News Articles

Education quality is a moving target these days.   With college education a right since the early 1990s and student loans unlimited to pay for it, costs and claims have expanded, as hot air must, to fill the available money space.Because everyone with good grades can afford to go to Stanford with enough loans or rich parents, lower ranked schools have no reason to charge less because the pool of high-ranked schools can accept is limited - they just have to wait.   

Critics of global warming will note that if the people behind the Kyoto protocol can't even get basic accounting correct there may be plenty of errors in simulations but science is about convergence over time.  And owning up to little mistakes and fixing them.An international team has found a critical error in the accounting method used to measure compliance with carbon limits and the flaw, which centers on the measurement of CO2 emissions from the use of bioenergy, could undermine greenhouse gas reduction goals if not addressed.

Sex crimes against pre-teen children are no higher during Halloween than at any other times of the year and diverting law enforcement places people at more risk, according to a study in Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment.  That's not to say parents shouldn't use caution or supervision but the findings raise questions about the wisdom of law enforcement practices aimed at dealing with a problem that does not appear to exist.

Are women naturally different from men when it comes to detecting emotions?    Biology may play a role, since there are few opportunities for socialization to shape such gender differences, and some  evolutionary psychologists have suggested that females, because of their role as primary caretakers, are wired to quickly and accurately decode or detect distress in preverbal infants or threatening signals from other adults to enhance their chances at survival. But women are better than men at distinguishing between emotions, especially fear and disgust, according to a new study published in Neuropsychologia and have a keener sense for processing auditory, visual and audiovisual emotions. 

Lightweight drinkers rejoice, it may be nature that keeps you from pounding shots like Indiana Jones squeeze Marion in "Raiders of the Lost Ark".Researchers at North Carolina State University have found a genetic 'switch' in fruit flies that plays an important role in making flies more tolerant to alcohol.  If you're reading this site, you will not that doesn't automatically translate to humans but a counterpart human gene contributes to a shift from metabolizing alcohol to the formation of fat in heavy drinkers. This shift can lead to fatty liver syndrome – a precursor to cirrhosis.

It takes two to reproductively tango for humans but even when plants  (or animals) can self-fertilize their offspring have longer lives when a mate is involved in the process, according to over 100 mini-evolution experiments involving nematode worms (Caenorhabditis elegans) at the University of Oregon. Going it alone increases susceptibility to genetic mutations and reduces that adaptability to changing environments, says their report in Nature.

By studying the Y chromosome from human dental remains from the Canary Islands, researchers have determined the origin and evolution of paternal lineages from the pre-Hispanic era to the present day. To date, only mitochondrial DNA had been studied, which merely reflects the evolution of maternal lineages, but a team of Spanish and Portuguese researchers carried out molecular genetic analysis of the Y chromosome (transmitted only by males) of the aboriginal population of the Canary Islands to determine their origin and the extent to which they have survived in the current population.The results suggest a North African origin for these paternal lineages which, unlike maternal lineages, have declined to the point of being practically replaced today by European lineages.

Infants can correctly identify humans as the source of speech and monkeys as the source of monkey calls even when they are as young as five months old, says a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) study.  While young children know that humans speak, monkeys grunt and ducks quack, it's not clear when we come to know which vocalizations each of these animals produce.  Much is known about infants' abilities to match properties of human voices to faces, such as emotion, but it is unknown whether infants are able to match vocalizations to the specific species that produces them.

A new groups of exoplanets announced today comprises no less than 32 new discoveries. Including these new results, data from HARPS have led to the discovery of more than 75 exoplanets in 30 different planetary systems.In 1999, ESO launched a call for opportunities to build the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, a high resolution, extremely precise spectrograph for the ESO 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla, Chile.

Brain activity considered to be  spontaneous 'white noise' changes after a person learns a new task, according to researchers, and the degree of change reflects how well subjects have learned to perform the task. The suggestion is that this learning-induced change in the brain's spontaneous activity may reflect  a 'memory trace' for the new skill, which makes it easier to use those parts of the brain together again when the same challenge is presented. In addition to helping anatomical connections between different brain regions, the changes in spontaneous brain activity may maintain a record of prior experience that constrains the way the same circuitries are recruited at the time of a task. 

The conventional family has changed over the last few decade but regardless of parent genders or family structure, adolescents' perception of proper family functioning has changed little, says a new study.Previous studies have pointed to families without a regular structure, such as headed by a lone parent or including the children of other partners, etc. as leading to a greater risk of teenagers living in such families turning to drugs or being violent, having mental health problems or even exhibiting criminal behavior.

Ah, to be a lizard - lay around in the sun, star in Japanese movies and, if  your tail is pulled off, you grow it right back.Humans are not so lucky about the regeneration part but Tel Aviv University research says we may come close.   Prof. Meital Zilberman of TAU's Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a new biologically active "scaffold" made from soluble fibers, which may help humans replace lost or missing bone. With more research, she says, it could also serve as the basic technology for regenerating other types of human tissues, including muscle, arteries, and skin.