UA Astronomers
Discover Most Primitive Supermassive Holes Known.
Astronomers have come across what appear to be two of the
earliest and most primitive supermassive black holes
known. The discovery will provide a better understanding
of the roots of our universe, and how the very first black
holes, galaxies and stars all came to be. (U. Arizona)
March 16
Ultra-powerful Laser Makes Silicon Pump Liquid Uphill with
No Added Energy. Researchers at the University of
Rochester's Institute of Optics have discovered a way to
make liquid flow vertically upward along a silicon
surface, overcoming the pull of gravity, without pumps or
other mechanical devices. (U. Rochester)
Catastrophic Flooding May Be More Predictable After Penn
Researchers Build a Mini River Delta.
Be true to yourself, and better romantic relationships
will follow, research suggests. A new study examined how
dating relationships were affected by the ability of
people to see themselves clearly and objectively, act in
ways consistent with their beliefs, and interact honestly
and truthfully with others. (U. Penn)
March 15
For Better Romantic Relationships, Be True To Yourself.
Be true to yourself, and better romantic relationships
will follow, research suggests. A new study examined how
dating relationships were affected by the ability of
people to see themselves clearly and objectively, act in
ways consistent with their beliefs, and interact honestly
and truthfully with others. (CU Boulder)
New CU-Boulder Hand Bacteria Study Holds Promise for
Forensics Identification. Forensic scientists may
soon have a valuable new item in their toolkits -- a way
to identify individuals using unique, telltale types of
hand bacteria left behind on objects like keyboards and
computer mice, says a new University of Colorado at
Boulder study. (CU Boulder)
Computational Feat Speeds Finding of Genes to Milliseconds
Instead of Years.
Like a magician who says, “Pick a card, any card,”
Stanford University computer scientist Debashis Sahoo,
PhD, seemed to be offering some kind of trick when he
asked researchers at the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell
Biology and Regenerative Medicine to pick any two genes
already known to be involved in stem cell development.
Finding such genes can take years and hundreds of
thousands of dollars, but Sahoo was promising the
skeptical stem cell scientists that, in a fraction of a
second and for practically zero cost, he could find new
genes involved in the same developmental pathway as the
two genes provided. (Stanford U.)
March 9
“Catastrophic Event” Behind the Halt of Star Birth in
Early Galaxy Formation. Scientists have found
evidence of a catastrophic event they believe was
responsible for halting the birth of stars in a galaxy in
the early Universe. They report their results in the
journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. (RAS)
Stars in the Fast Lane - Going Round and Round.
That is real fast: Two suns orbit each other in a mere 5.4
minutes. This makes HM Cancri the binary star system with
by far the shortest known orbital period - and at the same
time the smallest binary known. Its size is equivalent to
no more than a quarter of the distance from the Earth to
the Moon, about 100,000 kilometres. (MPG)
March 8
Researchers Show How Far South American Cities Moved In
Quake.
The massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck the west
coast of Chile last month moved the entire city of
Concepcion at least 10 feet to the west, and shifted other
parts of South America as far apart as the Falkland
Islands and Fortaleza, Brazil. (OSU)
March 5
ASU Scientists Narrow Down Origins of Malaria.
From King Tut to Alexander the Great to Mother Theresa,
the mosquito-borne illness malaria has long been a menace
to human civilization. Now, an international team of
scientists, including Arizona State University School of
Life Sciences professor Ananias Escalante, has attempted
to better understand this scourge by tracing it back to
its earliest origins. (ASU)
March 4
Genome Sequenced for Amoeba that Flips into Free-swimming
Cell.
In the long evolutionary road from bacteria to humans, a
major milestone occurred some 1.5 billion years ago when
microbes started building closets for all their stuff,
storing DNA inside a nucleus, for example, or cramming all
the energy machinery inside mitochondria. (UC Berkeley)
March 3
UM Study Lays Groundwork for New, Non-Invasive
Brain-Computer Interface Technology. New findings
by a team of University of Maryland researchers may lead
to new, non-invasive technologies for portable
brain-computer interface systems. Such technologies
potentially could allow people with disabilities or
paralysis to operate a robotic arm, motorized wheelchair
or other prosthetic device using a headset with scalp
sensors that send signals from the brain to the device. (U.
