Scotland’s golf courses can look forward to a greener future thanks to a new initiative launched today by the University of Abertay Dundee.
Golf Solutions brings together environmental scientists, plant biotechnologists, microbiologists, computer specialists and other experts at Abertay to offer golf course managers new technologies for reducing the environmental impact of the game.
The initiative is the first of its kind in Scotland, and could help golf courses significantly reduc
Greater investment in smallholder agriculture could offer a route out of the deepening poverty facing many African nations, a study by Imperial College London economists has concluded.
Reporting today in the journal Oxford Development Studies they outline five key policy themes that must be embraced by the international community if sub-Saharan Africa is to have any chance of meeting two of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals – halving both the number of people living on le
As Sex and the City’s Carrie finally wanders off our television screens, physicists at the Institute of Physics have devised a formula that high-heel fans can use to work out just how high they can go. Based on your shoe size, the formula tells you the maximum height of heel you can wear without toppling over or suffering agonies.
h = Q.(12+3s /8)
h is the maximum height of the heel (in cm)
Q is a sociological factor and has a value between 0 and 1 (see below to work this
Optimization is an effective method for enhancing the crashworthiness of cars. In a series of simulations of crash tests at Linköping University in Sweden it was possible to reduce the penetration of passenger space by a third.
Every year 47,000 people are killed in automobile accidents in the EU. This is as if a jumbo jet were to crash every third day. Such horrendous figures cry out for ever greater investments in crashworthiness. Modern optimization technique, based on so-called finite e
A novel application of microarray technology, where up to 30,000 whole genomes are printed on a single slide, is described in the journal BMC Microbiology this week. The ‘Library on a Slide’ will help researchers compare the genetic make up of large numbers of bacterial strains to discover which genes are responsible for causing disease.
Even within one species of bacteria, the genetic content can vary by as much as 25% between individual strains. These differences can determine how virulent
Patients recovering from brain injuries such as strokes often experience difficulties carrying out two activities at the same time, according to researchers in the School of Psychology at the University of Reading.
Most of us can walk, cycle or drive and carry on a conversation at the same time because the combination of motor actions is so well-practised it has become automatic. However, when people have to relearn the basic postural control that enables them to sit, stand or walk safely, t
Research paves the way to next generation of ’atomic clocks’
Three of the world’s premier measurement laboratories – including the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – have lined up the “hash marks” from four of the world’s best optical frequency rulers and declared that they match. The experiments, reported in the March 19, 2004, issue of the journal Science, are a significant step toward next-generation “atomic clocks
The neck and arm pain caused by degenerative cervical (neck) disc disease may be eliminated by replacing the problem disc with a metal-on-metal artificial disc, according to the results of a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/CNS Section on Disorders of the Spine & Peripheral Nerves.
“Implanting this device in the neck may be an effective alternative to spinal fusion,” said Dr. Russ P. Nockels, associate professor and vice chair, Depar
A decades-old mathematical model is being inappropriately used in at least 26 nations to make potentially costly predictions about how shorelines will retreat in response to rising sea levels, two coastal scientists contended in the Friday, March 19, 2004, issue of the research journal Science.
“Models can be a hazard to society, and this is certainly an example of such,” wrote Orrin Pilkey of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, and J. Andrew Cooper
North Carolina State University plant pathologist Jean Beagle Ristaino shocked the scientific world when she published a paper in the journal Nature that called into question the then-prevailing theories about the strain of pathogen – and its place of origin – that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s.
Using DNA fingerprinting analysis of 150-year-old leaves – evidence that had not previously been studied – Ristaino ruled out the longtime prime suspect behind the famine: the Ib haplot
With the advent of antiretroviral medication, HIV patients are living longer and facing yet another health challenge.
Carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) – a potent predictor of heart attack and stroke – is significantly higher in HIV-infected patients compared to uninfected controls, according to study results from UCSF researchers. In addition after one year of follow-up, carotid artery IMT progressed significantly faster in HIV-infected individuals.
“Our findings
Researchers at Wright State University have developed a prototype device to help blind individuals “see.”
Nikolaos Bourbakis, Ph.D., Ohio Board of Regents Distinguished Professor of Information Technology at Wright State’s College of Engineering and Computer Science is the principal investigator. The project is a cooperative venture with Arizona State University (ASU).
“Our object is to develop intelligent assistants that can help blind and visually impaired individuals eff
An answer to the long-standing riddle of whether the Earth’s ice ages occurred simultaneously in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres is emerging from the glacial deposits found in the high desert east of the Andes.
Using a new technique to gauge the effects of cosmic rays on minerals found in boulders carried by South American glaciers thousands of years ago, a group of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has demonstrated that the Earth’s most recent ice ages were gl
Third-generation communications promise to open up a new world of personalised multimedia and location-based services. Turning this promise into reality is an operation support system (OSS) architecture for service and network providers.
Focused on key areas of 3G service provision, including quality of service monitoring, aggregated services and roaming management, the OSS architecture developed by IST project AlbatrOSS was validated in trials that not only proved the need for advanced sup
A spectacle unseen for 16 years occurred in Patagonia this week: a natural dam of blue ice gave way to crushing lake waters trapped behind it, finally breaking apart.
Watching tourists applauded as a section of the 60-metre high Perito Moreno glacier collapsed and the waters of the dammed southern arm of Lago Argentino surged through it.
Since last October this section – known as Brazo Sur – had been blocked off from the rest of the lake by the glacier’s flowing ice tongue, which exte
New analyses from KTH in Stockholm are creating order in the uncertainty that has prevailed for the last four years about how plutonium dioxide, one of the most important radioactive compounds in nuclear waste, behaves when it comes into contact with water. The findings are being published in the latest issue of Nature Materials.
In January 2000 an article was published in the American scientific journal Science. A research team had discovered that plutonium dioxide, PuO2, quite unexpectedly
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