In a few days italian post-docs working in high-energy physics will be asked to gather for a nasty exam, held by the INFN -the italian institute for nuclear physics- to qualify valiant researchers for future hiring in the institute.
The exam generated a wave of outrage among the very pool of people at which it is aimed: the scores of "precari" (temporary workers) who are spending the best years of their life to try and make a career in particle physics. Let me explain why that is so.
Newton’s apple fell from the tree and after thumping the scientist on the head, fell benignly to the ground. If the same apple fell toward Einstein (and happened to have a little added atomic oomph), it could, according to special relativity, become infinitely massive, flattening not only the unfortunate Einstein as he sat bodhisattva-like beneath the tree, but also the Earth itself.
This doesn’t mean Newton was wrong—only, that his theories apply more accurately to things traveling at speeds that don’t approach the speed of light (from slow-moving atomic particles to city transit busses). The crucial postulate of Einstein’s theory is the idea that the speed of light is measured to be exactly the same no matter the motion of the observer.
Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid change, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo. Their Nature Geoscience describes fieldwork to show that a prehistoric glacier in the Canadian Arctic rapidly retreated in just a few hundred years.
The proof of such rapid retreat of ice sheets provides one of few confirmations that this phenomenon occurs. Should the same conditions recur today, they would result in sharply rising global sea levels, which would threaten coastal populations.
Worried about your child’s exposure to
phthalates, the chemical compounds used as plasticizers in a wide variety of personal care products, children’s toys, and medical devices? Phthalate exposure can begin in the womb and has been associated with negative changes in endocrine function.
A new study in
The Journal of Pediatrics examines the possibility that in utero phthalate exposure contributes to low birth weight in infants. Low birth weight is the leading cause of death in children under 5 years of age and increases the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disease in adulthood.
In a unique study of four previously convicted adult male pedophiles (Mage = 33.8, SD 9.7 years), utilizing structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and imaging genomics (neuroimaging combined with genetic analyses), the authors propose that small variations in genotypes are responsible for paraphilic phenotypic expression (Tost, Vollmert, Brassen, Schmitt, Dressing, Braus, 2004).
An enormous plume of water spurts in giant jets from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus and a report published in Nature provides evidence that this magnificent plume is fed by a salty ocean.
The Cassini spacecraft made a surprising discovery about Saturn's sixth largest moon, Enceladus, on its exploration of the giant ringed planet in 2005. Enceladus ejects water vapor, gas and tiny grains of ice into space hundreds of kilometres above the moon's surface.
In the 360 blog (sub-heading, “12 tables, 24 chairs, and plenty of chalk”), blogger Ξ (Xi) recently wrote about “Ethiopian Multiplication” (and followed it up with a series of interesting posts on different ways to multiply, here, here, here, and
Thinking of heading down to the Ms. Adrenaline Swimsuit Competition? Not surprising. Sex attracts and naked bodies flaunted for all to see, attract even more. Researchers from four universities across the US and Canada prodded into our sexual habits to answer the question of what characteristics attract us to our mates. The results were published in the journal Personality And Individual Differences, with a trend line showing those with hard bodies, a curvy waist-hip ratio and strong chin lines tend to be better in bed but perhaps more apt to cheat.
High cholesterol levels are considered to be a risk factor not only for cardiovascular disease including stroke, but also for the development of Alzheimer's disease so cholesterol lowering drugs, including statins, developed in recent years may help with both. In addition to the cholesterol reducing effect of statins Amalia Dolga, PhD, of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and her co-investigators have demonstrated that statins can protect nerve cells against damage which we know to occur in the brain of Alzheimer's disease patients.
The results are published in the June issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
Rearrangements in genomes, genes and exons can result from a glitch in DNA copying that occurs when the process stalls at a critical point and then shifts to a different genetic template, duplicating and even triplicating genes or just shuffling or deleting part of the code within them, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in a recent report in Nature Genetics. The report further elucidated the effect of the fork stalling and template switching mechanism involved in some forms of copy number variation.
