A newly described virus is not a cause of Kawasaki disease, according to an article by a group of researchers in Denver, Colorado. Their article appears in the December 15 issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online.
The largest superconducting magnet ever built has successfully been powered up to its operating conditions at the first attempt. Called the Barrel Toroid because of its shape, this magnet is a vital part of ATLAS, one of the major particle detectors being prepared to take data at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator scheduled to turn on in November 2007.
Educational policy discourse supports the idea that increases in science and mathematics achievement correlate to nation-wide economic gains. However, a thought-provoking new study from the American Journal of Education challenges the perceived causal links between educational achievement and economic growth. Francisco O. Ramirez (Stanford University) and his co-authors find that without the so-called “Asian Tigers,” the correlation diminishes and all but disappears.
Body armor with greater ballistics resistance is the aim of the research being carried out by Youqi Wang, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Kansas State University, with support from two US Department of Defense agencies.
Researchers from Georgetown University’s Institute for Reproductive Health report in November issue of Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health that new natural family planning methods, also known as fertility awareness-based methods, fits well with philosophy of nurse-midwives and the needs of the women they serve.
An international, interdisciplinary team of researchers led by professor Xiangming Xiao of the University of New Hampshire is taking a novel scientific approach in an attempt to understand the ecology of the avian influenza, develop better methods of predicting its spread, and provide an accurate early warning system.
Pseudo-copulation — an interaction that mimics sexual copulation — is a behavior known in mammalian communities that reduces aggression and signifies social dominance, particularly among males. However, this complex, so-called ritualized behavior is not widely known to occur among invertebrate species.
In new work, researchers report that the ability of plants to defend themselves by accumulating high levels of a toxic element can be overcome by some insects, and that such adaptation potentially echoes in the food web as other predators and parasites may in turn evolve to deal with high levels of the toxic element.
Researchers studying chimpanzee mating preferences have found that although male chimpanzees prefer some females over others, they prefer older, not younger, females as mates. The findings uncover a stark contrast between chimpanzee behavior and that of humans, their primate cousins.
The mechanisms that govern visual perception are only partly understood by scientists, and in fact much of what we know about how the human visual system works stems from investigations into our susceptibility to visual illusions. While scientists have used knowledge of illusions to further our understanding of the mind, magicians have learned to master the art of deception for entertainment purposes.