NewScITech

Scientists using one of the nation’s newest and most capable research aircraft are launching a far-reaching field project this month to study plumes of airborne dust and pollutants that originate in Asia and journey to North America. Read the rest of this entry »

In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state-level rates of suicide in the United States, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found that suicide rates among children, women, and men of all ages are higher in states where more households have guns. The study appears in the April 2007 issue of The Journal of Trauma. Read the rest of this entry »

Bugs in the gut are known as gut microbes and they live symbiotically in human and animal bodies, playing an important role in metabolism. Abnormalities in some types of gut microbes have recently been linked to diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Read the rest of this entry »

Did life arrive from space? Rather than developing here, could the first life forms have been catapulted to Earth on a chunk of rock from outer space? Investigations show that microbes are capable of surviving just such a journey. Read the rest of this entry »

In a breakthrough that could free nanomachines from the bulk of batteries, researchers have developed a novel nanogenerator–an array of tiny filaments that converts the smallest motions into electrical current. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most profound predicted impacts of climate change was discussed in a landmark conference at Oriel College by scientists, conservationists and policymakers from Europe and North and South America. They discussed some key research showing that although intact forests are fairly resistant to climate change, with partial deforestation the entire landscape could become drier and a domino effect could occur producing a ‘tipping point’ affecting the whole forest. Scientists were unwilling to quantify the risk of this happening, but talked about ‘corridors of probability’ with models predicting the risk at between 10 to 40 per cent over the next few decades. Read the rest of this entry »

The theory that Earth once underwent a prolonged time of extreme global freezing has been dealt a blow by new evidence that periods of warmth occurred during this so-called ‘Snowball Earth’ era. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone knows children are getting fatter and that both a poor diet and a lack of exercise are to blame. But, what researchers have been unable to discover until now, is exactly how major a role activity plays in the battle to keep obesity at bay. Read the rest of this entry »

Teaching parents better ways of bringing up children is likely to improve the child’s behaviour, according to researchers from Oxford University and Bangor University. Read the rest of this entry »

Scientists return this week to the world’s deepest known sinkhole, Cenote Zacatón in Mexico, to resume tests of a NASA-funded robot called DEPTHX, designed to survey and explore for life in one of Earth’s most extreme regions and potentially in outer space. Read the rest of this entry »

People’s intentions have been read via brain scans by a team of scientists including Professor Dick Passingham from Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology. Read the rest of this entry »

The Altair 8800, introduced in the early 1970s, was the first computer you could build at home from a kit. It was crude, didn’t do much, but many historians would say that it launched the desktop computer revolution. Hod Lipson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, thinks a little machine he calls a Fab@Home may have the same impact. Read the rest of this entry »

As climate change scientists develop ever more sophisticated climate models to project an expected path of temperature change, it is becoming increasingly important to include the effects of aerosols on clouds, according to Joyce E. Penner, a leading atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan. Read the rest of this entry »

Any dieter can tell you: Body weight is a function of how much food you eat and how much energy you use. The trick to maintaining a healthy weight lies in regulating the balance. Now new research from Rockefeller University suggests that brain cell receptors linked to sex hormones may play a role in the process by which we maintain that balance. Read the rest of this entry »

Some of people’s biggest problems with communication come in sharing new information with people they know well, newly published research at the University of Chicago shows. Because they already share quite a bit of common knowledge, people often use short, ambiguous messages in talking with co-workers and spouses, and accordingly unintentionally create misunderstandings, said Boaz Keysar, Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »