Topic: Science & Technology

Two Iowa State physicists say there's some science fiction in "Angels & Demons." But they're not quibbling because the movie is introducing millions to particle physics.

Soeren Prell admits to being amused by some of the high energy physics portrayed in Angels & Demons, the summer thriller starring science, religion and Tom Hanks.

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A technician helps install the pixel detector within the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. A team of Iowa State physicists is contributing to work on the pixel detector, the innermost part of the ATLAS experiment.

Research on the positive benefits of napping suggests that REM sleep enhances creative problem solving.

Research led by a leading expert on the positive benefits of napping at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests that Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep enhances creative problem-solving. The findings may have important implications for how sleep, specifically REM sleep, fosters the formation of associative networks in the brain.

Using the zebrafish as an animal model, researchers have discovered that the body uses hydrogen peroxide to sound the alarm when a tissue has been injured. As a direct result of this hydrogen-peroxide red alert, white blood cells come to the aid of the wounded site.

When you were a kid your mom poured it on your scraped finger to stave off infection. When you got older you might have even used it to bleach your hair. Now there’s another possible function for this over-the-counter colorless liquid: your body might be using hydrogen peroxide as an envoy that marshals troops of healing cells to wounded tissue.

In a new book, University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward suggests that Earth is ultimately inhospitable to life, and that life itself might be the primary reason. Rather than the nurturing idea of the Gaia hypothesis, he invokes the darker Medea from Greek mythology.

In the past 50 years it has become commonplace to think of Earth as a nurturing place, straining mightily to maintain equilibrium so that life might continue and flourish.

Sharks, barracuda and other large predatory fishes disappear on Caribbean coral reefs as human populations rise, endangering the region’s marine food web and ultimately its reefs and fisheries, according to a sweeping study by researcher Chris Stallings of The Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory.

While other scientists working in the Caribbean have observed the declines of large predators for decades, the comprehensive work by Chris Stallings of The Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory documents the ominous patterns in far more detail at a much greater geographic scale than any other research to date. His article on the study, “Fishery-Independent Data Reveal Negative Effect of Human Population Density on Caribbean Predatory Fish Communities,” is published in the May 6, 2009 issue of the journal PLoS One.

Federal requirements to increase the production of ethanol has developed into a “drink-or-drive issue” in the Midwest as a result of biofuel production’s impact on water supplies and water quality, says an environmental engineering researcher at Missouri University of Science and Technology in the latest issue of the journal "Environmental Science & Technology."

In an analysis of the water required to produce ethanol from various crops, Dr. Joel G. Burken, a professor of environmental engineering at Missouri S&T, and colleagues from Rice University and Clarkson University find that ethanol could become a costly proposition in terms of “gallons per mile” and other water quality issues. They describe the Midwest’s water needs and impacts as the ’water footprint’ in their cover feature for the May 1 issue of Environmental Science & Technology.

Earth's earliest ice age may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth. University of Maryland geologist Alan J. Kaufman and an international team of scientists uncovered evidence that the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere coincided with the first global ice age.

An international team of geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question - an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice age may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth.

Every brain has a soundtrack - probably many. Can we make them work for us?

Every brain has a soundtrack. Its tempo and tone will vary, depending on mood, frame of mind, and other features of the brain itself. When that soundtrack is recorded and played back-- to an emergency responder, or a firefighter - it may sharpen their reflexes during a crisis, and calm their nerves afterward.

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The results of a new study indicate that certain types of meditation allows practitioners to access greater levels of visuospatial memory resources, compared to when they are not meditating.

Meditation has been practiced for centuries, as a way to calm the soul and bring about inner peace. According to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, there is now evidence that a specific method of meditation may temporarily boost our visuospatial abilities (for example, the ability to retain an image in visual memory for a long time). That is, the meditation allows practitioners to access a heightened state of visual-spatial awareness that lasts for a limited period of time.

Analysis of Greenland ice led by Scripps researchers could allay fears about methane ‘burp’ accelerating current global warming trend.

An expansion of wetlands and not a large-scale melting of frozen methane deposits is the likely cause of a spike in atmospheric methane gas that took place some 11,600 years ago, according to an international research team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

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Horizontal banding of ice layers reveals thousands of years of ice formation at Greenland's Pakitsoq ice margin. Geoscientists frequent Greenland's ice sheets to build records of paleoclimate.