Presidential candidates can gain a measurable image boost from going on late-night TV, University of Washington researchers have found.
The researchers found that during the 2000 campaign, the favorability rating of George W. Bush went up among late-night comedy watchers for a week after Bush traded comedic jabs with David Letterman.
“Everyone talks about how ’infotainment’ is becoming more important in elections, but can it actually sway perceptions of the candidates? We found e
People are not drawn to religion just because of a fear of death or any other single reason, according to a new comprehensive, psychological theory of religion.
There are actually 16 basic human psychological needs that motivate people to seek meaning through religion, said Steven Reiss, author of the new theory and professor of psychology and psychiatry at Ohio State University.
These basic human needs – which include honor, idealism, curiosity and acceptance – can explain why cert
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say they have evidence that abnormally short telomeres – the end-caps on chromosomes that normally preserve genetic integrity -appear to play a role in the early development of many types of cancer.
“Cancer researchers have debated whether shortened telomeres were a cause or effect of tumors,” says Alan K. Meeker, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in urology and pathology at Hopkins. “What our study suggests is tha
OHSU study finds tiny crystals also help brain lesion tissue to be viewed under microscope
A research team from Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center is demonstrating some of the world’s first clinical applications for nanometer-size particles in the brain.
The OHSU scientists have shown that an iron oxide nanoparticle as small as a virus can outline not only brain tumors under magnetic resonance imaging, but also other lesi
Raindrops and proteins seem to have a lot in common. This has been shown in a new study by scientists at Umeå University in Sweden. The principle behind the formation of raindrops is very similar to how proteins fold. This knowledge is vital to our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases like ALS.
These findings have been published in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and have caught the attention of the international research community. The
How would it feel to pick up a Boeing 777 while standing on an asteroid? Or to play with a yo-yo on Mars? Or even to explore a box that is larger on the inside than on the outside? All these things are now possible as scientists at the University of Reading are developing technology which allows computer users to touch, grip and even manipulate ‘impossible objects’.
The methods are still in their infancy, but the new technology has a variety of potential applications, including training sim
Smells trigger memories but can memories trigger smell, and what does this imply for the way memories are stored? A UCL study of the smell gateway in the brain has found that the memory of an event is scattered across sensory parts of the brain, suggesting that advertising aimed at triggering memories of golden beaches and soft sand could well enhance your desire to book a seaside holiday.
By reversing the premise used in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, UCL researchers establish
How the news is presented, not the news itself, is putting young adult audiences off, say Central Michigan University media researchers David Weinstock and Timothy Boudreau. Their survey of 244 college students, ages 18 to 25, examines the students’ wartime media uses, preferences and attitudes about news media. The students were surveyed April 21-24, 2003, as U.S. forces were struggling to restore order in Baghdad. The researchers offer the following observations:
Youth interest in the wa
In the years at the dangerous border between adolescence and adulthood, about three men die for every woman, according to a new University of Michigan study of the ratio of male to female mortality rates in 20 nations, including the United States.
The study, selected as a “hot topic talk” to be presented May 28 at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, also appears in the current issue of the journal Evolutionary Psychology.
“Being male is now the single largest
The main objective of the Dressman robot is to dry and press shirts. On placing a damp shirt on the ironing figure, this dummy inflates with hot air in its interior, and thus puffs the shirt up, removing creases drying the garment (it has to be previously wet and undergone a spin-dry in a washing machine).
The device has a heater box inside with a number of different resistance elements. While we are placing the shirt on it, this box stores up heat in such a way that, when the garment is pos
To convert a gaseous fuel into a clean liquid one is the target of the research project being undertaken by the School of Industrial Engineering and Telecommunications Engineers of Bilbao in the Basque Country. It involves, in the final analysis, obtaining fuels which do not have contaminant components, i.e. sulphur, nitrogen or aromatic components.
Participating in this project, financed by the MARCO programme of the European Union, are nine groups from different European countries, under t
System crashes are not only annoying, they can bring a company to its knees. So IT specialists will welcome a way to measure the dependability of standard operating systems (OS). After conducting hundreds of computer-stress experiments, a European consortium has developed a new benchmarking method for commercial and open source systems.
Gone are the days when performance was all that mattered. What information technology people want – but rarely get – is a reliable system. Especially now th
CSIRO Livestock Industries scientists in Rockhampton have observed larger-than-expected numbers of a parasitic nematode in the gut of insects responsible for transmitting them – buffalo flies.
The ’filarial’ nematode (Stephanofilaria sp)- one of a group of worms transmitted by insects, and which live in the blood and tissues of their animal or human hosts – has been found in around 50 per cent of female buffalo flies in northern Australia.
The discovery could have implications fo
Hollywood’s latest disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is about to be released. It is a fictional account of the havoc wreaked by out-of-control climate as North America is beset by the chilling beginnings of a new Ice Age in the course of 10 days. The movie features numerous catastrophic weather events including hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and tidal waves striking New York.
“It’s a good yarn,” said Dr Tony Haymet, Chief of CSIRO Marine Research. “Like many of the catastroph
Jülicher Wissenschaftler messen Wassergehalt im lebenden Gehirn
Bei vielen Krankheiten des Gehirns, beispielsweise bei einem Hirntumor, sammelt sich Wasser um das kranke Gewebe an. Ein Ödem entsteht und der Wassergehalt im Hirn steigt an. Wissenschaftler des Forschungszentrums Jülich haben ein neues Messverfahren entwickelt, mit dem sie quantitativ den Wassergehalt in unterschiedlichen Bereichen des lebenden Gehirn bis auf etwa ein Prozent genau bestimmen können. Damit können sie j
As the Cassini spacecraft hurtles toward a rendezvous with Saturn on June 30 (July 1, Universal Time), both Cassini and the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope snapped spectacular pictures of the planet and its magnificent rings.
Cassini is approaching Saturn at an oblique angle to the sun and from below the ecliptic plane. Cassini has a very different view of Saturn than Hubble’s Earth-centered view. For the first time, astronomers can compare equally sharp views of Saturn from two very
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