Today is: 3 December, 2008

News

Gas leak in Bhopal, India: 3 December 1984 - This Day in History

This Day In History - 1 hour 2 min ago

On this day in 1984, a gas leak from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, spread over a populated area, resulting ultimately in 15,000 to 20,000 deaths and leaving some half million survivors with chronic medical ailments.

More Events on this day:

1967: Christiaan Barnard of South Africa performed the first human heart transplant, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

1861: In a battle during the American Civil War, Federal troops ousted the Confederates from Salem, Missouri.

1818: Illinois was admitted as the 21st state of the United States of America.

1721: German composer Johann Sebastian Bach married his second wife, Anna Magdalena Wilcken, daughter of a trumpeter at Weissenfels.

1552: St. Francis Xavier, the leading Roman Catholic missionary of modern times, died of fever off the coast of China.

Categories: News

Gilbert Stuart: Biography of the Day

This Day In History - 1 hour 2 min ago

Gilbert Stuart

American painter Gilbert Stuart, born this day in 1755, was one of his era's great portraitists, renowned for his portrait of George Washington and praised for his brushwork, luminous colouring, and psychological penetration.

Categories: News

Interferon needed for cells to 'remember' how to defeat a virus, UT Southwestern researchers report

Eureka - 2 hours 9 min ago
Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have determined that the immune-system protein interferon plays a key role in "teaching" the immune system how to fight off repeated infections of the same virus.
Categories: News

Stress-related disorders affect brain?s processing of memory

Eureka - 2 hours 9 min ago
Researchers using functional MRI have determined that the circuitry in the area of the brain responsible for suppressing memory is dysfunctional in patients suffering from stress-related psychiatric disorders. Results of the study will be presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
Categories: News

New breast imaging technology targets hard-to-detect cancers

Eureka - 2 hours 9 min ago
Breast-specific gamma imaging is effective in the detection of cancers not found on mammograms or by clinical exam.
Categories: News

Robotic technology improves stroke rehabilitation

Eureka - 2 hours 9 min ago
Research scientists using a novel, hand-operated robotic device and functional MRI have found that chronic stroke patients can be rehabilitated. This is the first study using fMRI to map the brain in order to track stroke rehabilitation.
Categories: News

Radiologists diagnose and treat self-embedding disorder in teens

Eureka - 2 hours 9 min ago
Minimally invasive, image-guided treatment is a safe and precise method for removal of self-inflicted foreign objects from the body, according to the first report on "self-embedding disorder," or self-injury and self-inflicted foreign body insertion in adolescents.
Categories: News

Spain in the dock over research visas

Nature - December 2, 2008 - 18:47
Failure to cut red tape for foreign scientists prompts legal action by the European Union.
Categories: News

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist: 12/2/2008

Seed - December 2, 2008 - 16:32
  • Evolutionary Urges and the One-Night Stand
    For those intimate with the walk of shame, this article in New Scientist explores emerging theories of "sociosexuality," aka why women and men pursue casual sex differently. Times Online gives the UK its bragging rights for having the highest rate of casual sex of any large industrialized country. But, it's societies with higher gender equality and daycare services like Finland that are closing the one-night stand gender gap. Radio Lab gets in the sex-talk spirit, too.
  • Psychology Study Shows Obama Won't Be Swayed by Team of Rivals
    Obama's cabinet choices may seem perilously open-minded, but Newsweek's Lab Notes comments on recent findings from Northwestern University that show that powerful people aren't very influenced by those around them, even if they are a Clinton. That means that our commander-in-chief is likely to, says one researcher, "express attitudes that don't necessarily conform to prevailing peer pressure."
  • Water Falls Up
    Water drops appear to hover and even fall upwards in this video of a levitating waterfall, evidently taken inside the home of sensory illusionist Al Seckel. The illusion, watch as it's broken by simply poking a finger into the stream, is produced using a strobe light.
  • Playing Vegetable-Instrument Music Builds Gray Matter?
    Check out the cucumber saxophone and a coconut-carrot slide trumpet pictures from a recent vegetable-instrument workshop at the American Visionary Art Museum in Santa Fe, and ponder how the gray matter of non-musician brains stacks up against musicians. (via oddinstrument.com)
  • Antarctica's Dark Matter Experiment, the Diagram It Deserves
    The New York Times put together this handy, dandy visualization of that landmark Antarctica-based dark matter experiment, involving a balloon the size of football field that detected an excess of high-energy electrons floating 23 miles above the Earth. The experiment made a cameo in Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, and has been splashed across the Internett since its promising findings were reported in Nature. Now, if only the Times could satisfactorily illustrate the fifth dimension...

