December 25
December 23
December 22
-
CAD for RNA.
The computer assisted design (CAD) tools that made it
possible to fabricate integrated circuits with millions of
transistors may soon be coming to the biological sciences. (LBNL)
December 20
-
How Pregnancy Changes a Woman’s Brain.
We know a lot about the links between a pregnant mother’s
health, behavior, and moods and her baby’s cognitive and
psychological development once it is born. But how does
pregnancy change a mother’s brain? (APS)
December 19
-
Facebook Helps Researchers See How Friendships Form.
New research funded by the National Science Foundation and
published this week in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences by three Harvard University
sociologists examines how we select our friends and the
role that friendship plays in transmitting tastes and new
ideas. (NSF)
December 14
-
Stress Causes Clogs in Coffee and Coal.
Scientists still aren't sure what causes clogs in flowing
macroscopic particles, like corn, coffee beans and coal
chunks. But new experiments by Duke physicist Robert
Behringer and his colleagues suggest that when particles
undergo a force called shear strain, they jam sooner than
expected. (Duke U.)
December 12
-
Exercising Harder—and Shorter—Can Help Type 2 Diabetes.
Regular exercise has proven benefits in preventing and
treating type 2 diabetes, but many patients find it tough
to meet the American Diabetes Association guidelines of
150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week. A new
study, conducted by researchers at McMaster University,
suggests that there could be a better way. (APS)
December 9
December 8
-
Making molecular hydrogen more efficiently.
When it comes to the industrial production of chemicals,
often the most indispensable element is one that you can't
see, smell, or even taste. It's hydrogen, the lightest
element of all. (ANL)
December 6
-
Why Aren’t We Smarter Already? Evolutionary Limits on
Cognition.
We put a lot of energy into improving our memory,
intelligence, and attention. There are even drugs that
make us sharper, such as Ritalin and caffeine. But maybe
smarter isn’t really all that better. A new paper
published in Current Directions in Psychological Science,
a journal of the Association for Psychological Science,
warns that there are limits on how smart humans can get,
and any increases in thinking ability are likely to come
with problems. (APS)
December 5
-
Sleeping Giants Discovered.
Astronomers recently discovered the most massive black
holes to date. Found in two separate nearby galaxies
roughly 300 million light years away from Earth, each
black hole has a mass equivalent to 10 billion suns. (NSF)
December 2
-
X-rays Reveal an Unfinished Self-Portrait by Rembrandt van
Rijn.
On Friday 2 December 2011 an unknown painting by Rembrandt
is being presented in the Rembrandt House. The small
panel, Old Man with a Beard was painted by Rembrandt
around 1630, at the end of his time in Leiden. The
Rembrandt House has the painting on loan from a private
collector. (BNL)
November 30
-
At a crossroads.
In 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, 2.3 million automobile crashes occurred at
intersections across the United States, resulting in some
7,000 deaths. More than 700 of those fatalities were due
to drivers running red lights. But, according to the
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, half of the people
killed in such accidents are not the drivers who ran the
light, but other drivers, passengers and pedestrians. (MIT)
November 29
November 28
November 24
-
How bats ‘hear’ objects in their path.
By placing real and virtual objects in the flight paths of
bats, scientists at the Universities of Bristol and Munich
have shed new light on how echolocation works. (Bristol
U.)
November 23
-
Earth’s core deprived of oxygen.
The composition of the Earth’s core remains a mystery.
Scientists know that the liquid outer core consists mainly
of iron, but it is believed that small amounts of some
other elements are present as well. Oxygen is the most
abundant element in the planet, so it is not unreasonable
to expect oxygen might be one of the dominant “light
elements” in the core. (Carnegie I.)
November 21
-
Materials scientists watch electrons "melt". When
a skier rushes down a ski slope or a skater glides across
an ice rink, a very thin melted layer of liquid water
forms on the surface of the ice crystals, which allows for
a smooth glide instead of a rough skid. In a recent
experiment, scientists have discovered that the interface
between the surface and bulk electronic structures of
certain crystalline materials can act in much the same way. (ANL)
November 14
November 10
November 9
November 8
November 6
-
Osteoarthritis results from inflammatory process, not just
wear and tear.
