News Articles

The U.S. spends more per capita on health care for its citizens than any other nation and, its proponents note, the quality is higher, but where area where spending has not helped is the life expectancy of older people - at least when it comes to increases in life expectancy.

Did dinosaurs appear and replace other animals?  At least in one South American valley, there's no indication that the dinosaurs appeared and wiped out other animals, which has been the prevailing hypothesis for the origin of dinosaurs based on fossils from North America and elsewhere in the world.Dating of new dinosaur fossils and volcanic ash around them by researchers from has led them to cast doubt on the idea that dinosaurs appeared and opportunistically replaced other animals. They seem to have existed side by side and gone through similar periods of extinction.

The dynamics behind signal transmission in the brain are extremely chaotic. The brain codes information in the form of electrical pulses, known as spikes. Each of the brain's approximately 100 billion interconnected neurons acts as both a receiver and transmitter: these bundle all incoming electrical pulses and, under certain circumstances, forward a pulse of their own to their neighbours. In this way, each piece of information processed by the brain generates its own activity pattern. This indicates which neuron sent an impulse to its neighbors: in other words, which neuron was active, and when. Therefore, the activity pattern is a kind of communication protocol that records the exchange of information between neurons.

About 250 million years about 70 percent of life on land was wiped out.   A new study says it has evidence to support massive volcanic eruptions that had broad impact on the global oceans and contributed to the extinction.Researchers at the University of Calgary believe they have discovered evidence for the hypothesis that volcanic eruptions burnt significant volumes of coal, producing ash clouds that had broad impact and was a direct factor in the late Permian extinction.

For hundreds of years, mathematicians even as great as Leonhard Euler(1) have tried to make sense of partition numbers, the basis for adding and counting.  Progress has been made but there has never been a full theory to explain partitions.   Answers have always led to more questions.Basically, partitions are not considered by some to be part of number theory at all but to keep it simple for now, in number theory, a partition of a positive integer (n) is a way of writing n as a sum of positive integers.    Here is an example from the Classic Encyclopedia:

Microbiologists have discovered a central metabolic pathway in microorganisms and the microorganisms use this pathway to survive under extremely salty conditions, like the Dead Sea.The Dead Sea is not dead, in the science sense.  Many microorganisms which inhabit it belong to a group of salt-tolerant archaea (from the Greek archaĩos, from which we also get"archaic“).   Archaea are among the most primordial life forms on earth and have managed to survive in extreme environments. 

For robots to get 'smart', they have to learn to adapt.   University of Vermont roboticist Josh Bongard has created both simulated and actual robots that, like tadpoles becoming frogs, change their body forms while learning how to walk.Over generations, his simulated robots also 'evolved', spending less time in infant tadpole-like forms and more time in adult four-legged forms.These evolving populations of robots were able to learn to walk more rapidly than those with fixed body forms and, in their final form, the changing robots had developed a sturdier gait,  better able to withstand being knocked with a stick, than the ones that had learned to walk using upright legs from the beginning.

Was the fall of the Roman Empire or, as often predicted, the coming fall of the American Empire, numerically predictable?It is, according to research led by Sergey Gavrilets, associate director for scientific activities at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis and a professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville published in Cliodynamics: The Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History.

How can a man who writes an article noting the many positive strides made in eliminating gender discrimination be sexist?    Well, he isn't, but men who go out of their way to help women can be considered sexist, thought it is a more benevolent sexism than the real kind.New research from the University of Granada warns about the negative effects of "benevolent sexism", a term used for apparently positive ideas and attitudes of men towards women, which are based on the assumption that men must take care of and sacrifice themselves for women.

If you're in the camp that says the U.S. military is not ridiculously ahead of the rest of the world enough, there is good news.   Months ahead of schedule, scientists at Los Alamos National Lab have achieved a breakthrough with the Free Electron Laser (FEL) program, demonstrating an injector capable of producing the electrons needed to generate megawatt-class laser beams for the Navy's next-generation weapon system.

For policy makers and politicians, there is confusion over what peer review is and how it should be used in policy decision making and, really, how improved technology and new science (including any ethics issues) make critical evaluation by the independent peers of those who create advancements more important than ever.A. Alan Moghissi, president of the Institute for Regulatory Science, and Michael S. Swetnam, of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, write in Technology&Innovation that review criteria must be identified, the process must be transparent, and over reliance on specific peer reviewers must be avoided.  Institutional, intellectual and personal conflicts of interest must also be avoided.

Do birth control pills cause weight gain?   Virtually since their introduction it was believed to be true but new research conducted at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health&Science University says that is not the case.To conduct their research, scientists and physicians studied a group of rhesus macaque monkeys at the OHSU Oregon National Primate Research Center for almost a year. Rhesus monkeys were used in this study because their reproductive system is nearly identical to humans. However, unlike human studies, more variables can be controlled and measured – such as exact food intake - to provide more meaningful data.