News Articles

In areas where freshwater is scarce, recycling of wastewater seems to be common sense.  Perhaps not, argues Amy Townsend-Small, assistant professor of geology and geography at the University of Cincinnati, and a team of researchers from the University of California, Irvine.Their research shows that wastewater recycling processes may generate more greenhouse gases than traditional water-treatment processes. Townsend-Small, along with Diane E. Pataki, Linda Y. Tseng, Cheng-Yao Tsai and Diego Rosso, studied how different types of wastewater treatment affect emissions of one greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a long-lived and potent greenhouse gas, with a warming potential of about 300 times that of carbon dioxide.

A randomized controlled trial showed that fear of flying can be cured independently of drug condition after 4 sessions of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET).The study introduced a new treatment for fear of flying. Research suggests that yohimbine hydrochloride (YOH), a noradrenaline agonist, can facilitate fear extinction. It is thought that the mechanism of enhanced emotional memory is stimulated through elevated noradrenaline levels.

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has discovered a new type of neutrino oscillation in which the particles appear to vanish as they travel. The rate of oscillations was much larger than many scientists had expected, which could open the gateway to a new understanding of fundamental physics and may eventually solve the riddle of why the universe today is dominated by matter as opposed to antimatter.

It seems obvious that when a culture can eat more than it needs to survive, many people will.. When even the poorest people can afford to be fat, they are happy.Researchers from Rice University and the University of Colorado did an analysis of survey results and found that while growth of developing countries may improve conditions such as malnutrition and infectious disease, it may also increase obesity among people with lower socio-economic status.  This troubles them, though it is unclear why. Being fat is better than starving.

Archaea, one of the three "domains of life" on Earth - the other two being bacteria and eukaryota (plants and animals) - strangely do not seem to be part of any food chain.But maybe they soon will be - and it just might help solve future climate change issues. Archaea, a type of single-celled microorganism, perform many key ecosystem services including being involved with nitrogen cycling, and they are known to be the main mechanism by which marine methane is kept out of the atmosphere. 

A new high-precision 3-D printer at TU Vienna is orders of magnitude faster than similar devices and opens up completely new areas of application, such as in medicine. "Two-photon lithography" means tiny structures on a nanometer scale can be fabricated quicker than ever.Their 3-D printer uses a liquid resin, which is hardened at precisely the correct spots by a focused laser beam. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind a polymerized line of solid polymer, just a few hundred nanometers wide. This high resolution enables the creation of intricately structured sculptures as tiny as a grain of sand.

 Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine are contending that  consumption of dietary trans fatty acids (dTFAs) is associated with irritability and aggression. Their survey of 945 men and women led them to link dTFAs with adverse behaviors that impacted others, ranging from impatience to overt aggression.  Dietary trans fatty acids are primarily products of hydrogenation, which makes unsaturated oils solid at room temperature. They are present at high levels in margarines, shortenings and prepared foods. Adverse health effects of dTFAs have been identified in lipid levels, metabolic function, insulin resistance, oxidation, inflammation, and cardiac health.

ESA’s GOCE gravity satellite has provided us with the first high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth’s crust and mantle – the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or Moho.Earth’s crust, as you know, is the outermost solid shell of our planet. Even though it makes up less than 1% of the volume of the planet, the crust is exceptionally important not just because we live on it, but because is the place where all our geological resources like natural gas, oil and minerals come from. The crust and upper mantle is also the place where most geological processes of great importance occur, such as earthquakes, volcanism and orogeny.

Evidence suggests that eating blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and other berry fruits has beneficial effects on the brain and may help prevent age-related memory loss and other changes, scientists report. In a new review, Barbara Shukitt-Hale, Ph.D., and Marshall G. Miller point out that longer lifespans are raising concerns about the human toll and health care costs of treating Alzheimer's disease and other forms of mental decline. They explain that recent research increasingly shows that eating berry fruits can benefit the aging brain. To analyze the strength of the evidence about berry fruits, they extensively reviewed cellular, animal and human studies on the topic.

In the cultural war over climate change, which is mostly about drivers but looks like politics, other aspects of earth science get lost, like that pollution is plain bad.  The oceans may be acidifying faster today than they have in the last 300 million years and part of that reason is because the oceans act like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air.'May' is one of those operative words scientists use that often get used colloquially to instill doubt, like how anti-science people on one side deny climate science and those on the other deny biological science.

The elusive antihydrogen atom has been manipulated using microwaves, providing the first glimpse of an "anti-atomic fingerprint." Antimatter is a staple of science fiction, but it also stands out as one of the biggest mysteries of science fact. Fundamental theories predict perfect symmetry between matter and antimatter, but the glaring absence of antimatter in our universe suggests there might be a difference. Enter microwave spectroscopy, one of the most sensitive techniques for probing the structure of atoms.

Researchers have completed the genome sequence for the gorilla, the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded. The results confirm that our closest relative is the chimpanzee but much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome.For the first time, scientists can compare the genomes of all four living great apes: humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. This provides a unique perspective on our own origins and is an important resource for research into human evolution and biology, as well as for gorilla biology and conservation.