April 30, 2013

Does Antimatter Fall Up or Down?




Berkeley Lab physicists and their colleagues in CERN’s ALPHA experiment present the first direct evidence of how atoms of antimatter interact with gravity

The atoms that make up ordinary matter fall down, so do antimatter atoms fall up? Do they experience gravity the same way as ordinary atoms, or is there such a thing as antigravity?

These questions have long intrigued physicists, says Joel Fajans of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), because “in the unlikely event that antimatter falls upwards, we’d have to fundamentally revise our view of physics and rethink how the universe works.”



One step closer to a quantum computer




Professor Weimin Chen and his colleagues at Linköping University, in cooperation with German and American researchers, have succeeded in both initializing and reading nuclear spins, relevant to qubits for quantum computers, at room temperature. The results have just been published in the renowned journal Nature Communications.

A quantum computer is controlled by the laws of quantum physics; it promises to perform complicated calculations, or search large amounts of data, at a speed that exceeds by far those that today’s fastest supercomputers are capable of.



Carnegie Mellon Researchers Develop Zooming Technique For Entering Text Into Smartwatches, Ultra-small Computers




Technology blogs have been abuzz that smartwatches may soon be on their way from companies such as Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft. But as capable as these ultra-small computers may be, how will users enter an address, a name, or a search term into them? One solution is an iterative zooming technique developed and tested by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Called ZoomBoard, this text entry technique is based on the familiar QWERTY keyboard layout. Though the full keyboard is impossibly small on a watch-size display, simply tapping the screen once or twice will enlarge an individual key until it can be comfortably and accurately pressed.



Charging electric vehicles cheaper and faster




Researchers at Chalmers have developed a unique integrated motor drive and battery charger for electric vehicles. Compared to today's electric vehicle chargers, they have managed to shorten the charging time from eight to two hours, and to reduce the cost by around $2,000.

Saeid Haghbin, doctor of electric power engineering, undertook his doctoral studies in order to develop the optimal electric vehicle charger. The result is a novel high-power integrated motor drive and battery charger for vehicle applications, where a new power transfer method has been introduced involving what is known as a rotating transformer.



Mysterious catalyst explained




How tiny gold particles aid the production of plastic components

RUB researchers report in “Angewandte Chemie”

From methanol to formaldehyde - this reaction is the starting point for the synthesis of many everyday plastics. Using catalysts made of gold particles, formaldehyde could be produced without the environmentally hazardous waste generated in conventional methods. Just how the mysterious gold catalyst works has been found out by theoretical and experimental researchers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in a cooperation project. In the international edition of the journal “Angewandte Chemie” they report in detail on what happens on the gold surface during the chemical reaction.



CAT AND MOUSE: A SINGLE GENE MATTERS




Scientists discover one gene is necessary for mice to avoid predators

When a mouse smells a cat, it instinctively avoids the feline or risks becoming dinner. How? A Northwestern University study involving olfactory receptors, which underlie the sense of smell, provides evidence that a single gene is necessary for the behavior.

A research team led by neurobiologist Thomas Bozza has shown that removing one olfactory receptor from mice can have a profound effect on their behavior. The gene, called TAAR4, encodes a receptor that responds to a chemical that is enriched in the urine of carnivores. While normal mice innately avoid the scent marks of predators, mice lacking the TAAR4 receptor do not.




Study identifies key shift in the brain that creates drive to overeat




A team of American and Italian neuroscientists has identified a cellular change in the brain that accompanies obesity. The findings could explain the body's tendency to maintain undesirable weight levels, rather than an ideal weight, and identify possible targets for pharmacological efforts to address obesity.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, identify a switch that occurs in neurons within the hypothalamus. The switch involves receptors that trigger or inhibit the release of the orexin A peptide, which stimulates the appetite, among other behaviors. In normal-weight mice, activation of this receptor decreases orexin A release. In obese mice, activation of this receptor stimulates orexin A release.



