Hundreds of Maunder minimum stars are not, say UC Berkeley astronomers
A mysterious 17th century solar funk that some have linked to Europe’s Little Ice Age and to global climate change, becomes even more of an enigma as a result of new observations by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers.
For 70 years, from 1645 until 1714, early astronomers reported almost no sunspot activity. The number of sunspots – cooler areas on the sun that appear dark against the brig
For years, the advice of psychologists and mothers alike has been to express your emotions in order to achieve a balanced mental state. This might bring up some problems when your anxiety is going to make that presentation look shoddy, but hey, it’s better to show emotions than be like Spock, right?
Not quite. A new hypothesis on the issue of emotional expression is that we’re actually better off being flexible about how much we show our feelings – neither letting it all out nor ke
Players’ rankings at normal chess are accurate predictors of blitz chess performance
Chess is typically envisioned as a game of concentration and deliberation, a game not to be taken lightly and a game definitely not to be rushed. But some recent research suggests that it’s actually a player’s split-second intuitions that make the master.
Bruce D. Burns of Michigan State University, in an article to be published in the July issue of Psychological Science, a journal
A bowl of blueberries by the thousands, a rock called “Lion Stone,” dunes of red sand, the shoreline of a salty sea, wind-sculpted volcanic rock — all of these features of the Martian landscape come to three-dimensional life for faculty and students when they don their 3-D glasses and step into the Visualization Laboratory at Northwestern University.
Northwestern is believed to be the only university in the country offering its faculty and students the opportunity to view 3-D images of the
The September 11 terrorist attacks demonstrated, for many people, that the world is not fair. This was especially distressing for people who had previously believed in a just world. Psychologists from Michigan Statue University and the University of California, Santa Barbara suggest that it’s this challenge to the view that the world is just that produced not only people’s distress after September 11, but also their desire for revenge.
In a study to be published in the July issue o
The experiment, titled “Quark Propagation through Cold QCD Matter,” began its run in December 2003 and wrapped up in early March. It probed Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), a fundamental theory of particle physics that describes the interactions of quarks and gluons — the basic building blocks of matter. A property of QCD, called confinement, states that no quark can ever be found alone. Instead, quarks combine in pairs or triplets to make up larger particles. For instance, every proton and neutron cont
Bone marrow stem cells, when exposed to damaged liver tissue, can quickly convert into healthy liver cells and help repair the damaged organ, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
In mouse-tissue cultures, scientists found that stem cells, in the presence of cells from damaged liver tissue, developed into liver cells in as little as seven hours. They also observed that stem cells transplanted into mice with liver injuries helped restore liver function within
While the memory inside electronic devices may often be more reliable than that of humans, it, too, can worsen over time.
Now a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Argonne National Laboratory may understand why. The results are published in the early online edition (May 23) of the journal Nature Materials.
Smart cards, buzzers inside watches and even ultrasound machines all take advantage of ferroelectrics, a family of materials that can retain informa
Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found an unexpected way to turn off a cellular enzyme involved in the progression of several types of human cancers.
The enzyme, focal adhesion kinase (FAK), is known to promote cellular movement and survival. Its over-activity promotes cancer cell growth and metastasis. The new study demonstrates for the first time that one segment of FAK called the FERM domain plays a crucial role in activating FAK.
Subtle changes
Patients given a class of anti-inflammatory drugs before and after minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery experienced less pain with fewer postoperative complications and an earlier return to normal activities, according to Duke University Medical Center researchers.
The class of drugs in question, known as cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 inhibitors, block a key enzyme in the cascade of immune system events leading to inflammation. Unlike other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), COX-2
Lenzing Fiber Shanghai – opening of new branch office
The official opening of the new branch office in Shanghai signals the reinforcement of the activities…
Munich-based WLAN software specialist Garderos will cooperate with arcusA of Hanover, a specialized purchasing organization for German carriers. The…
Alzheimer’s disease could be caused by the deactivation of what are known as “presenilin genes”. Using mice as a model for the study of Alzheimer’s in humans, a scientific team headed by the researcher Carlos Saura, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, has discovered that when these genes mutate and stop working they cause neuro-degeneration and memory loss, giving rise to what in humans would be Alzheimer’s. The discovery, published in Neuron, is totally unexpected, since up till now it was
By summer 2005, researchers in the Fluids Research Laboratory at Virginia Tech will be able to look for evidence of water on Mars by examining submicroscopic bubbles in martian meteorites, determine whether fluids and silicate melts trapped in volcanic rock can help predict future eruptions, and locate buried mineral deposits using data from surface rocks. Robert Bodnar, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences in the College of Science, has received equipment grants from t
A new research project at the University of Kent is looking for genetic evidence of a historical population bottleneck in the Seychelles kestrel by analysing DNA extracted from museum specimens estimated to be 100-150 years old.
Dr Jim Groombridge, Lecturer in Biodiversity Conservation at the University’s Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, has been awarded £14,600 funding from The Royal Society to conduct population genetic research on oceanic island birds.
Museum colle
Since its launch in October 2001, ESA’s Proba micro-satellite has been returning remarkable imagery of some of our planet’s major landmarks with a compact instrument called the High Resolution Camera.
On display here are some notable examples, ranging from the monolithic Uluru or Ayers Rock in the Australian Outback to the tidal island of Mont St. Michel on the northern coast of France, and the Pyramids on Egypt’s Giza Plain.
Measuring just 80 x 60 x 60 cm, Proba is the size an
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