News Articles

What do farmers think about GM crops? They like 'em - they like better crops with fewer pesticides and they feel that government has not listened when it counts so business has filled the void.
A group at the Open University, led by Professor Andy Lane, has taken the first systematic look at what large-scale, commodity farmers – not those mainly involved in organic growing - think about genetically-modified crops.
Lane and his colleagues found that both farmers who have been involved in GM crop trials and those who have not, regard GM as a simple extension of previous plant breeding techniques, such as those which have produced today’s established crop types. They regard GM crops as an innovation which they would assess on its merits. Their real interest is in how GM crops would work in practice and whether they can contribute to the profitability of their farms. The research suggests that these farmers do not think that GM raises any issues of principle, or that it is a matter of right or wrong.

Digital logic, or bits, is the only paradigm for the IT world, and up to now researchers used it almost exclusively to study quantum information processing. But European scientists say that an analog approach is far easier in the quantum world.
Modern computing is digital, a series of 1s and 0s that, once combined, create powerful information processing systems. The system is so simple – on or off, yes or no – that it almost seems dumb. It is that very simplicity that gives digital computing its power. It works very well - but there is a problem. Silicon circuits are getting so small that they will soon be bumping up against a fundamental physical limit.

The newspaper, that daily chronicle of human events, is undergoing the most momentous transformation in its centuries-old history. Online versions are proliferating, attracting young readers, and generally carving out a sizable swath of the news business. In the United States alone, 34 million people have made a daily habit of reading an online newspaper.
An online news site can change minute by minute and generate a different front page for each reader. The most interesting and useful customization involves capturing information about the readers' interests from their past behavior. There's already a model for that--the recommendation systems used by Web sites like Amazon, TiVo, and Netflix.

Researchers at the Department of Artificial Intelligence (DIA) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s School of Computing (FIUPM) have, in conjunction with Madrid’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, developed an algorithm that is capable of processing 30 images per second to recognize a person’s facial expressions in real time and categorize them as one of six prototype expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise.
Applying the facial expression recognition algorithm, the developed prototype is capable of processing a sequence of frontal images of moving faces and recognizing the person’s facial expression. The software can be applied to video sequences in realistic situations and can identify the facial expression of a person seated in front of a computer screen.

The human nervous system consists of the brain and spinal marrow, which constitute the central nervous system (CNS), and sensory nerve cells that comprise the peripheral nervous system (PNS).
Information from our surroundings-sight, smell, hearing, etc.-are transmitted from specific sensory nerve cells in the PNS to the central nervous system, where it is processed and governs our response. These processes require the two nervous systems to be functionally connected.

NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate has amended its NASA Research Announcement to solicit additional research proposals. The Research Opportunities in Aeronautics 2007 has been amended to include new topics in support of the Subsonic Rotary Wing Project.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have compiled a large catalog of gravitational lenses in the distant universe. The catalog contains 67 new gravitationally lensed galaxy images found around massive elliptical and lenticular-shaped galaxies. This sample demonstrates the rich diversity of strong gravitational lenses. If this sample is representative, there would be nearly half a million similar gravitational lenses over the whole sky.
The lenses come from a recently completed, large set of observations as part of a huge project to survey a single 1.6-square-degree field of sky (nine times the area of the full Moon) with several space-based and Earth-based observatories.

While current-generation solar cell technologies are too expensive and inefficient for wide-scale commercial applications, the demands of United States energy needs are spurring new advancements in improving solar cell efficiency.
A team of Northwestern University researchers has developed a new anode coating strategy that significantly enhances the efficiency of solar energy power conversion. Their paper about the work focuses on “engineering” organic material-electrode interfaces in bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells.

The raging eruption of dust and water from the south pole of Enceladus, Saturn's sixth-largest moon, has intrigued scientists ever since the Cassini spacecraft provided dramatic images of the phenomenon.
Physicist Nikolai Brilliantov from the University of Leicester and colleagues in Germany, have revealed why the dust particles in the plume emerge more slowly than the water vapour escaping from the moon's icy crust.
Enceladus orbits in Saturn's outermost "E" ring. It is one of only three outer solar system bodies that produce active eruptions of dust and water vapour.

Kava has been used in ceremonies and for recreational and social purposes in the South Pacific since ancient times, much like alcohol, tea or coffee is in other societies today.
In the 1980s other medicinal uses for kava began to emerge and it was marketed in herbal form as a natural way to treat conditions such as anxiety, insomnia, tension and restlessness, particularly in Europe and North America.
More recently, evidence began to emerge about the adverse affect kava could have on the liver and serious concerns about the dangers of kava and the effects on the liver have resulted in regulatory agencies, such as the US Food and Drug Administration and Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration, banning or restricting the sale of kava and kava products.

A discovery in molecular chemistry may help remove a barrier to widespread use of diesel and other fuel-efficient "lean burn" vehicle engines. Researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have recorded the first observations of how certain catalyst materials used in emission control devices are constructed.
The PNNL team observed how barium oxide attaches itself to the surface of gamma-alumina. Barium oxide is a compound that absorbs toxic nitrogen oxide, commonly referred to as NOx, from tail-pipe emissions. Gamma alumina is a form of aluminum oxide that is used as a support for catalyst materials, such as barium oxide, that are the active ingredients in exhaust systems.

It has always been impossible to clearly photograph electrons since their extremely high velocities have produced blurry pictures. In order to capture these rapid events, extremely short flashes of light are necessary, but such flashes were not previously available.
With the use of a newly developed technology for generating short pulses from intense laser light, so-called attosecond pulses, scientists at the Lund University Faculty of Engineering in Sweden have managed to capture the electron motion for the first time.
The movie shows how an electron rides on a light wave after just having been pulled away from an atom.