In a study published online Nov. 6 in Nature Medicine,
investigators at the Stanford University School of
Medicine have shown that the development of osteoarthritis
is in great part driven by low-grade inflammatory
processes. This is at odds with the prevailing view
attributing the condition to a lifetime of wear and tear
on long-suffering joints. (Stanford U.)
November 4
November 2
November 1
-
Understanding emotions without language.
Does understanding emotions depend on the language we
speak, or is our perception the same regardless of
language and culture? According to a new study by
researchers from the MPI for Psycholinguistics and the MPI
for Evolutionary Anthropology, you don't need to have
words for emotions to understand them. (MPG)
October 26
October 24
October 21
October 19
-
Propensity for longer life span inherited non-genetically
over generations.
We know that our environment — what we eat, the toxic
compounds we are exposed to — can positively or negatively
impact our life span. But could it also affect the
longevity of our descendants, who may live under very
different conditions? Recent research from the Stanford
University School of Medicine suggests this could be the
case. (Stanford U.)
October 14
-
Prehistoric speedway.
A meat-eating dinosaur that terrorized its plant-eating
neighbours in South America was a lot deadlier than first
thought, a University of Alberta researcher has found. (U.
Alberta)
October 13
October 12
October 11
-
New form of superhard carbon observed.
Scientists at Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory are part
of a team that has discovered a new form of carbon, which
is capable of withstanding extreme pressure stresses that
were previously observed only in diamond. (Carnegie
I.)
October 10
-
Giant Kraken Lair Discovered.
Long before whales, the oceans of Earth were roamed by a
very different kind of air-breathing leviathan.
Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaurs larger than school buses swam
at the top of the Triassic Period ocean food chain, or so
it seemed before Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark
McMenamin took a look at some of their remains in Nevada.
Now he thinks there was an even larger and more cunning
sea monster that preyed on ichthyosaurs: a kraken of such
mythological proportions it would have sent Captain Nemo
running for dry land. (GSA)
October 5
October 4
September 28
-
Argonne scientist energizes quest for lost Leonardo da
Vinci painting.
Perhaps one of Leonardo da Vinci's greatest paintings has
never been reprinted in books of his art. Known as the
"Battle of Anghiari," it was abandoned and then lost—until
a determined Italian engineer gave the art world hope that
it still existed, and a physicist from Argonne developed a
technique that may reveal it to the world once again. (ANL)
September 27
-
What Do Infants Remember When They Forget.
Six-month-old babies are severely limited in what they can
remember about the objects they see in the world; if you
hide several objects from an infant, they will only
remember one of those objects with any detail. (APS)
September 26
-
Copper Film Could Lower Touch Screen, LED and Solar Cell
Costs.
Copper nanowires may be coming to a little screen near
you. These new nanostructures have the potential to drive
down the costs of displaying information on cell phones,
e-readers and iPads, and they could also help engineers
build foldable electronics and improved solar cells,
according to new research. (Duke U.)
September 23
-
Aboriginal Australians: The first explorers.
An international team of researchers, including a UK
collaboration led by BBSRC- and MRC-funded researchers at
Imperial College London, with colleagues at University
College London, and University of Cambridge has for the
first time sequenced the genome of a man who was an
Aboriginal Australian. (BBSRC)
September 21
-
New energy in search for future wind.
Scientists are taking the first steps to improve estimates
of long-term wind speed changes for the fast-growing wind
energy sector, intended to reduce the risks for generators
in a changing climate. (CSIRO)
September 20
-
Smoking in films encourages teenagers to take a drag.
Ever since the era of silent films, smoking has played a
major part in film symbolism. Think Audrey Hepburn in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Robert De Niro in Goodfellas.
But iconic scenes such as these could be damaging the
health of teenagers, who are more likely to smoke after
watching films depicting the habit. (Bristol U.)
September 15
September 14
-
Being In the “No”: Questions Influence What We Remember.
