Science/Nature | Einstein was right, probe shows Early results from a Nasa mission designed to test two key predictions of Albert Einstein show the great man was right about at least one of them. It will take another eight months to determine whether he got the other correct say scientists analysing data from Nasa's Gravity Probe B satellite. The spacecraft was launched into orbit from California, US, on 20 April 2004. The mission's chief scientist presented details at a physics meeting in Jacksonville, Florida. Gravity Probe B uses four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure two effects of Einstein's general relativity theory. One of these effects is called the geodesic effect, the other is called frame dragging. The bowling ball will sit in a dip, distorting the rubber sheet around itself in much the way a massive object such as the Earth distorts space and time around itself. Minute measurements In the analogy, the geodesic effect is similar to the shape of the dip created when the ball is placed on to the rubber sheet. Larger puzzle
High-testosterone people reinforced by others' anger, new s ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Most people don't appreciate an angry look, but a new University of Michigan psychology study found that some people find angry expressions so rewarding that they will readily learn ways to encourage them. "It's kind of striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a non-conscious level can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for," said Oliver Schultheiss, co-author of the study and a U-M associate professor of psychology. The findings may explain why some people like to tease each other so much, he added. "Perhaps teasers are reinforced by that fleeting 'annoyed look' on someone else's face and therefore will continue to heckle that person to get that look again and again," he said. "As long as it does not stay there for long, it's not perceived as a threat, but as a reward." Listen to the podcast >
Debating the origin of life Dubai: Many schools and universities around the world deal with the theory of evolution, and many institutions rule out its antithesis, namely creationism. In the UAE, however, the teaching of naturalist Charles Darwin's theory takes the form of "scientific familiarisation" but it will be removed from public school curricula as of next year, said a senior official at the Ministry of Education. The two arguments, creationism and evolution, are widely labelled as religion vs science and the two concepts have been debated for decades. According to Abdul Qader Eisa, Senior Supervisor of Biology at the Curriculum Development Centre in the Ministry of Education, the evolution theory is included in the curriculum for Grade 12 pupils in public schools but will be removed for the next academic year. This requires the replacement of the evolution theory, he told Gulf News. The lesson on evolution theory also includes the viewpoints of Islamic scholars and a section on religion and science.
A Sound Way To Turn Heat Into Electricity University of Utah physicists developed small devices that turn heat into sound and then into electricity. The technology holds promise for changing waste heat into electricity, harnessing solar energy and cooling computers and radars. "We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound," says Orest Symko, a University of Utah physics professor who leads the effort. Five of Symko's doctoral students recently devised methods to improve the efficiency of acoustic heat-engine devices to turn heat into electricity. Symko plans to test the devices within a year to produce electricity from waste heat at a military radar facility and at the university's hot-water-generating plant. The research is funded by the U.S. Symko expects the devices could be used within two years as an alternative to photovoltaic cells for converting sunlight into electricity. How to Get Power from Heat and Sound Using sound to convert heat into electricity has two key steps.
Health | Mosquitoes target exhaled breath The mechanism mosquitoes use to zero in on their targets has been discovered by scientists in New York. It is already known that the insects are very sensitive to carbon dioxide in exhaled breath. Now a team led by Rockefeller University has found that they sense the gas using protein receptors in the structure extending from their jaws. Writing in Nature, they say the discovery could aid the fight against insect-born diseases, such as malaria. The Rockefeller team first examined fruit flies. They discovered two protein receptors, Gr21a and Gr63a, which enable the fly to sense carbon dioxide with its antennae. The researchers worked on fly nerve cells that did not normally respond to carbon dioxide. They found that, if the Gr21a and Gr63a receptors were both switched on, the cells became excited by the gas. They also showed that when Gr63a was mutated, the mutant flies no longer responded to the high levels of carbon dioxide that wild type flies avoid. Assessing environment
Health | 'Race role' in tobacco smoke risk Passive smoking may pose a different risk to African American children than their white counterparts, US research suggests. The study, featured in the journal Chest, examined 220 children with asthma exposed to cigarette smoke. More than half were black. The researchers measured levels of cotinine, a substance produced by the body as it metabolises nicotine. The black children showed significantly higher levels than the white children. Cotinine is an indicator of nicotine being metabolised, but it does not itself have a negative effect. However, the study does suggest that race affects how a body responds to tobacco. Lead researcher Dr Stephen Wilson, from Cincinnati Children's Medical Center, said: "It looks as though some genes may vary. The next step was to communicate the results to parents to try to encourage lifestyle changes, he said. Testing hair All of the children examined in the US research had the symptoms of persistent asthma and were exposed to at least five cigarettes per day.
