News Articles

Although most Americans believe they know what brought down the World Trade Center twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, civil engineers are still seeking answers to questions that could save lives in the future.
Structural engineers need to know from a scientific perspective what happened to the buildings during the terrorist attacks in order to prevent future failures.
The search for answers continues with the help of a state-of-the-art animated visualization created by researchers at Purdue University.
Source: Purdue University

A team of Canadian and U.S. researchers have uncovered evidence that ragged, kilometre-high undulating features on the surface of Mars were shorelines of massive ancient oceans that once covered one-third of the planet in water.
Mars’ oceanic past has been debated since Viking spacecraft images from the 1970’s pinpointed features that seemed similar to shorelines on the Earth. However, in the 1990s, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor revealed that peaks and dips along these features had topographic differences of nearly 3 kilometres. Since old shorelines on Earth remain nearly flat relative to sea level, there was widespread skepticism that these features represented ancient shorelines.

A unique discovery of two celestial explosions at exactly the same position in the sky has led astronomers to suggest they have witnessed the death of one of the most massive stars that can exist.
A global collaboration of astronomers, led by Queen’s University Belfast teamed up with Japanese supernova hunter Koichi Itagaki to report an amazing new discovery. This is the first time such a double explosion has been observed and challenges our understanding of star-deaths.

Credit (c) Frederic Durillon - www.animea.com, Courtesy Service d'Astrophysique/CEA

Sandia National Laboratories is pioneering the future of superalloy materials by advancing the science behind how those superalloys are made.
As part of Sandia’s nanoscale research, a group of experts specializing in inorganic synthesis and characterization, modeling, and radiation science have designed a radical system of experiments to study the science of creating metal and alloy nanoparticles.

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A young star’s strange elliptical ring of dust likely heralds the presence of an undiscovered Neptune-sized planet, says a University of Rochester astronomer
Stars in the early stages of life are surrounded by dust clouds that thin out and dissipate as the star reaches maturity, becoming rings in their final stages. One star, however, has a dust ring that has long puzzled astronomers because it is not centered around the star as usual. Instead, the ring is elliptical, with the parent star off to one side.

Hubble image of Fomalhaut and ring. Credit: NASA

It's no secret that humans can recognize siblings on a biological level. Now it turns out plants can also, according to biologists at McMaster University. Even more, they get downright competitive with strangers of the same species.
“The ability to recognize and favour kin is common in animals, but this is the first time it has been shown in plants” said Susan Dudley, associate professor of biology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. “When plants share their pots, they get competitive and start growing more roots, which allows them to grab water and mineral nutrients before their neighbours get them.

A team of researchers led by University of Virginia Health System geneticists has uncovered a major secret in the mystery of how the DNA helix replicates itself time after time.
It turns out that it is not just the sequence of the bases (building blocks) in the DNA, but also how loosely or tightly the chromatin (the material that makes up chromosomes) is packed at different points of the chromosome that is critical.

Human-caused nitrogen deposition has been indirectly “fertilizing” forests, increasing their growth and sequestering major amounts of carbon, a new study suggests.
The findings create a more complex view of the carbon cycle in forests, where it was already known that logging or other stand-replacement events – whether natural or not – create periods of 5-20 years when there is a net release of carbon dioxide from forests to the atmosphere, instead of sequestration as they do later on.

A decade or so ago, a spate of high profile legal cases arose in which people were accused, and often convicted, on the basis of “recovered memories.” These memories, usually recollections of childhood abuse, arose years after the incident occurred and often during intensive psychotherapy.
So how accurate are recovered memories? The answer is not so clear. In fact, this question has lead to one of the most contentious issues in the fields of psychology and psychiatry.

As a result of mapping the structure of the protein complex implicated in autism spectrum disorders, a research team led by scientists at University of California, San Diego have discovered how particular genetic mutations affect this complex and contribute to the developmental abnormalities found in children with autism. Their work should help scientists pinpoint the consequences of other genetic abnormalities associated with the disorder.

Neuroligin/neurexin complex in the synapse

If you've ever thought about running a public company, Sarbanes-Oxley is something you probably dread. Commonly dubbed "The Enron Law", it requires enormous oversight paperwork with the consequence that Chairmen, CEOs and Directors can go to jail if they violate it. A new University of Georgia study finds that the 2002 law has altered the makeup of corporate boards, making them larger and more independent and also had the unintended effect of increasing director pay - by more than 50 percent.
CEO pay as well. If you can go to jail for doing a job, be it Director or CEO, you demand more money to do it.

A new therapy to re-activate silenced genes in patients who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases or stroke is being developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Cornell University.
During and after a stroke, certain cellular events take place that lead to the death of brain cells. Compounds that inhibit a group of enzymes called histone deacetylases can modulate gene expression, and in some cases produce cellular proteins that are actually neuroprotective -- they are able to block cell death.