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Knife carrying is seen as a legitimate response both to potential threats and to the lack of protection provided by authorities, according to a study of young white British males published in this week's BMJ.
In fluent English with a soft accent, Pedro Mateo, a Harvard postdoctoral fellow in linguistics, recalled the restrictive signs plastered on the walls of Guatemalan schools in the past.
A Spanish study has analysed traffic accidents involving cattle being transported for human consumption in the country for the first time. Despite the "relatively" low mortality rate, animals suffer high-risk situations that cause pain and stress. The scientists say that specific protocols for action are needed with regard to these accidents, and to prepare the emergency services to deal with them.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The increased competition for attention in the digital era has not eroded public confidence in the mainstream news media, according to a study by researchers from the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Politicians should be careful when they rail against mainstream news media. A study from North Carolina State University shows that perceived bias of media outlets can lead to increased political engagement – but only on specific issues. When there is a general perception of bias in the news media it actually results in increased apathy among citizens.
Nanotechnology news
Research teams are trying different approaches within the nanotechnological field to improve water membrane technologies. One of these is to improve water purification by using nature’s own water-transporting channels, aquaporins. However, constructing suitable membranes for industrial processes is a challenge.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Single molecule electronics is a division of nanotechnology utilizing single molecules as electronic components and its study has the ultimate goal of reducing the size of common electrical circuits. Since 1974, when Mark Ratner and Arieh Aviram from IBM first described how a single molecule was capable of working as a diode in passing current in one direction, research has moved forward in trying to develop a way to use single molecule electronics.
(PhysOrg.com) -- For the past few years, researchers have been using quantum dots to increase the light absorption and overall efficiency of solar cells. Now, researchers have taken a step further, demonstrating that quantum dots with a built-in electric charge can increase the efficiency of InAs/GaAs quantum dot solar cells by 50% or more.
Physics news
(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are working with medical researchers at Loma Linda University Medical Center to develop a new imaging technology to guide proton therapy for cancer treatment.
Japanese scientists at a boozy office party stumbled across a discovery they hope will help revolutionise efficient energy transmission one day: red wine makes a metal compound superconductive.
Stewart Prager, a well-known plasma physicist and fusion scientist with a distinguished career and a record of discovery at the University of Wisconsin, arrived in January 2009 as director of PPPL, the United States’ leading magnetic fusion facility. Fusion energy, which is fueled by hot gases of charged particles known as plasma, has the potential to become a safe, clean and abundant energy source for the future. For nearly 60 years, Princeton has been a world leader in research on magnetic fusion energy due to efforts by scientists and engineers at PPPL. In 1994, an experimental device built at the lab, known as the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR), yielded an unprecedented 10.7 million watts of fusion power. As head of the lab, Prager is directing fundamental inquiries to establish the knowledge base for fusion energy, to understand how plasmas behave and to apply this understanding to a wide range of applications. The facility is managed by Princeton University ! and funded by the DOE’s Office of Science.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists from IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center and Columbia University, working with the X-Ray Microscopy Group, have mapped rotation and strain fields across a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) structure that included a liner of stressed Si3N4 using X-ray nanodiffraction (nano-XRD) at the CNM/APS Hard X-Ray Nanoprobe beamline.
Light does not travel at the same speed in all directions under the effect of an electromagnetic field. Although predicted by theory, this counter-intuitive effect has for the first time been demonstrated experimentally in a gas by a French team from the Laboratoire 'Collisions Agregats Reactivite' at CNRS. The researchers measured with extreme precision, of around one billionth m/s, the difference between the light propagation speeds in one direction and in the opposite direction. These results open the way to more in-depth research aimed at improving the model that describes elementary particle interactions. Published on the 11 May 2011 in the journal Physical Review Letters, they point to novel applications in optics.
(PhysOrg.com) -- In a new study, scientists have proposed that mini black holes may interact with matter very differently than previously thought. If the proposal is correct, it would mean that the time it would take for a mini black hole to swallow the Earth would be many orders of magnitude longer than the age of the Universe.
