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Other Sciences news
A new report prepared by a UCLA sociology professor for the Writers Guild of America–West reveals that diverse writers continue to face significant obstacles to employment in Hollywood, particularly in light of the recession.
London’s Latin American workers are being illegally paid below the minimum wage at a rate 10 times higher than the UK average, suggests a new report produced by Queen Mary, University of London.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Location, location, location. That's what UC Irvine economics professor David Neumark says is key to understanding how California's economy has managed to stay in line with or surpass the national growth average, despite the Golden State's less-than-favorable rankings in popular business climate indexes.
Women have lower career expectations than men, anticipating smaller paycheques and longer waits for promotions, according to a new study involving a University of Guelph researcher.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Without Internet access at home, teens from low income households are more likely than their wealthier counterparts to use their cell phones to go online.
Archaeologists have discovered a 12,000-year-old iron oxide mine in Chile that marks the oldest evidence of organized mining ever found in the Americas, according to a report in the June issue of Current Anthropology.
A fang-like tooth on double upper lips, spiny teeth on the tongue and a pulley-like mechanism to move the tongue backwards and forwards -- this bizarre bite belongs to a conodont and, thanks to fresh fossil finds, has now been analyzed and reconstructed by a research team headed by paleontologists from the University of Zurich. Their analysis sheds light on the origin of jaws. Their reconstruction shows for the first time how the first vertebrates fed.
(PhysOrg.com) -- New University of Ediburgh research has linked the risks taken by banks with the compensation received by their executives.
University of Arizona sociologist Jane Zavisca says the two countries are polar opposites when it comes to mortgage financing.
Math problems make more than a few students - and even teachers - sweat, but new brain research is providing insights into the earliest causes of the anxiety so often associated with mathematics.
Analysis of a 440-year-old document reveals new details about native population decline in the heartland of the Inca Empire following Spanish conquest in the 16th century.
Do scientists' job locations have any impact on the way their work spreads? Or, in today’s highly networked world, does research flow around the globe without regard to its point of origin? According to a study co-authored by an MIT economist, location still does matter — a finding with implications for technology transfer, the process of deriving innovations from pure research.
Paleontologists have often wondered why mammals—including humans—evolved to have larger brains than other animals. A team of paleontologists now believe that large brains may have developed in mammals to facilitate an acute sense of smell, according to a new paper published today in the prestigious journal Science. The team also noticed enlargement in the areas of the brain that correspond to the ability to sense touch through fur; this sense is acutely developed in mammals.
Nanotechnology news
Scientists from NPL, in collaboration with Linkoping University, Sweden, have shown that regions of graphene of different thickness can be easily identified in ambient conditions using Electrostatic Force Microscopy (EFM).
When you suffer a heart attack, a part of your heart dies. Nerve cells in the heart's wall and a special class of cells that spontaneously expand and contract – keeping the heart beating in perfect synchronicity – are lost forever. Surgeons can't repair the affected area. It's as if when confronted with a road riddled with potholes, you abandon what's there and build a new road instead.
(PhysOrg.com) -- In the 19th century novel, Flatland, by Edward A. Abbott, residents of that fictional country exist in only two dimensions. Women are born as line segments, while men come in a range of geometric shapes reflecting their rank, from lowly isosceles triangles, to middle-class squares, to six-sided hexagons, reserved for nobility.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A recent study at the National Institute of Standards and Technology may have revealed the optimal characteristics for a new type of computer memory now under development. The work, performed in collaboration with researchers from George Mason University (GMU), aims to optimize nanowire-based charge-trapping memory devices, potentially illuminating the path to creating portable computers and cell phones that can operate for days between charging sessions.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have conducted experiments confirming which of three possible mechanisms is responsible for the spontaneous formation of three-dimensional (3-D) pillar arrays in nanofilms (polymer films that are billionths of a meter thick). These protrusions appear suddenly when the surface of a molten nanofilm is exposed to an extreme temperature gradient and self-organize into hexagonal, lamellar, square, or spiral patterns.
Physics news
This year's Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics will be awarded to Professor Orazio Svelto for his pioneering, long-lasting and innovative work in the fields of lasers and optics. Svelto is an internationally renowned laser and photonics scientist and one of the worldwide leaders of the scientific community in this field. The award, accompanied by EUR 5,000, will be presented on 24 May 2011 at the Laser World of Photonics Congress in Munich, Germany.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The ability to image single biological molecules in a living cell is something that has long eluded researchers; however, a novel technique, using the structure of diamond, may well be able to do this and potentially provide a tool for diagnosing, and eventually developing a treatment for, hard-to-cure diseases such as cancer.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Rice University researchers have created a method to measure the axial rotation of tiny rods. The technique detailed in a paper by Sibani Lisa Biswal and her colleagues appears this month in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Space & Earth news
At 5:15 a.m. EDT today, Endeavour began the nine-minute Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, or 'backflip,' on its last visit to the Inernational Space Station.
Software developed by a Massey University computer scientist and astrophysicist has led to the discovery of free-floating ‘orphan’ planets – once the subject of science fiction.