Maryland)
Ecological Balancing Act. Phytoplankton are
single-celled organisms that serve as the base of the
marine food web and provide half the oxygen we breathe on
Earth. They also play a key role in global climate change
by removing carbon from the atmosphere and injecting it
deep into the oceans. (MIT)
Old Star is “Missing Link” in Galactic Evolution.
A newly discovered star outside the Milky Way has yielded
important clues about the evolution of our galaxy. Located
in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 280,000 light-years
away, the star has a chemical make-up similar to the Milky
Way’s oldest stars, supporting theories that our galaxy
grew by absorbing dwarf galaxies and other galactic
building blocks. (Carnegie I.)
March 2
Snakes Alive! Study Shows that the Reptiles Ate Baby
Dinosaurs.
Sixty-seven million years ago, when dinosaur hatchlings
first scrambled out of their eggs, their first-and
last-glimpse of the world might have been the open jaws of
a 3.5-metre-long snake named Sanajeh indicus, based on the
discovery in India of a nearly complete fossilized
skeleton of a primitive snake coiled inside a dinosaur
nest. (U. Toronto)
March 1
Dark Matter Used to Measure Age of Universe.
Astronomers from the United States and Europe have used a
gravitational lens -- a distant, light-bending clump of
dark matter -- to make a new estimate of the Hubble
constant, which determines the size and age of the
universe. (UC Davis)
Scientists Make Tiny New Magnets from Old Bugs.
Scientists in Manchester have found a clean and green way
of making tiny magnets for high tech gadgets – using
natural bacteria that have been around for millions of
years. (U. Manchester)
Darkness Increases Dishonest Behavior.
Darkness can conceal identity and encourage moral
transgressions; thus Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in
“Worship” in The Conduct of Life (1860), “as gaslight is
the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself
by pitiless publicity.” New research in Psychological
Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological
Science, shows that darkness may also induce a
psychological feeling of illusory anonymity, just as
children playing “hide and seek” will close their eyes and
believe that other cannot see them, the experience of
darkness, even one as subtle as wearing a pair of
sunglasses, triggers the belief that we are warded from
others’ attention and inspections. (APS)
February 24
TV Ads May Be More Effective if We Pay Less Attention.
Viewers pay less attention to creative television
advertisements, shows new research from the University of
Bath, but may make themselves more vulnerable to the
advertiser’s message. (U. Bath)
February 23
Alien Invaders Pack the Milky Way. Around a
quarter of the globular star clusters in our Milky Way
galaxy are invaders from other galaxies, according to a
team of scientists from Swinburne University of Technology
in Australia. In a paper accepted for publication in
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
Swinburne astronomer Professor Duncan Forbes has shown
that many of our galaxy’s globular star clusters are
actually foreigners - having been born elsewhere and then
migrated to our Milky Way. (RAS)
Anti-drinking Ads Can Increase Alcohol Use.
Public service advertising campaigns that use guilt or
shame to warn against alcohol abuse can actually have the
reverse effect, spurring increased drinking among target
audiences, according to new research from the Indiana
University Kelley School of Business. (Inidana U.)
February 22
An Afternoon Nap Markedly Boosts the Brain’s Learning
Capacity. If you see a student dozing in the
library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle,
don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of
California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can
dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed,
the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not
only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter. (UC
Berkeley.)
CU Team Discovers Tiny RNA Molecule With Big Implications
for the Origin of Life. An extremely small RNA
molecule created by a University of Colorado at Boulder
team can catalyze a key reaction needed to synthesize
proteins, the building blocks of life. The findings could
be a substantial step toward understanding "the very
origin of Earthly life," the lead researcher contends. (U.
Colorado, B.)
Caltech Neuroscientists Find Brain System Behind General
Intelligence.
