By measuring a peak in the temperature of hot gas in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, scientists have determined the mass of the galaxy's supermassive black hole. The method, applied for the first time, gives results that are consistent with a traditional technique.

Astronomers have been seeking different, independent ways of precisely weighing the largest supermassive black holes, that is, those that are billions of times more massive than the sun. Until now, methods based on observing the motions of stars or of gas in a disk near such large black holes had been used.

"This is tremendously important work since black holes can be elusive, and there are only a couple of ways to weigh them accurately," said Philip Humphrey, leader of the study and an assistant project scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCI. David Buote, associate professor of physics and astronomy at UCI, also worked on this study.

Women exposed to high levels of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls – a group of banned environmental pollutants) are less likely to give birth to male children, according to a study published today in Environmental Health.

The researchers found that among women from the San Francisco Bay Area, those exposed to higher levels of PCBs during the 50s and 60s, were significantly more likely to give birth to female children.

Similar exposure is thought to have occurred in Wales, after a quarry on the edge of Groesfaen village near Cardiff was used as a toxic dumping ground from 1965 to 1972.

A two-year study led by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) reveals that low-carbohydrate and Mediterranean diets may be just as safe and effective in achieving weight loss as the standard, medically prescribed low-fat diet, according to a new study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

In the study, 322 moderately obese people were intensively monitored and were randomly assigned one of three diets: a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet; a Mediterranean calorie-restricted diet with the highest level of dietary fiber and monounsaturated/saturated fat; or a low-carbohydrate diet with the least amount of carbohydrates, highest fat, protein, and dietary cholesterol. The low-carb dieters had no caloric intake restrictions.

It's no secret that the Commonwealth Fund doesn't like private health care and their new national scorecard states that scores on access have declined significantly since the first national scorecard in 2006. Despite spending more on health care than any other industrialized nation, they state, the U.S. overall continues to fall far short on key indicators of health outcomes and quality, with particularly low scores on efficiency.

There are currently great needs and great opportunities for improvement in post-secondary science education. As world education improves, we need to provide more students with complex understanding and problem solving skills in technical subjects to allow them to be responsible and successful citizens in modern society.

Emerging research indicates that our colleges and universities are not achieving this. However, there are great opportunities to improve this situation using advances in the understanding of how people learn science and advances in educational technology.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanosconiosis is a type of lung disease. Pneumoconiosis, also called black lung or coal-miners disease, is different, but is estimated to be the cause of death for 1,500 U.S. coal miners. Besides being bizarre, words like these can be largely informative. The top scientific and mathematical words and laws judging off of complexity can transpire into a largely personal-opinion-oriented endeavor. Astute denizens of cyberspace expounded on a list of some semi-rare and contentious terms and classified them into an “organized mess.”

Of course the flip side, meaning the benefits of the sunk-cost fallacy, need to be addressed. One example can be found in a January 12, 2007 article in the “Freakonomics” section of the New York Times titled “What does Barack Obama Know about Behavioral Economics?”

In the article, Obama is quoted as having said about sending more troops to Iraq as having used the notion of the fallacy. “And essentially the administration repeatedly has said: ‘We’re doubling down; we’re going to keep on going … because now we’ve got a lot in the pot and we can’t afford to lose what we put in the pot.”

Dr. Hal Arkes in the department of psychology at Ohio State University has done extensive studies on the sunk-cost fallacy after he became interested for his personal involvement in politics twenty years ago. His most recent studies look at finding new ways to minimize the fallacy through interventions.

With the help of undergrads and some others at OSU Arkes gives volunteers a scenario having to do with an airplane company and the construction of a $10 million Radar Blank Plane. If the plane has been 90 percent completed, meaning millions of dollars already having been spent, but another company came up with a better version making the almost finished product “grossly inferior,” should the last 10 percent of the budget be spent anyways? Most of the testers said “yes.”

President Bush is quoted in 2005 as saying “we owe them something…We will finish the task that they gave their lives for,” about the soldiers who have died since the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, exemplifying a mode of thinking that appeals to everyone in some way. Most people know this notion as an expenditure made in the past that cannot be modified, or the sunk-cost fallacy.

A recent study in the July issue of Psychological Science tested the relationship between older and younger adults through an individuals’ commitment relating to the “sunk-cost fallacy,” in matters of money.

The Tunguska event is regarded as one of the biggest natural disasters of modern times. On 30 June 1908 one or more explosions took place in the area close to the Tunguska River north of Lake Baikal. The explosion(s) flattened around 80 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres.

The strength of the explosion is estimated to have been equivalent to between five and 30 megatons of TNT. That is more than a thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb.

This almost unpopulated region of Siberia was first studied in 1927 by Professor Leonid A. Kulik. There are a number of different theories about what caused the catastrophe. However, the majority of scientists assume that it was caused by a cosmic event, such as the impact of a meteorite, asteroid or comet. If it had exploded in the atmosphere just under five hours later, St. Petersburg, which was the capital of Russia at that time, would have been completely destroyed because of the Earth's rotation.