Women may be terrible drivers but their abilities to make fair decisions when competing interests are at stake make them better corporate leaders, humanities scholars have found.

Gun control, a dormant issue for much of the 21st century, became a political hot-button again after the murder of children and adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  To effectively influence a country divided on the issue, elected officials must take a broad perspective rather than focusing on specific incidents, according to social psychologists from The University of Texas at Austin.

Psychologists Erin Burgoon and Marlone Henderson say public officials who are located out of state from their constituents and the incident are more likely to gain approval by framing their arguments around the abstract rather than specific incidents - it prompts people to consider the larger picture.

Whole genome sequencing has shown drug-resistant bacteria were transmitted from animals to humans in two disease outbreaks that occurred on different farms in Denmark.

Drug-resistant bacterial infections pose a significant challenge to public health and may have severe and sometimes fatal consequences. As the costs of whole genome sequencing methods continue to plummet and the speed of analysis increases, it becomes increasingly attractive for scientists to use whole genome sequencing to answer disease-related questions.

A team of Harvard scientists have succeeding in measuring the magnetic charge of single particles of matter and antimatter more accurately, by capturing individual protons and antiprotons in a "trap" created by electric and magnetic fields and precisely measuring the oscillations of each particle.

The researchers were able to measure the magnetism of a proton more than 1,000 times more accurately than an antiproton had been measured before. Similar tests with antiprotons produced a 680-fold increase in accuracy in the size of the magnet in an antiproton.    

Fluctuating wind speed and direction means turbines generate power inconsistently. Coupled with customers' varying power demand, the results is that many wind-farm managers end up wasting power-generation capacity and limiting the service life of turbines through active control, including fully stopping turbines, in order to damage to the power grid from spikes in supply.

The diagram below shows five concentric circles constructed in such a way that the area of each annulus is equal to that of the central circle. Within the first annulus, a square has been constructed such that none of the points on the square lie outside the inner or outer radii of that ring.

For the first annulus, A(1), with radii r(1) and r(2), n=4 is the minimum value of n such that a regular n-gon lies wholly within or on the boundary of A(1).

Find the smallest value of n, such that a regular n-gon will not fall outside the annulus A(m) bounded by r(m) and r(m+1) for values of m = 2, 3 and 4.

Also, what is the smallest value of n for A(50)?

The number of conferences held every year around the world to present and discuss topics in frontier particle physics is surprisingly large: over a hundred per year. Just look at the following list of conferences scheduled in the last three weeks for a proof (and no, March is not very different from other months):

2/3 Moriond EWK
4/3 KEKPH 2013
4/3 DPG 2013
9/3 Moriond QCD
10/3 Aspen 2013
10/3 HiJetsUSC 2013
13/3 LHCC
17/3 LISHEP 2013
18/3 MITP 2013
21/3 HFMCW 2013
21/3 DPHEP7 2013

The earth has abundant energy sources, if only we would bother to tap them. Wind power has had its financial and ethical ups and downs, with wind farms using gargantuan, expensive wind towers decorating or despoiling the scenery,depending on your esthetics:

Wind power resources on the eastern U.S.continental shelf are estimated to be over 400 GW [gigawatts], several times the electricity used by U.S. eastern coastal states…. The furthest advanced of a handful of proposed U.S. offshore wind developments is in Nantucket Sound,off the Southern coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Over 200 million years ago, a mass extinction wiped out an estimated 76 percent of marine and terrestrial species. It marked the end of the Triassic period and the onset of the Jurassic, clearing the way for dinosaurs to dominate Earth for the next 135 million years. 

It's not clear what caused the end-Triassic extinction, although most scientists agree on a likely scenario; over a relatively short time period, massive volcanic eruptions from a large region known as the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) spewed forth huge amounts of lava and gas, including carbon dioxide, sulfur and methane. 

An innovative new process releases the energy in coal without burning, while capturing carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas that is the target of emissions reduction goals. How close is it to commercial use?  It has passed an important milestone - a successful 200-hour test on a sub-pilot scale version of the technology using two inexpensive but highly polluting forms of coal.