Imagine that you are sitting in the park, deeply engaged
in a conversation with your loved one. A group of
teenagers pass by in front of you. The next day you learn
that the police are looking for someone to identify them
as these teenagers are suspected of a serious mugging. You
would most probably not be able to make a positive
identification. Do you really have absolutely no memory
for their faces? (APS)
September 12
September 9
September 7
September 6
September 1
-
Einstein's
dream surpassed.
A constant stabilization experiment of a quantum state has
been successfully carried out for the first time by a team
from the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (CNRS/ENS/Collčge de
France/UPMC-Université Pierre et Marie Curie) headed by
Serge Haroche. The researchers succeeded in maintaining a
constant number of photons in a high-quality microwave
cavity. (CNRS)
August 29
-
Scientists develop new technologies for understanding
bacterial infections.
Understanding how bacteria infect cells is crucial to
preventing countless human diseases. In a recent
breakthrough, scientists from the University of Bristol
have discovered a new approach for studying molecules
within their natural environment, opening the door to
understanding the complexity of how bacteria infect people. (Bristol
U.)
August 25
August 23
August 22
August 19
-
Mother’s BMI linked to fatter babies.
Babies of mothers with a higher pre-pregnancy body mass
index (BMI) are fatter and have more fat in their liver, a
study published in September’s issue of the journal
Pediatric Research has found. The researchers from
Imperial College London say that the effect of a mother’s
BMI on her child’s development in the womb might put them
on a trajectory towards lifelong metabolic health problems. (ICL)
August 17
August 15
August 12
August 8
August 5
August 4
-
Caltech-Led Engineers Solve Longstanding Problem in
Photonic Chip Technology.
Stretching for thousands of miles beneath oceans, optical
fibers now connect every continent except for Antarctica.
With less data loss and higher bandwidth, optical-fiber
technology allows information to zip around the world,
bringing pictures, video, and other data from every corner
of the globe to your computer in a split second. But
although optical fibers are increasingly replacing copper
wires, carrying information via photons instead of
electrons, today's computer technology still relies on
electronic chips. (Caltech)
August 1
July 29
-
The Dark Side of Oxytocin. For a hormone, oxytocin
is pretty famous. It’s the “cuddle chemical”—the hormone
that helps mothers bond with their babies. Salespeople can
buy oxytocin spray on the internet, to make their clients
trust them. It’s known for promoting positive feelings,
but more recent research has found that oxytocin can
promote negative emotions, too. (APS)
-
Study of golf swings pinpoints biomechanical differences
between pros and amateurs.
When it comes to hitting a golf ball hard, researchers at
the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified
several biomechanical factors that appear to separate the
duffers from the pros. (Stanford U.)
July 28
-
Dissecting Dyslexia: Linking Reading to Voice Recognition.
When people recognize voices, part of what helps make
voice recognition accurate is noticing how people
pronounce words differently. But individuals with dyslexia
don't experience this familiar language advantage, say
researchers. (NSF)
July 27
July 26
July 22
-
Engineers Develop Material That Could Speed
Telecommunications.
Researchers at Columbia Engineering School have
demonstrated that light can travel on an artificial
material without leaving a trace under certain conditions,
technology that would have many applications from the
military to telecommunications. (Columbia U.)
July 19
-
Bristol physicists break 150-year-old law.
A violation of one of the oldest empirical laws of physics
has been observed by scientists at the University of
Bristol. Their experiments on purple bronze, a metal with
unique one-dimensional electronic properties, indicate
that it breaks the Wiedemann-Franz Law. (Bristol U.)
July 18
-
Study of Earthquake Soil Effects Could Improve Building
Design.
Japan's March 11 Tohoku Earthquake is among the strongest
ever recorded, and because it struck one of the world's
most heavily instrumented seismic zones, this natural
disaster is providing scientists with a treasure trove of
data on rare magnitude 9 earthquakes. Among the new
information is what is believed to be the first study of
how a shock this powerful affects the rock and soil
beneath the surface. (GIT)
July 14
July 13
-
Our Brains Have Multiple Mechanisms For Learning.
