Efforts to promote sustainable development must tap into technologies developed locally, driven by community needs and priorities. The products of modern science and technology (S&T), from chemical pesticides to carbon-emitting combustion engines, are frequently blamed — with some justification — for the unsustainable use of the planet’s resources. At the same time S&T offers a…
The past five years have seen a proliferation of social networking sites designed specifically for scholars, like Academia.edu, which, with 1.2 million registered users, is one of the heavyweights in the field. The free sites, which also include Mendeley.com, ResearchGate.net, Zotero.org, and a number of discipline-specific platforms, typically offer users a way to organize their…
The South Korean health ministry announced that research into stem cells and regenerative medicine will receive a funding boost of 33 billion won (U.S. $29 million) in 2012, four times that given in 2011. Overall, six different ministries will invest 100 billion won in stem-cell research this year. Until last year, public investment in stem…
Researchers studying Oetzi, a 5,300-year-old body found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991, have found red blood cells around his wounds. Blood cells tend to degrade quickly, and earlier scans for blood within Oetzi’s body turned up nothing. Now a study in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface shows that Oetzi’s remarkable preservation…
Geomagnetic storms generated by the interaction between the electrically charged solar particles and the earth’s own magnetic field could have serious consequences. They are able to overload electricity supply networks and cause breakdowns, cause communications and navigation satellites to fail, and endanger astronauts.
Conventional wisdom deems smaller classes superior. John Boyer a professor at Virginia Tech and a self-described “Podunk instructor,” calls that “poppycock.” He’s exploring how technology can help engage students in face-to-face courses that enroll from 600 to nearly 3,000 students. It’s a timely project that may suggest tips for others. In a recent survey of…
An entirely new type of particle has been discovered by scientists using the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva, Switzerland. The discovery of the new particle, called “neutral Xi_b^star baryon,” was made by the CMS experiment, one of six separate particle physics experiments running at the LHC….
How do we judge whether a person knows what he or she is talking about? How do we gauge someone’s credibility? At least in part, we rely on a set of cues – titles, university degrees, papers published, lectures given – that have long been bound up in the concept of “expertise”. If a person…
Invisible dark matter particles may regularly pass through our bodies, and dozens to thousands of these particles may be colliding with atoms inside us every year, according to a new calculation. Dark matter is one of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time — an invisible substance thought to make up five-sixths of all matter…
Foods and packaging containing nanoparticles may require more scrutiny, the FDA says. The FDA has previously stated that nanotechnology is not inherently unsafe; however, materials at the nano scale can pose different safety issues than do things that are larger. Companies are studying whether nanoparticles can lower bacterial contamination.