A team led by Jacques Laskar from the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Ephémérides (IMCCE) and the Paris Observatory has released new computational results for the long-term evolution of the orbital and rotational motion of the Earth. Following Milankovitch’s theory of the paleoclimate that describes how major climatic changes on Earth are affected by astronomical events, these results have been employed to provide a new calibration of the sedimentary records over the 0 – 23.03
Issued on behalf of NERC’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
The first comprehensive national ‘stocktake’ of freshwater fishes in Britain is published this weekend in a fascinating hard-back book and a new internet-based database. The book includes a unique set of species distribution maps incorporating records dating from the 17th Century through to the present day.
Until the compilation of this data, freshwater fish were the only vertebrate group that did not have
For the first time, the public will have the extraordinary opportunity to observe live brain surgery in a pioneering event at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre in London, on Thursday 28 October.
Broadcast for the first time to a UK audience, visitors to the Dana Centre will not only watch live surgery, but be able to direct questions to the surgical team in the USA whilst the operation takes place. Live from Brainworks will be broadcast across the Atlantic Ocean from Overlook Hosp
The program developed by Russian specialists of the North-Caucasian Scientific Research Institute of Gardening and Viticulture (Russian Agricultural Academy, Krasnodar) allows to select cultures, horticultural crops and other agricultural specimen the most profitable for a given locality. The development was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Fund for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises (FASIE). If the program’s advice is used competently, there will be no n
Remains of a dinosaur new to Russia have been found in the town of Blagoveshchensk and described by a Russian paleontologist. Previously, remains of the nearest relations of this pangolin – Kerberosaur – were found only in North America.
An unusual scull of a large dinosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous (approximately 70 million years ago) was found in the territory of Blagoveshchensk by paleontologist Yuri Bolotsky, specialist of the Amir Comprehensive Scientific Research Ins
St. Petersburg physicists have developed a plant that allows to cut sapphire crystals into almost ideally smooth plates being fractions of millimeter thick. The approach suggested by the researchers fundamentally differs from the traditional one. They suggest that sapphire should not be sawn by a saw, but split by laser.
It is quite common that a title like “A plant for laser scribing of sapphire wafers” would surprise an ordinary person but it sounds like music for specialists
Children of older fathers are more likely to develop schizophrenia in later life, concludes new research published on bmj.com today.
These findings add weight to the theory that accumulating mutations in the sperm of older fathers contributes to the overall risk of schizophrenia. The study involved over 700,000 people born in Sweden between 1973 and 1980. The analysis was based on records of people admitted to hospital between 1989-2001 with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or other
Today sees ESA’s first ever microsatellite complete three years of successful operations. The size of a large television set, Proba was launched to demonstrate new technologies for future European spacecraft, but continues to provide fantastic images of Earth.
“It is amazing what we have got out of Proba, our first micro-satellite,” says Frederic Teston, ESA’s Proba Project Manager. “The mission has successfully demonstrated a number of sophisticated technologies in addi
Surfing the Web could become a much more effective experience thanks to new approaches endorsed at this year’s ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) Hypertext Conference.
In its current state, the commonly used link in a Web page allows people to search the Web and to use hyperlinks to jump from one page to another. The down side is that when people click links, pages load on top of one another and unless they can recall the route taken, it is easy to lose much of the conten
Scientists in Tokyo have discovered a new protein, named PICT-1, that is involved in regulating PTEN, the second most commonly mutated tumor suppressor in human tumors. This discovery suggests the possibility of a new tumorigenic pathway that is due to defects in a protein involved in stabilizing PTEN rather than defects in PTEN itself.
The research appears as the “Paper of the Week” in the October 29 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, an American Society for Biochemistry and Mol
Ailing health care industry will adopt operations research and manufacturing techniques by 2010, says expert
Bowing to crushing increases in the cost of delivering medical services to Americans, the troubled health care system will begin to adopt operations research and other techniques that have proven successful in the relatively unfashionable manufacturing sector, predicts a leading expert. “By the end of the decade, the health care industry will realize that operations resea
Earthquakes can be triggered by the Earth’s tides, UCLA scientists confirmed Oct. 21 in Science Express, the online journal of Science. Earth tides are produced by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun on the Earth, causing the ocean’s waters to slosh, which in turn raise and lower stress on faults roughly twice a day. Scientists have wondered about the effects of Earth tides for more than 100 years. (The research will be published in the print version of Science in November.
The progress of Parkinson’s disease (PD), or any brain-wasting disease, is painful to watch in oneself or in a loved one. Physicians and researchers are not immune to that pain, but they watch the progression of disease with an eye toward understanding it and, one day, halting or reversing it.
Johannes Schwarz, M.D., and a team of researchers from Germany and Canada reported in the October issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine on a study that measured the molecular changes
Cleveland researchers study musculoskeletal pain following significant weight loss
Over 18 months, researchers at University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University studied the frequency and prevalence of musculoskeletal (MSK) complaints in obese patients before and after undergoing gastric bypass surgery. The researchers concluded that the complaints, which involved joint and tendon pain, decreased significantly following surgery and initial weight loss, even i
Researchers are conducting a groundbreaking new study that may help stroke patients regain greater use of their hands or arms through treatment with electrical stimulation. Preliminary results of the feasibility study that precedes this new study have shown that the use of electrical stimulation, called motor cortex stimulation, may be both safe and effective, according to Robert Levy, M.D., Ph.D., a neurosurgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Dr. Levy presented this feasibility
A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.
The “brain” — a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish — gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorde
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