One of the most important things humans do is learning
this kind of pattern: when A happens, B follows. A new
study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of
Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for
Psychological Science, examines how people learn, and
finds that they use different mental processes in
different situations. (APS)
July 12
-
Brainy Lizards Pass Tests for Birds.
Tropical lizards may be slow. But they aren't dumb. They
can do problem-solving tasks just as well as birds and
mammals, a new study shows. (Duke U.)
July 11
July 6
-
Fossil jaws shed new light on early vertebrate feeding
ecology. With the evolution of jaws some 420
million years ago, jawed animals diversified rapidly into
a range of niches that remained stable for the following
80 million years, despite extinctions, habitat loss and
competition. (Bristol U.)
-
Researchers develop lens-free, pinhead-size camera.
It's like a Brownie camera for the digital age: The
microscopic device fits on the head of a pin, contains no
lenses or moving parts, costs pennies to make -- and this
Cornell-developed camera could revolutionize an array of
science from surgery to robotics. (Cornell U.)
July 5
June 28
June 24
June 23
June 21
-
Self Cleaning Electrode Allows Fuel Cells to Operate on
Coal Gas.
Using barium oxide nanoparticles, researchers have
developed a self-cleaning technique that could allow solid
oxide fuel cells to be powered directly by coal gas at
operating temperatures as low as 750 degrees Celsius. The
technique could provide a cleaner and more efficient
alternative to conventional power plants for generating
electricity from the nation's vast coal reserves. (GIT)
June 20
-
Battery research gets extra juice with research center.
Despite the rapid proliferation of lithium-ion batteries
throughout the communication, computing and transportation
industries, thirty years ago the world's greatest
scientific minds considered them far from a sure success. (ANL)
June 16
-
Searching for the “perfect glass”.
Glasses differ from crystals. Crystals are organized in
repeating patterns that extend in every direction. Glasses
lack this strict organization, but do sometimes
demonstrate order among neighboring atoms. New research
from Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory reveals the
possibility of creating a metallic glass that is organized
on a larger scale. (Carnegie I.)
June 15
-
Testing Improves Memory.
Psychologists have proven in a myriad of experiments that
“retrieval practice”—correctly producing a studied
item—increases the likelihood that you’ll get it right the
next time. (APS)
June 13
June 11
-
Birdsong independent of brain size .
The brains of all vertebrates display gender-related
differences. In songbirds, for example, the size of the
brain areas that control their singing behaviour could be
linked to the size of their song repertoires. (MPG)
June 9
June 8
-
Methane gas from cows – the proof is in the pats.
Scientists could have a revolutionary new way of measuring
how much of the potent greenhouse gas methane is produced
by cows and other ruminants, thanks to a surprising
discovery in their excrement. (U. Bristol)
June 6
-
Taking Email Etiquette to the Next Level.
When working with others in the office, most know it is
better to approach a colleague who is relaxed and drinking
a cup of coffee versus a frazzled co-worker buried under a
pile of paperwork. Unfortunately, email doesn’t offer
users the same social cues – until now. (GIT)
June 1
May 26
-
Chemotherapy
resistance: a new lead? UA62784: that is the name
of a molecule capable of preventing the proliferation of
cancerous cells in vitro, and thus causing their cellular
death. Its effects appear to amplify that of other
anticancer agents currently used clinically. (CNRS.)
May 24
-
Toadfish makes complex sounds, similar to mammals.
Nonlinear sounds that may be described as dissonant or
jarring are acoustically complex and have been observed in
the reproductive, territorial and distress calls of
mammals, amphibians and birds, but new Cornell research
for the first time finds such nonlinear calls in a fish
species. (Cornell U.)
May 23
May 22
-
New device could reduce surgical scarring.
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a
special wound dressing that they report was able to
significantly reduce scar tissue caused by incisions. (Stanford
U.)
May 18
-
Common Jupiters? Astronomers have discovered a new
population of Jupiter-size planets floating alone in the
dark of space, away from the light of a star. According to
the scientists, these lone worlds were probably ejected
from developing planetary systems. (NSF)
May 16
-
How tarantulas hold tight. A Newcastle University
scientist working with undergraduates has revealed how
tarantulas, which unlike other spiders struggle with
vertical surfaces, shoot silk safety threads from their
feet to stay secure. (Newcastle U.)
