News Articles

Global warming may not be a hot button topic these days because other threats, like  unemployment, terrorist attacks or death panels, are getting the media attention, says University of Colorado at Boulder psychology Professor Leaf Van Boven. That makes sense.   Media needs to sell media and some hype doesn't hurt.  People tend to view their recent emotions, such as their perceptions of threats or risks, as more intense and important than their previous emotions.   In one part of the study focusing on terrorist threats and using materials adapted from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Van Boven and his research colleagues presented two scenarios to people in a college laboratory depicting warnings about traveling abroad to two countries.

Highways and roads cost money but it's never a bad idea to save some cost and inconvenience using optimal design and materials which leads to fewer repairs.   Unfortunately there haven't been any great methods for determining how strongly (and safely) roads were built but a scientist in Sweden has developed a method where sound waves can reveal what a road looks like underneath and thereby show whether it is being properly built.According to the Swedish Road Administration, the method, which is expected to become the new standard, may entail major quality enhancements and cost savings.

There's no shortage of new theories about how kids help to learn better.   Unfortunately when it comes to kids and education, the only way to measure success is after the fact when it may already be too late.Recent work is focusing on social learning.  It says that infants and young children learn from imitation and by following the actions of those around them, adopting mannerisms and speech patterns.  A new study sought to compare television/computers and audio versus face-to-face human interaction in learning.

Committees and organizations usually start for the right reasons but over time they need to become self-perpetuating. The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) has managed to milk entire decades out of deciding the boundary dates for the Quaternary Age, which covers both the ice age and moment early man first started to use tools, and it seems they have finally voted on an answer.  Voting in science?   Indeed, they have formally agreed to move the boundary dates for the prehistoric Quaternary age by 800,000 years, reports the Journal of Quaternary Science. 

A new mathematical model of chronic wound healing could provide better guidance on how to tackle a major public-health problem - the estimated 6.5 million people in the USA who suffer from chronic wounds that can cause loss of limbs or even death.Ohio State University researchers are the first to publish a mathematical model of an ischemic wound – a chronic wound that heals slowly or is in danger of never healing because it is fed by an inadequate blood supply. Ischemic wounds are a common complication of diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and other conditions that can be characterized by poor vascular health.

Stéphane Guisard, world-renowned astrophotographer and ESO engineer, has created a  340-million-pixel, 34 by 20-degree wide image from Paranal, the site of the Very Large Telescope, as it looks through an amateur telescope.Guisard is head of the optical engineering team at Paranal.To create this true-color mosaic of the Galactic Centre region, Guisard assembled about 1200 individual images, totalling more than 200 hours of exposure time, collected over 29 nights, during Guisard's free time, while working during the day at Paranal. 

Cancer research needs more basic research likely to have the biggest impact on combating the disease in the next few decades but currently research funds are focused on new drug development, says professor Richard Sullivan of the King's Health Partners Integrated Cancer Centre who spoke London told Europe's largest cancer congress, ECCO 15 – ESMO 34 , in Berlin today.The World Health Organization predicts that the number of people worldwide living with cancer will rise from about 28 million today to about 75 million in 2030.

Individuals use a variety of cues to identify their own kin and humans can also detect resemblances in families other than their own, in defiance of 'you all look alike to us' jokes.   A new study says that our success in doing so is the same even if those families are not the same race as ourselves. 

If you find it ironic that members of Congress take private jets to meetings on global warming or debate raising taxes to pay for government health care they get for free, a RAND study may warm your Republican heart.  Except it means saying Europe did something right, which could make it run cold again. The new study says that wealthier countries use more than a third of their energy to heat, cool and illuminate buildings - but not always efficiently. Recent steps taken by the European Union (and some states in Australia) to inspect, rate and publicly disclose the energy efficiency of buildings indicate buildings that use less energy are worth more when sold or leased.

A new study from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg says middle-aged women who have large abdominal fat cells are at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to women with smaller fat cells. Waist circumference divided by body height can also be used to determine which women are at risk. The study is based on the extensive population study of women in "Gothenburg Kvinnoundersökningen i Göteborg". 

If you're concerned that too much politically-motivated action regarding the environment will end up costing a lot of money and accomplish little, you're not without rationale.  History has shown that government involvement rarely helps and is always expensive.But merging more than a decade of atmospheric data from European satellites, scientists have compiled a homogeneous long-term ozone record that allows them to monitor total ozone trends on a global scale – and it shows an ozone recovery.  So there is at least one example where industry complained, government regulations were put into place and the environment actually improved.

Allergies are on the rise and there are a number of theories why.  Some speculate that it's due to more parents getting kids tested for allergies; allergists will find allergies thta 40 years ago would have been dismissed as inconveniences.   Other speculation is that over-hyped concern about sterility regarding babies has weakened their immune system.A study conducted in 2008 by the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg says diet may be the culprit.  In Västra Götaland County in western Sweden, half of all teenagers are considered affected by asthma, nasal symptoms and eczema, almost 10 percentage points higher than when a similar study was conducted in 2000.Who is least affected?  Those who eat more fish and butter.