Got something for Seed's Daily Zeitgeist? Email the Zeitgeister.

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Categories: News

Can triniobium tin shrink accelerators?

Nature - December 2, 2008 - 16:30
Exotic superconductors promise savings.
Categories: News

Europe to pay royalties for cancer gene

Nature - December 2, 2008 - 16:30
Categories: News

Concise Encyclopedia Book and CD-ROM: Special Price from The Britannica Store

This Day In History - December 2, 2008 - 13:10
For RSS subscribers The Britannica Store presents a special 20% discount on the Concise Encyclopedia and free CD-ROM. This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of Britannica's most popular publication worldwide is a one-volume encyclopedia containing 28,000 articles accompanied by colorful photographs, diagrams, maps, and flags. The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia has comprehensive coverage on a variety of subjects including, arts, business, geography, history, literature, philosophy, politics, pop culture, science, sports, and more. The book features an easy-to-use format, pronunciation help, relevant tables, and international maps. To see the special price, add the product to your Shopping Cart.
Categories: News

[NEWS] TAINTED MILK SCANDAL: Chinese Probe Unmasks High-Tech Adulteration With Melamine

Science - November 27, 2008 - 16:27
A weeks-long investigation into China's tainted milk scandal has left scientists astonished by the technical sophistication of those who used melamine to adulterate food products.

Authors: Hao Xin, Richard Stone
Categories: News

[NEWS] FRANCE: Will French Science Swallow Zerhouni's Strong Medicine?

Science - November 27, 2008 - 16:27
In a surprisingly blunt report released on 13 November, a high-wattage international committee, led by former U.S. National Institutes of Health director Elias Zerhouni, proposes a massive overhaul of French life sciences research that would create a single, strong funding agency and likely spell the death of several existing institutes.

Author: Martin Enserink
Categories: News

[NEWS] ASTRONOMY: Giant Scope Heads Europe's Wish List

Science - November 27, 2008 - 16:27
European astronomers have asked policymakers to green-light a 42-meter-wide giant telescope that they promise will keep them at the forefront of world astronomy.

Author: Daniel Clery
Categories: News

[NEWS] HUMAN GENETICS: Interest Rises in DNA Copy Number Variations--Along With Questions

Science - November 27, 2008 - 16:27
At the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics last week, the hot topic was duplicated or missing blocks of DNA, known as copy number variations--the study of which, like any emerging field, is plagued by uncertainty.

Author: Jennifer Couzin
Categories: News

[NEWS] SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: Science Goes Hollywood: NAS Links With Entertainment Industry

Science - November 27, 2008 - 16:27
The National Academy of Sciences has launched a collaboration called the Science & Entertainment Exchange that it hopes will "be a service to all of Hollywood" by connecting scientific authorities to the people who produce, write, direct, and animate films and TV shows.

Author: Jon Cohen
Categories: News

[NEWS FOCUS] ECOLOGY: Canada's Experimental Lakes

Science - November 27, 2008 - 16:27
In remote Ontario, a network of lakes is dedicated to bold ecological manipulations. Research there has helped explain algal blooms and acid rain. As the unique outdoor lab turns 40, some wonder whether it is past its prime.

Author: Erik Stokstad
Categories: News

[NEWS FOCUS] ECOLOGY: Contaminating a Lake to Save Others

Science - November 27, 2008 - 16:27
Over the past 9 years, some 15 principal investigators from eight institutions have joined forces at a remote experimental station in Canada (see main text) to tease apart how mercury in air pollution cycles through the environment.

Author: Erik Stokstad
Categories: News

[NEWS FOCUS] PROFILE: ADAM RIESS: A Universe Past the Braking Point

Science - November 27, 2008 - 16:27
A decade after racing to tell the world about "dark energy," an acclaimed astrophysicist pushes to streamline the search for Type Ia supernovae--celestial milestones that may help explain space's ever-accelerating expansion.

Author: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
Categories: News
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