A collaborative team of neuroscientists at the California
Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Iowa,
the University of Southern California (USC), and the
Autonomous University of Madrid have mapped the brain
structures that affect general intelligence. (LBNL)
Most Precise Test Yet of Einstein's Gravitational
Redshift. While airplane and rocket experiments
have proved that gravity makes clocks tick more slowly — a
central prediction of Albert Einstein's general theory of
relativity — a new experiment in an atom interferometer
measures this slowdown 10,000 times more accurately than
before, and finds it to be exactly what Einstein
predicted. (UC Berkeley)
Upside-down Answer for Deep Earth Mystery. When
Earth was young, it exhaled the atmosphere. During a
period of intense volcanic activity, lava carried light
elements from the planet's molten interior and released
them into the sky. However, some light elements got
trapped inside the planet. In this week's issue of Nature,
a Rice University-based team of scientists is offering a
new answer to a longstanding mystery: What caused Earth to
hold its last breath? (Rice U.)
People Likely to Form Extreme Perceptions of Reality While
Learning. People may develop distorted views of
certain types of people, places or experiences depending
on how they compare those categories during the learning
process, according to new research at The University of
Texas at Austin. (UTA)
Cancer Breakthrough Could Save Children’s Lives.
A cancer which claims the lives of thousands of children
worldwide every year is a step closer to being cured
thanks to a breakthrough by scientists at Newcastle
University. (Newcastle U.)
February 16
NASA's Fermi Closes on Source of Cosmic Rays. New
images from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope show
where supernova remnants emit radiation a billion times
more energetic than visible light. The images bring
astronomers a step closer to understanding the source of
some of the universe's most energetic particles -- cosmic
rays. (GSFC)
Caltech Researchers Create Highly Absorbing, Flexible
Solar Cells with Silicon Wire Arrays.
Using arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded in a
polymer substrate, a team of scientists from the
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created a
new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the
absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its
photons into electrons. The solar cell does all this using
only a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials
required by conventional solar cells. (Caltech)
February 14
Digging Deep into Diamonds.
By creating diamond-based nanowire devices, a team at
Harvard University has taken another step toward making
applications based on quantum science and technology
possible. (Harvard U.)
Gene Discovery to Increase Biomass Needed for Green Fuel.
Manchester scientists have identified the genes that make
plants grow fatter and plan to use their research to
increase plant biomass in trees and other species – thus
helping meet the need for renewable resources. (U.
Manchester)
Students Find ‘Lost’ Office Gear with Tiny Sensors.
Miniature sensors being developed by CSIRO promise to
provide the answers to questions which seem to arise
regularly in modern office workplaces like: “Where’s my
pen?” and; “Who nicked my stapler?” (CSIRO)
February 9
Leaf Veins Inspire a New Model for Distribution Networks.
A straight line may be the shortest path from A to B, but
it’s not always the most reliable or efficient way to go.
In fact, depending on what’s traveling where, the best
route may run in circles, according to a new model that
bucks decades of theorizing on the subject. A team of
biophysicists at Rockefeller University developed a
mathematical model showing that complex sets of
interconnecting loops — like the netted veins that
transport water in a leaf — provide the best distribution
network for supplying fluctuating loads to varying parts
of the system. It also shows that such a network can best
handle damage. The findings could change the way engineers
think about designing networks to handle a variety of
challenges like the distribution of water or electricity
in a city (Rockefeller U.)
Clothing Solution for Chilly Operating Room Environment.
Hugging heated IV bags, layering undergarments and
wrapping themselves in blankets - Barry Finegan and his
co-workers do what they can to get warm before heading
into the surgical theatre. (U. Alberta)
February 5
Migrating Insects Fly in the Fast Lane. A study
involving researchers at the University of York sheds new
light on the flight behaviours that enable insects to
undertake long-distance migrations, and highlights the
remarkable abilities of these insect migrants. (U. York)
Record-breaking Collisions.
