Science & Society

Internet sites love to pounce on the latest ridiculous story, the more outrageous the better. The silliest thing this week propagated by press release aggregators and people who don't check facts was that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth after the German newspaper Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported on Tuesday that student Nico Marquardt was right and NASA was wrong. NASA, used to being the target of fringe conspiracy theorists who will believe anything they want to believe, issued the following statement in response: The Near-Earth Object…

According to the Tissue Viability Team at the University of Hertfordshire School of Nursing and Midwifery, around 200,000 peoople in the UK will have a chronic wound, like a pressure ulcer, at any given time. In addition to the pain and suffering caused by these non-healing wounds, the financial costs of their management are high for both the government and the patient. Non-healing wounds frequently result in extended hospital stays and increased risk of complications such as infections. To address the greater training requirements for chronic wounds, Julie Vuolo, a lecturer at the School,…

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have combined a cryogenic sensor and a microrefrigerator on a single microchip. They combined a transition-edge sensor (TES)(1), a superconducting thin film that identifies X-ray signatures far more precisely than any other device, with a solid-state refrigerator based on a sandwich of a normal metal, an insulator and a superconductor. The combo chip, a square about a quarter inch on a side, achieved the first cooling of a fully functional detector (or any useful device) with a microrefrigerator. The paper also…

There is no question that Al Gore’s 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" is a powerful example of how scientific knowledge can be communicated to a lay audience. What continues to be debated is whether it accurately presents the scientific argument that global warming is caused by human activities. Climate change experts express their opinions on the scientific validity of the film’s claims in the newest GeoJournal. "An Inconvenient Truth" is about Al Gore’s campaign to educate citizens about global warming and inspire them to take action. The papers in GeoJournal agree that it does an…

A new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge says that traders with high morning testosterone levels make more than average profits for the rest of that day. This influence of steroids naturally produced in the body (specifically testosterone and cortisol) may also provide insight into why people caught up in bubbles and crashes often find it difficult to make rational choices, unintentionally exacerbating financial crises. Testosterone is a steroid hormone which controls competitive encounters as well as sexual behavior. Testosterone in male athletes, for example, will rise…

You already knew that eastern and western cultures regard many aspects of every day life differently but researchers from Canada, Japan and Amsterdam say that eastern and western cultures even assess situations differently based on the perception of emotions they see. Across two studies, participants viewed images consisting of one center model and four background models. The researchers manipulated the facial emotion (happy, angry, sad) in the center or the background models and asked the participants to determine the dominant emotion of the center figure. The majority of Japanese…

Open Knowledge, cyber-activism and social uses of technologies are some of the topics that Dutch Media theorist and activist Geert Lovink likes to tackle. He is Associate Professor in the Media & Culture department at the University of Amsterdam and holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne. He is founder and director of the Institute of Network Cultures and co-founder of Internet projects such as The Digital City, Nettime, Fibreculture and Incommunicado. Lovink is also the author of "Dark Fiber", which has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Romanian, German and Japanese.…

Skeptic Society’s mastermind and author Michael Shermer is about to release a review of the latest nonsense entry in the evolution-creation wars: Ben Stein’s movie entitled “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” Shermer is in an excellent position to criticize creationism, having been a fundamentalist himself, one who rejected the theory of evolution not out of understanding, but simply because his preacher told him to. Today Michael is that rare find in America, a professional skeptic who devotes his life to the betterment of society through critical thinking. Stein, on the other hand, is an…

Patient safety incidents cost the federal Medicare program $8.8 billion and resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths during 2004 through 2006, according to HealthGrades' fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study. HealthGrades' analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records found that patients treated at top-performing hospitals had, on average, a 43 percent lower chance of experiencing one or more medical errors compared to the poorest-performing hospitals. The overall incident rate was approximately three percent of all Medicare admissions evaluated, accounting for…

Current strategies for jaw reconstruction require multiple procedures, first to repair the bone defect to offer sufficient support, and then to place the tooth implant. The entire procedure can be painful and time-consuming, and the desired esthetic and functional repair can be achieved only when both steps are successful. Although the patient’s quality of life can be improved significantly, the prognosis is often unpredictable, especially in young patients, whose jaws continue to grow, while the implant remains fixed. The ability to bioengineer combined tooth and bone constructs, which…