The ability to develop a form of communication that becomes an actual language is apparently innate, new University of Chicago research on the use of gestures among deaf children and experiments with adults shows.
Psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow’s work with adults and children also shows which features of language seem to come more easily, and are therefore resilient, such as using order to convey who does what to whom. Her research also shows which characteristics are more difficult t
A futuristic Duke University simulation of forest growth under the carbon dioxide-enriched atmosphere expected by 2050 does not reinforce the optimism of those who believe trees can absorb that extra CO2 by growing faster, said a spokesman for the experiment.
During seven years of exposure to carbon dioxide concentrations 1½ times higher than today’s, test plots of loblolly pines have indeed boosted their annual growth rates by between 10 and 25 percent, found the researchers. But “the
NSF sensors activities in focus at AAAS annual meeting in Seattle
In the 1990s, the Internet connected us to a planet-wide web of information-all the zillions of bits that are stored in computer memories and hard drives. But now, thanks to an ongoing revolution in highly miniaturized, wirelessly networked sensors, the Internet is reaching out into the physical world, as well.
“We call it ’the Embedding of the Internet’,” says Deborah Estrin, who is a computer scien
The successful cloning of three mules and their excellent health is important to the horse industry, a University of Idaho scientist said Monday at Seattle.
More important is the potential human health aspects of the cloning project. Dr. Gordon Woods, UI professor of animal and veterinary science, said the work aided understanding of calcium’s role in cell signaling and possibly in the progression of human disease.
Woods, who directs the Northwest Equine Reproduction Laboratory
For years, organic electro-optic polymers have held the promise of vastly improving technologies such as communications, data processing and image displays. Now it appears scientists are on the verge of breakthroughs that will bring dramatic progress in materials, as well as the devices in which they are used, setting the stage for a virtual revolution.
Simply put, electro-optic polymers are being used to make devices that take information that typically has been transmitted electronically
The world is full of complicated networks that scientists would like to better understand—human social systems, for example, or food webs in nature. But discerning patterns of organization in such vast, complex systems is no easy task.
“The structure of those networks can tell you quite a lot about how the systems work, but they’re far too big to analyze by just putting dots on a piece of paper and drawing lines to connect them,” said Mark Newman, an assistant professor of physics an
Advances in genetics during the last decade not only have influenced modern medicine, they also have changed how human evolution is studied, says an anthropologist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Using her own research on the teeth of baboons as a case in point, Leslea J. Hlusko said that some of the traits considered important to human evolution, such as the thickness of molar enamel, may be too simplistically interpreted by some paleontologists.
Hlusko organ
A Cornell University researcher is developing techniques for making photonic microchips — in which streams of electrons are replaced by beams of light — including ways to guide and bend light in air or a vacuum, to switch a beam of light on and off and to connect nanophotonic chips to optical fiber.
Michal Lipson, an assistant professor at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y., described recent research by the Nanophotonics Group in Cornell’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the a
Most agronomists look to their laboratories, greenhouses or research farms for innovative new cropping techniques. But Jane Mt. Pleasant, professor of horticulture and director of the American Indian Program at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., has taken a different path, mining her Iroquois heritage for planting and cultivation methods that work for today’s farmers.
Mt. Pleasant studies what traditionally are known as the “three sisters”: beans, corn and squash. These staples of Iroqu
“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” Zoologist Konrad Lorenz once asked in postulating the “butterfly effect,” the idea that the flapping of fragile wings could start a chain reaction in the atmosphere. In today’s world of the Internet the question might be rephrased: Can a single e-mail from Brazil set off a torrent of action in Texas?
Sociologists postulate that what a few influential leaders think and say can spread and grow and bring abo
Neutrinos are about the tiniest things in existence, but developing a greater understanding of what they are and how they function is likely to have a huge impact in the next few years.
The subatomic particles, created in the nuclear furnaces of the sun and other stars, have no electrical charge and only recently has it been found that they have any mass at all, yet billions pour through each human body every second with no discernable effect or interaction.
Still, the very slight
The fossil remains of early humans gave generations of scientists the clues needed to piece together much of our ancestral lineage. Chi-Hua Chiu now leads us into another dimension in the study of human origins: the underlying developmental and genetic processes that led to these remarkable evolutionary changes.
“To develop a better understanding of the genetic basis of human evolution, we must discover specific relationships between particular genetic changes and their resulting effects on
There’s a big discrepancy between what science shows about recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse and what’s being shown in the media, according to University of Oregon memory researcher Jennifer Freyd.
Most people find recovered memories less believable than events someone has always remembered, despite research showing that whether a memory is true or not has no documented relationship to whether it was always remembered or only recently remembered, Freyd says.
U
Scientists have created an unlimited supply of a type of nerve cell found in the spinal cord – a self-renewing cell line that offers a limitless supply of human nerve cells in the laboratory. Such a supply has long been one goal of neurologists anxious to replace dead or dying cells with healthy ones in a host of neurological diseases.
In this study, appearing in the March issue of Nature Biotechnology, the scientists then used the cells to partially repair damaged spinal cords in laborator
Researchers have successfully cloned a mouse using mature olfactory neurons as the genetic donor. The scientists credit the idea for the experiments to Woody Allen whose classic comedy Sleeper depicted scientists who try to clone a dead dictator from his nose.
The current study aims to answer longstanding questions about the developmental potential of mature cells. In doing their experiments, the researchers were seeking to determine whether a single mature olfactory neuron, when introduced
Recent EU research discovered that tomato waste is full of untapped, nutritious goodness, and suggested how to make the most of it. Instead of using the excess tomatoes for animal feed or simply discarding them, the EU TOM(ato) project suggests using the tomato waste as a natural food additive. Every year, around 4 million tonnes of tomato by-products are disposed of in Europe alone. These dregs, especially the seeds, are an excellent source of nutrient-rich substances such as carotenoids, proteins
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