Mediterranean diet linked to preserving memory




A University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) study suggests that the Mediterranean diet, which urges consuming foods that contain omega-3 fatty acids found in fish, chicken and salad dressing, and avoiding saturated fats, meat and dairy foods, may be linked to preserving memory and thinking abilities. However, the same association was not found in people with diabetes. The research is published in the April 30, 2013, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“Since there are no definitive treatments for most dementing illnesses, modifiable activities, such as diet, that may delay the onset of symptoms of dementia, are very important,” said Georgios Tsivgoulis, M.D., a neurologist with UAB and the University of Athens, Greece.



What Happened to Dinosaurs' Predecessors After Earth's Largest Extinction 252 Million Years Ago?




Fossil-hunting expeditions to Tanzania, Zambia and Antarctica provide new insights

Predecessors to dinosaurs missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during Earth's largest mass extinction 252 million years ago.

Or did they?

That thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia.

It turns out, however, that scientists may have been looking in the wrong places.

Newly discovered fossils from 10 million years after the mass extinction reveal a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs in Tanzania and Zambia.



Deep in Texas, a plant-eating feathered dinosaur reemerges




A recently identified feathered dinosaur found deep in West Texas reinforces an emerging view that creatures like it were more diverse and widespread in North America than previously thought, according to a new study.

The species — a turkey-sized herbivore called Leptorhynchos gaddisi — belongs to a broader group of bird-like dinosaurs characterized by toothless beaks and long, slender claws, said researchers, who analyzed fossils found near Big Bend National Park at a site dating to about 75 million years ago.



April 29, 2013

Researcher Reveals New Way to Safeguard DNA Samples




DNA evidence is invisible and remarkably easy to transfer, making it possible for a sample to be spilled or even planted on a piece of evidence.

Boise State University professor Greg Hampikian is known internationally for his work in DNA forensics, and he has developed a solution that permanently marks DNA samples to prevent contamination. Hampikian has used nullomers, the smallest DNA sequences that are absent from nature, to create the DNA bar code.



Do you obsess over your appearance? Your brain might be wired abnormally




Body dysmorphic disorder is a disabling but often misunderstood psychiatric condition in which people perceive themselves to be disfigured and ugly, even though they look normal to others. New research at UCLA shows that these individuals have abnormalities in the underlying connections in their brains.

Dr. Jamie Feusner, the study's senior author and a UCLA associate professor of psychiatry, and his colleagues report that individuals with BDD have, in essence, global "bad wiring" in their brains — that is, there are abnormal network-wiring patterns across the brain as a whole.



Decoding ‘noisy’ language in daily life




Study indicates how people make sense of confusing statements.

Suppose you hear someone say, “The man gave the ice cream the child.” Does that sentence seem plausible? Or do you assume it is missing a word? Such as: “The man gave the ice cream to the child.”

A new study by MIT researchers indicates that when we process language, we often make these kinds of mental edits. Moreover, it suggests that we seem to use specific strategies for making sense of confusing information — the “noise” interfering with the signal conveyed in language, as researchers think of it.



Silicone liquid crystal stiffens with repeated compression





Rice University researchers say discovery may point toward self-healing materials

Squeeze a piece of silicone and it quickly returns to its original shape, as squishy as ever. But scientists at Rice University have discovered that the liquid crystal phase of silicone becomes 90 percent stiffer when silicone is gently and repeatedly compressed. Their research could lead to new strategies for self-healing materials or biocompatible materials that mimic human tissues.

A paper on the research appeared this month in Nature’s online journal Nature Communications.

Silicone in its liquid crystal phase is somewhere between a solid and liquid state, which makes it very handy for many things. So Rice polymer scientist Rafael Verduzco was intrigued to see a material he thought he knew well perform in a way he didn’t expect. “I was really surprised to find out, when my student did these measurements, that it became stiffer,” he said. “In fact, I didn’t believe him at first.”