May 13
-
Cancer on the Breath? The Nose Knows.
A breath test for "sniffing out" cancer in a person's
breath is a step closer to reality, according to a study
recently published in the British Journal of Cancer. (ATS)
May 11
-
Argonne researchers find new isotope for climatological
dating.
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. (ANL)
May 9
-
Study
gives clues to how obesity spreads socially.
Obesity is socially contagious, according to research
published in the past few years. How it is “caught” from
others remains a murky area. But findings from Arizona
State University researchers published online May 5 in the
American Journal of Public Health shed light on the
transmission of obesity among friends and family. (ASU)
May 6
-
Columbia Engineers Patch A Heart.
Researchers at Columbia Engineering have established a new
method to patch a damaged heart using a tissue-engineering
platform that enables heart tissue to repair itself. (Columbia
U.)
May 4
-
Combining gas and diesel engines could yield best of both
worlds.
It may be hard to believe, but the beloved gasoline engine
that powers more than 200 million cars across America
every day didn't get its status because it's the most
efficient engine. Diesel engines can be more than twice as
efficient, but they spew soot and pollutants into the air. (ANL)
May 3
-
The sea dragons bounce back.
The evolution of ichthyosaurs, important marine predators
of the age of dinosaurs, was hit hard by a mass extinction
event 200 million years ago, according to a new study from
the University of Bristol. (Bristol U.)
May 2
April 29
April 27
-
Research outlines evolution of one of Earth’s first
animals.
They can be both a blessing and a curse, and have been
around since the dawn of life. Thousands of species are
found from mountain tops to smoking volcanic vents on the
ocean floor. They play a key role in soil biology and help
to support much of the plant and animal life on Earth. (Oregon
SU)
April 26
-
False memories lack sensory and other details.
To "tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth" is the
maxim guiding legal testimony. But what if the witness
recalls something that didn't really happen? Memory is
notoriously fickle and can be influenced by many factors,
including how questions are asked. We often remember
general impressions but not exact details of an event and
draw on that impression to fill in the gaps, sometimes
creating memories we never experienced. (Cornell U.)
-
How Fire Ants Build Waterproof Rafts. It’s a
naturally occurring phenomenon that has puzzled biologists
for decades: Place a single fire ant in water and it will
struggle. But a group of fire ants will bind together and
float effortlessly for days. (GIT)
April 19
April 18
April 14
-
Researchers explain why bicycles balance themselves.
The 1949 movie "Jour de Fete" shows a postman frantically
chasing his bicycle, which rides away on its own. It could
happen. Many bicycles, even without a rider, naturally
resist tipping over if they are going fast enough. (Cornell
U.)
April 13
-
Blood vessel simulation probes secrets of brain.
Zoom down to one artery in your body, and the commotion is
constant: blood cells hurtle down the passage with
hundreds of their kin, bumping against other cells and the
walls as they go. The many variables—and the sheer
immensity of the human circulatory system—have kept
scientists from closely documenting the rough-and-tumble
life inside blood vessels. (ANL)
April 12
April 11
-
Researchers Resurrect Ancient Enzymes to Reveal Conditions
of Early Life on Earth.
Scientists from Columbia University, Georgia Institute of
Technology and the University of Granada have for the
first time reconstructed active enzymes from
four-billion-year-old extinct organisms. By measuring the
properties of these enzymes, they can examine the
conditions in which the extinct organisms lived. The
results shed new light on how life has adapted to changes
in the environment from ancient to modern Earth. (Columbia
U.)
April 10
-
Experimental Drug Achieves Unprecedented Weight Loss.
An investigational combination of drugs already approved
to treat obesity, migraine, and epilepsy produced up to a
10 percent weight loss in obese individuals participating
in a one-year clinical trial, according to researchers at
Duke University Medical Center. (Caltech)
April 6
-
New Caltech Research Suggests Strong Indian Crust Thrust
Beneath the Tibetan Plateau. 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. (Caltech)
April 4
-
Study Examines Potential Positive Effects of Video Games.
