If your friends and family give you trouble for spending too much time on your cell phone, scientists at the University of South Florida may have discovered the ultimate excuse for your constant yakking. In a surprising study published today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, researchers reported the first evidence that long-term exposure to electromagnetic waves associated with cell phone use may actually protect against, and even reverse, Alzheimer's disease. The study also challenges claims that EMF exposure causes brain cancer
Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Cambridge have developed models they say explain how earth survived its birth. Presenting their findings at the 2010 meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C., the team suggests that variations in temperature can lead to regions of outward and inward migration that safely trap planets on orbits. When the protoplanetary disk begins to dissipate, planets are left behind, safe from impact with their parent star.
A new report published in the January 8 issue of Cell explains how plants, which are incredibly temperature sensitive, not only 'feel' the temperature rise, but also coordinate an appropriate response -- activating hundreds of genes and deactivating others; it turns out it's all about the way that their DNA is packaged. The findings may help to explain how plants will respond in the face of climate change and offer scientists new leads in the quest to create crop plants better able to withstand high temperature stress, the researchers say.
Reporting in the current online edition of the journal BMC Medicine, researchers from UCLA say they can predict the number of H1N1 flu infections that could occur during a commercial flight using novel mathematical modeling techniques. They found that transmission could be rather significant, particularly during long flights, if the infected individual travels in economy class. Specifically, two to five infections could occur during a five-hour flight, five to 10 during an 11-hour flight, and seven to 17 during a 17-hour flight.
I've often run into the idea of 'realspace' (or 'meatspace') versus 'virtual reality' (or 'the Internet'). The concept is that they are two often separate worlds. I disagree with that, and feel there are three spaces. One has solid entities like people and rooms, and you interact with them noticeably. The second may be online or it may be solid, but the interactions are between individuals and kept private. The third is completely open, for many to access-- typically via online presence, because online lends permanence that the 'solid' world rarely has.
One of my male friends was recently teasing me about the results of a study by Dr.
Today's visit to the
Cornell Arxiv, the repository where scientific papers on physics, astrophysics, mathematics, and a few other disciplines are made publically accessible before getting published on paper, was a productive one. Some casual browsing allowed me to learn a few random things on topics I know little or nothing about; but what really made my day was reading study by a few distinguished theorists (Vernon Barger, Wai-Yee Keung, and Brian Yencho), who considered a collider signature I had been fantasizing about in the past.
The U.S. government's biofuels policy needs a makeover, according to researchers from Rice University. In a new study published by the university's Baker Institute for Public Policy, the team says that the economic, environmental and logistical basis for the billions of dollars in federal subsidies and protectionist tariffs that go to domestic ethanol producers every year is seriously flawed and urge lawmakers to fundamentally rethink the policy of promoting ethanol to diversify America's energy sources.
Despite astronomers hopes, the rocky planet CoRoT-7 b that was discovered circling a star some 480 light years from Earth last October is likely a forbidding place that doesn't harbor life. Upon its discovery, experts said that was because the planet is so close to its star that
temperatures might be above 4,000 degrees F (2,200 C) on the surface lit by its star and as low as minus 350 F (minus 210 C) on its dark side.
Though it seems entirely obvious at this point, eating less and exercising more are the only reliable ways to lose weight. The reason for repeating this advice ad nauseum? An international team of researchers says it's because a body of scientific literature has arisen in recent years suggesting that fat oxidation – burning the fats we eat as opposed to the carbohydrates – is enough to promote fat loss. It isn't.
In a new paper published in Cell Metabolism, scientists say they have demonstrated that mice genetically altered to burn fats in preference to carbohydrates, will convert the unburned carbohydrates into stored fat anyway, and their ultimate weight and body composition will be the same as normal mice.