Sea Turtles Benefiting From Protected Areas




Nesting green sea turtles are benefiting from marine protected areas by using habitats found within their boundaries, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study that is the first to track the federally protected turtles in Dry Tortugas National Park.

Green turtles are listed as endangered in Florida and threatened throughout the rest of their range, and the habits of green sea turtles after their forays to nest on beaches in the Southeast U.S. have long remained a mystery. Until now, it was not clear whether the turtles made use of existing protected areas, and few details were available as to whether they were suited for supporting the green sea turtle’s survival.

U.S. Geological Survey researchers confirmed the turtles' use of the protected areas by tracking nesting turtles with satellite tags and analyzing their movement patterns after they left beaches.



a revolutionary shape changing smartphone that curls upon a call




queen’s university’s human media lab to unveil morephone at paris conference

researchers at queen’s university’s human media lab have developed a new smartphone – called morephone – which can morph its shape to give users a silent yet visual cue of an incoming phone call, text message or email.

“this is another step in the direction of radically new interaction techniques afforded by smartphones based on thin film, flexible display technologies” says roel vertegaal (school of computing), director of the human media lab at queen’s university who developed the flexible paperphone and papertab.

“users are familiar with hearing their phone ring or feeling it vibrate in silent mode. one of the problems with current silent forms of notification is that users often miss notifications when not holding their phone. with morephone, they can leave their smartphone on the table and observe visual shape changes when someone is trying to contact them.”



UMass Amherst Biologists Propose a New Research Roadmap for Connecting Genes to Ecology




A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is proposing a new investigative roadmap for the field of evolutionary developmental biology, or “evo devo,” to better understand how innovation at the genetic level can lead to ecological adaptations over time. Evo devo seeks to understand the specific genetic mechanisms underlying evolutionary change.

Seven UMass Amherst authors, all biologists but with diverse research programs including evolutionary genetics, developmental biology, biomechanics and behavioral ecology, describe the new framework they created to link genes to ecology in the May issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution. They propose a set of hypotheses that can form the basis for further studies. “We advocate strengthened collaborations,” they point out, among evo devo disciplines “to consider all links from genes to resource use.”



Grocery delivery service is greener than driving to the store




At the end of a long day, it can be more convenient to order your groceries online while sitting on the living room couch instead of making a late-night run to the store. New research shows it’s also much more environmentally friendly to leave the car parked and opt for groceries delivered to your doorstep.

University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions.



Growing new arteries, bypassing blocked ones




Scientific collaborators from Yale School of Medicine and University College London (UCL) have uncovered the molecular pathway by which new arteries may form after heart attacks, strokes and other acute illnesses — bypassing arteries that are blocked. Their study appears in the April 29 issue of Developmental Cell.

Arteries form in utero and during development, but can also form in adults when organs become deprived of oxygen — for example, after a heart attack. The organs release a molecular signal called VEGF. Working with mice, the Yale-UCL team discovered that in order for VEGF-driven artery formation to occur, VEGF must bind with two molecules known as VEGFR2 and NRP1, and all three must work as a team.



Engaging Online Crowds in the Classroom Could Be Important Tool for Teaching Innovation




Online crowds can be an important tool for teaching the ins and outs of innovation, educators at Carnegie Mellon University and Northwestern University say, even when the quality of the feedback provided by online sources doesn't always match the quantity.

In a pilot study that invited the crowd into their classrooms, Carnegie Mellon and Northwestern instructors found that input from social media and other crowdsourcing sites helped the students identify human needs for products or services, generate large quantities of ideas, and ease some aspects of testing those ideas.



Extreme Political Attitudes May Stem From an Illusion of Understanding




Having to explain how a political policy works leads people to express less extreme attitudes toward the policy, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The research suggests that people may hold extreme policy positions because they are under an illusion of understanding — attempting to explain the nuts and bolts of how a policy works forces them to acknowledge that they don’t know as much about the policy as they initially thought.

