A new report from the National Research Council suggests that naturally occurring methane hydrate may represent an enormous source of methane, the main component of natural gas, and could ultimately augment conventional natural gas supplies. Although a number of challenges require attention before commercial production can be realized, no technical challenges have been identified as insurmountable.
Moreover, the U.S. Department of Energy's Methane Hydrate Research and Development Program has made considerable progress in the past five years toward understanding and developing methane hydrate as a possible energy resource, the report claims.
Writing in PLoS Genetics, UCLA Researchers say they have performed the first complete genomic sequencing of a brain cancer cell line, a discovery that may lead to personalized treatments based on the unique biological signature of an individual's cancer and a finding that may unveil new molecular targets for which more effective and less toxic drugs can be developed.
A new study in Acta Paediatrica suggests that parents of four and five-year-olds may be unaware that their children are at an unhealthy weight. Half of the mothers who took part in the new study thought that their obese four or five year-old was normal weight, as did 39 per cent of the fathers.
When it came to overweight children, 75 per cent of mothers and 77 per cent of fathers thought that their child was normal weight. More than 800 parents of 439 children took part in the study, carried out by researchers from the University Medical Centre Groningen in The Netherlands. Five per cent of the children were overweight, four were obese and the rest were normal weight.
In recent years, climate change hasn't proceeded as most scientists expected. Global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last decade as they did in the 1980s and 1990s, and researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say they may know why--fluctuations in stratospheric water vapor. The team's new study in Science suggests that Just a 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming.
Here is an article relating to a discussion about the qualifications of mental health professionals in
assessing the long-term effects of torture.
There is extensive research, they argue, that torture causes long-term
mental health problems. However, "we do not yet have the scientific
knowledge to predict with any precision what the psychological outcome
will be for an individual."
GMST : Discovering Trends
What Is The Average Global Temperature? asks
Adam RetchlessAdam's question is a good one.
In brief, and very much oversimplified:
Astronomers have discovered another black hole with a mass over fifteen times that of the Sun, one of only three such objects found so far. The newly announced black hole lies in a spiral galaxy called NGC 300, six million light-years from Earth.
"This is the most distant stellar-mass black hole ever weighed, and it's the first one we've seen outside our own galactic neighborhood, the Local Group," says Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield and lead author of the paper appearing in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A new study in the Journal Of Law And Economics suggests that the number of hours physicians work each week is influenced by their fear of malpractice lawsuits.
The study found that doctors cut back their workload by almost two hours each week when the expected liability risk increases by 10 percent. The study notes that the decline in hours adds up to the equivalent of one of every 35 physicians retiring without a replacement.
The analysis combined data gathered by insurers about medical liability risks in each state and medical specialty with physicians' responses to surveys about their workload and income.
Married couples who refer to themselves as 'we' may annoy everyone around them, but probably have healthier marriages than people who emphasize individuality in their relationships, according to a recent study published in Psychology and Aging.
UC Berkeley Researchers analyzed conversations between 154 middle-aged and older couples about points of disagreement in their marriages and found that those who used pronouns such as "we," "our" and "us" behaved more positively toward one another and showed less physiological stress.
For many recovering alcoholics, AA is the primary reason they're able to kick their addiction and stay sober. According to a new study in the Journal Addiction, one of many reasons that the program is so successful appears to be alleviation of depression. Researchers have found that study participants who attended AA meetings more frequently had fewer symptoms of depression – along with less drinking – than did those with less AA participation.
