Culture

MP3 players and digital cameras fill home computers with a data flood of images and music. The sector association BITKOM estimated that the number of music downloads in 2008 would exceed 38 million in Germany. Until now, anyone wishing to maintain an overview of their favorite music and photos had to laboriously assign keywords to everything using cumbersome administration software.

"It was half the size of a domestic cat and probably hunted and ate whatever it could for its size – insects, mammals, amphibians and maybe even baby dinosaurs," Longrich said. "It probably spent most of its time close to the ground searching through the marshes and forests that characterized the area at the end of the Cretaceous."

Boston, Mass. - Many households harbor a threat to young children that safety regulations, surprisingly, have overlooked: glass-topped tables and tables with glass panels. A review by Children's Hospital Boston, in collaboration with Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, finds that glass-table injuries aren't as rare as one might think, and that many could have been avoided had tempered glass been used.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--A rising tide is said to lift all boats. Rising global temperatures, however, may lead to increased disparities between rich and poor countries, according to a recent MIT economic analysis of the impact of climate change on growth.

Catching the common cold virus: BYU researchers coming down with the rhinovirus genome

A new study by Brigham Young University researchers on the virus behind nearly half of all cold infections explains how and where evolution occurs in the rhinovirus genome and what this means for possible vaccines.

The study is reported in the April issue of the academic journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Sometimes objects in the sky that appear strange, or different from normal, have a story to tell and prove scientifically very rewarding. This was the idea behind Halton Arp's catalogue of Peculiar Galaxies that appeared in the 1960s. One of the oddballs listed there is Arp 261, which has now been imaged in more detail than ever before using the FORS2 instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. The image proves to contain several surprises.

One of the most important tasks of the immune system is to identify what is foreign and what is self. If this distinction fails, then the body's own structures will be attacked, the result of which could be an autoimmune disease such as diabetes mellitus type 1 or multiple sclerosis. The only way to protect against these afflictions is to destroy all immune factors that turn against the body's own tissue – in other words: immune tolerance. A team working with LMU researcher Dr. David Vöhringer has now investigated exactly what role dendritic cells play in this process.

Boulder, CO, USA – The 43rd annual meeting of the Geological Society of America's South-Central Section will feature a presentation on Tuesday, 17 March, on the Arlington Archosaur Site in North Arlington, Texas, USA. Among the site's 95 million-years-old rocks is a rich deposit of fossils, not only of an as-yet-unnamed carnivorous theropod, but also of a large, herbivorous "duck billed" hadrosaur, prehistoric crocodiles, turtles, sharks, and a new species of lungfish.

A herd of young birdlike dinosaurs met their death on the muddy margins of a lake some 90 million years ago, according to a team of Chinese and American paleontologists that excavated the site in the Gobi Desert in western Inner Mongolia.

The Sudden sudden death of the herd in a mud trap provides a rare snapshot of social behavior. Composed entirely of juveniles of a single species of ornithomimid dinosaur (Sinornithomimus dongi), the herd suggests that immature individuals were left to fend for themselves when adults were preoccupied with nesting or brooding.

For 25 years, researchers have tried and failed to develop an HIV vaccine, primarily by focusing on a small number of engineered "super antibodies" to fend off the virus before it takes hold. So far, these magic bullet antibodies have proved impossible to produce in people. Now, in research to be published March 15 online by Nature, scientists at The Rockefeller University have laid out a new approach.

Pharaoh Hatshepsut was a power-conscious woman who assumed the reins of government in Egypt around the year 1479 B.C. In actual fact, she was only supposed to represent her step-son Thutmose III, who was three years old at the time, until he was old enough to take over. But the interregnum lasted 20 years. "She systematically kept Thutmose out of power", says Michael Höveler-Müller, the curator of Bonn University´s Egyptian Museum.

HOUSTON -- (March 13, 2009) -- Researchers at Rice University have created a metamaterial that could light the way toward high-powered optics, ultra-efficient solar cells and even cloaking devices.

Naomi Halas, an award-winning pioneer in nanophotonics, and graduate student Nikolay Mirin created a material that collects light from any direction and emits it in a single direction. The material uses very tiny, cup-shaped particles called nanocups.

In new research published in the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, New York University Professor Mitchell Moss explains that the cornerstone Federal disaster relief legislation, the Robert T. Stafford Act, is dangerously out of date, and must be reformed to provide for rapid relief after a catastrophe.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The New Madrid fault system does not behave as earthquake hazard models assume and may be in the process of shutting down, a new study shows.

A team from Purdue and Northwestern universities analyzed the fault motion for eight years using global positioning system measurements and found that it is much less than expected given the 500- to 1,000-year repeat cycle for major earthquakes on that fault. The last large earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone were magnitude 7-7.5 events in 1811 and 1812.

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 13, 2009) — The process to turn propane into industrially necessary propylene has been expensive and environmentally unfriendly. That was until scientists at U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory devised a greener way to take this important step in chemical catalysis.

"Using platinum clusters, we have devised a way to catalyze propane not only in a more environmentally friendly way, but also using far less energy than previous methods," Argonne scientist Stefan Vajda said.