Psychological scientist Philip Fernbach of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, Boulder and his co-authors were interested in exploring some of the factors that could contribute to what they see as increasing political polarization in the United States.




Sniffing Out Schizophrenia




Neurons in the nose could be the key to early, fast, and accurate diagnosis, says a TAU researcher

A debilitating mental illness, schizophrenia can be difficult to diagnose. Because physiological evidence confirming the disease can only be gathered from the brain during an autopsy, mental health professionals have had to rely on a battery of psychological evaluations to diagnose their patients.

Now, Dr. Noam Shomron and Prof. Ruth Navon of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, together with PhD student Eyal Mor from Dr. Shomron's lab and Prof. Akira Sawa of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, have discovered a method for physical diagnosis — by collecting tissue from the nose through a simple biopsy. Surprisingly, collecting and sequencing neurons from the nose may lead to "more sure-fire" diagnostic capabilities than ever before, Dr. Shomron says.



Ecological knowledge offers perspectives for sustainable agriculture




A smart combination of different crops, such as beans and maize, can significantly cut the use of crop protection agents and at the same time reduce the need for fertilizers. Integrating ecological knowledge from nature with knowledge of crops opens up the prospect of a sustainable strategy that will increase yield per hectare at reduced environmental costs. This was the assertion of Prof Niels Anten in his inaugural speech upon accepting the post of Professor of Crop and Weed Ecology at Wageningen University, part of Wageningen UR, on Monday 22 April.






Will green tea help you lose weight?




Evidence shows that green tea extract in tandem with an additional compound could be effective for body weight control and type 2 diabetes

Evidence has shown that green tea extract may be an effective herbal remedy useful for weight control and helping to regulate glucose in type 2 diabetes. In order to ascertain whether green tea truly has this potential, Jae-Hyung Park and his colleagues from the Keimyung University School of Medicine in the Republic of Korea conducted a study, now published in the Springer journal Naunyn-Schmedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology.






HOW WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR ASSISTANT - HUMAN OR ROBOTIC?




Roboticists are currently developing machines that have the potential to help patients with caregiving tasks, such as housework, feeding and walking. But before they reach the care recipients, assistive robots will first have to be accepted by healthcare providers such as nurses and nursing assistants. Based on a Georgia Institute of Technology study, it appears that they may be welcomed with open arms depending on the tasks at hand.



Leadership emerges spontaneously during games




Video game and augmented-reality game players can spontaneously build virtual teams and leadership structures without special tools or guidance, according to researchers.

Players in a game that mixed real and online worlds organized and operated in teams that resembled a military organization with only rudimentary online tools available and almost no military background, said Tamara Peyton, doctoral student in information sciences and technology, Penn State.

"The fact that they formed teams and interacted as well as they did may mean that game designers should resist over-designing the leadership structures," said Peyton. "If you don't design the leadership structures well, you shouldn't design them at all and, instead, let the players figure it out."



THE POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE




U.S. residents who believe in the scientific consensus on global warming are more likely to support government action to curb emissions, regardless of whether they are Republican or Democrat, according to a study led by a Michigan State University sociologist.

However, a political divide remains on the existence of climate change despite the fact that the vast majority of scientists believe it is real, said Aaron M. McCright, associate professor in Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Sociology.



Visitors and Residents: Students' attitudes to academic use of social media




A University of Leicester-led study shows students display “Visitor” and “Resident” characteristics when using social media for learning

University of Leicester-led research has shown that university students behave very differently when using social media as part of their academic learning.

Some students happily use social networking to share information about their course with their peers, in a similar way to how they might talk to friends on Facebook.



Older Is Wiser: Study Shows Software Developers’ Skills Improve Over Time




There is a perception in some tech circles that older programmers aren’t able to keep pace with rapidly changing technology, and that they are discriminated against in the software field. But a new study from North Carolina State University indicates that the knowledge and skills of programmers actually improve over time – and that older programmers know as much (or more) than their younger peers when it comes to recent software platforms.



