Often maligned as just another one of the Internet boom’s myriad hypes, e-learning’s chasm between theory and performance is being bridged by a new platform from SCHOOL+ that supports rather than imposes technology on Europe’s classrooms.
The three-year IST project SCHOOL+ project is developing a comprehensive online teaching and learning environment known as SCHOOL+ Microcosmos, which has been tested in 20 European schools at the beginning of this year. Simultaneously, this
New Kingston University research could reduce the recovery time for lower limb amputees by helping health professionals chart patients’ progress more easily. Tom Geake, from Kingston’s Mobile Information and Network Technologies Research Centre, has designed a new method of interpreting results from the locomotor capabilities index, used by clinicians to assess amputees’ improvement in the four-week period after they have been fitted with a socket and artificial limb.
Using the index, ampute
A billion years ago (the Neoproterozoic age), complex single-celled organisms, the acritarchs, began to develop, grow, and thrive. Almost a billion years later, the study of the evolutionary history of acritarchs began to bog down amid inconsistencies in the reporting of the diversity of species. Now, a Virginia Tech graduate student has devised a new way to study the ebb and flow of life in the Neoproterozoic and Early Cambrian ages, a period that includes two mass extinctions.
John Warren
By bombarding very thin slices of several copper/oxygen compounds, called cuprates, with very bright, short-lived pulses of light, Ivan Bozovic, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, and his collaborators have discovered an unusual property of the materials: After absorbing the light energy, they emit it as long-lived sound waves, as opposed to heat energy. This result may open up a new field of study on cuprates — materials already used in wireless comm
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory are proposing to use a supercomputer originally developed to simulate elementary particles in high-energy physics to help determine the structures and functions of proteins, including, for example, the 30,000 or so proteins encoded by the human genome. Structural information will help scientists better understand proteins’ role in disease and health, and may lead to new diagnostic and therapeutic agents.
Research by Young-June Kim, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, may help determine how a class of materials already used in electronic circuits could be used in optical, or light-based, circuits, which could replace standard electrical circuits in telecommunications, computer networking, and other areas of technology.
Kim’s research is focused on “quasi one-dimensional” cuprates, materials that contain copper and oxygen where the atoms ar
Researchers studying the environmental consequences of acid rain have reached an important milestone, adding evidence for a theory that has been the focus of much scientific debate. Publishing in the December, 2003 issue of the Soil Science Society of America Journal, a team at the University of Maine reported that a modest addition of acid in a paired watershed experiment resulted in a decrease of crucial nutrients in forest soils.
For more than 30 years, scientists in Europe and North Amer
University of Toronto researchers have shown that “designer molecules” can interact with the body’s insulin receptor, a step toward the development of an oral medication for diabetes.
U of T professors Lakshmi Kotra, Cecil Yip, Peter Ottensmeyer and Robert Batey have created the first small molecules using the three-dimensional structure of the insulin receptor. A receptor is the site on the surface of a cell to which molecules with specific tasks, such as hormones, attach themselves.
The body size of ancient creatures, bivalves and brachiopods, could tell geoscientists a lot about the creatures’ life history and about the ecology of the times in which they lived. However, traveling the world to measure these creatures’ fossils would take several life-times and more travel funds than scientists usually have.
Since the same creatures have also become abundant in scientific literature since the mid 1800s, a team of Virginia Tech researchers is determining whether measurin
Without destroying endangered freshwater mussels
In the early 1900s, there were 42 species of freshwater mussels in the North Fork of the Holston River in Southwest Virginia. There were 33 downstream of Saltville. Now there are only nine species of mussels downstream of Saltville, and none directly below Saltville. When Virginia Tech geosciences student Megan Brown of Colonial Heights, Va., decided to study the local extinctions of these creatures, some of which have been known to liv
A protein critical in tadpole metamorphosis has role in human cancer
There’s something magical about tadpoles. The mere mention of this little creature sparks happy memories of children screaming with delight as they splash in a shallow stream trying to capture some of the tiny swimmers in a cup. The real magic happens as the children witness the metamorphosis from tadpole to frog.
Within the mystery of this transformation is a biological series of changes that among ot
In what may sound like a project from a high school science fair, scientists are using a household humidifier to create porous spheres a hundred times smaller than a red blood cell. The technique is a new and inexpensive way to do chemistry using sound waves, the researchers say.
In the home, ultrasonic humidifiers are used to raise humidity, reduce static electricity and ease discomfort from the common cold or cough. In the lab, chemists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ar
Fluorescent nanoparticles that can be attached to biological molecules are being developed for use in microscopic sensor devices. Philip Costanzo, a graduate student in chemistry at UC Davis, and Timothy Patten, associate professor of chemistry, have prepared nanoparticles of cadmium sulphide and silicon dioxide coated with polymer chains with biotin attached to the ends. When avidin, a protein that binds to biotin, is added, the nanoparticles cluster into larger aggregates. The researchers used dyna
Innovative polymer chemistry employed
Carnegie Mellon University scientists have developed an attractive way to make discrete carbon nanoparticles for electrical components used in industry and research. This method, which employs polyacrylonitrile (PAN) as a nanoparticle precursor, is being presented by Chuanbing Tang, a Carnegie Mellon graduate student, on Sunday, March 28, at the 227th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, Calif. (POLY69, Garden A). The resear
Protein hydrogels can be genetically engineered to promote the growth of specific cells
Johns Hopkins University researchers have created a new class of artificial proteins that can assemble themselves into a gel and encourage the growth of selected cell types. This biomaterial, which can be tailored to send different biological signals to cells, is expected to help scientists who are developing new ways to repair injured or diseased body parts.
“We’re trying to give an
A new class of fibers
Strong and versatile carbon nanotubes are finding new applications in improving conventional polymer-based fibers and films. For example, composite fibers made from single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and polyacrylonitrile – a carbon fiber precursor – are stronger, stiffer and shrink less than standard fibers.
Nanotube-reinforced composites could ultimately provide the foundation for a new class of strong and lightweight fibers with properties such a
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