Toward faster transistors: New physical phenomenon could lead to increases in computers' clock speed
In the 1980s and ’90s, competition in the computer industry was all about "clock speed" — how many megahertz, and ultimately gigahertz, a chip could boast. But clock speeds stalled out almost 10 years ago: Chips that run faster also run hotter, and with existing technology, there seems to be no way to increase clock speed without causing chips to overheat.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Taking another step toward demonstrating quantum behavior in a quantum computer, researchers from the Vancouver-based company D-Wave Systems, Inc., have performed a technique called quantum annealing, which could provide the computational model for a quantum processor. They have published a study describing the demonstration in a recent issue of Nature.
Space & Earth news
Western Europe's exceptionally dry spring is clear to see in maps generated using data from SMOS. While these maps offer an interesting view of the stark difference in soil moisture compared to a year ago, the data are also important for agricultural and hydrological applications.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new software system has been developed that could support decisions on how to respond to potential Near Earth Object (NEO) impacts on Earth.
(AP) -- Catfish farming in Mississippi faces grave danger from flooding.
(AP) -- NASA's countdown clocks are ticking again for the next-to-last space shuttle launch.
Research conducted by a Harvard undergraduate has traced the rise of mercury pollution in endangered seabirds and highlighted the importance of museum collections as a time capsule concerning conditions on Earth over the past century.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The Spacecraft Assembly Facility of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was constructed in 1961 to support NASA's Ranger and Mariner missions to the moon, Venus and Mars.
Earlier this year, Boston University researchers and collaborators conducted a mobile greenhouse gas audit in Boston and found hundreds of natural gas leaks under the streets and sidewalks of Greater Boston. Nathan Phillips, associate professor of geography and environment and director of BU's Center for Environmental and Energy Studies (CEES), and his research partners will present these and related findings at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) Global Monitoring Annual Conference, May 17-18 in Boulder, Colorado.
As the space shuttle program winds down, questions are flying about what's happening and why. The launch countdown began Friday for the second-to-last flight. Some answers about the end of the space shuttle:
Chemistry news
A research article May 12 in Science demonstrates the use of computational methods to design new antiviral proteins not found in nature, but capable of targeting specific surfaces of flu virus molecules.
Graduate students from the University of Toronto's Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry’s food engineering laboratory helped to set the Guinness Book of World Record May 10 for largest ice cream cake ever made.
A huge number of students ranging from linguists to those studying coins and family ancestry are benefiting from a 100 year project to compile the world’s most comprehensive dictionary of Medieval Latin.
A new study from Family Process shows that passing down a family business is an emotional process, and key factors need to be in place in order for the transition to prove successful. The owner needs to trust other family members' involvement in the long-term plan for the business, and nurture a healthy outlook and plan for their own retirement. In the United States alone there are an estimated 10.8 million family businesses. Only 30% of businesses stay in the family from the first to the second generation.
A dollar is a dollar is a dollar, so goes the economic theory of fungibility. But do people really act that way? In a new working paper, Brown University economist Justine Hastings and Jesse Shapiro of Chicago Booth School of Business find striking evidence that basic consumer choice behavior violates this bedrock theory.
Since 2008, the U.S. economy has been "seizing" uncontrollably. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher says that a comparison of the multifaceted economic downturn with the uncontrolled spasms of an epileptic is not inappropriate — and may say something about the origins of the disaster.
In a time of transition for rural African-American young adults, natural mentors in the community help them stay focused on their goals and avoid potential difficulties associated with emerging adulthood, according to findings from an ongoing University of Georgia study.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Interactive teaching methods significantly improved attendance and doubled both engagement and learning in a large physics class, according to a University of British Columbia study published today in Science.
Films depicting the 1787 mutiny aboard the British ship HMS Bounty show sailors living cheek by jowl, being forced to dance, enduring storm-ridden Cape of Good Hope crossings to satisfy the ship captain's ego and being flogged for trivial reasons.