Turtle genome analysis sheds light on turtle ancestry and shell evolution




From which ancestors have turtles evolved? How did they get their shell? New data provided by the Joint International Turtle Genome Consortium, led by researchers from RIKEN in Japan, BGI in China, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK provides evidence that turtles are not primitive reptiles but belong to a sister group of birds and crocodiles. The work also sheds light on the evolution of the turtle’s intriguing morphology and reveals that the turtle’s shell evolved by recruiting genetic information encoding for the limbs.



Rear Seat Design — A Priority for Children’s Safety in Cars




A research report released today from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) provides specific recommendations for optimizing the rear seat of passenger vehicles to better protect its most common occupants — children and adolescents. By bringing technologies already protecting front seat passengers to the rear seat and modifying the geometry of the rear seat to better fit this age group, the US could achieve important reductions in serious injury and death. Motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of death for children older than 4 years and resulted in 952 fatalities in 2010 for children age 15 and younger.



PSC, Notre Dame to Supply Computer Infrastructure for Global Malaria Eradication Project




Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and the University of Notre Dame have received up to $1.6 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a system of computers and software for the Vector Ecology and Control Network (VECNet), an international consortium to eradicate malaria. The new VECNet Cyber-Infrastructure Project (CI) will support VECNet’s effort to unite research, industrial and public policy efforts to attack one of the worst diseases in the developing world in more effective, economical ways.

“VECNet is about bringing order out of chaos,” says Tom Burkot, VECNet’s principal investigator and professor and tropical leader at James Cook University, Australia. “The challenge we have is that we’re trying to control and eliminate malaria in a world in which, for example, there are 40 or 50 dominant mosquito species that are important for its spread.” The CI project, he adds, is intended to decrease the complexity of engaging in the problem so that malaria researchers, national malaria control officials, product developers, and policy makers can all contribute to solutions.






EUROPE SET TO BAN BEE-KILLING PESTICIDES




The European Commission received the go-ahead Monday to slap a two-year ban across the European Union on the use of pesticides blamed for a sharp decline in bee populations, an EU diplomat said.

A key committee cleared the way for the European Union executive to implement a two-year moratorium on three pesticides that is expected to enter into force late this year, a diplomat told AFP.

Countries opposed to the ban, including Britain and Hungary, failed to muster enough support to block it, with 15 nations, including France, voting in favour, France's EU delegation said on Twitter.



Researchers design nanometer-scale material that can speed up, squeeze light




In a process comparable to squeezing an elephant through a pinhole, researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have designed a way to engineer atoms capable of funneling light through ultra-small channels.

Their research is the latest in a series of recent findings related to how light and matter interact at the atomic scale, and it is the first to demonstrate that the material – a specially designed “meta-atom” of gold and silicon oxide – can transmit light through a wide bandwidth and at a speed approaching infinity. The meta-atoms’ broadband capability could lead to advances in optical devices, which currently rely on a single frequency to transmit light, the researchers say.



Scientists reach the ultimate goal - controlling chirality in carbon nanotubes




An ultimate goal in the field of carbon nanotube research is to synthesise single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with controlled chiralities. Twenty years after the discovery of SWNTs, scientists from Aalto University in Finland, A.M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute RAS in Russia and the Center for Electron Nanoscopy of Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have managed to control chirality in carbon nanotubes during their chemical vapor deposition synthesis.

Carbon nanotube structure is defined by a pair of integers known as chiral indices (n,m), in other words, chirality.

– Chirality defines the optical and electronic properties of carbon nanotubes, so controlling it is a key to exploiting their practical applications, says Professor Esko I. Kauppinen, the leader of the Nanomaterials Group in Aalto University School of Science.



IU raises bar in supercomputing power with dedication of Big Red II




Indiana University confirmed its leadership in high performance, data-intensive computing by unveiling Big Red II, a powerful new supercomputer with a processing speed of one thousand trillion floating-point operations per second (one petaFLOPS).

