Culture

The phenomenon of "shimmering" in giant honeybees, in which hundreds—or even thousands—of individual honeybees flip their abdomens upwards within a split-second to produce a Mexican Wave-like pattern across the bee nest, has received much interest but both its precise mode of action and its purpose have long remained a mystery.

Bacteria can be used to break down used sheep dip, preventing bees and fish from dying because of soil and river contamination, scientists heard today (Wednesday 10 September 2008) at the Society for General Microbiology's Autumn meeting being held this week at Trinity College, Dublin.

Microbes that break down oil and petroleum are more diverse than we thought, suggesting hydrocarbons were used as an energy source early in Earth's history, scientists heard today (Wednesday 10 September 2008) at the Society for General Microbiology's Autumn meeting being held this week at Trinity College, Dublin. These microbes can change the composition of oil and natural gas and can even control the release of some greenhouse gases. Understanding the role of microbes in consuming hydrocarbons may therefore help us access their role in the natural control of climate change.

A new report co-authored by Rice political scientists Mark Jones and William Reed with colleagues at the University of Houston finds patterns and/or aberrations in the use of Tasers related to ethnicity, gender, race and geography.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -Without a way to measure religious beliefs, anthropologists have had difficulty studying religion. Now, two anthropologists from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have developed a new approach to study religion by focusing on verbal communication, an identifiable behavior, instead of speculating about alleged beliefs in the supernatural that cannot actually be identified.

The world's intellectual property system is broken. It's stopping lifesaving technologies from reaching the people who need them most in developed and developing countries, according to the authors of a report released in Ottawa today by an international coalition of experts.

Anti-virus companies play a losing game. Casting their nets wide, they catch common, malicious viruses and worms (known to the industry as "malware"), but it may take days before their software updates can prepare your computer for the next attack. By then it could be too late. And some insidious programs prove immune to anti-virus software, residing inside your computer for months or even years, collecting personal information and business secrets.

Yeast fungus cells that kill thousands of AIDS patients every year escape detection by our bodies' defences by hiding inside our own defence cells, and hitch a ride through our systems before attacking and spreading, scientists heard today (Tuesday 9 September 2008) at the Society for General Microbiology's Autumn meeting being held this week at Trinity College, Dublin.

A first-ever, national study conducted in South Africa found that 27.5 percent of men who have ever been married or lived with a partner report perpetrating physical violence against their current or most recent female partner. This study http://www.cmaj.ca/press/pg535.pdf,led by researchers from Harvard School of Public Health, Yale School of Public Health, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa, appears in the September 9, 2008, issue of CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal.)

Patients visiting an ophthalmologist report that prayer is important to their well-being and that God plays a positive role in illness, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

A video lottery terminal In Montreal, a video lottery terminal (VLT) is often less than three minutes away by foot from a compulsive gambler, who is usually a male between 18 and 44 with little education and low revenues.

For instance, 96 percent of the Park Extension neighborhood has a business with a VLT permit less than three minutes away from the residential area, according to Université de Montréal geographer Éric Robitaille.

The moment that James Pilcher has been waiting for since 1994 will arrive at 1:30 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, Sept. 10, when the world's largest scientific instrument is scheduled to begin operation.

Pilcher is among six University of Chicago faculty members and more than a dozen research scientists and students, both graduate and undergraduate, who have contributed to the design and construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

You can tell a lot about people from the way they move alone: their gender, age, and even their mood, earlier studies have shown. Now, researchers reporting in the September 9th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have found that observers perceive masculine motion as coming toward them, while a characteristically feminine walk looks like it's headed the other way.

Such studies are done by illuminating only the joints of model walkers and asking observers to identify various characteristics about the largely ambiguous figures.

Of all environments, space must be the most hostile: It is freezing cold, close to absolute zero, there is a vacuum, so no oxygen, and the amount of lethal radiation from stars is very high. This is why humans need to be carefully protected when they enter this environment. New research by Ingemar Jönsson and colleagues published in the September 9 issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press journal, shows that some animals —the so-called tardigrades or 'water-bears'— are able to do away with space suits and can survive exposure to open-space vacuum, cold and radiation.

Deportable immigrants who previously have been expelled from the United States are more likely to be rearrested on suspicion of committing a crime after they are released from jail than other deportable immigrants without the prior history of expulsion, according to a new RAND Corporation study.