2008 April

The old adage, “We are what we eat,” may be the latest recipe for success when it comes to curbing the perils of global climate warming. Despite the recent popular attention to the distance that food travels from farm to plate, aka “food miles,” Carnegie Mellon researchers Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews argue [...]

How good are we at guessing other people’s likes and dislikes? Ever bring a favorite dish to a potluck — only to watch it go uneaten? Or receive an unwelcome shock when a cherished product is discontinued for lack of sales? People have the tendency to assume the whole world likes what we like, reveals [...]

Philanthropy just got easier and a lot more accessible to the public thanks to the social networking power of the Internet and a ground-breaking partnership between a young British entrepreneur, a global health think tank, and an African medical research institute.
Debuted April 20 to offer individuals a meaningful way to mark World Malaria Day (Friday, [...]

Geotimes magazine examines Google’s efforts to develop affordable renewable energy in the April issue, available online and on newsstands now.
Google, Inc. launched RE<C: Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal in November 2007. The goal is to bring renewable energy, such as solar, wind and geothermal, to prices low enough to compete with coal within the next [...]

Although the digital age is well under way, one crucial detail remains to be worked out — how to store vast amounts of digital information in a way that allows future generations to recover it.
“The problem is how to build a large-scale data storage system to last 50 to 100 years,” said Ethan Miller, associate [...]

Researchers have used the world’s thinnest material to create the world’s smallest transistor, one atom thick and ten atoms wide.
Reporting their peer-reviewed findings in the latest issue of the journal Science, Dr Kostya Novoselov and Professor Andre Geim from The School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Manchester show that graphene can be [...]

The connection between music and mathematics has fascinated scholars for centuries.
More than 200 years ago Pythagoras reportedly discovered that pleasing musical intervals could be described using simple ratios.
And the so-called musica universalis or “music of the spheres” emerged in the Middle Ages as the philosophical idea that the proportions in the movements of the celestial [...]

A computer system that can carry on a discussion with a human being by reacting to signals such as tone of voice and facial expression, is being developed by an international team including Queen’s University Belfast.
Known as SEMAINE, the project will build a Sensitive Artificial Listener (SAL) system, which will perceive a human user’s facial [...]

When a tiny, quantum-scale, hypothetical balloon is popped in a vacuum, do the particles inside spread out all over the place as predicted by classical mechanics”
The question is deceptively complex, since quantum particles do not look or act like air molecules in a real balloon. Matter at the infinitesimally small quantum scale is both a [...]

Creating an improved aerodynamic shape for truck trailers by mounting sideskirts can lead to a cut in fuel consumption and emissions of up to as much as 15%. Earlier promising predictions, based on mathematical models and wind tunnel tests by TU Delft, have been confirmed during road tests with an adapted trailer. This means that [...]

Typing on a keyboard or scribbling on paper may be similar activities, but there is a significant difference in how the body moves, according to new motor development research.
“In language we start with letters that lead to syllables that lead to words, and we use grammar to put everything together,” said Howard N. Zelaznik, a [...]

It’s amazing that nobody has spotted it before. Superimposed on every ocean on the planet there is a striped pattern of currents. Yet what causes them is a mystery.
Between 1992 and 2003, Peter Niiler of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, and colleagues collected data from more than 10,000 drifting ocean buoys, [...]

Griffin Technology’s iTalk Pro Voice Recorder for iPod Video and nano attaches securely to your iPod via the dock port. Now you can use your iPod to record memos, lectures, and personal journals as well as play them back.
The black color iTalk Pro also has two high-quality omnidirectional microphones built in for optimal sound [...]

Television news audiences are divided along party lines like never before, according to a new University of Georgia study that warns the trend may have damaging consequences for political discourse and democracy in America.
“Ideology and partisanship used to be completely unrelated to the television news people consumed,” said study author Barry Hollander, associate professor of [...]

The world’s oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the Dalarna province of Sweden.
The spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.
For many years the spruce tree has been regarded as [...]

A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time, according to a new paper in the latest issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society’s (OSA) open-access journal. They did this by aiming high-power pulses of laser light into a thunderstorm.
At the top of South Baldy Peak in New [...]

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may gain better control over their breathing and breathe more efficiently by using their breath to play a computer game, according to new research.
“COPD is a double-edged sword: the incapacitating lung condition can cause such serious shortness of breath that every-day physical activity, such as walking a flight [...]

University of Utah engineers took an early step toward building superfast computers that run on far-infrared light instead of electricity: They made the equivalent of wires that carried and bent this form of light, also known as terahertz radiation, which is the last unexploited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
“We have taken a first step to [...]

People with high blood pressure appear to be less likely to have migraine than those with low blood pressure. Researchers say stiff arteries associated with high blood pressure may play a role in protecting against migraine. The research is published in the April 15, 2008, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy [...]

I purchased a Prius earlier in the year, and I went in with my eyes wide open. I knew it would cost more than say, a Corolla (which I already had), get probably 15 mpg more than the 30 mpg I was getting, and get me in the car pool lane. I also knew about [...]