Big Red II replaces the original Big Red, installed in 2006. The new supercomputer, which is 25 times faster than its predecessor, will enable vital new research to be done and breakthroughs in fields ranging from medicine and physics to fine arts and global climate research. Additionally, it is expected to attract and help retain faculty whose work requires advanced data-processing power.



Scientists study rare dinosaur skin fossil at CLS




Experiments will determine dinosaur’s skin colour and why the fossil preserved intact

One of the only well preserved dinosaur skin samples ever found is being tested at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to determine skin colour and to explain why the fossilized specimen remained intact after 70-million years.

University of Regina physicist Mauricio Barbi said the hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period (100-65 million years ago), was found close to a river bed near Grand Prairie, Alberta.

The area has a robust “bone bed” but Barbi is not yet sure why the fossil preserved so well.



Discovery alters understanding of long-distance intercellular communication




In a finding likely to fundamentally reshape biologists' understanding of how vertebrate cells communicate, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the UC-San Francisco have discovered a new type of cellular structure that directly delivers and receives payloads of signaling molecules between distant neighbors in a developing embryo.



Optimizing nanoparticles for commercial applications




Nanoparticles are used in many commercial products catalysts to cosmetics. A review published today in the Science and Technology of Advanced Materials by researchers in Sweden and Spain describes recent work on the 3 main nanoparticles used in photocatalytic, UV-blocking and sunscreens.

Nanoparticles are currently used in commercial products ranging from catalysts, polishing media and magnetic fluids to cosmetics and sunscreens. A new review by researchers in Sweden and Spain describes recent work to optimize the synthesis, dispersion and surface functionalization of titania, zinc oxide and ceria – the three main nanoparticles used in photocatalytic, UV-blocking and sunscreen applications.



TU Delft helps to advance important microscopic technique for biomedical research




Scientists at TU Delft have made an important advancement in a new microscopic technique that is widely used in medical research. They demonstrate what the resolution of this localisation microscopy is and how the best resolution can be achieved as quickly as possible. This week their findings are being published online in the scientific journal Nature Methods.

Much sharper images

Fluorescence microscopy is an important technique in biomedical research. This method makes it possible to deduce information, for example about the functioning of cells, from the light emitted by certain fluorescent molecules in cells. Fluorescence microscopy used to produce images with resolution ranging from 200 to 300 nanometres. In recent years, however, scientists have employed a trick that allows you to view images around ten times sharper: localisation microscopy. This technique makes it possible to obtain much better and much more informative images of the interior of the cell.



Increasing hydropower capacity without straining the environment




With over 800 mini-hydroelectric plants awaiting approval in Switzerland, the biodiversity of Swiss river ecosystems could be at stake. More enlightened policies could help preserve the environment.

As nuclear power production is phased out in several countries in the wake of the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plants, renewable energy is expected pick up much of the slack. Switzerland expects a 10% increase in its hydropower capacity by 2050 by expanding its existing hydropower installations and authorizing the construction of hundreds of new mini-hydropower plants, leaving few river courses untouched. But what does this mean for the country’s river ecosystems? Under current policy this could lead to a dramatic change of biodiversity, argues Paolo Perona, professor in applied hydro-economics and fluvial morphodynamics. In two recent publications, he outlines how a change in policy could help maintain the natural fluctuations in river flow that are fundamental in driving many ecological processes without hampering the economic productivity of existing hydropower installations. We met Paolo Perona for an interview.



Personal touch is key to gesture control software




Design-it-yourself gestures may be the key to future computer interfaces.

A team of experts in human-computer interaction at the University of St Andrews have found that gesture-based Natural User Interfaces (used to control televisions, computers and games consoles like the Wii and Xbox 360) just need the personal touch to make them more effective.

A key question for Natural User Interfaces is whether people will be able to remember the many gestures recognised by the devices.



Twinkle, twinkle little star! – New app measures sky brightness




Researchers from the German „Loss of the Night“ project have developed an app for Android smart phones, which counts the number of visible stars in the sky. The data from the app will be used by scientists to understand light pollution on a world wide scale.

