Latest News

• share
• favorite_border

A strange group of fossil mammals, heretofore only known in South America, has been discovered on the island of Madagascar and in India. The unexpected discoveries were announced in this week's issue of the journal Nature by an international team of researchers. The team was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and led by paleontologist David Krause of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

• share
• favorite_border

In an effort to expand its work in one of the most critical areas facing social work professionals, the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work has established the National Research and Training Center on Social Work and HIV/AIDS.

• share
• favorite_border

New Scientist Tip Sheet for 11-26-97

• share
• favorite_border

A physician reporting at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting this week will describe how the Digital Holographyô System from VoxelÆ (NASDAQ:VOXL) improves display of cerebral vasculature and reduces or eliminates image artifacts in patients with surgical hardware. Additionally, Voxel will introduce software for previewing three-dimensional holograms on a computer.

• share
• favorite_border

Tips related to chem/bio warfare 1. Chemical microsensors detect signs of munitions or toxins. 2. PCR technology tell if pathogens are natural outbreak -- or not. 3. Acoustic signature reveals container contents. 4. Modeling bioagent dispersals in urban settings. 5. A lab tool for bioanalysis is now used in the field by the Army. 6. Remote detection technology aids defense against terrorism.

• share
• favorite_border

A Purdue biochemist has identified plant genes that could soon help the wood industry produce paper with less waste and livestock get more nutrition out of their feed.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) has established a program to conduct research and demonstrate technologies related to fine particle matter, an air pollutant that affects human health and the environment.

• share
• favorite_border

A recent discovery by a team of scientists, working in part through the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Center for Biological Timing, challenges the strongly-held belief that 24-hour rhythms (biological clocks) are centrally controlled by the brain.

• share
• favorite_border

1) Scientists demonstrate new need to preserve biodiversity, 2) U.S. Research and Development (R&D) expenditures exceed expectations, 3) Carbon, not sulfate, prevails in polluted D.C. air

• share
• favorite_border

On Dec. 1, more than 100 countries will send delegations to the United Nations Kyoto Conference of the Parties to discuss limiting greenhouse gas emissions. North Carolina State University experts have researched this important environmental issue, taken part in worldwide conferences debating the actions needed to help ensure the world's environmental health, and have studied the policies motivating the politics. Call on them if you'd like to localize your coverage of the Kyoto Conference.

• share
• favorite_border

An ancient type of marine community typical of 450 million years ago has resurfaced in Antarctic fossils of near-modern age. A National Science Foundation-sponsored expedition to Seymour Island off the Antarctic Peninsula unearthed an ecological anomaly: fossil communities only 40-million-years-old dominated by brittle stars and sea lilies (marine invertebrates like starfish).

• share
• favorite_border

Several University of Michigan scientists currently conducting research on questions related to the effects of global warming, climate change and increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are available for interviews. Here is a summary of their areas of expertise and how to reach them.

• share
• favorite_border

A $20 million crystal growth experiment on board the current flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia is making Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute a testbed for the remote telescience that will be the paradigm for research on the planned International Space Station.

• share
• favorite_border

November tips include 1.) High-tech snow plows set to battle winter, 2.) Making PC's work like supercomputers, 3.) New alliance for nondestructive evaluation education.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Wisconsin-Madison horticulturists have identified a compound that causes fruit to ripen more quickly and last longer on grocers' shelves and in our refrigerators.

• share
• favorite_border

In a compendium of more than 25 peer-reviewed papers published this month, scientists warn that the world's fisheries are now considered fully or heavily exploited, and need new management schemes to prevent collapse.

• share
• favorite_border

Did the large plant-eating Parasaurolophus dinosaur bellow, screech, roar or honk? Find out at 10 a.m. Dec. 5 when Sandia National Laboratories and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science ìunveilî the sound the dinosaur made 70 million years ago.

• share
• favorite_border

A microtransmission about the size of a grain of sand, developed at Sandia National Laboratories, can increase the power of its micro- engine (also the size of a grain of sand) 3 million times, and theoretically move an object weighing one pound.

