News Articles

It will enrage our fellow Californians, who regard the wholesomeness and warmth of the in-home hearth as akin to fratricide, but when it comes down to it, people in the Third World, like the US is becoming economically, are going to respond to the stress of rising natural gas prices in ways that activists in cozy office buildings do not like.How they heat their homes will be at the top of the list for everyone in the upper part of North America this winter - which means out-of-fashion alternative energy options, the kind our ancestors used; wood burning stoves. 

Cars that drive themselves?   Being cut up by some remote hand that never touches you?  It's not a Stephen King novel, it's the latest in robotics and it's coming to a Senate floor near you.Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF) presented took over the Hart Senate Office Building and had a luncheon briefing for Senate members and staff on cyber-physical systems (CPS).

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) discovered that the Earth orbits the Sun, thus paving the way for our modern view of the world.  It took a few hundred years for religion to apologize for the reception his discovery got but luckily the  the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) only took a dozen years after the discovery of element 112 to honor him.Element 112 was discovered at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung (Center for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt.

Ancient nomadic hominids moved from place to place but often how has been subject to speculation.   Now researchers think they have one answer, using the dental fossils of animals eaten by Homo heidelbergensis.In the French cave of Arago, an international team of scientists headed by researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) in Tarragona has analyzed the dental wear of herbivorous animals, the first time that an analytical method has allowed the establishment of the length of human occupations at archaeological sites. The key is the last food that these hominids consumed. This told them some details on the vegetation in the environment and the way of life of Homo heidelbergensis. 

Is it a magic trick?   A man takes a paper clip and bends it so that it is just a crooked piece of wire, then he throws it into a bowl of hot water and instantly the metal wire returns to the shape of the paper clip.This phenomenon is called the shape memory effect and it can be observed in certain metallic alloys, known as shape memory alloys. These kinds of materials are ideal for many applications. In aerospace technologies, solar sails can unfold in outer space.  In cardiology, stents are small tube-shaped, metal grid frameworks folded together and inserted into blood vessels where they expand and prevent the vessels from becoming blocked.

Does fasting lead to a longer life?   You never see any really old fat people but that has more to do with other issues than starvation.   Some studies indicate that caloric restriction does extend life spans in fruit flies, mice and, most recently, rhesus monkeys, apparently by slowing the aging process, but in the case of most, they were also weaned that way from birth, which will get you thrown in jail if you do it to your kids.Virtually all those studies had been performed in sterile environments, on animals raised under relatively pathogen-free conditions.   Stanford University School of Medicine researchers decided to see if reduced caloric intake also helps creatures cope with infection.

Designing a new hydroelectric power station can be a laborious task - the pressures, temperatures and fluid flows can be simulated but the actual results outside FEA showbiz graphics will still be columns of numbers or a one-dimensional representation which need analysis.A new technique could make the process a lot more elegant. Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg have developed a method that visualizes the processes inside energy conversion plants, e.g. such as photovoltaic, wind, biogas and hydroelectric power stations. To do so, they have coupled 3-D plant engineering and simulation results with a virtual reality (VR) program developed at the IFF.

There's a bipolar force with a repulsive side that doesn't involve cosmic opera or wooden acting - it's light.  And it can be used to control components on silicon microchips, meaning future nanodevices could be controlled by light rather than electricity, according to Yale researchers. The team previously discovered an 'attractive' force of light and showed how it could be manipulated tiny switches in semiconducting micro- and nano-electrical systems. They say they have now uncovered its non-evil twin - a repulsive force.

University of Denver researchers say that couples who live together before they are engaged have a higher chance of getting divorced than those who wait until they are married to cohabitate.In addition, couples who lived together before engagement and then married, reported a lower satisfaction in their marriages.   Couples who got engaged and then later moved in together had no conclusive difference one way or another.   The research published in Journal of Family Psychology was conducted by Galena Rhoades, senior researcher, Scott Stanley, research professor, and Howard Markman, professor of psychology.

Cornell computer scientists say they have tracked and analyzed the "news cycle", the way stories rise and fall in popularity, and found a consistent pattern as stories rose into prominence and then fell off after a few days, with a 'heartbeat' pattern of handoffs between blogs and mainstream media. In mainstream media, in most cases a story rises to prominence slowly then dies quickly but in the blogosphere, stories rise in popularity very quickly but then stay around longer, as discussion goes back and forth.  Every story is eventually pushed aside by something newer.So blogs may not be taking the place of newspapers and television news as much as magazine features, where more complex stories would usually be fleshed out.

University of Dundee scientists say they have shown that E. coli, one of the most extensively studied organisms in the world, still has some secrets that may hold the key to human diseases, such as cancer. The team has examined the genome sequence of this workhorse of the laboratory and spotted three previously unknown genes that, it turns out, are essential for the survival of E. coli and one out of the three could also be implicated in cancer or developmental abnormalities in humans. These mystery genes are also found in numerous other creatures, suggesting a vital role for them across many species. The research will be published in the Journal of Bacteriology.

If you have a 'difficult' baby, don't worry too much about your parenting skills.   A new report in Psychological Science says that a child's temperament may be due in part to a combination of a certain gene and a specific pattern of brain activity.The pattern of brain activity in the frontal cortex of the brain has been associated with various types of temperament in children. For example, infants who have more activity in the left frontal cortex are characterized as temperamentally "easy" and can be soothed with less effort. Conversely, infants with greater activity in the right half of the frontal cortex are temperamentally "difficult" and are easily distressed and require more effort to soothe.