Video game enthusiasts can become deeply involved in their
game play, sometimes to the point where they block out the
external environment and momentarily feel that their play
space is as vivid and important as the so-called “real
world” outside the game. Researchers at Colorado State
University now say that such absorptive experiences can in
the right circumstances actually be positive ones,
providing important mental health benefits. (Colorado
SU)
March 31
-
Watch Your Language! Of Course–But How Do We Actually Do
That? Nothing seems more automatic than speech. We
produce an estimated 150 words a minute, and make a
mistake only about once every 1,000 words. We stay on
track, saying what we intend to, even when other words
distract us—from the radio, say, or a road sign we pass
while driving. (APS)
March 30
March 28
March 27
-
Will
We Hear the Light? University of Utah scientists
used invisible infrared light to make rat heart cells
contract and toadfish inner-ear cells send signals to the
brain. The discovery someday might improve cochlear
implants for deafness and lead to devices to restore
vision, maintain balance and treat movement disorders like
Parkinson's. (U. Utah)
March 23
-
Identifying the origin of the fly.
Some may think that the mosquito and the house fly are
worlds apart when it comes to common ancestry but new
research published this week by an international team of
scientists puts them much closer together in evolutionary
history. (CSIRO)
March 21
March 20
-
Scientists Discover Major Clue in Long-Term Memory Making.
Scientists believe that long-term potentiation (LTP) --
the long-lasting increase of signals across a connection
between brain cells -- underlies our ability to remember
over time and to learn, but how that happens is a central
question in neuroscience. (NSF)
March 16
-
Viscous Cycle: Quartz is Key to Plate Tectonics.
More than 40 years ago, pioneering tectonic geophysicist
J. Tuzo Wilson published a paper in the journal Nature
describing how ocean basins opened and closed along North
America's eastern seaboard. (NSF)
-
Does Your Name Dictate Your Life Choices? What’s
in a name? Letters. And psychologists have posited that
the letters—particularly the first letter of our names—can
influence decisions, including whom we marry and where we
move. The effect is called “implicit egotism.” (APS)
March 14
-
Bilinguals get the blues.
Learning a foreign language literally changes the way we
see the world, according to new research. (Newcastle
U.)
March 13
-
Miniature 'Wearable' PET Scanner Ready for Use.
Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE)
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University,
and collaborators have demonstrated the efficacy of a
“wearable,” portable PET scanner they’ve developed for
rats. The device will give neuroscientists a new tool for
simultaneously studying brain function and behavior in
fully awake, moving animals. (BNL)
March 9
March 8
-
For lizard research, size matters.
For a species whose name suggests otherwise, Gila monsters
are actually quite shy. Their size and bite are the only
monstrous things about these animals, which are the
second-largest and one of only two venomous lizards native
to North America. (ASU)
March 7
-
Teaching Robots to Move Like Humans.
When people communicate, the way they move has as much to
do with what they’re saying as the words that come out of
their mouths. But what about when robots communicate with
people? (GIT)
March 2
March 1
February 28
-
Silver-Diamond Composite Offers Cooling Capabilities for
Electronics.
Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)
are developing a solid composite material to help cool
small, powerful microelectronics used in defense systems.
The material, composed of silver and diamond, promises an
exceptional degree of thermal conductivity compared to
materials currently used for this application. (Conservation
I.)
February 23
-
75% of World's Coral Reefs Currently Under Threat.
A new comprehensive analysis finds that 75 percent of the
world's coral reefs are currently threatened by local and
global pressures. For the first time, the analysis
includes threats from climate change, including warming
seas and rising ocean acidification. The report shows that
local pressures — such as overfishing, coastal development
and pollution — pose the most immediate and direct risks,
threatening more than 60 percent of coral reefs today. (Conservation
I.)
