News Articles

In the somewhat chronic angst over science understanding (more funding, more funding) one thing that gets lost is that it's really only 'fact-based' science, memorization, where American kids are behind those in Asia.  That changes over time and, among adults, new results show science understanding has improved dramatically.

The schedule 1 illicit drug known as ecstasy has been used by up to 12 million people in the United States  and millions more worldwide. Past research has suggested that ecstasy users perform worse than others on some tests of mental ability but there have been concerns that the methods used to conduct that research were flawed, and the experiments overstated the cognitive differences between ecstasy users and non-users. 

There are varying levels of acceptance for various climate models, especially those that predict short-term escalation of warming due to man-made emissions.Given that, no one is going to like new University of Washington claims that it's already too late.   People who want curbs on emissions won't like news that it won't help and people who don't think emissions are the biggest problem in a worldwide recession won't bother to listen if it doesn't matter.  

When you were young you may have heard something about a dog like, "Fido is 10 years old, that is 70 in people years" and wondered what that meant.It's a rule of thumb but there is a science basis to it, yet current methods of comparing patterns of aging are limited because they confound two different elements of aging – pace and shape.   And it can be confusing for non-biologists.

When you were younger, you may have wondered why gas had odd prices like $1.09.9 and your parents likely told you it's because $1.09.9 looks cheaper than $1.10.   Stores love prices that end in $.99 for that reason.

An artificial big toe found attached to the foot of an ancient Egyptian mummy is the world's oldest prosthetic.  At least for now.   It predates the previous earliest known practical prosthesis , the Roman Capula Leg, by several hundred years.It wasn't simply cosmetic.   The two toes, a three-part wood and leather artifact housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and the Greville Chester artificial toe on display in the British Museum, also helped their toeless owners walk like Egyptians.

A University of Leicester ecologist has warned that Kenya is being “bled dry” by the UK’s demand for fresh flowers, a timely concern given Valentine's Day.   Dr. David Harper, of the Department of Biology has been working at Lake Naivasha in Kenya as part of ongoing research and projects on the ecosystem of lakes there and has called on UK supermarkets to show more concern about the health of the natural environment that the flowers come from.Blaming supermarkets seems a little much but academics know better than to blame individuals so telling poor women they shouldn't get flowers would have some backlash - faceless corporations are fair game.

How does something made of loose particles sometimes behave like a solid, liquid or gas? For example, dry sand acts like a solid when you stand on it but like a liquid when you try to scoop some up in your hand.Or how Saturn's rings act like a fluid.    Dr Nikolai Brilliantov from the University of Leicester Department of Mathematics is intrigued by the maths of things like that and is going to give a free lecture on February 15th in the University’s Ken Edwards Building, Lecture Theatre 1, at 5.30pm titled ‘Statistical mechanics of granular matter: simple concepts and complex phenomena’.

You've heard of Granola, we all have.   But is it a green technology?   Yes and no.   It turns out the name is no longer trademarked so when Virginia Tech computer science faculty member Kirk Cameron and co-founder Joseph Turner decided to create intelligent software power management green software for use in servers, personal computers, and laptops, they named it Granola.

Since Valentine's Day is approaching, it's a good time to combine X-rays from the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)  into a new image of a ring - not of jewels - but of black holes. The composite image is of Arp 147, a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light years from Earth.

When the shootings in Arizona occurred, various pundits in the media jumped on 'right ring radio' and 'culture of hate' (meaning conservative news programs) despite the fact that the shooter was not political and did not even watch shows like Fox News.If your prism is left, you tend to view even the center as the right, so mainstream media can be somewhat forgiven for demonizing all qualities they dislike as being right wing (it happens in science also - various scientists and bloggers have no idea there are left wing anti-science positions but can recite entire volumes of anti-science right wing issues) but is it really the case that the right is 'meaner' than the left?   

In the somewhat irrational war on incandescent light bulbs, one thing left out is that the current alternatives are not great yet either.   If you break a CFL bulb, you'd better call in a HazMat team (and who knows what the high frequency ballasts are doing to your pets?) but if you break an LED, the lead levels are far too high, according to a new study.