When music teachers and students first heard about the IMUTUS interactive tuition many were sceptical about its ability to improve upon traditional learning. Today, evaluation evidence suggests that it has a really strong great potential of making music education more fun, entertaining and effective than ever before.
The result of more than two years of work by music experts and software developers in Greece, Italy, France and Sweden, the IST programme-funded project has created
Capturing and animating human motion for use in virtual reality or in television production is typically long and costly. However that is about to change with the first fast low-cost motion animation system that needs no markers, bodysuits or other sensors.
Using just a PC, two cameras and the motion recognition software developed by the IST programme-funded project HUMODAN, television producers will be able to easily and cheaply create animated characters based on the real-t
A new report, “Part of a Context,” presents successful outcomes in the rehabilitation of female substance abusers with the help of a network model used at Fortuna House in Värnamo, Sweden. The project helped 18 of 20 women out of their abuse, that is, 90 percent.
“Considering the clients we have, these results are sensational,” says Sture Korpi, director general of SiS, the National Board of Institutional Care, which operates the home for abusers placed in compulsory rehabilit
The recent killer tsunami has highlighted once more the importance of coastline protection. In natural conditions, this function is taken up by mangroves, forests thriving at the edge of land and sea that are ecologically and socio-economically important for local people in tropical countries on all continents. Using biology, geography, hydrology, socio-economic interviews, and 18th-century history, an international team led by Dr. Farid Dahdouh-Guebas has demonstrated that in the recent past an
Determining which variants of particular genes patients with epilepsy carry might enable doctors to better predict the dose of drugs necessary to control their seizures, suggest basic findings by researchers at the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (IGSP) and the University College London. Patients often undergo a lengthy process of trial and error to find the dose of anti-epilepsy drugs appropriate for them.
The researchers found that variants of two gen
A vital molecular step in cell migration, the movement of cells within the body during growth, tissue repair and the body’s immune response to invading pathogens, has been demonstrated by researchers in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. Published in the March 27 online edition of Nature Cell Biology and the journal’s upcoming April print edition, the study describes how a the interaction of alpha4 integrin adhesion receptor with a protein called paxillin creates d
A molecule designed to block cat allergies successfully prevented allergic reactions in laboratory mice, as well as in human cells in a test tube, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers report in the April issue of Nature Medicine, available online now. In the future, the investigators say, these promising results could lead to a new therapy not only for human cat allergies, but also possibly for severe food allergies such as those to peanuts.
The National Insti
Imaging technology may someday guide therapy designed to prevent heart attacks
A catheter-based imaging technology called optical coherence tomography (OCT) can successfully identify the characteristics of coronary plaques in patients with various cardiac symptoms. The report from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will appear in the journal Circulation and has received early online release at http://www.circulationaha.org/.
“More than 1.2 million peo
A Department of Veterans Affairs and Northwestern University researcher has developed the first reliable measure of neurobehavioral functioning that will help physicians predict the likelihood of a patient recovering consciousness during coma from severe brain injury within the first year of injury–with up to 86 percent certainty.
The study, by Theresa Pape, DrPH, and colleagues, is described in a two-part series in Volume 42, Issue 1, of the Journal of Rehabilitation Research a
Every protein–from albumin to testosterone–is folded into a unique, three-dimensional shape that allows it to function properly. Now Stanford University scientists have developed a simple test that instantly changes color when a protein molecule attached to a gold nanoparticle folds or unfolds. The new technique, which works on the same principle as ordinary pH tests that measure the acidity of water, is described in the March 2005 issue of the journal Chemistry and Biology.
In an age of e-mails, databases and online catalogues, two heads may no longer be better than one, according to new ESRC-sponsored research into the effects of information overload.
Problems are exacerbated when information is shared between people with different viewpoints, says a team led by Professor Tom Ormerod of Lancaster University, which revealed big variations in recall among married couples. In a project aimed at finding better ways for us to organise and retrieve infor
The growth and maintenance of human embryonic stem cells in the absence of contaminated animal products has been demonstrated by University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine researchers in the Whittier Institute*, La Jolla, California.
Published in the April 2005 issue of the journal Stem Cells, the study shows that laboratory culture media enriched by a human protein called activin A are capable of maintaining human embryonic stem cells in a continuous undiffe
Quasiparticles carry energy in condensed matter. In the world of quasiparticle physics, understanding when and how these energy carriers fail opens doors to another level of understanding, and can lead the way to many new and important theories. Scientists at the U. S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered the failure point for the quasiparticle construct, the standard model of condensed matter physics. This could have far-reaching implications, for example, in
Contradicting previous assumptions, new fisheries research shows that allocating catch among vessels reduces the amount of fish discarded at sea.
The study in Canada’s British Columbia waters compared so-called individual transferable quotas with a previously used system of trip limits where vessels are only allowed to land a certain quantity of each species every two months.
The findings come at a time when individual transferable quotas are being considered for
Scientists at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine have discovered the cause of a deadly type of secondary stroke known as cerebral vasospasm.
A constriction of the blood vessels in the brain, cerebral vasospasm usually occurs three to 10 days following a massive brain bleed known as hemorrhagic stroke. Sixty percent of patients who survive the initial stroke develop vasospasm, and 40 percent of them die from it.
Vasospasm, says neurology department
Predicting when large earthquakes might occur may be a step closer to reality, thanks to a new study of undersea earthquakes in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The study, reported in today’s Nature, is the first to suggest that small seismic shocks or foreshocks preceding a major earthquake can be used in some cases to predict the main tremors.
Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of Southern California (USC) report that some types of larg
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