All referees feel stress on match days. However, contrary to what you might believe, a joint study by the Catholic University of Brasilia, A Coruña University and James Cook University in Australia state that the level of stress is not linked to the physical condition of these referees, but to their nervous system. The researchers measured the activity of Spanish football referees on a normal day and on a match day.
Heavens
The Tongue Drive System is getting less conspicuous and more capable. Tongue Drive is a wireless device that enables people with high-level spinal cord injuries to operate a computer and maneuver an electrically powered wheelchair simply by moving their tongues.
Pulsars, superdense neutron stars, are perhaps the most extraordinary physics laboratories in the Universe. Research on these extreme and exotic objects already has produced two Nobel Prizes. Pulsar researchers now are poised to learn otherwise-unavailable details of nuclear physics, to test General Relativity in conditions of extremely strong gravity, and to directly detect gravitational waves with a "telescope" nearly the size of our Galaxy.
Researchers from King's College London have provided the first experimental evidence confirming a great British mathematician's theory of how biological patterns such as tiger stripes or leopard spots are formed.
Contrary to Earth, our Moon has no active volcanoes, and the traces of its past volcanic activity date from billions of years ago. This is surprising, because recent Moonquake data suggest that there is plenty of liquid magma deep within the Moon because part of the rocks residing there are thought to be molten. Scientists have now identified a likely reason for this peaceful surface life: the hot, molten rock in the Moon's deep interior could be so dense that it is simply too heavy to rise to the surface like a bubble in water.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – The modernization of isolated villages brings about a change in human information flow patterns that not only destroys the social fabric of the community, but also the economy and the landscape, according to Sander van der Leeuw, a Senior Sustainability Scientist at Arizona State University's Global Institute of Sustainability.
Detectable for only a few seconds but possessing enormous energy, gamma-ray bursts are difficult to capture because their energy does not penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. Now, thanks to an orbiting telescope, astrophysicists are filling in the unknowns surrounding these bursts and uncovering new questions.
The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, formerly called the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, launched on June 11, 2008. As part of its mission, the telescope records any gamma-ray bursts within its viewing area.
Vancouver, B.C. (Wednesday, February 15, 2012) – The galaxy Arp 220 is home to several giant star clusters—about 10 million solar masses—that are twice as massive as any comparable star cluster in the Milky Way Galaxy. McMaster University's Christine Wilson is captivated by this turbulent galaxy that provides such a target-rich environment for watching stars form.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Unexpected new findings by a University of Maryland team of geochemists show that some portions of the Earth's mantle (the rocky layer between Earth's metallic core and crust) formed when the planet was much smaller than it is now, and that some of this early-formed mantle survived Earth's turbulent formation, including a collision with another planet-sized body that many scientists believe led to the creation of the Moon.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope may have found evidence for a cluster of young, blue stars encircling one of the first intermediate-mass black holes ever discovered. Astronomers believe the black hole may once have been at the core of a now-disintegrated unseen dwarf galaxy. The discovery of the black hole and the possible star cluster has important implications for understanding the evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies.
Rainfall data from NASA's TRMM satellite revealed that parts of Madagascar's east coast received over a foot (30 cm) of rainfall from Cyclone Giovanna's passage, and new satellite data shows Cyclone Giovanna re-strengthening and turning back toward southeastern Madagascar.
A new study published by researchers at SUNY Downstate Medical Center's School of Public Health assesses mercury levels in pregnant women and examines dietary and environmental sources of exposure to mercury. The research, which focuses on an urban immigrant community, examined risk factors that may be associated with elevated mercury levels, measured through urine and cord blood samples.
Two new and powerful research tools are helping astronomers gain key insights needed to transform our understanding of important processes across the breadth of astrophysics. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and the newly-expanded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) offer scientists vastly improved and unprecedented capabilities for frontier research.
In a rough-and-tumble wonderland of plunging canyons and towering buttes, some of the still-raw bluffs are lined with soaring, six-sided stone columns so orderly and trim, they could almost pass as relics of a colossal temple. The secret of how these columns, packed in edge to edge, formed en masse from a sea of molten rock is encrypted in details as tiny as the cracks running across their faces. To add to this mystery's allure, decoding it might do more than reveal the life story of some local lava: it might help explain the history of Mars.
Infrared NASA satellite imagery showed Cyclone Giovanna moving south through the Mozambique Channel on Thursday, February 16, 2012. Infrared data showed that Giovanna was regaining strength in the warm waters of the Channel, and the strongest thunderstorms were west of the storm's center.