News Articles

Accurate measurement of thermal performance is crucial if legislation aimed at producing dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions is to be successful. The UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is offering construction companies a way of meeting this mandate.
Two factors are making the need for accurate measurement of the thermal performance of building products ever more important. Firstly, the Code for Sustainable Homes published by the Department for Communities and Local Government in 2006 set a target of producing zero carbon homes by 2016. The second is the draft Climate Change Bill with its declared intention of setting a legal framework for ensuring a specific reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 and a 60% reduction of 1990 levels by 2050. This will result in a constant stream of legislation and regulations aimed at minimising energy use in new buildings.

By the age of 18 years, two in every five South African schoolboys report being forced to have sex, mostly by female perpetrators. A new study, reported in International Journal for Equity in Health, reveals the shocking truth about endemic sexual abuse of male children that has been suspected but until now only poorly documented.
Some 28% of victims said a non-family member or teacher was the perpetrator. Another 28% had been forced by a fellow student, while 20% had been abused by a teacher and 18% by an adult family member.
Until 2007, forced sex with males in South Africa did not count as rape but as ‘indecent assault’, a much less serious offense.

Tired of your bulky microscope? Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a super-compact high-resolution microscope, small enough to fit on a finger tip.
This "microscopic microscope" operates without lenses but has the magnifying power of a top-quality optical microscope, can be used in the field to analyze blood samples for malaria or check water supplies for giardia and other pathogens, and can be mass-produced for around $10.
"The whole thing is truly compact--it could be put in a cell phone--and it can use just sunlight for illumination, which makes it very appealing for Third-World applications," says Changhuei Yang, assistant professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at Caltech, who developed the device, dubbed an optofluidic microscope, along with his colleagues at Caltech.

Penn State researchers have used computed tomography (CT) technology to virtually glue newly-discovered skull fragments of a rare extinct lemur back into its partial skull, which was discovered over a century ago. Alan Walker, Evan Pugh Professor of Anthropology and Biology at Penn State, and Research Associate in Anthropology Timothy Ryan, led the research.
The different fragments of this lemur's skull are separated by thousands of miles, with the partial skull in Vienna and the pieces of frontal bone in the United States. The result of the digital manipulation is a nearly complete skull of Hadropithecus stenognathus, which is one of only two known skulls for this species.

A fish-heavy diet has gotten another endorsement, this one saying that a lifetime of eating tuna, sardines, salmon and other fish appears to protect Japanese men against clogged arteries, despite other cardiovascular risk factors.
The research, published in the August 5, 2008, issue of Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), suggests that the protection comes from omega-3 fatty acids found in abundance in oily fish. In the first international study of its kind, researchers found that compared to middle-aged white men or Japanese-American men living in the United States, Japanese men living in Japan had twice the blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids—a finding that was independently linked to low levels of atherosclerosis.

If you're a pessimist, the primate known as the "Kipunji'"discovered just three years ago, is already bordering on extinction.
If you're more of an optimist, you may think that its small numbers are why it was never discovered until recently so 1,117 of them are nothing to be alarmed about.
The Wildlife Conservation Society is in the alarm business so they're saying that the first-ever census of the forest-dwelling primate showing 1,117 individuals, according to a study released in the July issue of the journal Oryx, is worrisome.

A recent study published by the International Journal of Eating Disorders says that university undergraduate women who actively participate in sports and exercise-related activities tend to have higher rates of attitudes and behaviors related to eating disorders compared to those who do not regularly exercise.
The researchers concluded that women who have higher anxiety about their sport or exercise-related performance were even more likely to experience eating disorder symptoms and body dissatisfaction. This study is one of the first to document that women who participate in high levels of athletic competition and have sports anxiety are more likely to experience eating disorder symptoms.

A snapshot of New Zealand's climate 40 million years ago reveals a greenhouse Earth, with warmer seas and little or no ice in Antarctica, according to research published this week in the journal Geology.
The study suggests that Antarctica at that time was yet to develop extensive ice sheets. Back then, New Zealand was about 1100 km further south, at the same latitude as the southern tip of South America – so was closer to Antarctica – but the researchers found that the water temperature was 23-25°C at the sea surface and 11-13°C at the bottom.

The ocean is a noisy place and although we don't hear much when we stick our heads underwater, the right instruments can reveal a symphony of sound.
The noisemakers range from the low-frequency bass tones of a fish mating ritual to the roar of a motorboat. The study of how underwater animals hear is a growing topic in marine science, especially with regards to naval sonar and whales.
This summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), zoologist T. Aran Mooney will be the first scientist to look at cephalopod hearing, using the squid, Loligo pealeii, as a model. To learn how sensitive the translucent animals are to noise, he is monitoring squid brain waves as they respond to various sounds, specifically the echolocation clicks of its main predators: the sperm whale, beaked whale, and dolphin. In addition to the brain wave experiments, he also plans to condition squid to avoid certain sounds.

Oxytocin was originally studied as the "milk let-down factor," i.e., a hormone that was necessary for breast-feeding. However, there is increasing evidence that this hormone also plays an important role in social bonding and maternal behaviors.
A new study in Biological Psychiatry shows that one way oxytocin promotes social affiliation in humans is by enhancing the encoding of positive social memories.

BRAY, Ireland, July 28 /PRNewswire/ --
Advanced Surgical Concepts is pleased to announce that surgeons have used its TriPort device to complete a kidney transplant through only a small incision in the donor's bellybutton. The donor was able to leave the hospital less than 48 hours after the surgery with his surgical scar hidden by the natural contour of the bellybutton, rather than the 12" abdominal scar that is common following kidney removal surgery.

Is even microwave cooking not fast enough for you? Researchers from Saga Ceramic Research Laboratory in Japan and the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences and Materials Research Institute at Pennsylvania State University report in Chemistry of Materials that their new ceramic materials heat up faster and retain heat longer than conventional microwave cookware, all while using less energy.
In the new study, Sridhar Komarneni, Hiroaki Katsuki, and Nobuaki Kamochi note that researchers long have sought a commercially feasible method for using microwaves in the production of new genres of sturdy-heat-resistant ceramic materials. However, no optimal process had been developed.