Who's better at teaching difficult physics to a class of more than 250 college students: the highly rated veteran professor using time-tested lecturing, or the inexperienced graduate students interacting with kids via devices that look like TV remotes? The answer could rattle ivy on college walls.
Nanotechnology news
The practical use of visible light and zinc oxide nanorods for destroying bacterial water contamination has been successfully demonstrated by researchers at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). Nanorods grown on glass substrates and activated by solar energy have been found to be effective in killing both gram positive and gram negative bacteria – a finding that has immense possibilities for affordable and environmentally friendly water purification techniques.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Nowadays, everyday life would be inconceivable without nanotechnology. It is also ever-present in medical technology – both in therapy and diagnostics. Researchers from ETH Zurich have now prepared silver nanoparticles in an interdisciplinary study in such a way that they offer further potential in this field.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have helped to uncover the nanoscale structure of a novel form of carbon, contributing to an explanation of why this new material acts like a super-absorbent sponge when it comes to soaking up electric charge. The material, which was recently created at The University of Texas - Austin, can be incorporated into "supercapacitor" energy-storage devices with remarkably high storage capacity while retaining other attractive attributes such as superfast energy release, quick recharge time, and a lifetime of at least 10,000 charge/discharge cycles.
Physics news
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced that researchers from Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories have completed their second experiment in the past six months at Sandia’s Z machine to explore the properties of plutonium materials under extreme pressures and temperatures. The information is used to keep the U.S. nuclear stockpile safe, secure and effective.
In a four-decade, Holy Grail-like quest to fully understand what it means to be in a "supersolid" state, physicists have found that supersolid isn't always super solid. In other words, this exotic state of frozen helium appears to have liquid-like properties, says a new paper published in the journal Science on May 13, 2011.
Getting two fluids to mix in small or confined spaces is a big problem in many industries where, for instance, the introduction of one fluid can help extract another — like water pumped underground can release oil trapped in porous rock — or where the mixing of liquids is the essential point of the process. A key example of the latter is microfluidics technology, which allows for the controlled manipulation of fluids in miniscule channels often only a few hundred nanometers wide.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Radioactive dating is used to determine everything from the age of dinosaur fossils to Native American arrowheads. A new technique recently developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory may give researchers another tool for radioactive dating that could be of particular use in studying the history of climate change.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Stronger than steel or titanium -- and just as tough -- metallic glass is an ideal material for everything from cell-phone cases to aircraft parts. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a new technique that allows them to make metallic-glass parts utilizing the same inexpensive processes used to produce plastic parts. With this new method, they can heat a piece of metallic glass at a rate of a million degrees per second and then mold it into any shape in just a few milliseconds.
(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the most difficult problems for designing mobile devices is finding a way to minimize the size of the device while simultaneously maximizing the size of the display. To get the best of both worlds, researchers from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology in South Korea have designed and built a prototype of a seamless foldable display that folds in half without a visible crease in the middle.
Space & Earth news
Clean water is a rare commodity in many countries of the world and governments often face problems ensuring its reliable supply. In Mongolia, an interdisciplinary research team is demonstrating how this vital resource can be efficiently managed and used. Specially developed software help to detect weak points in the supply system.
Spain suffered an unusually high death toll in a moderate quake that claimed nine lives in the southeastern city of Lorca on Wednesday, geological experts said.
Warning that the risk of dangerous climate change impacts is growing with every ton of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere, a National Research Council committee today reiterated the pressing need for substantial action to limit the magnitude of climate change and to prepare to adapt to its impacts. The nation's options for responding to the risks posed by climate change are analyzed in a new report and the final volume in America's Climate Choices, a series of studies requested by Congress. The committee that authored the report included not only renowned scientists and engineers but also economists, business leaders, an ex-governor, a former congressman, and other policy experts.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers detonated explosives at the Birds Point levee near Wyatt, Missouri, at 10:02 p.m. on May 2, 2011. Water from the intentional breach flooded a 130,000-acre stretch of land. Two more breaches were detonated on May 3 and 5. This image from the Advanced Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft shows the resultant flooding of farmland west of the Mississippi 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of the levee breach. On the image, vegetation is displayed in red, bare fields in gray and water in blue. The image covers an area of 30.7 by 39 miles (49.5 by 63 kilometers), and is located near 36.5 degrees north latitude, 89.4 degrees west longitude.
