Published on Aug 6th 2010 Science
This image shows the different elements present in SN 1987A: two outer rings, one inner ring and the deformed, innermost expelled material. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have for the first time obtained a three-dimensional view of the distribution of the innermost material expelled by a recently exploded star. The original blast was not only powerful, according to the new results. It was also more concentrated in one particular direction. This is a strong indication that the supernova must have been very turbulent, supporting the most recent computer models. Continue Reading »
Published on Jul 26th 2010 Science
Each year several hundred Norwegian women face the choice between having a late-term abortion or keeping a foetus that they know will not be born healthy.
Most pregnant women whose foetus is proven to have a genetic abnormality choose to have an abortion, but reaching that decision is a painful, exhausting process for most of them. “The women’s doubt, pain and sorrow make abortion more moral – in the eyes of society as well as her own,” says Sølvi Marie Risøy, a researcher at the Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies, University of Bergen.
“We were happy to see a lively little chap, but the midwife grew serious very quickly. ‘There is an accumulation of fluid in the neck that should not be there. And I see only three chambers of the heart … I will ask one of the doctors to look at this.’ It was as if my blood froze there and then. I think I understood immediately that this was not going to end well.” (“Elin”)
“Elin” was having the routine ultrasound examination offered to all women in week 18 of pregnancy when it was discovered that the foetus she was carrying had a serious heart malfunction and other deformities. This discovery meant that “Elin” had to take what she perceived to be an exceedingly painful, gruelling decision. Should she terminate the pregnancy or not? Continue Reading »
Published on Jul 22nd 2010 Science
Psychiatry is one area of medicine where there are few diagnostic blood tests
Blood tests have been extremely important tools aiding doctors in making medical diagnoses and in guiding the treatment of many diseases. However, psychiatry is one area of medicine where there are few diagnostic blood tests.
New scientific fields may someday generate blood tests that can be used for these purposes. Some of the areas under increasingly intensive study are genetics, the study of variations in the genes (DNA) that can be extracted from blood cells, and genomics like proteomics, the measurement of the levels of specific proteins in the blood, and gene expression profiling, which measures the levels of RNA produced from DNA as an indication of the level of the “activity” of particular genes.
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Published on Jul 21st 2010 Science
Its dark secrets
A scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London believes dark matter is lurking at the center of the sun and cooling down its core temperature.
The latest study, led by Dr Stephen West from the Department of Physics at Royal Holloway, looks at the possible effects of dark matter on the properties of the sun, if these elusive particles become trapped at its center.
“Dark matter makes up more than 80 per cent of the total mass of the universe. We know that dark matter exists but to date it has never been produced in a laboratory or directly observed in any experiment, as a result we have very little information about what it actually is. It is important that we examine all possible ways of probing the nature of dark matter and the sun could provide us with an unexpected laboratory in which to do this,” says Dr West.
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Published on Jun 19th 2010 Science
If you’re having trouble getting a date, French researchers suggest that picking the right soundtrack could improve the odds. Women were more prepared to give their number to an ‘average’ young man after listening to romantic background music, according to research that appears today in the journal Psychology of Music, published by SAGE.
There’s plenty of research indicating that the media affects our behaviour. Violent video games or music with aggressive lyrics increase the likelihood of aggressive behaviour, thoughts and feelings – but do romantic songs have any effect? This question prompted researchers Nicolas Guéguen and Céline Jacob from the Université de Bretagne-Sud along with Lubomir Lamy from Université de Paris-Sud to test the power of romantic lyrics on 18-20 year old single females. And it turns out that at least one romantic love song did make a difference. Continue Reading »
Published on Jan 26th 2010 Science
Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. Credit: Amir Yurman. Courtesy of the University of Haifa
University of Haifa – “Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today is in fact nothing new,” explains Dr. Dorit Sivan, who supervised the research.
The sea level in Israel has been rising and falling over the past 2,500 years, with a one-meter difference between the highest and lowest levels, most of the time below the present-day level. This has been shown in a new study supervised by Dr. Dorit Sivan, Head of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa.
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Published on Dec 28th 2009 Science
Planet Pandora from the movie Avatar
Harvard University – In the new blockbuster Avatar, humans visit the habitable – and inhabited – alien moon called Pandora. Life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction.
With NASA’s Kepler mission showing the potential to detect Earth-sized objects, habitable moons may soon become science fact. If we find them nearby, a new paper by Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger shows that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to study their atmospheres and detect key gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor.
“If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade,” said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
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Published on Oct 12th 2009 Science
Published on Oct 8th 2009 Science