In December, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s
largest particle accelerator, shattered the world record
for highest energy particle collisions. (MIT)
February 3
Some Morbidly Obese People are Missing Genes. A
small but significant proportion of morbidly obese people
are missing a section of their DNA, according to research
published today in Nature. The authors of the study, from
Imperial College London and ten other European Centres,
say that missing DNA such as that identified in this
research may be having a dramatic effect on some people's
weight. (ICL)
Bad News For Mosquitoes: Yale Study May Lead to Better
Traps, Repellents. Yale University researchers
have found more than two dozen scent receptors in
malaria-transmitting mosquitoes that detect compounds in
human sweat, a finding that may help scientists to develop
new ways to combat a disease that kills 1 million people
annually. (Yale U.)
Madly Mapping the Universe.
To map our home planet, Google Earth depends mostly on
satellite imagery for land surfaces and sonar imagery for
the sea floor. Maps of the Universe likewise depend on
different kinds of detectors for different kinds of
features. Maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB),
for example, depend on measuring minute differences in the
temperature of the sky. (LBNL)
February 1
Seeing the Brain Hear Reveals Surprises About How Sound Is
Processed.
New research shows our brains are a lot more chaotic than
previously thought, and that this might be a good thing.
Neurobiologists at the University of Maryland have
discovered information about how the brain processes sound
that challenges previous understandings of the auditory
cortex, which had suggested an organization based on
precise neuronal maps. (U. Maryland)
January 29
Study Shows Cigarette Smoking a Risk for Alzheimer’s
Disease. A UCSF analysis of published studies on
the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and smoking
indicates that smoking cigarettes is a significant risk
factor for the disease. After controlling for study
design, quality of the journals, time of publication, and
tobacco industry affiliation of the authors, the UCSF
research team also found an association between tobacco
industry affiliation and the conclusions of individual
studies. Industry-affiliated studies indicated that
smoking protects against the development of AD, while
independent studies showed that smoking increased the risk
of developing the disease. (UCSF)
Cell Growth Regulates Genetic Circuits. Genetic
circuits control the activity of genes and thereby the
function of cells and organisms. Scientists from the Max
Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and
the University of California at San Diego have shown how
various genetic circuits in bacterial cells are influenced
by growth conditions. According to their findings, even
genes that are not regulated can display different
activities - depending on whether they are translated into
proteins in slow- or fast-growing cells. The results
provide researchers with new insights into gene regulation
and will help them in the design of synthetic genetic
circuits in the future. (MPG)
Learning from Toys.
Scientists have long studied how atoms and molecules
structure themselves into intricate clusters. Unlocking
the design secrets of nature offers lessons in engineering
artificial systems that could self-assemble into desired
forms. (Harvard U.)
January 27
National Ignition Facility Achieves Unprecedented 1
Megajoule Laser Shot. The National Nuclear
Security Administration (NNSA) announced today that
scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have
successfully delivered an historic level of laser energy —
more than 1 megajoule — to a target in a few billionths of
a second and demonstrated the target drive conditions
required to achieve fusion ignition. (LLNL)
Perfect Landing. Scientists have found that people
who run barefoot, or in minimal footwear, tend to avoid
“heel-striking,” and instead land on the ball of the foot
or the middle of the foot. In so doing, these runners use
the architecture of the foot and leg and some clever
Newtonian physics to avoid hurtful and potentially
damaging impacts, equivalent to two to three times body
weight, that shod heel-strikers repeatedly experience. (Harvard
U.)
Microbes Produce Fuels Directly from Biomass.
A collaboration led by researchers with the U.S.
Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI)
has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced
biofuel directly from biomass. Deploying the tools of
synthetic biology, the JBEI researchers engineered a
strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce
biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from
fatty acids. (LBNL)
January 26
Diamond in Space.
When viewed through a telescope, the Steins planetoid is
an inconspicuous spot of light. Viewed in more detail, it
shows itself to be a kind of debris heap with a
diamond-like shape and large craters on its surface. A
team headed by Horst Uwe Keller from the Max Planck
Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau
has taken a closer look. The scientists used the OSIRIS
camera system aboard the European space probe Rosetta for
this task. (MPG)
Study Links Springtime Ozone Increases Above Western North
America to Emissions Abroad.