-
Hyperactive Nerve Cells May Contribute to Depression.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE)
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory, and the University of California, San Diego
School of Medicine, have identified hyperactive cells in a
tiny brain structure that may play an important role in
depression. (BNL)
February 22
-
Are We More—or Less—Moral Than We Think? If asked
whether we’d steal, most of us would say no. Would we try
to save a drowning person? That depends—perhaps on our
fear of big waves. Much research has explored the ways we
make moral decisions. But in the clinch, when the
opportunity arises to do good or bad, how well do our
predictions match up with the actions we actually take? (APS)
February 16
February 15
-
Bat immunity key to controlling deadly viruses.
CSIRO research into how bats can host some of the world’s
deadliest viruses without suffering any ill-effects
themselves will lead to improved strategies for
controlling the spread of bat-borne diseases. (CSIRO)
February 14
-
Researchers Work Toward Automating Sedation in Intensive
Care Units.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the
Northeast Georgia Medical Center are one step closer to
their goal of automating the management of sedation in
hospital intensive care units (ICUs). They have developed
control algorithms that use clinical data to accurately
determine a patient's level of sedation and can notify
medical staff if there is a change in the level. (GIT)
February 11
February 9
-
Skin cells help to develop possible heart defect treatment
in first-of-its-kind study. Using skin cells from
young patients who have a severe genetic heart defect,
Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have
generated beating heart cells that carry the same genetic
mutation. The newly created human heart cells —
cardiomyocytes — allowed the researchers for the first
time to examine and characterize the disorder at the
cellular level. (Stanford U.)
February 8
-
Conceptualizing cancer cells as ancient 'toolkit'.
Despite decades of research and billions of dollars,
cancer remains a major killer, with an uncanny ability to
evade both the body’s defenses and medical intervention.
Now an Arizona State University scientist believes he has
an explanation. (Arizona
SU)
February 7
February 4
February 2
January 29
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Disruptions in Calcium Flow Linked to Heart Failure.
Excessive release of calcium inside cardiac muscle can
cause sudden cardiac death in heart failure patients. New
research has revealed how this could happen, opening up
new possibilities for combating heart disease. (Bristol
U.)
January 27
January 26
-
Hunt for Dark Matter Closes in at Large Hadron Collider.
Physicists are closer than ever to finding the source of
the Universe's mysterious dark matter, following a better
than expected year of research at the Compact Muon
Solenoid (CMS) particle detector, part of the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva. (ICL)
January 24
January 23
January 21
-
Evolution by
Mistake. A major driving force of evolution comes
from mistakes made by cells and how organisms cope with
the consequences, UA biologists have found. Their
discoveries offer lessons for creating innovation in
economics and society. (U. Arizona)
-
Finding Footprints: How Ancient People Affect Modern
Landscapes.
There’s a common misconception that prior to European
contact in the 15th century, the Americas were a pristine,
untouched wilderness, inhabited by people who lived in
complete harmony with their environment. In reality,
humans have been affecting and influencing their
surroundings as long as we’ve existed. (ASU)
January 20
-
Putting Up a Struggle Against Cancer.
MIT scientists have discovered that cells lining the blood
vessels secrete molecules that suppress tumor growth and
keep cancer cells from invading other tissues, a finding
that could lead to a new way to treat cancer. (MIT)
January 19
-
Like Humans, Amoebae Pack a Lunch Before They Travel.
In results of a study reported today in the journal
Nature, evolutionary biologists Joan Strassmann and David
Queller of Rice University show that long-studied social
amoebae Dictyostellum discoideum (commonly known as slime
molds) increase their odds of survival through a
rudimentary form of agriculture. (NSF)
January 18
January 13
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Atmosphere Cleans Itself More Efficiently than Previously
Thought.
The earth's atmosphere is less sensitive to pollutants
than some researchers previously thought. An international
team of researchers, including scientists from the Max
Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, has found that
the concentration of hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere
has changed little in recent years. Hydroxyl radicals
clean the air by breaking down organic substances such as
climate-damaging methane. Because this self-cleaning
capacity has scarcely varied over the past few years, the
researchers believe that it is only marginally affected by
environmental changes. These findings refute the view held
by other scientists who believed that the atmosphere is
very sensitive to air pollutants. (MPG)
January 12
-
Cosmic Magnifying Lenses Distort View of Distant Galaxies.
