News Articles

The celebrated Bristol Dinosaur, Thecodontosaurus, has been shown to live on subtropical islands around Bristol, instead of in a desert on the mainland as previously thought.
This new research could explain the dinosaur’s small size (2 m) in relation to its giant (10 m) mainland equivalent, Plateosaurus. Like many species trapped on small islands, such as the ‘hobbit’, Homo floresiensis, of Flores and pygmy elephants on Malta, the Bristol Dinosaur may have been subjected to island dwarfing.
Geological mapping indicates that the islands were quite small in size and, judging by abundant remains of fossil charcoal, were often swept by fires.

FACT: The inner core of the earth is a sphere with a radius of about 1,200 km, made mostly of iron, which has different mechanical and magnetic properties based on temperature.
MYSTERY: Elastic waves pass that through this core move faster parallel to the earth’s axis of rotation than they do parallel to the equator.
At the high temperatures that prevail in the core of the earth, these waves should pass at the same speed regardless of their direction.

In the science world, media and our daily lives, the debate continues over how carbon in the atmosphere is affecting global climate change. In a study of how organic carbon is processed in rivers, a research team including an engineer, ecologists and microbiologists has determined that carbon processing in rivers is a bigger component of global carbon cycling than previously thought.
Aaron Packman, Northwestern University associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, is collaborating with ecologists and microbiologists from around the world to study how organic carbon is processed in rivers.
Packman, who specializes in studying how particles and sediment move around in rivers, is co-author of a paper on the topic published in Nature Geoscience.

Black holes are massive gravitational fields in the universe that result from the collapse of giant stars. Because black holes absorb light, they cannot be studied using telescopes or other instruments that rely on light waves. However, scientists believe they can learn more about black holes by listening for their gravitational waves.
Scientists hope that a new supercomputer being built by Syracuse University's Department of Physics may help them identify the sound of a celestial black hole. The supercomputer, dubbed SUGAR (SU Gravitational and Relativity Cluster), will soon receive massive amounts of data from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) that was collected over a two-year period at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
Gravitational waves are produced by violent events in the distant universe, such as the collision of black holes or explosions of supernovas. The waves radiate across the universe at the speed of light. While Albert Einstein predicted the existence of these waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity, it has taken decades to develop the technology to detect them.

The two atoms of an oxygen molecule severed by a metal catalyst usually behave identically, but new research reveals that on a particular catalyst, one oxygen atom plants itself while the other moves away, probably with energy partially stolen from the stationary one.
Scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found this unanticipated behavior while studying how oxygen interacts with reduced titanium oxide surfaces. The chemists are trying to understand how molecular oxygen -- the stuff we breathe -- interacts with metals and metal oxides, which are used as catalysts in a variety of environmental and energy applications.

Forty years ago, mathematician Mark Kac asked the theoretical question, "Can one hear the shape of a drum?"
If drums of different shapes always produce their own unique sound spectrum, then it should be possible to identify the shape of a specific drum merely by studying its spectrum, thus "hearing" the drum's shape (a procedure analogous to spectroscopy, the way scientists detect the composition of a faraway star by studying its light spectrum).
But what if two drums of different shapes could emit exactly the same sound?

The February issue of Geotimes takes a look at the complicated issues surrounding Iraq’s oil exploration and production.
Though oil prices have doubled and Iraq boasts the largest untapped oil reserves in the world, the instability that comes with war, attacks on infrastructure and outdated technology in Iraq have led to the lowest reserve-to-production ratio of all oil-producing countries.
Currently Iraq produces 2.0 million barrels per day (bpd), down from an average of 2.6 million prior to the invasion in 2003. Exploration and development in Northern Iraq could easily increase production by 100,000 bpd.

A report published in BMC Public Health states that socio-economics and neighborhood have a more powerful influence on sexual activity among 15- and 16-year-olds than the classroom.
A team of researchers analyzed data on nearly 5,000 pupils from 24 different Scottish Schools. They found that overall 42% of girls and 33% of boys reported experience of sexual intercourse, but the rates between schools ranged widely, from 23% to 61%.
Commenting on the value of sex education in schools, lead author Dr. Marion Henderson said, "It would be over-simplifying to interpret these results as suggesting that sex education isn't valuable. The study was looking at effects of school beyond the sex education curricula."

National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Arden L. Bement Jr. has presented the agency's proposed $6.85 billion budget for fiscal year (FY) 2009, a 13 percent increase over its actual FY 2008 budget. The additional $822.10 million would increase funding for agency programs that advance the frontiers of research and education in science and engineering.
Bement said the increase reflected a growing consensus that the United States needs to invest more resources in basic scientific research if it is to remain a global leader in science and technology. "More than a dozen major studies have now concluded that a substantial increase in federal funding for basic scientific research is critical to ensure the preeminence of America's scientific and technological enterprise," Bement said.

The colugo doesn't fly and is not a lemur but it's still called a "flying lemur" - and it's the champion of all gliding mammals, able to drop from the forest canopy in Malaysia, glide more than the length of two football fields, execute 90-degree turns and then alight gently on a tree trunk.
The colugo looks like a very large squirrel with membranous skin stretching from each limb and even between its toes to catch the wind and work as a parachute. When fully spread, the skin flaps reach the size of a large doormat.
Researchers are discovering how these animals move with the help of a miniature backpack outfitted with accelerometers.

The Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) has released an upgraded version of the IMG/M metagenome data management and analysis system, providing tools for analyzing the functional capability of microbial communities based on their metagenome DNA sequence in the context of reference isolate genomes.
The new version includes five additional metagenome datasets generated from microbial community samples that were the subject of recently published studies, including the metagenomic and functional analysis of termite hindgut microbiota (Nature 450, 560-565, 22 November 2007) and the single cell genetic analysis of TM7, a rare and uncultivated microbe from the human mouth (PNAS, July 17, 2007, vol. 104, no. 29, 11889-11894).

There was a time when you had to be rich to be fat. Now you have to be rich to stay thin, says a new study.
Researchers led by Jennifer L. Black at New York University critically reviewed ninety studies published between 1997 through 2007 on neighborhood determinants of obesity through the PubMed and PsychInfo databases.
They found that neighborhoods with decreased economic and social resources have higher rates of obesity. They also found that residents in low-income urban areas are more likely to report greater neighborhood barriers to physical activity, such as limited opportunities for daily walking or physical activity and reduced access to stores that sell healthy foods, especially large supermarkets.