Springtime ozone levels above western North America are
rising primarily due to air flowing eastward from the
Pacific Ocean, a trend that is largest when the air
originates in Asia. These increases in ozone could make it
more difficult for the United States to meet Clean Air Act
standards for ozone pollution at ground level, according
to a new international study. Published online today in
the journal Nature, the study analyzed large sets of ozone
data captured since 1984. (NOAA)
Organized Chaos Gets Robots Going.
Göttingen scientists develop an autonomous walking robot
that flexibly switches between many different gaits by
using "chaos control". (MPG)
January 14
Y Chromosomes Evolving Rapidly.
The Y chromosome is often considered somewhat of a genetic
oddball. Short and stubby, it carries hardly any genes,
most of which are related to traits associated with
maleness. Most of the chromosome consists of highly
repetitive sequences of DNA, known as massive palindrome
sequences, whose function is unknown. (MIT)
Study Sheds New Light on Key to Life on Earth.
University of Manchester scientists have discovered
exactly how plants obtain energy from sunlight through
chlorophyll production in a study that helps to explain
the design and activity of all enzymes. (U. Manchester)
Friendship
May Help Stem Rise of Obesity in Children. Parents
are acutely aware of the influence of friends on their
children's behavior -- how they dress, how they wear their
hair, whether they drink or smoke. (U. Buffalo)
For this Microbe, Cousins not Particularly Welcome.
A bacterial species that depends on cooperation to survive
is discriminating when it comes to the company it keeps.
Scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and
Netherlands' Centre for Terrestrial Ecology have learned
Myxococcus xanthus cells are able to recognize genetic
differences in one another that are so subtle, even the
scientists studying them must go to great lengths to tell
them apart. (Indiana U.)
UM-Led Team Shines Cosmic Light on Missing Ordinary
Matter. An international team of scientists, led
by University of Maryland astronomer Stacy McGaugh, has
found that individual galactic objects have less ordinary
matter, relative to dark matter, than does the Universe as
a whole. (U. Maryland)
Honeybees Can Help Dissect How Disease Spreads in
Livestock, Other Animal and Human Groups.
The study of honeybees and their social structure can give
scientists a greater understanding of how infectious
disease spreads among animals and humans, says a Colorado
State University professor who has embarked on a five-year
study of honeybee behavior, funded by a National Science
Foundation CAREER award. (CSU)
January 5
Image Reveals Unprecedented View of Universe.
Shown in an extremely broad range of color and showcasing
more than 12 billion years of cosmic history, Hubble's
recent image is a full-glory cosmic renaissance of the
history of the Universe. This image provides a record of
the Universe's most exciting formative years, from the
birth of stars in the early Universe all the way through
the materialization of the Milky Way. (ASU)
January 4
Biodegradable Nanoparticles Can Bypass Mucus Barrier and
Release Drugs Over Time.
Johns Hopkins University researchers have created
biodegradable nanosized particles that can easily slip
through the body’s sticky and viscous mucus secretions to
deliver a sustained-release medication cargo. The
researchers say these nanoparticles, which degrade over
time into harmless components, could one day carry
life-saving drugs to patients suffering from dozens of
health conditions, including diseases of the eye, lung,
gut or female reproductive tract. (JHU)
Researchers Find Clues to Why Some Eat When Full.
The premise that hunger makes food look more appealing is
a widely held belief – just ask those who cruise grocery
store aisles on an empty stomach, only to go home with a
full basket and an empty wallet. (UTSMC)
Molars Provide Insight into Evolution of Apes, Humans.
The timing of molar emergence and its relation to growth
and reproduction in apes is being reported by two
scientists at Arizona State University's Institute of
Human Origins in the Dec. 28 online early edition of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). (ASU)
December 24
Scientists Identify Protein that Keeps Stem Cells Poised
for Action.