Looking deep into space, and literally peering back in
time, is like experiencing the universe in a house of
mirrors where everything is distorted through a phenomenon
called gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs
when light from a distant object is distorted by a massive
object that is in the foreground. (Arizona S.U.)
January 11
-
Researchers Find Specific Bacteria May Lead to Heart
Disease and Stroke.
Emil Kozarov and a team of researchers at the Columbia
University College of Dental Medicine have identified
specific bacteria that may have a key role in
atherosclerosis, or what is commonly referred to as
“hardening of the arteries,” caused by plaque build-up,
which can lead to heart attack and stroke. (Columbia
U.)
January 10
-
Climate Change to Continue to the Year 3000 in Best Case
Scenarios. New research indicates the impact of
rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere will cause
unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next
1000 years, causing researchers to estimate a collapse of
the West Antarctic ice sheet by the year 3000, and an
eventual rise in the global sea level of at least four
metres. (U. Calgary)
-
Eat Your Greens to Improve Your Looks.
Getting your five a day will do more for your looks than a
sun tan according to scientists who have found that our
appearances really do prove that you are what you eat. (Bristol
U.)
January 7
-
Study Finds Energy Limits Global Economic Growth.
A study that relates global energy use to economic growth,
published in the January issue of BioScience, finds strong
correlations between these two measures both among
countries and within countries over time. The research
leads the study's authors to infer that energy use limits
economic activity directly. They conclude that an
"enormous" increase in energy supply will be required to
meet the demands of projected world population growth and
lift the developing world out of poverty without
jeopardizing standards of living in most developed
countries. (AIBS)
January 6
-
Expitaxial Graphene Shows Promise for Replacing Silicon in
Electronics.
Move over silicon. There's a new electronic material in
town, and it goes fast.
That material, the focus of the 2010 Nobel Prize in
physics, is graphene -- a fancy name for extremely thin
layers of ordinary carbon atoms arranged in a
"chicken-wire" lattice. These layers, sometimes just a
single atom thick, conduct electricity with virtually no
resistance, very little heat generation -- and less power
consumption than silicon. (GIT)
January 5
-
Earth is Twice as Dusty as in 19th Century.
If the house seems dustier than it used to be, it may not
be a reflection on your housekeeping skills. The amount of
dust in the Earth's atmosphere has doubled over the last
century, according to a new study; and the dramatic
increase is influencing climate and ecology around the
world. (Cornell
U.)
January 4
-
New Solar Cell Self-repairs Like Natural Plant Systems.
Researchers are creating a new type of solar cell designed
to self-repair like natural photosynthetic systems in
plants by using carbon nanotubes and DNA, an approach
aimed at increasing service life and reducing cost. (Purdue
U.)
-
From Dusty Punch Cards, New Insights Into Link Between
Cholesterol and Heart Disease. A stack of punch
cards from a landmark study published in 1966, and the
legwork to track down the study’s participants years
later, has yielded the longest analysis of the effects of
lipoproteins on coronary heart disease. (LBNL)
-
Trust Your Gut…but Only Sometimes.
When faced with decisions, we often follow our
intuition—our self-described “gut feelings”—without
understanding why. Our ability to make hunch decisions
varies considerably: Intuition can either be a useful ally
or it can lead to costly and dangerous mistakes. A new
study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the
Association for Psychological Science, finds that the
trustworthiness of our intuition is really influenced by
what is happening physically in our bodies. (APS)
January 3
-
From Sunlight to Synfuels. Turning fossil fuel
into energy is easy: You just burn it. And live with the
carbon dioxide byproduct. (U. Minnesota)
-
Understanding the Anesthetized Brain. Since 1846,
when a Boston dentist named William Morton gave the first
public demonstration of general anesthesia using ether,
scientists and doctors have tried to figure out what
happens to the brain during general anesthesia. (MIT)
-
Mathematical Model Shows How Groups Split into Factions.
The school dance committee is split; one group wants an
"Alice in Wonderland" theme; the other insists on "Vampire
Jamboree." Mathematics could have predicted it. (Cornell
U.)
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