A new set of buoys in Alaska waters will help scientists understand how climate change may be affecting the pH level of northern seas. Researchers placed the first buoy last month.
Drought on China's Yangtze river has led to historically low water levels that have forced authorities to halt shipping on the nation's longest waterway, the government and media said Thursday.
(AP) -- The astronauts for NASA's next-to-last space shuttle flight are back in Florida for another try at launching into orbit.
Writing in the scientific journal Nature, scientists have called for increased discussion of independent monitoring of deep-sea hydrocarbon industry activity with the aim of obtaining a better understanding of its ecological impact.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Maryland-led mission proposal know as Comet Hopper has been chosen to compete for final selection as a new planetary mission in NASA's Discovery Program. The team will receive $3 million to further develop its mission proposal concept.
When NASA's salt-seeking Aquarius instrument ascends to the heavens this June, the moon above its launch site at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base won't be in the seventh house, and Jupiter's latest alignment with Mars will be weeks in the past, in contrast to the lyrics of the song from the popular Broadway musical "Hair." Yet for the science team eagerly awaiting Aquarius' ocean surface salinity data, the dawning of NASA's "Age of Aquarius" promises revelations on how salinity is linked to Earth's water cycle, ocean circulation and climate.
Global consumption of natural resources could triple to 140 billion tons a year by 2050 unless consumer nations take drastic steps, the United Nations warned Thursday.
Nick Risinger has always gazed up at the sky. But last year the amateur astronomer and photographer quit his day job as a Seattle marketing director and lugged six synchronized cameras about 60,000 miles to capture an image of the entire night sky.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Hubble’s newest camera has taken an image of galaxy NGC 4214. This galaxy glows brightly with young stars and gas clouds, and is an ideal laboratory to research star formation and evolution.
Rising salinity in the primary source for desalinated tap water in North Carolina's Outer Banks has been traced to fossil seawater, not – as some have feared – to recent seawater intrusion.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A group of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, have shown that the emissions produced by aircraft idling at the gate, or lining up for takeoff, contain tiny oil droplets, that when exposed to ordinary sunlight, undergo a chemical reaction that causes them to solidify into tiny particles that can infiltrate the lungs and eventually the brain.
Aggregating nearly the entire landmass of Earth, Pangaea was a continent the likes our planet has not seen for the last 200 million years. Its size meant there was a lot of space for animals to roam, for there were few geographical barriers, such as mountains or ice caps, to contain them.
Some planets that roam the galaxy without a star to call home still may be able to host life. Finding such rogue planets is difficult, but new research suggests these wandering worlds could be detected by their atmospheric auroras.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The famous Crab Nebula supernova remnant has erupted in an enormous flare five times more powerful than any flare previously seen from the object. On April 12, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope first detected the outburst, which lasted six days.
The fifth dwarf planet of the Solar System, Haumea, and at least one of its two satellites, are covered in crystalline water-ice due to the tidal forces between them and the heat of radiogenic elements. This is the finding of an international research study using observations from the VLT telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
A new analysis of data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft has revealed that beneath the surface of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io is an "ocean" of molten or partially molten magma.
Chemistry news
Shelly Peyton, a chemical engineer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is building working models of human bone, breast, liver and artery tissues to see how cells behave when they are affected by a disease such as cancer. The ultimate goal of the research is to develop new drug therapies to fight diseases with a streamlined testing regimen that may not require animal testing, she says.
A report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy has concluded that a novel University of Colorado Boulder method of producing hydrogen fuel from sunlight is the only approach among eight competing technologies that is projected to meet future cost targets set by the federal agency.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