Science/Nature | 248-dimension maths puzzle solved The structure is described in the form of a vast matrix Mapping the 248-dimensional structure, called E8, took four years of work and produced more data than the Human Genome Project, researchers said. E8 is a "Lie group", a means of describing symmetrical objects. The team said their findings may assist fields of physics which use more than four dimensions, such as string theory. Lie groups were invented by the 19th Century Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie (pronounced "Lee"). Familar structures such as balls and cones have symmetry in three dimensions, and there are Lie groups to describe them. "What's attractive about studying E8 is that it's as complicated as symmetry can get", observed David Vogan from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US. "Mathematics can almost always offer another example that's harder than the one you're looking at now, but for Lie groups, E8 is the hardest one." Lie groups were invented by the Norwegian Sophus Lie
Health | Bacteria 'do not cut life short' The theory that bacteria hasten our death has been questioned by research suggesting living in a sterile world would not boost life expectancy. It has been thought that the immune system response provoked by even harmless bacteria speeds up the ageing process by using up vital energy. But a study of fruit flies kept in a bacteria-free environment showed they did not outlive their grubby siblings. The University of Southern California study appears in Cell Metabolism. The researchers admit their experiment cannot be replicated in higher organisms, which need bacteria for proper digestion and other functions. But they said the result in flies still may be relevant to human ageing research. In both flies and humans, the number of bacteria living on the organism increases with age. The innate immune response to bacteria is similar in flies and humans, and it loses strength with age in both species. But the study suggests these factors may have nothing to do with ageing. False assumptions
Science/Nature | Chimpanzees 'hunt using spears& Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates, according to a study in the journal Current Biology. Researchers documented 22 cases of chimps fashioning tools to jab at smaller primates sheltering in cavities of hollow branches or tree trunks. The report's authors, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani, said the finding could have implications for human evolution. Chimps had not been previously observed hunting other animals with tools. Pruetz and Bertolani made the discovery at their research site in Fongoli, Senegal, between March 2005 and July 2006. "There were hints that this behaviour might occur, but it was one time at a different site," said Jill Pruetz, assistant professor of anthropology at Iowa State University, US. "While in Senegal for the spring semester, I saw about 13 different hunting bouts. Jabbing weapon Chimpanzees were observed jabbing the spears into hollow trunks or branches, over and over again. Female lead
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): Wild Vervet tags: vervet monkey, Cercopithecus aethiops, sexual harassment, Nachu, Kenya, behavior, interspecies communication A young vervet monkey, Chlorocebus pygerythrus. Image: shashamane. If you live in the small village of Nachu in Kenya, watch out, because a group of approximately 300 marauding monkeys is out to steal your food, sexually harass your women and attack and kill your livestock! In a truly amazing incidence of interspecies communication, a group of vervet monkeys, Chlorocebus pygerythrus, is using sexual harassment to intimidate women and children, who are responsible for growing maize, potatoes, beans and other crops for their farming community, causing them to lose their main food supply so they now are dependent upon famine relief to survive. The monkeys are more afraid of young men than women and children, with the bolder individuals throwing stones and chasing the women from their farms. I wonder why this is occurring all of a sudden? Sources BBCNews (quotes) shashamane (image)
Science/Nature | Hidden method of reading revealed The mystery of how we read a sentence has been unlocked by scientists. Previously, researchers thought that, when reading, both eyes focused on the same letter of a word. But a UK team has found this is not always the case. In fact, almost 50% of the time, each of our eyes locks on to different letters simultaneously. At the BA Festival of Science in York, the researchers also revealed that our brain can fuse two separate images to obtain a clear view of a page. Sophisticated eye-tracking equipment allowed the team to pinpoint which letter a volunteer's eyes focused on, when reading 14-point font from one metre away. Rather than the eyes moving smoothly over text, they make small jerky movements, focusing on a particular word for an instant and then moving along the sentence. Crossed eyes Professor Simon Liversedge, from the University of Southampton, said: "We found that in a very substantial number of fixations that people make when they read, they aren't looking at the same letter."