocean. Projections of where this debris might head have been made by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Maximenko has developed a model based on the behavior of drifting buoys deployed over years in the ocean for scientific purposes. What this model predicts about the tsunami debris can be seen in Figure 1.
A wide-ranging group of experts has published a set of 40 key environmental questions to help align scientific research agendas with the needs of natural resource decision makers.
Last year's record hurricane season will be followed by another unusually busy one, with 16 named storms expected this year, US weather forecasters predicted on Wednesday.
An international team of scientists has found very high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) along the coasts of West Africa. Production of these extremely toxic compounds has been banned in Europe and the United States for years. These harmful substances could come from the illegal dumping of waste or from an enormous ship breaking yard in Mauritania.
This week marks the first anniversary of the NASA Global Hawk project’s initial science mission. On April 7, 2010, Global Hawk No. 872 took off from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., for its first science foray over the Pacific Ocean in the Global Hawk Pacific 2010 - or GloPac - science campaign.
Entry, descent and landing is the big moment for any Mars lander mission, and the big honkin’ Mars Science Lab and its sky-crane landing system will truly be unique. This brand new video from the Jet Propulsion Lab shows how MSL, a.k.a Curiosoity will land on the Red Planet in August of 2012. Doug Ellison, part of the team who worked on this computer generated video told Universe Today that the scenes from Mars shown here were created from real elevation data from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the outcrop of rock that Curiosity visits is based on Burns Cliff, visited by Opportunity in 2004.
Baruch Blumberg, who won the Nobel Prize for helping identify the Hepatitis B virus and who served as the first chief of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, has died at the age of 85, NASA said Wednesday.
A Soyuz craft carrying two Russians and an American on Thursday docked with the International Space Station, ahead of celebrations marking half a century since Yuri Gagarin's trail-blazing flight.
(AP) -- A British astrophysicist known for his theories on the origin and the destiny of the universe has been honored with one of the world's leading religion prizes.
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA and co-researchers from the United States, South Korea and Japan have found a new mineral named "Wassonite" in one of the most historically significant meteorites recovered in Antarctica in December 1969.
Researchers have long known that landfills produce methane, but had a hard time figuring out why – since landfills do not start out as a friendly environment for the organisms that produce methane. New research from North Carolina State University shows that one species of microbe is paving the way for other methane producers.
Half a century ago, a Russian carpenter's son named Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, carving an indelible mark in human history and scoring the greatest Soviet Cold War success.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Apostolos Christou and David Asher from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland announced the discovery of an asteroid near Earth called Asteroid 2010 SO16 and their findings were published on arXiv.org. While finding near-Earth asteroids is not unusual, there is something quite rare about this particular asteroid in that it orbits the sun in what is referred to as a horseshoe orbit.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Anatoly Perminov, director of the Russian Space agency Roscosmos, has announced plans for an upcoming meeting between the Russian space agency, and it’s counterparts in the United States, France, Germany and Japan (countries with a high level of nuclear engineering capability) on April 15. The meeting is being held to discuss the possibility of cooperation between the nations in building a nuclear powered rocket.
For many years, most scientists studying Tibet have thought that a very hot and very weak lower and middle crust underlies its plateau, flowing like a fluid. Now, a team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is questioning this long-held belief and proposing that an entirely different mechanism is at play.
White dwarfs are dead stars that pack a Sun's-worth of matter into an Earth-sized ball. Astronomers have just discovered an amazing pair of white dwarfs whirling around each other once every 39 minutes. This is the shortest-period pair of white dwarfs now known. Moreover, in a few million years they will collide and merge to create a single star.
Chemistry news
Scientists at the University of Hull have identified a cellular 'on-off' switch that may have implications for treating cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Move over, newts and salamanders. The mouse may join you as the only animal that can re-grow their own severed limbs. Researchers are reporting that a simple chemical cocktail can coax mouse muscle fibers to become the kinds of cells found in the first stages of a regenerating limb. Their study, the first demonstration that mammal muscle can be turned into the biological raw material for a new limb, appears in the journal ACS Chemical Biology.
Inspired by Mother Nature, scientists are reporting development of a protective coating with the potential to enable living cells to survive in a dormant condition for long periods despite intense heat, dryness and other hostile conditions. In a report in Journal of the American Chemical Society, they liken the coating to the armor that encloses the spores that protect anthrax and certain other bacterial cells, making those microbes difficult to kill.
A new drug delivery device designed and constructed by Jie Chen, Thomas Cesario and Peter Rentzepis promises to unlock the potential of photosensitive chemicals to kill drug-resistant infections and perhaps cancer tumors as well.
With efforts underway to ban lead-based ammunition as a potential health and environmental hazard, scientists are reporting new evidence that a prime alternative material for bullets — tungsten — may not be a good substitute The report, which found that tungsten accumulates in major structures of the immune system in animals, appears in ACS' journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Alberta professor has been developing a model for protective clothing that may make firefighters’ jobs safer.
Chemical engineers at UC Santa Barbara expect that their new process to create molecular probes may eventually result in the development of new drugs to treat cancer and other illnesses.
Infection with some strains of strep turn deadly when a protein found on their surface triggers a widespread inflammatory reaction.
Proteins are critically important to life and the human body. They are also among the most complex molecules in nature, and there is much we still don't know or understand about them.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
