News Articles

Engineers from the University of Florida and Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea have developed what they call a 'nearly perfect hydrophobic interface' by reproducing, on small bits of flat plastic, the shape and patterns of the minute hairs that grow on the bodies of spiders. A paper describing the new water repellent surface, appears this month in Langmuir."They have short hairs and longer hairs, and they vary a lot. And that is what we mimic," said Wolfgang Sigmund, a professor of materials science and engineering.

According to a new study in Social Psychology Quarterly, the higher your IQ the more likely you are to be a liberal and an atheist. The author says this is because more intelligent people exhibit social values and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history--mainly, liberalism and atheism.The study advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years."

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland have found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's.The significance? The human brain is a big believer in equality, the scientists say. Their results are detailed in a new study appearing in Nature.

Many scientists warn that with a changing climate there's a good chance that forest fires in the Pacific Northwest will become larger and more frequent – and according to one expert, that's just fine.The future of fire in this region is difficult to predict, will always be variable, and undoubtedly a part of the future landscape. People should understand, however, that fire is not only inevitable but also a valuable part of forest ecosystems and their management, says John Bailey, an associate professor in the Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management at Oregon State University.

Biologists from the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York have found that grizzly bears are roaming into what was traditionally thought of as polar bear habitat, the Canadian province of Manitoba, where they are officially listed as extirpated. The preliminary findings were published in Canadian Field Naturalist and show that sightings of Ursus arctos horribilis in Canada's Wapusk National Park are recent and appear to be increasing in frequency.

A team of paleontologists has discovered a new dinosaur species which belongs to the  same group of gigantic, long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged, plant-eating sauropods as Brachiosaurus. The new species has been dubbed 'Abydosaurus', and its discovery will be detailed in an upcoming issue of Naturwissenshaften.The fossils were excavated from the Cedar Mountain Formation in Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, Utah. The team recovered four heads – two still fully intact – from a quarry in Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. Complete skulls have been recovered for only eight of more than 120 known varieties of sauropod.

In order to determine if there is cancer in the lymph nodes, pathologists must currently perform several  detailed, time-consuming tests. But University of Missouri researchers have developed a laser-induced ultrasound, called the photoacoustic method, that may help doctors locate the general area of the lymph node where melanoma cells are residing with much more efficiency than is currently possible. The new approach is detailed in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering.

Depression raises stress hormone levels in adolescent boys and girls but may lead to obesity only in girls, according to research in a recent issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. Authors of the study suggest that early treatment of depression could help reduce stress and control obesity.The hormone Cortisol regulates various metabolic functions in the body and is released as a reaction to stress. Researchers have long known that depression and cortisol are related to obesity, but they had not figured out the exact biological mechanism.

A new study of the IGF1 gene in BMC biology has found that small domestic dogs probably originated in the Middle East more than 12,000 years ago. Researchers traced the evolutionary history of IGF1, finding that the version of the gene that is a major determinant of small size probably originated as a result of the domestication of the Middle Eastern gray wolf.

A new study from UK researchers suggests that deficits in prospective memory (remembering to remember, or remembering to perform an intended action) are more common for recreational drug users. The new research appears in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.42 ecstasy/polydrug users (14 males, 28 females) and 31 non-users (5 males, 26 females)  were recruited for the study – all were students. The students were quizzed about their drug habits (including tobacco, cannabis and alcohol), and given questionnaires to assess their everyday memory, cognitive failures and prospective and retrospective memory.

What makes Hollywood blockbusters? Scientists writing in Psychological Science may have the answer. Using the sophisticated tools of modern perception research to deconstruct 70 years of film, shot by shot, the Cornell researchers say that successful movies follow a particular mathematical pattern. The team of psychologists measured the duration of every shot in every scene of 150 of the most popular films released from 1935 to 2005. The films represented five major genres—action, adventure, animation, comedy and drama. Using a complex mathematical formula, they translated these sequences of shot lengths into "waves" for each film.

A new study published this week in PLoS Biology suggests that seasonal changes in absolute humidity are the apparent underlying cause of wintertime influenza outbreaks. The study also found that the onset of outbreaks might be encouraged by anomalously dry weather conditions, at least in temperate regions.