News Articles

Is there such a thing as 'math' dyslexia?
Daniel Ansari, an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, is using brain imaging to understand how children develop math skills, and what kind of brain development is associated with those skills.
Some children who experience mathematical difficulties have what has been termed developmental dyscalculia – a syndrome that is similar to dyslexia, a learning disability that affects a child's ability to read. Children with dyscalculia often have difficulty understanding the concept of numerical quantity. For example, they find it difficult to connect abstract symbols, such as a number, to the numerical magnitude it represents. They can't see the connection between five fingers and the number '5'.

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, says a new Northwestern University study in the Journal of Research in Personality, you're motivated by fear.
Political conservatives worry about fear of chaos and absence of order while political liberals operate out of a fear of emptiness, they say.
How did they arrive at those conclusions?

Masdar, Abu Dhabi's program to develop sustainable solutions to meet the world's future energy demand, has established an international awards program designed to recognize innovation and leadership in the global search for future energy solutions -- the Zayed Future Energy Prize.
The Zayed Future Energy Prize recognizes individuals, organizations, companies and NGOs who are advancing innovation in the field of clean energy and sustainable development. A jury of international experts chaired by Nobel Laureate Dr. R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will choose one winner and two finalists for the prize.

Are drinks like Red Bull and other 'energy' beverages making caffeine a gateway drug? Johns Hopkins scientists who have spent decades researching the effects of caffeine say that is the case, and they report that a slew of caffeinated energy drinks now on the market should carry prominent labels that note caffeine doses and warn of potential health risks for consumers.
Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., one of the authors of an article that appears in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence this month, says most of these drinks advertise their products as performance enhancers and stimulants – a marketing strategy that may put young people at risk for abusing even stronger stimulants such as the prescription drugs amphetamine and methylphenidate (Ritalin).
Caffeine intoxication, a recognized clinical syndrome included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases, is marked by nervousness, anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, gastrointestinal upset, tremors, rapid heartbeats (tachycardia), psychomotor agitation (restlessness and pacing) and in rare cases, death.

Professor Ron Appel, speaking at the 10th anniversary conference of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics in Berne, Switzerland, says they have completed the annotation of human proteins.
Where the Human Genome Project produced a dictionary, this new work is more like an encyclopedia because it looks at life as it is really organized in our body at the molecular level, which will speed up scientific work that aims to improve our quality of life, like how we can combat genetic-based diseases.
Professor Amos Bairoch, head of the SIB's Swiss-Prot group said: "If human DNA is the script of life, proteins are its actors, its living embodiment."

The deep interior of Neptune, Uranus and Earth may contain some solid ice.
Through first-principle molecular dynamics simulations, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists, together with University of California, Davis collaborators, used a two-phase approach to determine the melting temperature of ice VII (a high-pressure phase of ice) in pressures ranging from 100,000 to 500,000 atmospheres.
For pressures between 100,000 and 400,000 atmospheres, the team, led by Eric Schwegler, found that ice melts as a molecular solid (similar to how ice melts in a cold drink). But in pressures above 450,000 atmospheres, there is a sharp increase in the slope of the melting curve due to molecular disassociation and proton diffusion in the solid, prior to melting, which is typically referred to as a superionic solid phase.

It's easy to blame Republicans for our environmental troubles but this ethanol stuff was trumpeted by Al Gore and environmental groups for 15 years, and they only figured out it must be stupid when Republicans agreed and made it into law.
It's only getting worse. A bill approved today by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee will expand ongoing efforts by Brazil and the United States to promote the production and use of biofuels, according to the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association.

Alcoholics are more likely to die of smoking-related diseases than from the consequences of drinking. Even 'casual' smokers are more likely to be alcoholics, but it's the smoking that more often does them in.
A new study published in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research looks at casual smoking and drinking behavior and has found that non-daily smoking confers an increased risk of hazardous drinking and alcohol-use disorders (AUDs).
Non-daily or "casual" smokers tend to slip through the cracks of prevention efforts but casual smoking and heavy drinking are prevalent behaviors among young adults and, furthermore, casual smoking occurs primarily in the context of alcohol use.

Scientists at the Science and Technology Facilities Council have developed a system that measures the individual layers of cloud above us which will make answering weather questions possible in the future. This Cloud Radar will not only allow forecasters to predict the weather more precisely, the information gathered will also enable aircraft pilots to judge more accurately whether it is safe to take off and land in diverse weather conditions, offering a powerful safety capability for civil airports and military air bases.
Developed over 10 years by researchers and engineers at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, in collaboration with the Met Office, the Cloud Radar can take a complete and accurate profile of cloud or fog up to 5 miles overhead. Operating at 94 GHz, 50 times higher in frequency than most mobile phones, the radar measures the cloud base height, its thickness, density and internal structure as well as providing similar information on cloud layers at higher altitudes.

The fatter the world gets, the more extreme thinness is popular on the internet, according to an analysis of nearly three million random URLs. The study revealed that websites promoting anorexia and bulimia have jumped in number since 2007.

If you've been reading all those studies on the benefits of chocolate and salivating at the thought of milk-chocolating your way to health and longevity, you're going to be disappointed. But if you aren't a choco-holic and just want to know if it can help you stay heart healthy, there is good news.
6.7 grams of chocolate per day (that's 1/15th of a chocolate bar) represents the ideal amount for a protective effect against inflammation and subsequent cardiovascular disease, say the results of a population study being conducted by the Research Laboratories of the Catholic University in Campobasso in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute of Milan.
The findings, published the Journal of Nutrition, come from one of the largest epidemiological studies ever conducted in Europe, the Moli-sani Project, which has enrolled 20,000 inhabitants of the Molise region(1).

The effect of global climate change on the planet's ecosystems is one of the key issues scientists are currently focusing on and, while there isn't a lot of good news, there is some; the main source of food for many fish, including cod, in the North Atlantic appears to adapt in order to survive climate change.
Billions of Calanus finmarchicus, a plankton species, which are just a few millimeters in size, live in the waters of the North Atlantic where the research was carried out. It showed they responded to global warming after the last Ice Age, around 18,000 years ago, by moving north and maintaining large population sizes and also suggests that these animals might be able to track the current change in habitat.
Calanus finmarchicus, a zooplankton species, is considered one of the most important components of the regional marine food web.