In the 1980s, scientists captured the precise mechanics of a protein machine. It looked strange, to researchers its tall thin structure with stubby legs invoked the enchanted broomstick that stole the show in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of Disney's 1940 Fantasia film.
In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue computer beat Garry Kasparov at chess. He had won their first encounter in 1996, with 3 wins, 1 loss and 2 draws (4-2), so the team of programmers and chess experts tweaked the program and in 1997 came out ahead 3.5-2.5, a big achievement for programming because chess is 'creative'.
Another creative task even more relevant to scientists than chess is extracting data from scientific publications to create a database cataloging results from tens of thousands of individual studies. It sounds like it would be easy but much of cataloging would ordinarily be placed in the 'subjective' camp.
Relational aggression, such as malicious rumors, social exclusion and rejection, are considered something that girls do more often. The movie "Mean Girls" epitomized it to hilarious effect. A trio of scholars used surveys to show that boys are being shortchanged in popular accounts of mean-ness.
620 randomly selected sixth graders were followed through their senior year, filling out an annual survey talking about victimization. Using group-based trajectory modeling the female co-authors determined that boys are actually meaner than girls - or at least they brag about it more on surveys. Boys were more often to call themselves relational aggression perpetrators while girls reported being victims more.
In epidemiology, matching curves are often enough to imply causation and so it is often done, even if there is no evidence to warrant the link.
There has been an increased use of antibiotics and there are an increased number of diagnoses so some epidemiologists looked at those two curves in the same direction and suggested one may be causing the other. A new analysis of about 500,000 children published in BMJ dismisses those claims and finds that exposure to antibiotics during pregnancy or early in life does not appear to increase the risk of asthma.
Imagine a car that can't get dirty or a business in Ferguson, Missouri that can't be graffiti'ed by unhinged protesters. It might be possible with a new class of highly fluorinated super-repellent polymer called a “fluoropore”, which mimics the natural ability of lotus plants and cabbage leaves to make water droplets simply roll away - but for oils too. This lotus effect has been used for producing rough surfaces with special chemical properties. “However, this trick does not work for oils – the lotus plant repels water, but no oil,” says Dr.-Ing. Bastian Rapp of the KIT Institute of Microstructure Technology. “Oil-repellent surfaces need to have another chemical structure, fluoropolymers, for this purpose.”
The Arctic Ocean sea ice cover emerged 2.6 million years ago - and it hasn't changed since. Not in all of the recurring warming cycles we have had and not even in 2006, when pundits predicted it would be melted by 2014.It wasn't always that way. Between 4 and 5 million years ago, the extent of sea ice cover in Arctic was much less than it is today. Recent IPCC reports believe that the expanse of the Arctic ice cover has been quickly shrinking since the 1970s and that 2012 was the known sea ice minimum in that time.
A growing number of scholars are using social media data to write articles about both online and offline human behavior - it's cheap, it's as accurate as surveys if properly controlled, and no one ever has to leave the office.
But surveys are not science for an obvious reason and yet, in recent years, studies have claimed the ability to predict everything from summer blockbusters to fluctuations in the stock market. They all get mainstream media attention despite obvious evidence of flaws in many of these studies.
How is this for the ultimate miniaturization of energy storage: A new tiny nanopore includes all the components of a battery though it is just is a tiny hole in a ceramic sheet that holds an electrolyte to carry the electrical charge between nanotube electrodes at either end - and 1,000,000,000 can fit in the size of a postage stamp.
The existing device is a test but the nano-sized battery performs well - and it can be fully charged in 12 minutes, thousands of times.
The golden ratio is known as the divine proportion because it is found so often in nature. It has fascinated mathematicians since Euclid. A golden ratio is when the ratio of two numbers is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities.Credit: WikipediaRepresented by the Greek letter phi (φ), its value is 1.61803399.
Good news for Christmas party season: A new compound has been shown to reduce the harmful side-effects of ‘binge drinking’. It also has the potential for new ways to treat Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases that damage the brain but showing that would take $1 billion in clinical trials and 10 years of approval and then some generic company would just poach it a few years later anyway. If they simply go the alternative medicine route, the inventors could save themselves the double-blind clinical trials and get right to selling it.
Dietary masochists say you should endure the most difficult brown bread imaginable because 1,000 years ago people had no choice. It's vaguely healthier, we are all told, though if you read more than a few epidemiology studies and saw the lack of methodology you know it casts on doubt almost every health claim made by matching populations to specific foods, not to mention the bizarre beliefs promoted by prominent nutrition 'experts'.
We're being overrun with Big Data and that has created a need to increase computing and networking power to make it possible to manage the vast amount of information available. Toward that goal, a new generation of Information and communications technology (ICT) systems has been inspired by the operating principles of the brain.Stemming from the premise that the brain is an ideal model for information processing, in recent years there have been multiple attempts at bio-inspired systems. Some examples are neuronal networks for learning systems or ant algorithms used to trace optimal paths in communication networks.
Drinking 3-5 cups of coffee per day has been linked to protection against Alzheimer's Disease, according to a new review of studies.
The number of people in Europe aged over 65 is predicted to rise from 15.4% of the population to 22.4% by 2025 and, with an aging population, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease are of increasing concern. Alzheimer's Disease affects one person in twenty over the age of 65, amounting to 26 million people world-wide.
Epidemiologists have linked regular, moderate coffee consumption with a possible reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's Disease. An overview of the findings were presented during a satellite symposium at the 2014 Alzhemier Europe Annual Congress.
