Solar Flares Set the Sun Quaking
Data from the ESA/NASA spacecraft SOHO shows clearly that powerful starquakes ripple around the Sun in the wake of mighty solar flares that explode above its surface. The observations give solar physicists new insight into a long-running solar mystery and may even provide a way of studying other stars.
The outermost quarter of the Sun’s interior is a constantly churning maelstrom of hot gas. Turbulence in this region causes ripples that criss-cross the solar surface, making it heave up and down in a patchwork pattern of peaks and troughs.
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April 19, 2008 | Filed Under Astronomy | Leave a CommentWork Hassles Hamper Sleep
Common hassles at work are more likely than long hours, night shifts or job insecurity to follow workers home and interfere with their sleep.That’s the conclusion of a University of Michigan study presented April 17 at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America.
The study analyzes two nationally representative surveys of approximately 2,300 U.S. adults that monitored the same workers for up to a decade. Over that time, roughly half the respondents said they had trouble sleeping.
Popularity: 40% [?]
April 18, 2008 | Filed Under Health | Leave a CommentGraphene Used to Create World’s Smallest Transistor
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 carved into tiny electronic circuits with individual transistors having a size not much larger than that of a molecule.
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April 18, 2008 | Filed Under Technology | Leave a CommentAerodynamic Trailer Cuts Fuel and Emissions by Up to 15%
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 PART (Platform for Aerodynamic Road Transport), the public-private partnership platform, has produced an application which can immediately be put into production.
Popularity: 36% [?]
April 18, 2008 | Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment1 in 5 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Suffer from PTSD
Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan — 300,000 in all — report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slight more than half have sought treatment, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
In addition, researchers found about 19 percent of returning service members report that they experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed, with 7 percent reporting both a probable brain injury and current PTSD or major depression.
Popularity: 39% [?]
April 18, 2008 | Filed Under Medical | Leave a CommentIntelligence and Rhythmic Accuracy Go Hand in Hand
People who score high on intelligence tests are also good at keeping time, new Swedish research shows. The team that carried out the study also suspect that accuracy in timing is important to the brain processes responsible for problem solving and reasoning.
Researchers at the medical university Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University have now demonstrated a correlation between general intelligence and the ability to tap out a simple regular rhythm. They stress that the task subjects performed had nothing to do with any musical rhythmic sense but simply measured the capacity for rhythmic accuracy. Those who scored highest on intelligence tests also had least variation in the regular rhythm they tapped out in the experiment.
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April 17, 2008 | Filed Under Humans | Leave a CommentConversations with Computers
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 expression, gaze, and voice and then engage with the user. When engaging with a human, the SAL will be able to adapt its own performance and pursue different actions, depending on the non-verbal behaviour of the user.
Popularity: 39% [?]
April 17, 2008 | Filed Under Technology | Leave a CommentWorld’s Oldest Living Tree Discovered in Sweden
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 relative newcomer in the Swedish mountain region.
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April 17, 2008 | Filed Under Biology | Leave a CommentMysterious Striped Currents in Our Oceans
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, which they tracked with satellites. As expected, the buoys’ movements were influenced mainly by known global currents, which are driven by wind and by differences in the temperature and salinity of seawater.
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April 17, 2008 | Filed Under General | Leave a CommentOlder People are Nation’s Happiest
Americans grow happier as they grow older, according to a University of Chicago study that is one of the most thorough examinations of happiness ever done in America.
The study also found that baby boomers are not as content as other generations, African Americans are less happy than whites, men are less happy than women, happiness can rise and fall between eras, and that, with age the differences narrow.
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April 17, 2008 | Filed Under Humans | Leave a Comment
