Culture

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A University of Missouri study published in Nature this week has found that the Earth's crust melts easier than previously thought. In the study, researchers measured how well rocks conduct heat at different temperatures and found that as rocks get hotter in the Earth's crust, they become better insulators and poorer conductors. This finding provides insight into how magmas are formed and will lead to better models of continental collision and the formation of mountain belts.

Batavia, Ill.—Scientists of the CDF experiment at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced yesterday (March 17) that they have found evidence of an unexpected particle whose curious characteristics may reveal new ways that quarks can combine to form matter. The CDF physicists have called the particle Y(4140), reflecting its measured mass of 4140 Mega-electron volts. Physicists did not predict its existence because Y(4140) appears to flout nature's known rules for fitting quarks and antiquarks together.

New Haven, Conn.—Even in the midst of a growing economic crisis last fall, over 90 percent of Americans said that the United States should act to reduce global warming, according to a national survey released today by researchers at Yale and George Mason Universities. The results included 34 percent who said the United States should make a large-scale effort, even if it has large economic costs.

Toronto – Agencies selling marketing services are often faced with the dilemma of whether to sell a service exclusively to a single firm in a given market category or to work with more than one.

Washington, D.C.—March 18, 2009—In the last three decades, research across the social sciences has made great advances in the political economy of technological change (also called innovation or R&D). There exists a better understanding how domestic institutions shape R&D and innovation rates. However, the global system of production is rapidly changing, so there is a need to review the impacts of the international system on technological changes across many countries.

Students at charter schools graduate and attend college at significantly higher rates than students at traditional public schools, according to a Rand Corp. study led by a Michigan State University scholar.

The study, which offers mixed overall results for charter school advocates, comes amid a national debate over President Obama's endorsement of charter schools, which are experimental public schools that operate independently of the local school board. Obama recently said he would oppose limits on the number of charter schools.

Of the six billion people sharing our planet, almost half live under the poverty line of $US2 per day. Though growth predictions vary it is likely that, by 2020, the population will increase by approximately another 1.2 billion, of which some 95% will live in developing countries. Such figures highlight the need to address the issues surrounding global poverty as a priority.

Terrorist organizations sometimes have an advantage in the media. A new study by Dr. Yaniv Levyatan of the University of Haifa, published in the journal of Israel's National Security College, describes how our side can regain the advantage in this arena too.

Using the natural glue that marine mussels use to stick to rocks, and a variation on the inkjet printer, a team of researchers led by North Carolina State University has devised a new way of making medical adhesives that could replace traditional sutures and result in less scarring, faster recovery times and increased precision for exacting operations such as eye surgery.

Dangling a lucrative financial carrot at the end of a professional sport season can cause certain players to exert the effort necessary to put together a string of successful performances, sometimes known in sporting circles as a "hot hand" or "hot streak."

That's the result of a forthcoming study by North Carolina State University economists to be published in the Journal of Sports Economics.

Female birds often choose their mates based on fancy feathers. Female mammals, on the other hand, may be more likely to follow their noses to the right mate. That's one conclusion of Cambridge zoologist Tim Clutton-Brock and Harvard researcher Katherine McAuliffe, whose review of evidence for female mate choice is published in the March 2009 issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology.

Last summer, it was very expensive to fill up a gas tank when the gasoline price hit close to four dollars a gallon. Transportation by road or air consumes fuel, which not only increases our vulnerability to foreign imports but also is a source of greenhouse gas emissions that will impact adverse change in climate and global warming. A mechanical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis is developing techniques that will lessen our monetary pain at the pump by reducing the drag of vehicles.

USA300—the major epidemic strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) causing severe infections in the United States during the past decade—inherits its destructiveness directly from a forefather strain of the bacterium called USA500 rather than randomly acquiring harmful genes from other MRSA strains. This finding comes from a new study led by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Tight labour market regulation increases unemployment all over the world, finds a study of 73 countries by the University of Bath.

The study, published in the Journal of Comparative Economics, is one of the first to cover not only industrial countries but also developing and transition countries.

New finds of 95 million year old fossils reveal much earlier origins of modern octopuses. These are among the rarest and unlikeliest of fossils. The chances of an octopus corpse surviving long enough to be fossilized are so small that prior to this discovery only a single fossil species was known, and from fewer specimens than octopuses have legs.