ITHACA, N.Y. — Female birds in species that breed in groups can find themselves under pressure to sexually show off and evolve the same kinds of embellishments – like fanciful tail feathers or chest-puffing courtship dances - as males, according to new research in the latest issue of Nature (Dec. 10, 2009).
Culture
As they pop the champagne corks to celebrate New Year's Eve, drug industry executives will likely be glad to put 2009 behind them. That's because pharmaceutical companies who make top-selling drugs for heart disease, asthma, and many other conditions had a tough year in the midst of mounting market pressures and a global recession. A timely year-end analysis of the state of the pharmaceutical industry is scheduled for the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS' weekly newsmagazine.
Rural industries, such as meat-packing and textile manufacturing, create job opportunities that have brought significant numbers of Latino workers and their families to small- and medium-sized towns. This influx of Latino migrants is often met with resistance from other residents, who fear increases in crime and poverty rates. But a new study from North Carolina State University debunks those fears, showing that the introduction of Latinos contributes to positive changes, not negative ones.
COPENHAGEN (9 December 2009)—An agreement at this week's UN Climate Change talks in Copenhagen to cut carbon emissions by paying developing countries to maintain their forests has the potential to reverse the decline in the world's forests, according to a comprehensive analysis of national policy options to reduce deforestation released today by CIFOR, the Center for International Forestry Research.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists Lynn Price and Nan Zhou expected the long banquet and endless toasting. What they did not expect on a recent trip to a cement plant in central China was a three-hour variety show by the factory employees, complete with folk dancing, song-and-dance numbers and comedians. Even more surprising were the lyrics to one of the songs: "I started to listen closely and realized they were singing about closing inefficient factories, next year's clean production targets and so on," said Zhou.
An international group of anthropologists offers a new theory about the diffusion of maize to the Southwestern United States and the impact it had.
Published the week of Dec. 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study, co-authored by Gayle Fritz, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues*, suggests that maize was passed from group to group of Southwestern hunter-gatherers.
HOUSTON – Regardless of an individual's dietary and lifestyle risk factors, living in a poorer or more socioeconomically deprived neighborhood may increase a person's risk for death, according to data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, held Dec. 6-9, 2009.
While navigating the microscopic world of immune system proteins and cells to save a patient suffering from a raging bacterial infection, young teenage players of the "Immune Attack" video game measurably improved their understanding of cell biology and molecular science, according to a study that will be presented at the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) 49th Annual Meeting, Dec. 5-9, 2009 in San Diego.
A Kansas State University professor's research is showing a gap between the character traits that business students say make a good executive and the traits they describe having themselves.
Thomas A. Wright, the Jon Wefald Leadership Chair in Business Administration, said business schools need to close that gap by continuously discussing ethics and character in the classroom.
We don't always turn out like our parents.
Sometimes we become even better.
How this happens is the subject of a new research project at the University of Gothenburg.
When two gene pools combine, you might expect the characteristics of the offspring to end up somewhere in the middle between those of its parents. But children often have characteristics that are better or worse than that middle value, sometimes even better than both parents.
Better horses, redder tomatoes
The changing global climate threatens life-sustaining resources. Fresh water reserves and arable land are shrinking. Weather-related catastrophes, such as heat waves, floods, storms, fires and droughts, are becoming more frequent and destructive. Climate change imperils livelihoods, presenting one of the most difficult global challenges confronting the international community.
Mitigating Climate Change
DURHAM, N.C. -- Sarah Steele and Langtian "Ren" Yuan were both self-admittedly inexperienced Duke freshmen in the spring of 2006. But then they followed helpful directions of an assistant chemistry professor, added their own patience and ingenuity, and ended up identifying compounds that might allay the powerful cravings of methamphetamine and cocaine addiction.
Although politicians are often criticized for making empty promises, when it comes to their voting records, their words may carry more weight than previously thought, according to findings by two Penn State information technology scientists.
The researchers used a computer model to compare voting records from the 110th Congress -- Jan. 3, 2007 to Jan. 3, 2009 -- to each senator's floor statements on the issues to determine whether the two matched up.
Providence, RI---"Mathematics links Art and Science in one greatenterprise, the human attempt to make sense of the universe."
So writes Abel Prizewinner and Fields Medalist Sir Michael F. Atiyahin the January 2010 Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Thetheme of the issue is creativity in mathematics.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A gut-level connection with workers may be the key to encouraging whistle-blowing that could chip away at an estimated $652 billion lost to fraud annually by U.S. businesses, an ongoing University of Illinois study suggests.
Though largely overlooked, tapping into employees' emotions and personal values can produce powerful triggers for calling out wrongdoing in the workplace, from petty theft to embezzlement and sexual misconduct, U. of I. researchers say.