News Articles

A major milestone has been achieved in the completion of the U's next-generation particle accelerator, ALICE, which is set to produce an intense beam of light that will revolutionize the way in which accelerator based light source research facilities will be designed in the future.ALICE is an acronym standing for Accelerators and Lasers In Combined Experiments. Financed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council with seed funding from the North West Development Agency, the project is designed to produce light from both the accelerator and advanced lasers that can be used simultaneously in cutting edge experiments.

Observations from satellites now allow scientists to monitor changes to water levels in the sea, in rivers and lakes, in ice sheets and even under the ground. As the climate changes, this information will be crucial for monitoring its effects and predicting future impacts in different regions.Sea level rise in one of the major consequences of global warming, but it is much more difficult to model and predict than temperature. It involves the oceans and their interaction with the atmosphere, the ice sheets, the land waters and even the solid Earth, which modifies the shapes of ocean basins. Measurements from tidal gauges show that for most of the twentieth century, sea levels rose by 1.8 mm per year on average.

AAAS isn't usually regarded as fans of science journalism (well, unless it's people writing for Science) but that hasn't always been the case. Since 1945 they have honored science reporting for print and radio and later expanded that to television and now online reporting.
This year, an ambitious series on memory and the brain, a look at whether research supports widespread use of anti-cholesterol medications, and a broadcast account of the contentious battle over intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania, are among the winners of the 2008 AAAS Science Journalism Awards.
Panels of science journalists chose the winners of the awards, which are sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C.

As any good beer brewer knows, the yeast used in fermentation stick together in large clumps consisting of thousands of cells that settle out where they are easily removed. Brewers had even traced this behavior to a gene that encodes a sticky protein that sits on the surface of yeast cells. But despite the fact that yeast are a major laboratory "workhorse," any further exploration of their social lives had remained almost entirely neglected. Indeed, the "domesticated" yeast commonly studied in genetics labs have had any social tendencies bred out of them. 

Researchers at MIT's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research have produced a report concerning key design issues of proposed "cap-and-trade" programs that are under consideration in the United States as a way of curbing greenhouse gas emissions. The first contribution of the three-part study found that, based on an examination of the European Union's system and of similar U.S. programs for other emissions, such a program can indeed be effective in reducing emissions without having a significant economic impact.

Developed more than 200 years ago and found in households around the world, chlorine bleach is among the most widely used disinfectants, yet scientists never have understood exactly how this familiar product actually kills bacteria.   New research from the University of Michigan  reveals key details in the process by which bleach works its antimicrobial magic.In a study published in the Nov. 14 issue of Cell, a team led by molecular biologist Ursula Jakob describes a mechanism by which hypochlorite, the active ingredient of household bleach, attacks essential bacterial proteins, ultimately killing the bugs.

Humans would never agree that elections sometimes come down to looks.   Science disagrees.   Some argue that Barack Obama won because he looks younger and healthier than John McCain while others contend that having twice as much money makes any candidate more likely to win and about three people actually voted based on the issues.A new report in the November 13th issue of Current Biology says that one species of fish picks its leaders in much the same way; most of the time they reach a consensus to go for the more attractive of two candidates. 

Two clones of highly antibiotic-resistant organism strains, which previously had only been identified in the United States, are now causing serious sickness and death in several Colombian cities including the capital Bogotá, say researchers at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. The study, done in collaboration with Universidad El Bosque in Bogotá, is presented in a research letter published in the Nov. 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

An infrared camera aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered a unique aurora lighting up Saturn's polar cap. The mysterious new aurora is unlike any other known in our solar system."We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," said Tom Stallard, an RCUK Academic Fellow working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester.  Stallard is lead author of a paper released today in the British journal Nature.  "It's not just a ring of aurorae like those we've seen at Jupiter or Earth. This one covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurorae predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright one here is a fantastic surprise."

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder(OCD) affects as much as 2 % of the population and is considered a psychiatric disorder. It is the number four psychiatric pathology in terms of frequency following phobias, disorders relating to alcohol and drugs, and depression.People affected with OCD are obsessed with cleanliness, order, and symmetry or are overcome by doubts and irrational fears. In order to reduce their anxiety, they carry out rituals of tidying, washing or verification for several hours a day in the most serious cases.

The HPV vaccine, sold as Gardasil in the U.S., is intended to prevent four strains of the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world. The vaccine also prevents against cervical cancer. While the vaccine represents a significant public health advance, a new article in the Journal of Law, Medicine&Ethics suggests that it is premature for states to currently mandate the HPV vaccine as a condition for school attendance.Gail Javitt, J.D., M.P.H., Deena Berkowitz, M.D., M.P.H., and Lawrence O. Gostin, J.D., LL.D., review the scientific evidence supporting Gardasil's approval and the legislative actions in the states that followed and raise several concerns about state mandates for HPV vaccination. 

A team of Princeton University scientists say they have discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.  They say the research appears to offer evidence of a hidden mechanism guiding the way biological organisms respond to the forces of natural selection and provides a new perspective on evolution, the scientists said.