Like a child awaiting the arrival of Christmas, embryonic
stem cells exist in a state of permanent anticipation.
They must balance the ability to quickly become more
specialized cell types with the cellular chaos that could
occur should they act too early (stop shaking those
presents, kids!). Researchers at the Stanford University
School of Medicine have now identified a critical
component, called Jarid2, of this delicate balancing act —
one that both recruits other regulatory proteins to genes
important in differentiation and also modulates their
activity to keep them in a state of ongoing readiness. (Stanford
U.)
December 23
Sun and Moon Trigger Deep Tremors on San Andreas Fault.
The faint tug of the sun and moon on the San Andreas Fault
stimulates tremors deep underground, suggesting that the
rock 15 miles below is lubricated with highly pressurized
water that allows the rock to slip with little effort,
according to a new study by University of California,
Berkeley, seismologists. (UC Berkeley)
Cancer, Alzheimer's Less Likely to Strike in Combination.
It may seem a small consolation from either point of view,
but a new study has affirmed that patients with cancer are
less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, and patients
with Alzheimer's disease are less likely to get cancer. (WUSTL)
December 22
Genetic Study Traces African-Americans' Ancestry.
Researchers may now reliably use genetics data to tell a
person's ancestry -- what percent of an African-American's
genome stems from Europe, for example, and what percent
comes from Africa. (Cornell U.)
December 21
Next Generation Lens Promises More Control.
Duke University engineers have created a new generation of
lens that could greatly improve the capabilities of
telecommunications or radar systems to provide a wide
field of view and greater detail. (Duke U.)
December 16
An Advance in Superconducting Magnet Technology Opens the
Door for More Powerful Colliders. The Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) at CERN has just started producing
collisions, but scientists and engineers have already made
significant progress in preparing for future upgrades
beyond the collider’s nominal design performance,
including a 10-fold increase in collision rates by the end
of the next decade and, eventually, higher-energy beams. (LBNL)
Argonne Scientists Use Bacteria to Power Simple Machines.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE)
Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University
have discovered that common bacteria can turn microgears
when suspended in a solution, providing insights for
designs of bio-inspired dynamically adaptive materials for
energy. (ANL)
December 15
Black Holes in Star Clusters Stir up Time and Space.
Within a decade scientists could be able to detect the
merger of tens of pairs of black holes every year,
according to a team of astronomers at the University of
Bonn’s Argelander-Institut fuer Astronomie, who publish
their findings in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society. By modelling the behaviour of stars
in clusters, the Bonn team find that they are ideal
environments for black holes to coalesce. These merger
events produce ripples in time and space (gravitational
waves) that could be detected by instruments from as early
as 2015. (RAS)
Pollution Alters Isolated Thunderstorms. New
climate research reveals how wind shear — the same
atmospheric conditions that cause bumpy airplane rides —
affects how pollution contributes to isolated thunderstorm
clouds. Under strong wind shear conditions, pollution
hampers thunderhead formation. But with weak wind shear,
pollution does the opposite and makes storms stronger. (PNNL)
Greenland Glaciers: What Lies Beneath. Scientists
who study the melting of Greenland’s glaciers are
discovering that water flowing beneath the ice plays a
much more complex role than they previously imagined. (OSU)
December 14
Yellowstone's Plumbing Exposed. The most detailed
seismic images yet published of the plumbing that feeds
the Yellowstone supervolcano shows a plume of hot and
molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a
depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims that
there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like
slowly boiling soup. (U. Utah)
Brain Plaques in Healthy Individuals Linked to Increased
Alzheimer's Risk.
Scientists have long assumed that amyloid brain plaques
found in autopsies of Alzheimer's patients are harmful and
cause Alzheimer's disease. But autopsies of people with no
signs of mental impairment have also revealed brain
plaques, challenging this theory. (WUSTL)
December 10
New Meat-Eating Dinosaur Alters Evolutionary Tree.
