Technology unravels mysteries of ancient corpse.
Glassy-eyed with a hole in the head – meet Nesperennub, the virtual-reality mummy. A new three-dimensional reconstruction of his insides swoops through musty layers of linen to penetrate his holy skull, without putting the ancient artefact at risk.
Egyptologist John Taylor smuggled the British Museum’s sealed coffin into a hospital computerized tomography (CT or CAT) scanner after hours. The resulting 1,500 flat scans hav
There are no in-car methods of detecting that a driver is too drunk to drive – until now. A team at Bristol University, led by physiologist Dr Dilwyn Marple-Horvat, has found a new way of detecting whether a driver has drunk too much to be fit to be at the wheel.
To assess a driver`s fitness to drive, a new device has been created that measures the degree of co-ordination between hand and eye. It uses: an in-car eye-tracker; a system that continuously monitors steering wheel movements; and
The best way to conserve many of the world’s forests — and alleviate poverty in some of its poorest countries — is to allow rural communities to generate income by selling forest products, rather than tightly regulating forest use, according to a report released on 7 March.
Forests are vital to one quarter of the world’s poorest people, who depend on forest resources for their subsistence, the report says. It adds that improving the lives of these people through commercial forestry is esse
Microbes, not the worms that carry them, aggravate the immune system.
Stowaway bacteria inside parasitic worms, and not the worms themselves, cause river blindness, according to new research. The finding could lead to better ways of preventing or treating the debilitating disease.
River blindness, or onchocerciasis, affects some 17 million people throughout central Africa and in parts of Arabia and South America. Sufferers develop inflammatory conditions. When inflammation
Five times as much water as in all the world’s oceans may lurk deep below its surface.
Geologists have divined water where you might least expect it: 1,000 kilometres below the Earth’s surface. Here, rocks heated to over 1,000 oC and squeezed under high pressures may harbour around five times as much water as in all the world’s oceans. This could give clues to how the Earth formed and how it behaves today.
Between 650 and 2,900 km below the Earth’s surface hot, compressed mi
Research by a University of Sunderland psychologist has revealed that one in four people may have a special gift for predicting uncertainties like the weather.
Tests carried out by Professor Richard Heath, from the university’s Business School, also showed that this uncanny ability could possibly extend to the financial markets.
During his research volunteers were shown temperature figures for the previous eight days and were asked to predict the following four days.
The f
Patients on new Angina Plan report 40% reduction in angina attacks per week New research published in the British Journal of General Practice revealed that patients on the York Angina Plan, compared to those receiving a conventional educational session, reported a 40% reduction in the number of episodes of angina per week (a reduction of three from the baseline mean of seven attacks). This was despite the fact that they were more active. They also showed a lower level of anxiety and d
A team of chemists and physicists at the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford have shown that hydrogen transmits magnetism. This discovery could be the first step to a new class of magnetic materials, and opens up a new field of chemistry.
The team, headed by Professor Matthew Rosseinsky of the Department of Chemistry, University of Liverpool, and including Dr Stephen Blundell of the University of Oxford, has prepared a new magnetic oxide material in which for the first time the dominant ma
Most smokers are disenchanted with smoking and would not smoke if they had their time again, according to a letter in this week’s BMJ. It also shows that smokers’ expectations of how soon they will quit greatly exceed rates of quitting observed in recent history.
A national sample of 893 smokers were asked: “If you had your time again would you start smoking?” Over 80% said that they would not (79% men, 87% women). Those aged 45 to 64 were most regretful, with 90% saying that they would not
pparently credible websites may not necessarily provide higher levels of accurate health information, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.
Researchers examined the relation between credibility features and accuracy of contents of 121 websites that provided information on five common health topic: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, ankle sprain, emergency contraception, menorrhagia, and female sterilisation.
The entire contents of the selected websites were assessed for three credib
A molecular pump that helps to keep cells flush with energy has been visualised by scientists at Imperial College, London.
The structure of the pump, a key enzyme in bacterial respiration, reveals for the first time one of the molecular mechanisms that underpins cellular respiration, and confirms a Nobel Prize-winning theory proposed over 40 years ago by Briton Peter Mitchell.
Professor So Iwata and colleagues from the Laboratory of Membrane Protein Crystallography, Imperial Colleg
A robot submarine expedition under the Antarctic sea ice has discovered a major food reserve in the Southern Ocean. The findings, reported this week in SCIENCE, show a dense band of the shrimp-like krill under the ice, five times more concentrated than in open water. The importance of sea ice as a nursery for krill – key food for penguins, whales and fish – has long been suspected, but these are the first large scale measurements.
Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, the Open Univer
Spondyloarthropathies are rheumatic infectious diseases affecting the spinal column and peripheral joints and tendons. These diseases either occur as such (Bechterew`s disease or ankylosing spondylitis), or are combined with skin psoriasis, inflammatory intestinal diseases (Crohn`s disease and ulcerating colitis), and eye infection (uveitis).
These diseases effect about 1% of total world population and often develop into seriously debilitating conditions with complete stiffening of the spin
Since the 30s of the 20th century, after two wars and revolutions, a lot of women have been joining scientific activities. At last, after centuries of fighting for their rights, women became considered full members of society. Women were welcome to work if they wished to – but only on equal terms with men. However, men and women were not to equalize in rights in terms of housekeeping obligations. It so happened that women did housekeeping, brought up children, and worked as hard as men. Initially, i
A new spin-out from Oxford University, Spinox, is aiming to devise novel ways to copy spiders` ability to spin silks. The new silks may be used for sutures or woven material for surgical implants, protective clothing and in sports equipment.
Spinox has been set up to fully develop a spinning process to create high performance fibres from natural or artificial proteins based on the principles used by spiders and insects to create natural silk fibres. This approach – biomimetic (mimicking biology)
Neue Materialien mit nichtlinearen optischen Eigenschaften
Fensterscheiben und Brillengläser, die sich bei zunehmender Helligkeit dunkler färben, sind besonders im Sommer eine feine Sache. Optische Eigenschaften, die sich mit der Lichtstärke verändern, so genannte nichtlineare optische Eigenschaften, sind ihr Geheimnis. Auch als optoelektronische Bauteile sind derartige Materialien von Interesse. Voraussetzung für die besonderen optischen Eigenschaften ist eine sehr regelmäßigen Mikrostruktu
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