Fish in a wind tunnel? How else will you learn how they fly?
It turns out flying fish can remain airborne for over 40 seconds and cover distances of up to a quarter mile hitting a top speed up to 40 miles an hours, says Haecheon Choi, a mechanical engineer from Seoul National University, Korea. Choi said a children's science book inspired him to look into the aerodynamics of flying fish, and a paper of his results appear in
The Journal of Experimental Biology. Choi and colleague Hyungmin Park posted similar results in a poster for the American Physical Society meeting in 2006.
22 scientists have published a study they say provides clear evidence about the effectiveness of Non-pharmacological Therapies in Alzheimer's disease and are calling on governments to make these useful treatments readily available.
A cure for Alzheimer's is not in sight and available drugs have worthwhile but limited benefits the study says scientifically developed and rigorously tested Non-pharmacological Therapies can significantly improve the lives of people with dementia and their caregivers.
They say he strongest evidence is for individualized intervention packages for family caregivers which can improve the well-being of caregivers and help delay admissions to care homes.
What happens to the laws of physics if a fundamental constant turns out to be not a constant after all? The 'magic number' known as the fine-structure constant, called 'alpha' by physicists, appears to vary throughout the universe, according to a team of astrophysicists.
That means the laws of physics would vary throughout the universe also.
The arXiv preprint describes how they determined that the fine-structure constant 'alpha' varies by measuring light from a quasar as it red-shifted due to universal expansion.
In case you do not easily panic, you may have missed the story that two asteroids were passing close to Earth yesterday. Not to worry, it happens all of the time, but because their existence was only discovered Sunday by the
Catalina Sky Survey, people were concerned.
The 50-foot 2010 RX30 came within 154,000 miles of Earth, just over halfway from here to the moon (
0.6 lunar distances if you want to impress your friends), yesterday morning and then 2010 RF12, about 30 feet in size, came within 50,000 miles of Earth yesterday afternoon.
Arctic Ice September 2010 - Update #1
This is my first update to Arctic Ice September 2010.
The debate on hard and soft science seems to still be on – also here on Science2.0. As a representative of several hard sciences (mathematics, physics, theoretical astrophysics, geodesy...) I have always been annoyed by variations over the statement 'no, I want to save lives, therefore not do [hard]science' often presented with a moral indignation as toppings.
Remembering numbers is one of the most basic things we do from a young age - early on, a combination lock or a phone number and later any number of things such as ATM codes, social security numbers, and more.
In Western cultures, children learn to place numbers on a mental number line - smaller numbers to the left and spaced further apart than the larger numbers on the right. Then the number line changes to become more linear, with small and large numbers the same distance apart. Children whose number line has made this change are better at remembering numbers, according to a new study published in Psychological Science.
To physicists, nothing is really a coincidence. Even cats in quantum boxes can be explained in mathematical terms, not to mention roulette or the success or failure of an attack in Dungeons&Dragons, but researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen say they have constructed a device that is truly random and generates random numbers that cannot be predicted in advance.
The researchers exploit the fact that measurements based on quantum physics can only produce a special result with a certain degree of probability, that is, randomly. True random numbers are needed for the secure encryption of data and to enable the reliable simulation of economic processes and changes in the climate.
Paleontologists have released details about Concavenator corcovatus, a carnivorous humpbacked dinosaur discovered in Spain - and it oddly had both feathers and scales.
Concavenator corcovatus was a theropod dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago. Concavenator corcovatus translates to 'hump-backed predator from Cuenca', where it was discovered.
"We hear a lot about bioterrorism and pandemics," says Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor of computer science and pediatrics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,"but the fact of the matter is, the threat to routine immunization is one of the greatest threats we face. If we had problems with our vaccine supply chain, it would have the potential to cause more deaths than any of those other issues."