To David Cleveland, a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Barbara, it seemed as though Santa Barbara County would be a great example of what many are advocating as a solution to the problems of a conventional agrifood network –– a local food system.
A sharp increase in forest destruction in March and April in the Amazon has led Brazil to announce the creation of an emergency task force to fight against deforestation.
Researchers at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and partnering organizations will build a frozen repository of Great Barrier Reef coral sperm and embryonic cells. Genetic banks composed of frozen biomaterials hold strong promise for basic and applied research and conservation of species and genetic variation. Because the banked cells are alive, researchers can thaw the frozen material one, 50 or, in theory, even 1,000 years from now to help restore a species or diversify a population. Done properly over time, samples of frozen material can be reared and placed back into ecosystems to infuse new genes into natural populations, thereby helping to enhance the health and viability of wild stocks.
China's Three Gorges Dam has caused a host of ills that must be "urgently" addressed, the government has said, in a rare admission of problems in a project it has long praised as a world wonder.
Wow! These two latest images from the HiRISE Camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are simply amazing. I couldn’t decide which to post on top as the lead image, so did a coin flip. This observation shows dune gullies laced with beautiful swirls of tracks left by dust devils. Just like on Earth, dust devils move across the Martian surface and expose the underlying darker material, creating a striking view. The HiRISE team has been tracking changes in this location (-70.3 degrees latitude and 178.2 degrees Longitude East), and they also compare it with dune gully activity going on in other regions. The science team says the activity here is rather anomalous for their high altitude location.
They say that time and tide wait for no man – well, neither does the mighty Mississippi River. As the already gargantuan body of water swells beyond its normal manmade boundaries, the state of Louisiana is starting to see impact after having seen the damage already done to states from Missouri to Mississippi. While near record-breaking water levels are expected any day now and safety precautions are being taken, one LSU professor explained how the river's meandering historic path and silty contents might offer a future ray of hope.
The Atlantic will experience a rougher than normal hurricane season this year with up to 10 hurricanes, the US weather service forecast Thursday.
A new era in astronomy will come a step closer when scientists from across Europe present their design study today for an advanced observatory capable of making precision measurements of gravitational waves -- minute ripples in the fabric of space-time -- predicted to emanate from cosmic catastrophes such as merging black holes and collapsing stars and supernovae. It also offers the potential to probe the earliest moments of the Universe just after the Big Bang, which are currently inaccessible.
Endeavour's astronauts accomplished the No. 1 objective of their mission Thursday, installing a $2 billion cosmic ray detector on the International Space Station to scan the invisible universe for years to come.
Yarrow, it's called, this flowering plant also known as "little feather" for the shape of its leaves. Prized as a garden plant that repels unwanted insects while attracting beneficial ones, it also improves soil quality and is used in many herbal medicines.
Among the casualties of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan was the country's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The trip to Mars just got a little more difficult now that French researchers have discovered that antibodies used to fight off disease might become seriously compromised during long-term space flight. In a new report published online in the FASEB Journal, the scientists show that antibodies produced in space are less effective than those produced on terra firma. The reduced effectiveness of antibodies makes astronauts more susceptible to illness, while increasing the danger posed by bacteria and viruses likely to coexist with wayfaring astronauts.
(PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Opportunity Mars rover uses an onboard navigation capability during backward drives, it leaves a distinctive pattern in the wheel tracks visible on the Martian ground.
When the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake and resulting tsunami struck off the northeast coast of Japan on March 11, they caused widespread destruction and death. Using observations from a dense regional geodetic network (allowing measurements of earth movement to be gathered from GPS satellite data), globally distributed broadband seismographic networks, and open-ocean tsunami data, researchers have begun to construct numerous models that describe how the earth moved that day.
(PhysOrg.com) -- An Australian-based astronomy team, co-led by Professor Michael Drinkwater from the School of Mathematics and Physics (SMP) at The University of Queensland (UQ), has shown that the mysterious 'dark energy' is indeed real and not a mistake in Einstein's theory of gravity.
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has teamed up with NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to study a rare storm in the atmosphere of the planet Saturn in more detail than has ever been possible before. The new study by an international team will appear this week in the journal Science.
Chemistry news
Smalt was one of the blue pigments the most commonly used by the artists between the 16th and 18th centuries. Unfortunately, this pigment is unstable and tends to fade with time. Researchers from the new European platform for research on ancient materials, the SOLEIL synchrotron, the National Gallery, London and the C2RMF found the key of this fading, described for four centuries. These results, obtained through the synchrotron analysis of microsamples of paint from works by Baroque painter Murillo and other artists, have been published in the journal Analytical Chemistry.
In the computer displays of medical equipment in hospitals and clinics, liquid crystal technologies have already found a major role. But a discovery reported from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that micrometer-sized droplets of liquid crystal, which have been found to change their ordering and optical appearance in response to the presence of very low concentrations of a particular bacterial lipid, might find new uses in a range of biological contexts.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The humble alga, hated by boaters and pool owners, may someday help provide us with the raw machinery to power our appliances.
(PhysOrg.com) -- It sounds like hype from a late-night infomercial: It can twist and bend without breaking! And wait, there's more: It could someday help you fend off disease!
Provided by PhysOrg.com
