Culture

Putting a new spin on an old technique, Anne M. Hofmeister, Ph.D., research professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has revolutionized scientists' understanding of heat transport in the Earth's crust, the outermost solid shell of our planet. Temperature is an important driver of many geological processes, including the generation of magmas (molten rocks) in the deepest parts of the Earth's crust, about 30-40 kilometers below the surface. Yet, until recently, temperatures deep inside the Earth's crust were uncertain, mainly because of difficulties…

ATLANTA — In the midst of life-threatening situations requiring split-second decisions, police officers with a higher ability to multitask are less likely to shoot unarmed persons when feeling threatened during video simulations, a new Georgia State University study suggests. Heather Kleider, Dominic Parrott and Tricia King, assistant professors of psychology at Georgia State, have taken a unique look at officer-involved shooting situations, signs of negative emotions and working memory capacity — the capacity to perform multiple mental tasks, such as reasoning, at the same time. Other…

University of Minnesota researcher Christine Greenhow, Seattle-based news aggregator NewsCloud and student newspaper The Minnesota Daily today announced the launch of the Minnesota Daily Facebook application. The Minnesota Daily application aims to become the hub of news and sharing for U of M students and community, combining both professional student and citizen journalism. Researchers will use it to test new ways to engage youth in news and information through social media. The Daily, the U of M's 109 year-old independent, student-run newspaper, has teamed up with researchers to provide…

Dust trapped deep in Antarctic ice sheets is helping scientists unravel details of past climate change. Researchers have found that dust blown south to Antarctica from the windy plains of Patagonia – and deposited in the ice periodically over 80,000 years – provides vital information about glacier activity. Scientists hope the findings will help them to better understand how the global climate has changed during the past ice age, and so help predict environmental changes in the future. The study indicates that the ebb and flow of glaciers in the Chilean and Argentinian region is a rich source…

HOUSTON (March 29, 2009) – The allergen breathed in by a person with asthma triggers a proteinase or enzyme called MMP7 that activates a cascade of events to prompt an allergic reaction, said a consortium of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu) in Houston in a report that appears online today in the journal Nature Immunology. In particular, MMP7 activates interleukin 25, a key mediator of the allergic response in the lung said Drs. Farrah Kheradmand (http://www.bcm.edu/medicine/pulmonary/?pmid=4832) and David B. Corry (http://www.bcm.edu/medicine/pulmonary/?pmid=4828),…

PHILADELPHIA –- A team of biologists at the University of Pennsylvania has completed a research study begun in 1915 and determined that a snail making its home in the northwest Atlantic Ocean around Mount Desert Island, Me., has experienced a dramatic increase in the size of its shell during less than a century, providing a clear illustration of how fast and effectively change can occur. The study is published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The most striking finding, which has not been reported previously in Nucella lapillus, the Atlantic dogwhelk…

Waltham, MA—A new report, LIVING LONGER ON LESS IN MASSACHUSETTS: The New Economic (In)Security of Seniors, issued today by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University finds that Massachusetts seniors face widespread financial insecurity. Almost 7 in 10 senior households in Massachusetts lack sufficient resources for long-term economic security, according to the study. Economic risk is especially pronounced for single senior households—with 82 percent among them facing financial insecurity. These findings are a result of analysis utilizing the new Massachusetts…

Considerably more people than previously believed are allergic to the most common fragrance ingredient used in shampoos, conditioners and soap. A thesis presented at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden found that over 5% of those who underwent patch testing were allergic to the air oxidized form of the fragrance ingredient linalool. "I would suspect that about 2% of the complete population of Sweden are allergic to air oxidized linalool. That may not sound very much, but it is serious since linalool is so widely used as a fragrance ingredient. Linalool is found in 60-80…

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Modern manufacturing methods are spectacularly inefficient in their use of energy and materials, according to a detailed MIT analysis of the energy use of 20 major manufacturing processes. Overall, new manufacturing systems are anywhere from 1,000 to one million times bigger consumers of energy, per pound of output, than more traditional industries. In short, pound for pound, making microchips uses up orders of magnitude more energy than making manhole covers. At first glance, it may seem strange to make comparisons between such widely disparate processes as metal casting…

What possible connection could there be between an eighteenth century British Presbyterian minister and preventing road traffic accidents in Hartford, Connecticut. Everything, according to a report in the International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications. Thomas Bayes (1702-1761) was not only a church minister but also the mathematician who formulated a probability theorem that can be used to solve problems that stymie conventional statistics. The crux of his theorem can be stated as follows: "The probability of any event is the ratio between the value at which an…