"In natural areas you can see several thousand stars with the naked eye" says Dr. Christopher Kyba, physicist at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and Freie Universität. "In Berlin, we can still see several hundred, but the situation in most large cities and world capitals is far worse." The smartphone app will evaluate sky brightness, also known as skyglow, on a worldwide scale.



Elsevier and IEDA Launch Data Rescue Competition for Earth Sciences Discipline




Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, and IEDA (Integrated Earth Data Applications), an NSF-funded data facility in the geosciences at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, announced today that they are jointly launching a new competition, the International Data Rescue Competition, which aims to improve preservation and access of research data in the earth sciences discipline. The challenge invites members of the international geosciences community who have worked on efforts that advance preservation and access of research data, particularly dark data, to share their work and the varied ways that these data are being processed, stored and used.



Do you fear you are missing out?




Does checking Twitter and Facebook to see what your friends are up to make you feel like you are missing out on all the fun? Researchers have come up with a way of measuring the modern day concept of the “fear of missing out” (FoMO).

The rise in social media, where we can keep up-to-date with each other’s every movements like never before, has led to the hidden curse of the “fear of missing out”.

A relatively new concept, FoMO is a concern people have that others may be having more fun and rewarding experiences than them and is characterised as the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing.




Laser welding as an engine of innovation




Lasers have long been able to do what traditional welding guns can. Nevertheless, many manufacturers did not dare employ the delicate technology in the raw environment of their assembly floors. At LASER 2013 (Hall C2, Booth 330), researchers will be demonstrating that lasers are robust enough to take over welding duties in fabrication.

Can lasers perform welds precisely and reliably in the midst of thundering machinery? The prototype of a new laser welder developed by an international team of researchers has now withstood the worst. At INTEGASA and ENSA, two companies in Spain that produce heat exchangers for heavy industry, the prototype proved itself precise and reliable under the difficult conditions of routine daily use.






Plants moderate climate warming




As temperatures warm, plants release gases that help form clouds and cool the atmosphere, according to research from IIASA and the University of Helsinki.

The new study, published in Nature Geoscience, identified a negative feedback loop in which higher temperatures lead to an increase in concentrations of natural aerosols that have a cooling effect on the atmosphere.

“Plants, by reacting to changes in temperature, also moderate these changes,” says IIASA and University of Helsinki researcher Pauli Paasonen, who led the study.





April 27, 2013

As women live longer and have fewer children, they are becoming taller and slimmer




A Durham University study of people living in rural Gambia shows that the modern-day “demographic transition” towards living longer and having fewer children may also lead women to be taller and slimmer.

The findings in Gambia, published today in the journal Current Biology, may have relevance around the globe.

Dr Ian Rickard, Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, worked with Alexandre Courtiol of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany to show that changes in mortality and fertility rates in Gambia, likely related to improvements in medical care since a clinic opened there in 1974, have changed the way that natural selection acts


Racing car with electric drive




Drive technology has an electric future – of this Fraunhofer research scientists are in no doubt. At the Sensor + Test measurement fair in Nuremberg from May 14 -16, they will use an electric racing car to present novel solutions for battery management and electronic sensor systems together with an industry partner. The scientists are right on trend, as even FIA, the governing body for world motor sport, federation of the world’s leading motoring organizations and organizer of Formula 1, is planning a racing series for electric vehicles.



Continuous monitoring of UV exposure




UV lamps are used to cure coatings and adhesives in many industrial manufacturing processes. And special sensors are used to measure the intensity of the UV light applied to these surfaces. But because these sensors age too quickly, they can only be used to record intermittent measurements. Fraunhofer researchers have developed a new generation of sensors capable of continuously monitoring UV intensity. These devices will be presented for the fi rst time at the Sensor + Test trade show in Nuremberg, from May 14 to 16 (Hall 12, Booth 537).