Culture

CHICAGO—Tiziana Di Matteo, associate professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University is harnessing the power of supercomputing to recreate how galaxies are born, how they develop over time and, ultimately, how they collapse. Di Matteo will present an overview of her cosmological simulations as part of the "Big, Small, and Everything in Between: Simulating Our World Using Scientific Computing" session at the 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Chicago. Her session will be held at 1:30 p.m., Sunday, Feb.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered that the good bacteria found in dairy products and linked to positive health benefits in the human body might also be an effective vehicle for an oral vaccine that can provide immunity to anthrax exposure. The approach could possibly be used to deliver any number of specific vaccines that could block other types of viruses and pathogens.

The social environment at swimming pools appears to be related to sun safety behaviors of outdoor pool staff, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

CHICAGO – How did the universe begin? How will it end? Do other universes exist? Everyone at some time or another ponders these questions. Generations of researchers have brought us to our current point of understanding, but our picture of the universe has changed more in the past decade or so than it did in the past century. The changes have had a significant effect upon our understanding of the future of the universe and life within it.

The stability and livability of the world's growing urban regions is going to depend more than ever on advances in public-infrastructure engineering, says Brad Allenby.

"The accelerating urbanization of the species is rapidly increasing the complexity of the urban environment for humanity as a whole," he says. "This makes urban-system infrastructure a critical component in maintaining stable, functioning societies and ensuring quality of life."

Carbon dioxide (CO2) distinguishes itself as the fastest growing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere today. Policy decisions and regulation of CO2 emissions depends on our ability to measure the increase in the atmosphere and determine the source of the increase.

Research so far on global warming and Atlantic hurricanes indicates:

The victimization of both female and male blacks and Latinos increases during or after periods of economic recession, according to a study by researchers Karen Heimer of the University of Iowa and Janet Lauritsen of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

CHICAGO, IL--After installing an extensive network of monitoring stations in Costa Rica, researchers have detected slow slip events (also known as "silent earthquakes") along a major fault zone beneath the Nicoya Peninsula. These findings are helping scientists understand the full spectrum of motions occurring on the fault and may yield new insights into the events that lead to major earthquakes.

The hot topics of global warming and environmental sustainability are concerns that fit neatly within the precepts of religious naturalism, according to Ursula Goodenough, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to being a renowned cell biologist, Goodenough is a religious naturalist and the author of The Sacred Depths of Nature, a bestselling book on religious naturalism that was published in 1998.

CHICAGO — If science education is to flourish and if science is to be better understood by the general public, then scientists need to think more locally, Michigan State University professor Jon Miller said.

Miller and several other academics spoke at a special symposium – "C2ST: The Nation's First Metropolitan Science Council" – today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.

In the real world, tracking a person's social network -- which could include hundreds of contacts that serve different purposes -- is nearly impossible.

But in online virtual games like EverQuest II, where tens of thousands of people leave digital traces as they chat with one another, perform quests together, form groups and buy and sell goods, researchers have found a gold mine of networking data.

When the Drake Oil Well in Titusville, Pennsylvania began seeping crude oil 150 years ago, humanity allowed itself to become engulfed in the ecology of oil, according to a Penn State environmental historian. Now in the midst of an energy transition, the U.S. and the world need to keep moving forward toward alternative methods of power generation.

Without decisive action, global warming in the 21st century is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than predicted, according to a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Stanford, CA— Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising more rapidly than expected, increasing the danger that without aggressive action to reduce emissions the climate system could cross a critical threshold by the end of the century, warns a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Studies indicate that greenhouse warming could trigger a vicious cycle of feedback, in which carbon dioxide released from thawing tundra and increasingly fire-prone forests drives global temperatures even higher.