• share
• favorite_border

Individual brain cells continually perfrom complex computational tasks to help humans, bats, gerbil, birds and other creatures distinguish what a sound ;is and where it is coming from. To do this, individual neurons do not just relay information from one point to another. Instead each neuron could be compared to a tiny computer that compiles ;information from many sources and makes a decision based on that information, say a group of neuroscientists who are beginning to unravel how brain cells continually perform complex computations what a sound is and where it's coming from.

• share
• favorite_border

October turned out dry in the Northeast, according to climatologists from the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.

• share
• favorite_border

Cornell University gerontologist finds that 80 percent of older moms have favorite children and most children think -- wrongly -- that they are it. Moms tend to favor children who had problems out of their control.

• share
• favorite_border

A probability chart developed by the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University shows the chances of a 'white' Thanksgiving. The chart gives the probability of one-inch or more of snow on the ground Thanksgiving morning.

• share
• favorite_border

African American boys, compared with Whites, Hispanics and African American girls, are "particularly and perhaps uniquely" vulnerable to "academic disidentification," the phenomenon in which success or failure in school ceases to matter to the student. The finding comes from a four-year study of nearly 25,000 high school students across the United States and is reported in the December issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

• share
• favorite_border

Studies on the health of sea otters in Alaska are helping scientists understand how an ecosystem responds to an environmental disaster. Paul W. Snyder, a Purdue University veterinary pathologist, is studying the effects that the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound has had on the Alaskan sea otter population.

• share
• favorite_border

New Scientist Tip Sheet for 11-19-97

• share
• favorite_border

The picture of life on the streets for children in the late 20th century drawn from a University of Washington psychologist is a horrifying one. Violence in ;the form of physical and sexual abuse are rampant, as are suicide attempts, mental and emotional disorders, and drug and alcohol abuse. But those conditions may be an improvement over those found at home.

• share
• favorite_border

WASHINGTON -- The chemical analysis of a 9000-foot core taken from the Greenland ice sheet has now uncovered unequivocal evidence of large-scale atmospheric lead pollution in the Northern Hemisphere dating to 300 A.D. And the source has been traced to ancient Carthaginian and Roman mines in Spain, according to Dr. Kevin J. Rosman of the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia. Rosman's group, along with colleagues from the Domaine Universitaire in France, report their results in the December issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.

• share
• favorite_border

A University of Delaware researcher has joined forces with a Lincoln University colleague to win a major U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant that ultimately may help improve the accuracy of global warming predictions.

• share
• favorite_border

From science fairs to spelling bees, children's efforts are often propelled by the desire to win against others. A new study suggests that a child's level of masculinity is central to determining his or her response to competition.

• share
• favorite_border

Primate researcher Jane Goodall will speak to the nation's first college Roots and Shoots environmental summit to be held at Texas Christian University Nov. 21-23. The summit, organized by students at TCU, will bring 50 delegates from colleges and universities around the nation to learn more about environmental issues and how to start Roots and Shoots chapters on their own campuses.

• share
• favorite_border

With twin goals of furthering her research in mathematics and pushing out the frontiers of education for inner-city children, Katherine Okikiolu of the University of California, San Diego, has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

• share
• favorite_border

The following research articles will appear in the December issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a monthly peer-reviewed journal published by the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society: 1. Sunflowers Filter Uranium, Clean Up Contaminated Ground Water, 2. Mother Nature's Outdoor Air Cleaner Proves a Health Problem For Indoor Offices, 3. Mexican Auto Emissions Improve, but Problems Still Exist, 4. Exposure to PCBs In Residential Indoor Air near a Superfund Site

• share
• favorite_border

A coating that detects Sarin, nuclear weapons scientists design an artifical foot, and a detector that makes evidence blink is all part of research at Sandia Natonal Laboroyaries.

