DALLAS – March 29, 2011 – A retrospective study of women who became pregnant while using intrauterine devices shows that more than half of the IUDs were malpositioned.
Though the displacement may have occurred over time, a UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher suggests that routine sonograms after IUD placement would in the least confirm proper initial positioning.
A researcher at Case Western Reserve University has detected tiny amounts of Iodine 131 from Japan in rainwater collected from the roof of a campus building.
Gerald Matisoff, professor of geology, said the presence of the isotope presents no danger to human health. He estimated the level of radiation is about one-tenth that of natural background radiation.
"In theory, the Iodine 131 could have come from any radioactive waste processing facility," Matisoff said. "But, we know it's from Japan. The isotope is being seen worldwide."
Wind is a much more powerful force in the evolution of mountains than previously thought, according to a new report from a University of Arizona-led research team.
Bedrock in Central Asia that would have formed mountains instead was sand-blasted into dust, said lead author Paul Kapp.
"No one had ever thought that wind could be this effective," said Kapp, a UA associate professor of geosciences. "You won't read in a textbook that wind is a major process in terms of breaking down rock material."
Between 75 and 80 per cent of all volcanic activity on Earth takes place at deep-sea, mid-ocean ridges. Most of these volcanoes produce effusive lava flows rather than explosive eruptions, both because the levels of magmatic gas (which fuel the explosions and are made up of a variety of components, including, most importantly CO2) tend to be low, and because the volcanoes are under a lot of pressure from the surrounding water.
Cattle ranchers in southwestern Alberta have suspected it for a long time and now, GPS tracking equipment confirms it: wolf packs in the area are making cow meat a substantial part of their diets.
University of Alberta researchers tracked wolves to bone yards, where ranchers dispose of dead cattle, and to sites of fresh cow kills. The study was done over two grazing seasons in 2008 and 2009. The vast study area in southwestern Alberta includes private ranchland and wooded public lands bordering the Rocky Mountains.
Shortly after experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland began yielding scientific data last fall, a group of scientists led by a Syracuse University physicist became the first to observe the decays of a rare particle that was present right after the Big Bang. By studying this particle, scientists hope to solve the mystery of why the universe evolved with more matter than antimatter.
New insights into why and how nanowires take the form they do will have profound implications for the development of future electronic components. PhD student Peter Krogstrup from the Nano-Science Center at the University of Copenhagen is behind the sensational new theoretical model, which is developed in collaboration with researchers from CINAM-CNRS in Marseille.
How would you like to store all the films ever made on a device the size of an I-phone?
Magnets made of just a few metallic atoms could make it possible to build radically smaller storage devices and have also recently been proposed as components for spintronics devices. There's just one obstacle on the way. Nano-sized magnets have only been seen to work at temperatures a few hairs above absolute zero.
ANAHEIM, March 27, 2011 — Do television shows like House, Breaking Bad, and Zula Patrol — major sources of information about science and technology for millions of people — try to get it right? Or do they play fast and loose with the facts, images, and nuances that forge public perceptions about science and help shape young people's career decisions?
ANAHEIM, March 27, 2011 — Organizers of the technical program at the American Chemical Society's 241st National Meeting & Exposition have identified these highlights from their own division or committee's presentations. The technical program is a journalistic treasure trove for spot news, features, story ideas, background, and sources for future coverage. It includes almost 9,400 papers that span scientific topics from astronomy to zoology.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The effects of climate change and population growth on agricultural land area vary from region to region, according to a new study by University of Illinois researchers.
Regions with relative high latitudes – China, Russia and the U.S. – could see a significant increase in arable land in coming years, but Africa, Europe and India and South America could lose land area.
Civil and environmental engineering professor Ximing Cai and graduate student Xiao Zhang published their findings in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
Baylor University geology researchers, along with scientists from Texas A&M University and around the country, have found the oldest archaeological evidence of human occupation in the Americas at a Central Texas archaeological site located about 40 miles northwest of Austin.
University of British Columbia chemists have developed a new model to predict the optical properties of non-conducting ultra-fine particles.
The finding could help inform the design of tailored nano-structures, and be of utility in a wide range of fields, including the remote sensing of atmospheric pollutants and the study of cosmic dust formation.
Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have joined with researchers at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to mount a three-pronged attack on one of the most obstinate puzzles in materials sciences: what is the pseudogap?
Japan needs maps. Not just any kind—detailed informational maps georegistered with latitude and longitude and annotated with simple, self-evident details: this bridge is out, this port is damaged, this farm field is scoured; this one is verdant.