Your eyes play tricks. And your brain makes it worse. Both teenagers and adults misjudge how much they pour into glasses. They will pour more into short wide glasses than into tall slender glasses, but perceive the opposite to be true. The delusion of shape even influences experienced bartenders, though to a lesser degree, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has found.
How shape can alter a person’s notion of size has been widely investigated. For instance, trian
The signal, called Hedgehog, tells cells when and where to grow during embryonic development and is turned on in primitive cells,
Available report outlines goals, challenges, and research areas
The results of a two-day workshop on hydrogen production through biological and artificial systems now is available.
The workshop, sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and hosted jointly by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), included key scientists from the Air Force, NREL, DOE, other national la
Scientists have long known of the potential risk from cosmic rays and other aspects of space weather, such as streams of protons from the Sun, to airline electronic systems, passengers, and crews. It has not been feasible to quantify this risk, however, as systematic data are lacking on the actual amount of rays and the charged particles and neutrons they create in Earth’s atmosphere that are encountered during typical flights. Researchers have now begun collecting that information, thanks to a
Pierre Auger Observatory seeks source of highest-energy extra-terrestrial particles
With the completion of its hundredth surface detector, the Pierre Auger Observatory, under construction in Argentina, this week became the largest cosmic-ray air shower array in the world. Managed by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Pierre Auger project so far encompasses a 70-square-mile array of detectors that are tracking the most violent-and perha
’Fly-bys’, or ’gravity assist’ manoeuvres, are now a standard part of spaceflight and are used by almost all ESA interplanetary missions.
Imagine if every time you drove by a city, your car mysteriously picked up speed or slowed down. Substitute a spacecraft and a planet for the car and the city, and this is called a ’gravity assist’. These manoeuvres take advantage of the fact that the gravitational attraction of the planets can be used to change the tra
Businesses throughout the UK and Europe should soon be able to reduce their travel costs thanks to improvements in the quality of teleconferencing made possible by a grant of almost €2.5 million from the Information Society Technology (IST) Programme of the European Union’s Fifth Framework Programme (FP5).
The VIRTUE (Virtual Team User Environment) project concentrated on improving the quality aspects of video conferencing and the results look set to revolutionise future technology. The VIRT
Researchers at Uppsala University and the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences (SLU) report in the latest issue of Nature that they have identified a regulatory mutation in a gene for a known growth factor that makes pigs more muscular and less fat than wild boars.
Most characteristics, such as common diseases like diabetes, have a multifactorial background, which means that they are influenced by many different genes and environmental factors. Even though we know the entire DNA sequ
Walruses are ’right-flippered’, according to research published this week in BMC Ecology. The first study of walrus feeding behaviour in the wild showed that the animals preferentially use their right flipper to remove sediment from buried food. This is the first time that any aquatic animal has been shown to prefer using one flipper to the other when foraging. Direct observations of the underwater behaviour of free-living marine mammals are rare, especially if the animals are dang
The approximately 50 million people in the U.S. who suffer from autoimmune diseases like HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and arthritis, may soon be able to control their immune responses, thanks to a breakthrough discovery by a researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Wilfred Jefferies, a professor at UBC’s Biotechnology Laboratory, has discovered and characterized the mechanics of a cellular pathway that triggers immune responses. He and his team have also
Refuting 30 years of scientific theory that solely credits hormones for brain development, UCLA scientists have identified 54 genes that may explain the different organization of male and female brains. Published in the October edition of the journal Molecular Brain Research, the UCLA discovery suggests that sexual identity is hard-wired into the brain before birth and may offer physicians a tool for gender assignment of babies born with ambiguous genitalia.
“Our findings may help answer an
A real renaissance in European manufacturing was the focus of a briefing chaired by European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin today. The briefing highlighted the EMO MILANO 2003 Fair in Milan, the world’s largest trade event for the machine tools, robots and automation industries which attracted over 1600 exhibitors from 38 countries and 200,000 visitors. It also emphasised the contribution of EU research in support of the European manufacturing industry. Currently, Europe provides for 52% of t
Leading Scientists and Clinicians at McGill University Health Centre Win A-List Impact Award for MOXXI Research Project
A Montreal team’s unique approach to patient and heath care management received international attention today. This team, led by scientists and clinicians at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), was the only Canadian winner of the QUALCOMM 3G CDMA-List Award for use of innovative wireless technology. The team won the A-List Impact Awa
Scientist have created a new material which could save the electronics industry millions of pounds each year and could also be more effective.
Several attempts have been made over the last twenty years to make gold nitride but now a researcher at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne has solved the puzzle.
Gold is used extensively in the electronics industry, as a conductor of electricity in products such as computers, mobile phones and smart cards. This is because it is relatively
A group of German researchers, headed by Gudrun Schneider (University of Munster) explored the characteristics of psychological well-being in an elderly population in an article published in the Nov-Dec 2003 issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
Recent gerontological research shows a high variability in the elderly population. The aim of the present study is to investigate by means of cluster analysis, as to whether different ’ageing styles’ can be identified in a sample of cognitivel
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center and elsewhere have completed the first large-scale study demonstrating sustained efficacy of a medication to treat insomnia for a period of six months.
Eszopiclone (trade name Estorra), was administered nightly to patients with chronic insomnia and led to significant improvement in patients’ ability to fall asleep and stay asleep and in the quality of their sleep without any evidence of a loss of effect over time, the researchers said. Prio
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