A wider range of social and demographic data to enable planners and policymakers cope with huge changes in people’s living arrangements is called for in an important new booklet published today by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It will involve re-defining what we mean by ‘family’ and households.
The advice comes against a background of:
– an ageing population;
– a decline in marriage;
– rising cohabitation, divorce and re-partnering;
– more bir
If computers could create a society, what kind of world would they make? Thanks to the work of an ambitious project that adds a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘computer society’, in which millions of software agents will potentially evolve their own culture, we could be about to find out.
With funding from the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) initiative of the IST programme, five European research institutes are collaborating on the NEW TIES project
Nanotechnology has been touted as the next technology revolution, transforming everything from communications to medicine, water decontamination to homeland security. But scientific progress has been accompanied by fears over unknown consequences of nanotechnology, with one pressure group even calling for a moratorium on all research until more is known. More specific concerns have been voiced by various parties – including the UK Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering – about exposure t
In time for the 22 May 2006, which is the International Day for Biological Diversity, GreenFacts has published a popularised version of the Millennium Assessment Report on Biodiversity. It is available at www.greenfacts.org/biodiversity/ in English, and soon also in French, Dutch and Spanish. The summary was produced in partnership with IUCN (the World Conservation Union), Countdown 2010 and UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre.
This year’s International Day for Biological Divers
The link between the caffeine intake of expectant mothers and low birth-weight babies is being explored in a groundbreaking study which will, for the first time, link caffeine intake with individual variations in metabolism – or breakdown – of caffeine.
Research has suggested too much caffeine during pregnancy – over five cups of ordinary strength coffee a day – could increase the risk of having a low birth-weight baby. These babies are at greater risk from a range of problems
A student organisation that successfully recruits thousands of bone marrow donors from UK universities is exporting its pioneering model abroad to tackle a global shortage of donors.
The organisation, Marrow, was set up nine years by The Anthony Nolan Trust in collaboration with British medical schools to recruit, test and counsel potential bone marrow donors at clinics on college campuses. (A clinic will be held on Newcastle University campus from 14.00 – 17.00 today, Thursday M
The Internet has become an arena for love and sexuality, but what does this arena look like, how is it used, and by whom? And why is the Internet used for love and sexual purposes? These are some of the questions this dissertation attempts to answer. The study comprises answers from 1850 respondents who participated in a Net-based questionnaire and 26 informants who were interviewed via the Internet. By analyzing the participants’ answers and narratives, the thesis provides insights into this relati
Pile driving and industrial noise may adversely affect dolphin behaviour, communication and breeding, according to a scientific paper in CIWEM’s Water and Environment Journal.
Bottlenose dolphins that reside in designated Special Areas of Conservation throughout the UK, including Dorset, Anglesey and Cornwall, might be at risk from pile driving. The frequency range of pile driving noise could interfere with their ability to communicate, find food and avoid predators. This has the
ESA has for the first time acquired and processed images sent by ALOS – Japan’s four-tonne satellite dedicated to land-based Earth Observation – including views of Italy, The Netherlands and Norway.
ESA is supporting ALOS as a ’Third Party Mission’, which means the agency is utilising its multi-mission ground segment of existing European facilities and expertise to acquire, process and distribute data from the satellite.
“We have received high-quality data
Throughout our life, we are exposed daily to ionizing radiation (IR) emitted by Earth, during routine medical diagnosis exams, or in the workplace for professionals such as nuclear workers but also cabin crew members of airline companies. How aware is the public of being exposed to low doses of IR? Accounting for about 2,4 mSv/year/person, these unperceived exposures to IR are considered harmless by radiation protection standards based on biological effects the current state of science allows to
Proteins from a newly discovered family of genes, LRIG, function as a retardant for a protein that is important to tumor cells. It is probably this mechanism that lends the gene family its inhibiting effect on cancer tumors. This is shown in a dissertation by Jonas Nilsson at Umeå University in Sweden, to be publicly defended on May 24.
Jonas Nilsson and his associates have identified a new family of genes, the leucin-rich and immunoglobulin-like (LRIG) family. They found that the
AIDS patients’ failure to clear HIV-1 might not be due to the inability of the human immune system to recognise the virus, as was previously thought. A study published today in the open access journal Medical Immunology shows that cultured immune system cells taken from healthy individuals recognise and respond to HIV-1 proteins. Cells taken from infected individuals, however, are much less responsive to the virus. These findings need to be reproduced in vivo, but they do offer new hope for a vacci
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and colleagues in the UK and USA today publish the longest and final chapter in what has been called The Book of Life — the text and study of our human genetic material. Published in Nature, the report of the sequence of human chromosome 1 is the final chromosome analysis from the Human Genome Project.
The sequence has been used to identify more than 1000 new genes and is expected to help researchers find novel diagnostics and treatments for
HARPS Instrument Finds Unusual Planetary System
Using the ultra-precise HARPS spectrograph on ESO’s 3.6-m telescope at La Silla (Chile), a team of European astronomers have discovered that a nearby star is host to three Neptune-mass planets. The innermost planet is most probably rocky, while the outermost is the first known Neptune-mass planet to reside in the habitable zone. This unique system is likely further enriched by an asteroid belt.
“For the first time, we have dis
After the boom for new wind turbines in Germany in the past years, the repowering of these turbines gains more and more importance today. In the future, larger units will replace the smaller and older wind turbines, especially at sites with strong wind conditions. Siemens Power Generation (PG) is to supply a total of 17 wind energy turbines for three repowering projects in Germany. Of these, seven wind turbines will be for the Marienkoog project, and seven will be for the Norderhof Wind Park in t
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed an inexpensive, reliable and easy-to-manufacture class of dielectric films that have the capability of enabling programmable antifuses on integrated circuits (IC) at less cost and using easier-to-manufacture methods.
The new Sandia films enable single-mask level sub 5 Volt write antifuses that are compatible with leading-edge IC specifications.
Antifuses are nonvolatile, one-time programmable memories fa
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