News Articles

A recent Newsweek magazine cover story on global warming contained significant errors and used outdated scientific material in its representation of global climate data collected by satellites, according to the scientists who maintain that dataset at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Dr. John Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer, who created and maintain the global temperature dataset, recently addressed how instruments aboard NOAA satellites collect temperature data and about the accuracy of that data.

If you’re among the creatures that produce scads of genetically identical offspring – like microbes, plants or water fleas - you have a good evolutionary strategy, a new study says.
These creatures provide a chance to wonder about the clones raised in near-identical environments that turn out differently than their kin. In this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a Michigan State University zoologist and others report how the greater good of a genetic pool of identical organisms is affected when a few individuals break from the developmental pack.

Men really only think about women, it seems, even to the point of evolving to be more attractive to them.
Men with large jaws, flaring cheeks and large eyebrows are sexy, at least in the eyes of our ancestors, researchers at the Natural History Museum have discovered. Facial attractiveness played a major role in shaping human evolution, as studies on our fossil ancestors have shown our choice of sexual partner has shaped the human face.
Dr Eleanor Weston, palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum said, ‘The evolution of facial appearance is central to understanding what makes men and women attractive to each other.

Did a group of Indian scholars out-math Newton hundreds of years before he was born?
Dr George Gheverghese Joseph from The University of Manchester says the ‘Kerala School’ in India identified the ‘infinite series’- one of the founding principles of modern mathematics and a basic component of calculus - in about 1350.
Circumstantial evidence listed by Gheverghese also says that the Indians passed on their discoveries to mathematically knowledgeable Jesuit missionaries who visited India during the fifteenth century and that knowledge may have been passed on to Sir Isaac later.
The discovery is attributed ( wrongly, says Gheverghese ) to Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz at the end of the seventeenth centuries.
The team from the Universities of Manchester and Exeter reveal the Kerala

The plant growth hormone auxin is controlled by circadian rhythms within the plant, UC Davis researchers have found. The discovery explains how plants can time their growth to take advantage of resources such as light and water, and suggests that many other processes may be influenced by circadian rhythms.
Auxin tells shoots to grow away from the ground and toward light and water. Charles Darwin conducted early experiments that showed how auxin affects plant growth. Most plants and animals have an internal clock that allows them to match their activities to the time of day or season of the year.

Credit: dlarborist.com

Italians, Irish and European Jews were all once considered 'non-white' by the standards of their day but that's hardly the case now - and certainly not the case with the descendants of those immigrants.
But a new study on Latino immigrants finds that, in contrast to past generations of European immigrants, a significant share of second-and-third-generation Latino-Americans still identify with a Latino racial category.
Joseph Michael, a UC doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and a researcher at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and Jeffrey Timberlake, University of Cincinnati assistant professor of sociology, are examining how the immigration of Latinos to the United States compares to the earlier European immigration waves of white ethnic

Enthusiastic observers were rewarded by a nice display of the Perseid meteor shower that was visible at its best in the night between 12 and 13 August 2007. We present glimpses of the spectacle and the scientific rewards of staying up all night.
The comet Swift-Tuttle orbits the Sun with a period of about 130 years. Whenever the comet comes close to the Sun in its orbit, it ejects a stream of dust particles, which are then distributed along its orbit. When the Earth passes through their path - a regular occurrence every August - we see a meteor shower, a fabulous spectacle for viewers on Earth.

Cocaine abuse in the U.S. is widespread, with nearly 35 million Americans reporting having ever tried cocaine and an estimated 7.3 million users, including 15 percent of young adults ages 18 to 25, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Life-threatening emergencies related to cocaine use include sudden cardiac death, high blood pressure, stroke and acute myocardial infarctions.
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a treatment that counteracts the effects of cocaine on the human cardiovascular system, including lowering the elevated heart rate and blood pressure often found in cocaine users.

Robert Weinberg, MIT professor of biology and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research member, has created cancer stem cells in a Petri dish by isolating and transforming a particular population of cells from human breast tissue. After being injected with just 100 of these transformed cells, mice developed tumors that metastasized (spread to distant tissues).
“The operational definition of a cancer stem cell is the ability to initiate a tumor, so these are cancer stem cells,” declares Weinberg, who is also an MIT professor of biology.
Engineering these potent cells was not the original intent, says pathologist Tan Ince.

Two new studies may lead to the development of more effective therapies for individuals with multiple myeloma (MM), a common and incurable blood cell cancer. The research provides new insight into the molecular mechanisms that underlie aberrant NF-κB activity in MM tumor cells and underscores the relevance of the NF-κB signaling pathway as a target for MM therapy.
MM is a cancer of the plasma cell, a blood cell that produces antibodies to help the body fight off infections. Previous research implicates abnormal activation of the NF-κB signaling pathway as a key event in MM pathology. NF-κB target genes are known to be involved in cell proliferation and cell survival.

James Spivey, professor of chemical engineering at LSU, and Challa Kumar, group leader of nanofabrication at LSU’s Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices, are working with Clemson University and Oak Ridge National Laboratories to boost the efficiency of ethanol.
Both the Department of Energy and Conoco-Phillips are behind the project and have invested $2.9 million.
“We’re working with our project partners to produce ethanol from a coal-derived syngas, a mixture of primarily carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The United States has tremendous reserves of coal, but converting it to affordable, clean fuels is a challenge – one that we are addressing in this DOE-funded project,” said Spivey.

In a study scheduled for publication in the August issue of the American Journal of Chinese Medicine, a team of kinesiologists at the University of Illinois suggest that older adults who adopt an exercise regimen combining Taiji ( western: T'ai Chi) and Qigong may get an extra boost from their annual flu shot.
“We have found that 20 weeks of Taiji can increase the antibody response to influenza vaccine in older adults,” said the study’s lead author Yang Yang, an adjunct professor of kinesiology and community health, and a Taiji master with 30-plus years of experience as a practitioner and instructor.