Paleontologists, aided by amateur volunteers, have
unearthed a previously unknown meat-eating dinosaur from a
fossil bone bed in northern New Mexico, settling a debate
about early dinosaur evolution, revealing a period of
explosive diversification and hinting at how dinosaurs
spread across the supercontinent Pangaea. (UTA)
December 9
Non-Invasive Technique Blocks a Conditioned Fear in Humans.
Scientists have for the first time selectively blocked a
conditioned fear memory in humans with a behavioral
manipulation. Participants remained free of the fear
memory for at least a year. The research builds on
emerging evidence from animal studies that reactivating an
emotional memory opens a 6-hour window of opportunity in
which a training procedure can alter its. (NIH)
December 8
Social Scientists Build Case for 'Survival of the Kindest'.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are
challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired
to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social
scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show
we are evolving to become more compassionate and
collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive. (UC
Berkeley)
Reinvigorated Hubble Reveals Most Distant Galaxies Yet.
Using the recently updated Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
two teams of UK astronomers have identified galaxies which
are likely to be the most distant yet seen. The UK teams,
one led by Andrew Bunker and Stephen Wilkins at the
University of Oxford and the other by Ross McLure and Jim
Dunlop at the University of Edinburgh, analysed infrared
images from the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument
on HST, installed during the most recent Space Shuttle
servicing mission in May 2009. Infrared light is light
invisible to the human eye, with wavelengths about twice
as long as visible light - beyond the red. (RAS)
A Special Kind of Flight Training.
Whether for a business trip to a neighbouring country or a
holiday in the Caribbean: What most people take for
granted, actually poses a great challenge not only for the
transport business, but also particularly for pilots. The
goal of the European Union project SUPRA, funded with 3.7
million Euro, is to train pilots in the best manner
possible and prepare them for hazardous scenarios. (MPG)
December 7
A See-through Surprise.
Very often in science, the unexpected discovery turns out
to be the most significant. Rice University Professor
Junichiro Kono and his team weren't looking for a
breakthrough in the transmission of terahertz signals, but
there it was: a plasmonic material that would, with
adjustments to its temperature and/or magnetic field,
either stop a terahertz beam cold or let it pass
completely. (Rice U.)
December 4
Galapagos the Rosetta Stone of Evolution Faces Devastation
from Climate Change and Fishing.
The coastal wildlife of the Galapagos Islands – arguably
the world’s most celebrated environmental treasure – has
suffered outright transformations due to a combination of
climate change and over fishing, with several species of
marine plants and animals believed to have gone extinct
and many others seriously threatened, a new report
reveals. (Conservation I.)
December 3
A Greener Way to Get Electricity from Natural Gas.
A proposed system would use solid-oxide fuel cells to
produce power without sending CO2 into the atmosphere. But
can it compete with conventional power plants? (MIT)
December 2
Newly Discovered Star One of Hottest in Galaxy.
Astronomers at The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank
Centre for Astrophysics have discovered one of the hottest
stars in the Galaxy with a surface temperature of around
200,000 degrees - 35 times hotter than the Sun. (Manchester
U.)
New Cell Phone Technology Allows Deaf People to
Communicate Anytime, Anywhere. For those who are
deaf or hard of hearing, cell phone use has largely been
limited to text messaging. But technology is catching up:
Cornell researchers and colleagues have created cell
phones that allow deaf people to communicate in sign
language -- the same way hearing people use phones to talk. (Cornell
U.)
Why a Short Run is Better than a Long Walk.
Using the latest technology, researchers are uncovering
evidence of exactly how major a role activity plays in the
battle to keep obesity at bay. In new report published in
the British Medical Journal, scientists have shown that
it’s the type of exercise you do, rather than the amount,
that’s most important. (Bristol U.)
December 1
Fear of
Anxiety Linked to Depression in Above-average Worriers.
Anxiety sensitivity, or the fear of feeling anxious, may
put people who are already above-average worriers at risk
for depression, according to Penn State researchers.
Understanding how sensitivity to anxiety is a risk factor
for depression may make anxiety sensitivity a potential
target for treating depression in the future. (PSU)