Most people don't know this, but there is a secret war going on in the animal kingdom; since before recorded history began, squirrels and rattlesnakes have been going at it. Over time, some squirrels have
even developed the ability to use rattlesnake scent as a means of concealing their own odor.
The "plumbing systems" that lie under volcanoes, the location and behavior of magma chambers on the Earth's mid-ocean ridge system, a vast chain of volcanoes along which the Earth forms new crust, could bring scientists closer to predicting large eruptions.
Researchers worked in Afar (Ethiopia) and Iceland, the only places where mid-ocean ridges appear above sea level. Volcanic ridges (or "spreading centers") occur when tectonic plates rift or pull apart. Magma injects itself into weaknesses in the brittle upper crust, erupting as lava and forming new crust upon cooling.
Magma chambers work like plumbing systems, channeling pressurized magma through networks of underground "pipes".
Robots don't understand subtlety - what is effortless to a human, like pouring juice into a cup, is a challenge for a machine. While one hand holds the glass bottle firmly, the other one must gently grasp the cup.
Researchers at Saarland University together with associates in Bologna and Naples have developed a robotic hand that can accomplish both tasks and the actuator is barely larger than a human arm. They use a novel string actuator, making use of small electric motors to twist strings, making the new robotic hand suitable as a helper around the house or in catastrophic scenarios.
The robotic hand was recently presented during a meeting at the Forschungszentrum Informatik in Karlsruhe.
What the public and even experts suspected is now supported by representative data collected by researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and University of Basel: ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, has been over-diagnosed. New studies show that child and adolescent psychotherapists and psychiatrists have tended to give a diagnosis based on heuristics and unclear rules of thumb rather than adhering to recognized diagnostic criteria. Boys in particular are substantially more often misdiagnosed compared to girls.
Will review reports published with articles enhance peer review quality?
Atheists like to think they are more rational people but, as death approaches, they secretly play the irrational odds, according to new work which suggests that when even non-religious people think about their own death and consciously still seem to be more skeptical about religion, they unconsciously grow more receptive to religious belief. Or at least less likely to deny it.
The work from the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, predictably also found that when religious people think about death, their religious beliefs appear to strengthen at both conscious and unconscious levels. They believe these findings help explain why religion remains a durable feature of human society.