British scientists set sail today from Glasgow to begin work aimed at discovering if Britain is indeed in danger of entering the next ice age.
Scientists on the Royal Research Ship Discovery are on their way to deploy oceanographic instruments across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to the Bahamas. The instruments will spend the next four years measuring the temperature, salinity and speed of currents.
The work is part of a research programme called Rapid Climate Change, f
What project can possibly bring together techniques as diverse as data mining and decision support with the fields of online dating, traffic accident analysis and many more. Only one! SolEuNet.
Modern solution-oriented work processes often bring together loose networks of highly-skilled and entrepreneurial individuals – creating in effect virtual organisations. Such virtual workgroups form up to solve a problem, then break apart and reform around the next challenge. A highly efficien
A new study of young mothers by researchers at University College London (UCL) has shown that romantic and maternal love activate many of the same specific regions of the brain, and lead to a suppression of neural activity associated with critical social assessment of other people and negative emotions. The findings suggest that once one is closely familiar with a person, the need to assess the character and personality of that person is reduced, and bring us closer to explaining why, in neurologica
High tech tools may help find solutions to animal-human conflicts in the sea — Sea turtles, porpoises, albatrosses and tunas could see brighter days ahead
How can scientists follow leatherback sea turtles that dive to crushing depths a half-mile below the surface and swim across 80% of the world’s ocean? Or tunas that race faster than most boats? Or albatrosses that soar halfway across the Pacific without sleep or a meal — unlike their human observers? Science is beginning to m
In the world of molecules, DNA tends to get top billing at the expense of RNA, which is critical for turning DNA’s genetic blueprint into working proteins. Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have published significant insights into how the RNA molecule completes this task in two back-to-back papers in the Feb. 13 issue of Science.
All the genetic information contained in DNA is silent, said Roger Kornberg, PhD, the Mrs. George A. Wizner Professor in Medicine and
There are no general laws of human relationships as there are for physics, but a leading marital researcher and group of applied mathematicians have teamed up to create a mathematical model that predicts which couples will divorce with astonishing accuracy. The model holds promise of giving therapists new tools for helping couples overcome patterns of interaction that can send them rushing down the road toward divorce.
Psychologist John Gottman and applied mathematicians James D. Murray and
The first reactor capable of producing hydrogen from a renewable fuel source–ethanol–efficiently enough to hold economic potential has been invented by University of Minnesota engineers. When coupled with a hydrogen fuel cell, the unit–small enough to hold in your hand–could generate one kilowatt of power, almost enough to supply an average home, the researchers said. The technology is poised to remove the major stumbling block to the “hydrogen economy”: no free hydrogen exists, except what is ma
As world reserves of oil and natural gas dwindle over the coming decades – a prospect predicted by many energy experts – the rate at which the people in most societies around the world have babies is likely to drop precipitously as well.
That is the prediction of anthropologist Virginia Abernethy, professor emerita of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, speaking on Feb. 13 in the symposium “From the Ground Up: The Importance of Soil in Sustaining Civilization” at the annual meeting of the
Like the delicate form of an icicle defying gravity during a spring thaw, patterns emerge in nature when forces compete. Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found a hidden pattern in cuprate (copper-containing) superconductors that may help explain high-temperature superconductivity.
Superconductivity, the complete loss of electrical resistance in some materials, occurs at temperatures near absolute zero. First observed in 1911 by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlin
Individuals with autism have been shown to have a difficult time recognizing faces, but two University of Washington researchers now suggest that the problem may be due to a lack of practice, rather than to abnormal functioning of the affected region of the brain.
Previous research, using an electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure brain activity, had shown that autistic 3- and 4-year-olds failed to show normal brain response when viewing their mother’s picture. However, a recent study re
Heat may be essential for life, but in some cases – such as protecting the space shuttle or improving the efficiency of a jet engine – materials with low thermal conductivities are needed to prevent passage of too much heat. As reported in the Feb. 13 issue of the journal Science, researchers have created a better thermal insulator by controlling material structure at the nanoscale.
“We explored ways to control thermal properties in materials by introducing structure on nanometer length scal
Research using M&Ms sheds light on particle-packing problem
For most people, a regular lunch of M&M’s and coffee would lead to no good. For Princeton physicist Paul Chaikin and collaborators, it spurred fundamental insights into an age-old problem in mathematics and physics.
Chaikin and Princeton chemist Salvatore Torquato used the candies to investigate the physical and mathematical principles that come into play when particles are poured randomly into a vessel. While
Loss of restraint may contribute to lupus, other autoimmune disorders
When they’re not busy battling invaders, some of the cells that act as the attack dogs of the mouse immune system have to be kept on a genetic leash to prevent them from mounting inappropriate attacks on the mouse’s own tissues, researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.
The findings, reported in this week’s issue of Science, are the first scientific p
In the largest study of its kind, researchers have shown that diabetes can cause chronic liver disease and cancer of the liver. Researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the National Institutes of Health report their findings in the February issue of Gastroenterology, the journal of the American Gastroenterological Association.
The prospective cohort study was comprised of 173,643 patients with diabetes and 650,620 patients without diabetes who were discharged from VA hos
Well-qualified women are less likely than their male counterparts to consider running for public office because women do not perceive themselves as qualified and do not receive as much encouragement as men, according to a new study by political scientists at Brown University and Union College.
Despite the fact that women perform as well as men in terms of campaign fundraising and vote totals, they remain severely under-represented in U.S. political institutions. Gender disparities are appar
Looking into the night sky you may see a few stars and the moon. Astronomers, however, are looking for more than this – they are looking for Earth-like planets, which, with a little help from Cranfield University, they may be able to find.
As part of a four-year collaborative project, Cranfield University professors Paul Shore, Dave Stephenson and John Nicholls, together with Dr David Walker and Dr Peter Doel, both of University College London, and OpTIC Technium, are set to establish a uniq
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