News Articles

According to findings from the October issue of the American Sociological Review, money does matter in education, but not in a way lobbyists want you to believe.
The research, which looked at the mathematical literacy scores of thousands of 15-year-old immigrants to 13 Western nations from 35 different native countries, indicates that economic development and political conditions in an immigrant's home country impact the child's academic success in his or her destination country.
Despite claims that education quality is solely a funding issue, the results say that immigrant children from countries with lower levels of economic development have better scholastic performance than comparable children who emigrate from countries with higher levels of economic development.

With one of the most aggressive submarine cable builds in the world now complete, the first phase of the Trans-Pacific Express submarine cable system directly connecting Mainland China, the United States, South Korea and Taiwan is ready for service. The 18,000 kilometer (more than 11,000 mile) fiber-optic undersea cable will play a significant role in driving new development for international telecommunications in the Asia-Pacific region.
Originally announced as a 5.12 terabit system in December 2006, the cable system has increased in capacity, and when fully deployed when phase two is completed, TPE will be a 6 terabit submarine cable system.
The six international telecommunications carriers initially investing in the Trans-Pacific Express Submarine Cable Consortium -- China NetCom, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Korea Telecom and Verizon Business -- knew a monumental task was ahead when they set out to build and make ready for service within two years the most advanced submarine cable in the Pacific Ocean.

The U.S. House of Representative’s rejection of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout, was a prudent decision, say two University of Arkansas researchers who are closely monitoring the U.S. financial crisis.
“The necessity of passing this particular bill was unclear,” said Tim Yeager, associate professor of finance in the Sam M. Walton College of Business and former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Instead of purchasing mortgages directly at unknown prices, the government would be better off purchasing preferred shares of large financial institutions in crisis. If Wall Street lending truly freezes up over the next several days or months, this bill or another one can be passed by Congress to help alleviate the crisis. So at this point, the rejection of the Wall Street bailout bill is a good thing.”

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen, Germany, have reported the completion of the first genomes of wild strains of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana as part of the 1001 Genomes Project.
The entire genomes of two individuals of this species, one from Ireland, the other from Japan, have now been compared in great detail. They were found to be astonishingly different from each other, as Detlef Weigel and his colleagues write in Genome Research.
This study marks the starting point of the 1001 Genomes Project, in which a total of thousand and one individuals of the same species will be sequenced. The scientists aim at correlating the genetic differences between the different strains with variation in the speed of plant growth and their resistance against infectious germs. These strategies could then also be applied to crop plants or trees.

Economic globalization and liberalization have been blamed for numerous social ills over the last two decades, including a sharp rise in interethnic violence in countries all over the world. Not so, say the results of a study conducted by researchers from McGill University and published in the current issue of International Studies Quarterly.
According to Dr. Stephen Saideman and former student David Steinberg, the more government intervention there is in the local economy, the more likely inter-ethnic violence and rebellion becomes. Conversely, the more economically open a society is, the less likely such violence becomes.

Tourism on Antarctica is increasing and that can form a threat for the vulnerable South Pole area. Research from Maastricht University provides a possible solution: market the visitor rights to the highest bidder.
Tourism in Antarctica has grown dramatically. In 1985, just a few thousand people visited the area but in the season 2007/2008 more than 40,000 did. A number of parties are concerned about the effects of this rapid growth with respect to safety, the environment, the scale of tourism and the lack of financial resources for monitoring and enforcement purposes.
They also have doubts about how this growth can be reconciled with the basic principles of the Antarctic Treaty System ATS.

The remains of a 30-foot-long predatory dinosaur discovered along the banks of Argentina's Rio Colorado is helping to unravel how birds evolved their unusual breathing system.
Birds have a breathing system that is unique among land animals. Instead of lungs that expand, birds have a system of bellows, or air sacs, which help pump air through the lungs. This novel feature is the reason birds can fly higher and faster than bats, which, like all mammals, expand their lungs in a less efficient breathing process.
The discovery, announced at a news conference in Mendoza, Argentina, builds on decades of paleontological research indicating that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Smell is one of the most complex and least-understood senses. Humans have a vast olfactory system that includes close to 400 functional genes, more than are dedicated to any other function. Animals such as dogs and mice have around 1,000 functional olfactory receptor genes.
MIT biological engineers have found a way to mass-produce smell receptors in the laboratory, an advance that paves the way for "artificial noses" to be created and used in a variety of settings. The work could also allow scientists to unlock the mystery of how the sense of smell can recognize a seemingly infinite range of odors.
Artificial noses could one day replace drug- and explosive-sniffing dogs, and could have numerous medical applications, according to Zhang and his colleagues. DARPA recently approved funding for the team's MIT (microfluidic-integrated transduction) RealNose project.

Applications for Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships In Science And Religion are now open.
The fellowship enables ten print, broadcast or online journalists to pursue an intensive two-month course of study in issues of science and religion. The program includes three weeks of seminars at the university of Cambridge featuring eminent, well-known authorities in the field. Fellows are paid a stipend in addition to travel expenses to Cambridge.

As more and more greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere and the oceans warm, their chemistry also changes — seawater becomes more acidic as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves.
According to a paper to be published this week by marine chemists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, these changes in ocean temperature and chemistry will have an unexpected side effect— sounds will travel farther underwater.

Researchers in Italy report that an ancient Chinese herbal remedy known as "horny goat weed" shows potential in lab studies as source for new future drugs to treat erectile dysfunction (ED), an issue commonly treated with drugs like Viagra. The study says they provide scientific evidence supporting the herb's use as a natural aphrodisiac.
In the new study, Mario Dell'Agli and colleagues point out that Viagra (sildenafil) and several other prescription drugs are now available for ED, or male impotence. ED affects an estimated 18 million men in the United States alone. Studies show, however, that these drugs may cause side effects such as headache, facial flushing, stomach upset, and visual disturbances.

In research conducted at the University of Calgary, climate change scientist David Keith and a team of researchers showed it is possible to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, using a relatively simple machine that can capture the trace amount of CO2 present in the air at any place on the planet.
The research is significant because air capture technology is the only way to capture CO2 emissions from transportation sources such as vehicles and airplanes. These so-called diffuse sources represent more than half of the greenhouse gases emitted on Earth.