• share
• favorite_border

A Michigan State University scientist has shown that corn isn't just a food that sits on the sob waiting to be salted. Kris Berglund has discovered a way to turn corn into a salt substitute that lacks both sodium or the bitter taste that plagues other salt substitutes.

• share
• favorite_border

The study of immunology, traditionally left to immunologists and biologists, is becoming a significant part of research in the University of New Mexico Computer Science Department.

• share
• favorite_border

Men may have more dependent personalities than women have. So says Robert F. Bornstein, professor of psychology at Gettysburg College, PA. He has completed two studies on that topic: Dependent Personality Disorders in the DSM-IV and Beyond, which appers in the Summer 1997 issue of Clinical Psychology and Practice; and Sex Differences in Objective and Projective Dependency Tests: A Meta-Analytic Review, which appeared in the Winter 1995 issue of Assessment.

• share
• favorite_border

NASA sounding rockets carrying research payloads, including an experiment from Cornell to study the dynamics and composition of the ionosphere, will blast off next winter from Puerto Rico in a scientific campaign known as Coqui II.

• share
• favorite_border

Los Alamos is leading an effort to build unique imagers that will provide 3-D stereoscopic movies of Earth's magnetosphere when they are launched into orbit early next century.

• share
• favorite_border

Food Chemistry Tip Sheet (from the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry): Health Benefits of Sugar Found in Garlic Include Lower Cholesterol and Reduced Tooth Decay & Using Chemistry to Make Cultivated Shrimp Taste Wild

• share
• favorite_border

A joint NASA and Japanese space mission studying tropical rainfall and "El Nino" weather patterns scheduled for launch on Tuesday, Nov. 18 will contain a micro-chip designed by the University of New Mexico Microelectronics Research Center.

• share
• favorite_border

A combination of natural wanderlust and bad public image has caused African wild dogs to plummet to just 3,000 individuals -- making them as endangered as black rhinos, according to an IUCN report.

• share
• favorite_border

The Administration has stated that it supports the continued privatization and commercialization of the Internet and is committed to completing the transition to private sector governance. The National Science Board (NSB) agrees, and has issued a resolution that the NSF should no longer be involved in domain name registration.

• share
• favorite_border

The missing link in the chain of molecules that tells cells to die has been found, which may enable scientists to create more effective drugs for cancer, Parkinson's disease and stroke. The discovery by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas is reported in the Nov. 14 issue of Cell.

• share
• favorite_border

Using compelling visuals, Goldin will lead the audience on a journey into the future. Focusing on the steps NASA is taking to revolutionize engineering, Goldin will discuss his vision for the future.

• share
• favorite_border

WHO: 125 Dallas middle school students, 10 teachers and engineers WHAT: Devote a day to hands-on learning experience, including egg drop contest WHEN: Thursday, Nov. 20, 10:00 a.m. to 1:50 p.m. WHERE: Wyndam Anatole Hotel, 2201 Stemmons Freeway, Dallas, Khmer Pavilion WHY: Photo opportunity/interview opportunity/background information

• share
• favorite_border

NC State News Tips: A roundup of NC State University research and outreach activities. For use by the media as briefs or as background for stories.

• share
• favorite_border

Holidays can be a torturous time for those trying to maintain a healthy weight. However, the next few weeks do not have to be torture, if you plan ahead, says a Purdue University nutrition expert.

• share
• favorite_border

New information gathered last summer shows that diseases on Florida's coral reefs have dramatically increased with potential long-term consequences for the coral reef ecosystem.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of Harvard Medical School researchers has isolated a gene, Crx, that appears to play a key regulatory role in photoreceptor development. The findings, which could someday help prevent blindness in people with retinal disease, were made in mouse and rat tissue. The study is published in the November 14 Cell.

• share
• favorite_border

A book by a North Carolina State University political science professor could become required reading for international policy makers who are serious about protecting the air we breathe. Dr. Marvin Soroos' timely book, The Endangered Atmosphere: Preserving Global Commons