Culture

The 1930s semi is an icon of its age. Three million were built and they are still a major part of our current housing stock. Now a three year research project is about to start at The University of Nottingham that will help people living in these properties meet the Government's ambitions to reduce CO2 emissions from homes.

This joint project with the energy firm E.ON aims to learn energy efficiency lessons for the future from the failings of houses in the past.

Hopes that the plunging pound may boost UK exports have been questioned by new research into currency movements.

The research from GEP — the Globalisation and Economic Policy Centre at The University of Nottingham — challenges expectations that UK firms might increase overseas sales thanks to sterling's recent plunge to a two-year low against the Euro.

Following the largest-ever study of its kind into currency movements, the research shows the sinking pound might have almost no effect whatsoever on the UK's manufacturing exports.

Clubbers—people who dance the night away in dance clubs—are seeking communal, ecstatic experiences. And, according to a new study in theJournal of Consumer Research, modern clubbers get a more controlled, legalized version of the raves of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Authors Christina Goulding (University of Wolverhampton), Avi Shankar, Richard Elliott (both University of Bath), and Robin Canniford (University of Exeter) immersed themselves in club culture for five years, interviewing clubbers and researching the history of raves and clubs.

Products with visible brand names are everywhere; many times we don't even notice them. But how much do those unnoticed exposures affect brand choices? Quite a bit, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

People who gamble from the comfort of their home tend to think they're more in control of their gambling than people who gamble in casinos, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Authors June Cotte (University of Western Ontario) and Kathryn A. Latour (University of Nevada-Las Vegas) found surprisingly little previous research on their subject: the habits and motivations of online gamblers, who contribute to a $10 billion a year industry.

One thing that all western nations have in common is our ever evolving societies. In order to understand the impact of such changes on our communities, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is launching Understanding Society, the world's largest ever household longitudinal study on Monday 13th October 2008. Understanding Society will provide valuable new evidence to inform research on the vital issues facing our communities.

Plans to introduce plant-eating predators to fight a superweed spreading throughout Britain should not be seen as a 'magic bullet', says a world expert on Japanese knotweed at the University of Leicester.

Dr John Bailey of the Department of Biology has been researching the invasive weed since the 1980s. The research continues with PhD students Michelle Hollingsworth and Catherine Pashley. Research in the Leicester department established that the weed in Britain was a single clone- making it one of the biggest female organism in the world.

MOSCOW, Idaho – Scientists at the University of Idaho currently are involved in a CSI-like investigation of a killer known to have been running rampant for the past decade. But the killer's name can't be found on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Instead, it's on the minds of ecologists on every continent in the world.

More than 40 million years ago, primates preferred Texas to northern climates that were significantly cooling, according to new fossil evidence discovered by Chris Kirk, physical anthropologist at The University of Texas at Austin.

Kirk and Blythe Williams from Duke University have discovered Diablomomys dalquesti, a new genus and species of primate that dates to 44-43 million years ago when tropical forests and active volcanoes covered west Texas.

GOLDEN, Colo. (October 14, 2008) – Patients have on average a 70 percent lower chance of dying at the nation's top-rated hospitals compared with the lowest-rated hospitals across 17 procedures and conditions analyzed in the eleventh annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, issued today by HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization.

Night-traveling migratory moths may hitch a ride on the wind, but a new study in the October 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, confirms that they are anything but drifters.

Unlike the male-dominated societies of their chimpanzee relatives, bonobo society—in which females enjoy a higher social status than males—has a "make-love-not-war" kind of image. While chimpanzee males frequently band together to hunt and kill monkeys, the more peaceful bonobos were believed to restrict what meat they do eat to forest antelopes, squirrels, and rodents.

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 12, 2008 – Research presented at the 20th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium, sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), suggests that olmesartan, a drug commonly used to treat high blood pressure, may play a role in reducing coronary plaque.

Fuel is expensive, so cars need to become lighter and lighter. To ensure that this weight loss does not come at the expense of safety, the vehicles' metal sheets are not only getting thinner but also harder – ultra-hard. This means that the production process, too, has to be re-adapted. "Several process steps are needed to manufacture car body components," explains Dipl.-Ing. Sören Scheffler of the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Chemnitz. "If you look at a car, you can see that each of its sheet metal parts is extremely large.

Since the discovery of nitroglycerin in 1846, the nitrate ester group of compounds has been known for its explosive properties. A whole series of other nitrate esters have been subsequently put to use as explosives and fuels. A research team led by David E. Chavez at Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) has now developed a novel tetranitrate ester. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the compound has a particularly interesting characteristic profile: it is solid at room temperature, is a highly powerful explosive, and can be melt-cast into the desired shape.