Time-dependent Maxwell's equations in media By Robyn Arianrhod, Monash UniversityIt’s hard to imagine life without mobile phones, radio and television. Yet the discovery of the electromagnetic waves that underpin such technologies grew out of an abstract theory that’s 150 years old.Our ...

Can a penalty kick simultaneously score a goal and miss? In the realm of quantum mechanics that is certainly be true, because microscopic objects can take different paths at the same time.  Almost 100 years ago physicists Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Erwin Schrödinger created this ...

The publishing giant Elsevier is about to launch a new journal, Reviews in Physics. This will be a fully open-access, peer-reviewed journal which aims at providing short reviews (15 pages maximum) on physics topics at the forefront of research. The web page of the journal is here, and a screenshot ...

Glass looks like it is solid but telling a materials engineer that glass is a solid is like telling an aerospace engineer Bernoulli is why planes fly (or Newton, for that matter - whichever you say, they will argue the opposite).Glass flows - but slowly. The question is does it ever really stop ...

The Permian was a geologic period that ended more than 250 million years ago. The Earth consisted of one forested super-continent called Pangea and a large ocean called Panthalassa teemed with life. It wasn't going to last, we know the largest mass extinction ever recorded was om the horizon. Why ...

Looks healthy, but still lacks the big predatory fish... how would it rate on the Promonitor Index? AF Johnson, CC BY-NC-SABy Andrew Frederick Johnson, University of California, San DiegoWe know that fishing has significant impacts on our oceans and the animals that live in them. Effects can range ...

Researchers have determined that languages with a wide range of tone pitches are more prevalent in regions with high humidity levels while languages with simpler tone pitches are mainly found in drier regions. They explain this by noting that the vocal folds require a humid environment to ...

Put innovative farming techniques in the right hands. CGIAR Climate, CC BY-NC-SABy Sayed Azam-Ali, University of NottinghamAfrica will be able to feed itself in the next 15 years. That’s one of the big “bets on the future” that Bill and Melinda Gates have made in their foundation’s latest ...

Some media, such as the New York Daily News and NBC, have reported that the Asian H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza has now entered the United States. This is incorrect and they were told it was not the same strain by the United States Geological Survey and then suggested it ...

If you are in the United States and travel to Mexico, you are cautioned not to drink the water, just like if you travel to Taiwan or China you are cautioned not to eat chicken bought from a street vendor; people are immune to some nasty stuff you probably are not.Getting diarrhea in Mexico ...

Scientists have gained new insight into fragile X syndrome, the most common cause of inherited intellectual disability, by studying the case of a person without the disorder, but with two of its classic symptoms. Fragile X syndrome results from an inherited genetic error in a gene called FMR1 ...

Every summer, there are reports linking a bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus to people getting sick or dying. The bacteria are found in warm saltwater and problems occur after eating raw tainted shellfish or when an open wound comes in contact with seawater. People with a weakened immune system ...

Fortifying food with folic acid saves about 1,300 babies each year from serious birth defects of the brain and spine known as neural tube defects (NTDs), according to new data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.The number of babies ...

A study has found that reducing expression of the Myc gene - found in the genomes of all animals, ranging from ancestral single-celled organisms to humans - significantly increased the healthy lifespan of laboratory mice, the first such finding regarding this gene in a mammalian species.Myc is ...

The actions of cells underpin new thinking about pancreatic cancer, which took the life of Apple's Steve Jobs. James Mitchell, CC BY-SABy Catherine Hogan, Cardiff UniversityPancreatic cancer is a devastating disease. With a ten-year survival rate of just 1%, it has the poorest prognosis of all ...

An analysis of Danish women of reproductive age suggests that long-term use of hormonal contraceptives is associated with an increased risk of brain tumors. Hormonal contraceptives, commonly called "the pill" in oral contraceptive, contain female sex hormones and are commonly referenced as ...

Diabetes has been described as an epidemic of modern times so why does it affect aboriginal people more? Over the past several decades diabetes has become a prevalent health concern among Canada's First Nations communities, but it wasn't always so.One group thinks the way to reduce diabetes among ...

Some suggest that the universe naturally produces complexity. The emergence of life in general and perhaps even rational life, with its associated technological culture, may be extremely common, argues Kelly Smith, Associate Professor of Philosophy&Biological Sciences at Clemson, in a recent ...

Climate science is right – but it isn't winning. NASA, CC BYBy Mathis Hampel, University of East AngliaScientists tell us the world is warming and that a climate catastrophe is imminent. They’re probably right. Yet climate change framed by scientists, politicians and economists as a straightforward ...

Social scientists believe that pre-Homo human ancestral species, such as Australopithecus africanus, used human-like hand postures much earlier than was previously thought.The authors say they have the first archaeological evidence for stone tool use among fossil australopiths 3-2 million years ...

The night before the famous "Raid at Entebbe" in 1976, when the Israel Defense Forces rescued over 100 kidnapped hostages from German and Palestinian terrorists at Entebbe airport in Uganda, Tel Aviv University's Prof. Pinhas Alpert, then head of an Israel Air Force base forecasting unit, provided ...

By using spatial analysis software and electronic medical records to identify clusters of under-immunization and vaccine refusal among Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California, researches don't just know where anti-vaccine sentiment is more prominent - that correlates to voting registration ...

Romantic notions of Burns as a lovable man of the people are a little rich. ElnurBy Corey E. Andrews, Associate Professor of English at Youngstown State UniversityRobert Burns may have lost some of the nationalist charge behind his popularity since Scotland voted 'No' in last year’s referendum ...

 Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is one of a group of preventable, lifelong conditions (the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders) that may result from high alcohol use in pregnancy. It can cause low IQ, delays in development and problems with learning, academic achievement, behavior, motor function, speech ...