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A recent study by NOAA scientists and colleagues on captive juvenile sandbar sharks showed the presence of an electropositive alloy, in this case palladium neodymium, clearly altered the swimming patterns of individual animals and temporarily deterred feeding in groups of sharks.
Rare earth metals have previously been reported to deter spiny dogfish from attacking bait due to interactions with the shark’s electroreceptive system, which detects weak electric fields including those generated by their prey.
Electric fields generated by electropositive alloys are believed to deter or repel sharks by overloading their sensory systems, a behavior that may help fishery biologists develop a strategy to reduce the bycatch of sharks in longline gear. Shark bycatch is an increasing priority worldwide given diminished populations of many shark species, and because sharks compete with target species for baited lines, reducing fishing efficiency and increasing operating costs.

The residual herbicides commonly used in the production of corn and soybean are frequently detected in rivers, streams, and reservoirs at concentrations that exceed drinking water standards in areas where these crops are extensively grown.
When these bodies of water are used as sources of drinking water this contamination can lead to increased treatment costs or a need to seek alternative sources of supply. Additionally, these herbicides can have negative effects on aquatic ecosystems at concentrations well below their drinking water standards.
When genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant, corn and soybean became commercially available in the 1990s it became possible to replace some of the problematic residual herbicides with strongly sorbed, short half-life, contact herbicides that may be more environmentally benign. By 2004 almost 90% of the soybean grown in the US was genetically modified for tolerance to the contact herbicide glyphosate (Roundup), which is currently the most widely used herbicide in the world.

From the war room to the board room, negotiations are a part of everyday life. Successful negotiations demand a clear understanding of one’s opponent. But what approach should one take to achieve such an understanding of one’s opponent in everyday negotiations?
Psychologist Adam Galinsky from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and colleagues William Maddux (INSEAD), Debra Gilin (St. Mary’s U.), and Judith White (Dartmouth) asked a similar question and found that success in negotiations depends on focusing on the head and not the heart. In other words, it is better to take the perspective of negotiation opponents rather than empathize with them.

Researchers at Deventer Hospital recently tried Luminol, a chemical used by crime scene investigators, to detect traces of blood in their haemodialysis unit. Luminol reacts with microscopic amounts of blood to produce bright blue luminescence, which allows investigators to track invisible blood splashes in the environment.
The researchers tested their apparently clean unit with Luminol and found traces of blood on many surfaces, including cupboard handles, telephones, computer keyboards, side tables and the floor, even though some of these surfaces had been cleaned. They expect that these results can be reproduced in other hospitals that plan to use Luminol in the future as described in their paper.

Score one for the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate, as North Carolina State University geneticists have shown that environmental factors such as lifestyle and geography play a large role in whether certain genes are turned on or off.
By studying gene expression of white blood cells in 46 Moroccan Amazighs, or Berbers – including desert nomads, mountain agrarians and coastal urban dwellers – the NC State researchers and collaborators in Morocco and the United States showed that up to one-third of genes are differentially expressed due to where and how the Moroccan Amazighs live.

Magnetic confinement fusion could be a safe, environmentally friendly way to provide a substantial part of the world’s energy needs in the 21st century but before that can happen science needs to understand the complex behavior of hot collisionless plasmas (ion gases) in strong magnetic fields.
Such plasmas are subject to temperature and density gradient driven microturbulence which leads to particle and heat losses and tends to keep the plasma from reaching a "burning" state.
Simulations are necessary if we are to understand and control plasma microturbulence but, because fusion plasmas are virtually collisionless, a three-dimensional (i.e., in space) fluid description must, in principle, be abandoned, in favor of a six-dimensional (i.e., in phase space) kinetic one.

While the recent Arctic summer was the warmest on record satellite images from the Antarctic summer have shown the largest sea-ice extent ever recorded, according to the Polarstern expedition. ANT-XXIV/3 was dedicated to examining the oceanic circulation and the oceanic cycles of materials that depend on it. Warming is a lot less global when you get south of Chile, it seems.
In the coming years autonomous measuring buoys will be used to find out whether the cold Antarctic summer induces a new trend or was only a 'slip.'
Under the direction of Dr. Eberhard Fahrbach, Oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute, 58 scientists from ten countries were on board the research vessel Polarstern in the Southern Ocean from 6 February until 16 April, 2008. They studied ocean currents as well as the distribution of temperature, salt content and trace substances in Antarctic sea water.

We're a long way from machine cognition but scientist are making improvements, mostly in recognition. Researchers have managed to teach a computer’s vision system to recognise up to 100 objects.
But there is another radically different approach available that European researchers have applied to the study of robotics and AI. The MACS project does not attempt to get robots to perceive what something is, but how it can be used.
This is an application of the cognitive theory of ‘affordances’, developed by the American psychologist James J. Gibson between 1950 and 1979. He rejected behaviourism and proposed a theory of ‘affordances’, a term signifying the range of possible interactions between an individual and a particular object or environment. The theory focuses on what a thing or environment enables a user to do.

Using a multidisciplinary mix of geometry, biological research and techniques developed to solve problems on supercomputers, scientists at the University of California, San Diego have shown for the first time how a genome is organized in three-dimensional space.
Researchers led by Cornelis Murre, a professor of biology at UC San Diego, and Steve Cutchin, senior scientist for visualization services at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), used the gene encoding the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus — responsible for generating diverse kinds of antibodies — to demonstrate the structure of the genome.
The observations, the researchers say, permit an insight into the structure of the human genome, which until now has remained elusive.

The government of Cameroon has created the Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary, the world’s first sanctuary exclusively for the Cross River gorilla, the world’s rarest kind of great ape.
“The creation of this sanctuary is the fruit of many years of work in helping to protect the world’s rarest gorilla subspecies,” said Dr. Roger Fotso, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Cameroon Program, which worked in tandem with the Cameroon Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife in laying the groundwork for the sanctuary.
Classified as Critically Endangered by IUCN’s Red List, the Cross River gorilla is the rarest of the four subspecies of gorilla. The entire population numbers under 300 individuals across its entire range, which consists of 11 scattered sites in Cameroon and Nigeria.

Looking on the bright side can lead to irresponsible financial behavior, says Elizabeth Cowley from the University of Sydney. In a series of studies, Cowley examined repeated gambling in the face of loss. She finds that people often engage in too much positive thinking, selectively focusing on one win among hundreds of losses when they think back on the overall experience.
“When we want to justify engaging in an activity which could potentially be irresponsible – like gambling – we may need to distort our memory of the past to rationalize the decision,” Cowley explains. “People who have frequently spent more money than planned on gambling edit their memories of the past in order to justify gambling again.”

A genetic variation protects some people with heart failure, enabling them to live longer than expected, according to a research team led by investigators at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The researchers found that the genetic variation acts just like beta-blockers, a class of drugs used to treat chronic heart failure.
In the study, the researchers found that black heart failure patients with the genetic variation had a natural protection against death and the need for a heart transplant that is the same as the protection provided by beta-blocker therapy.