Culture

The economic and psychological term known as "sunk-cost fallacy" is a bias that leads someone to make a decision based solely on a previous financial investment. For example, a baseball fan might attend every game of the season only because he already purchased the tickets. But not everyone would force themselves to brave the pouring rain for a single game in one season simply because they previously paid for the seats.

As museums continue to digitize their art collections, it becomes increasingly easier for paintings to be forged. Two Penn State researchers are part of an international team working on a digital system to help detect original works from counterfeit ones.

James Z. Wang, associate professor of information sciences and technology, Jia Li, associate professor of statistics, and their colleagues published their work in the July issue of IEEE Signal Processing.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is experiencing further disintegration that is threatening the collapse of the ice bridge connecting the shelf to Charcot Island. Since the connection to the island in the image centre helps to stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the break-up of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk.

In the first in-depth study of its kind ever done in the Southeastern United States, researchers at the University of Georgia and Emory University have discovered a link between thunderstorms and asthma attacks in the metro Atlanta area that could have a "significant public health impact."

While a relationship between thunderstorms and increased hospital visits for asthma attacks has been known and studied worldwide for years, this is the first time a team of climatologists and epidemiologists has ever conducted a detailed study of the phenomenon in the American South.

Washington -- “The Senate today gave overwhelming, bipartisanapproval to legislation to avert cuts in Medicare physician paymentupdates--the best outcome possible given the difficult circumstancesfacing us,” Jeffrey P. Harris, MD, FACP, president of the AmericanCollege of Physicians (ACP) said today. “We implore President Bushto immediately sign this bill into law. The votes in both the Senateand House in favor of H.R. 6331 are more than enough to override apresidential veto, but we hope that it doesn’t come to that.

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Many coaches inspire better performance by pressuring their teams. Now, proteomics researchers are using pressure to improve the performance of their analyses. In a simple solution to a time-consuming problem, the researchers have found that adding pressure early in their protocol squeezes four hours of waiting into a minute.

CHICAGO—A newly identified fossil and the reinterpretation of previously known fossils, all from Europe and about 50 million years old, fill in a "missing link" in the evolution of flatfishes and explain one of nature's most extraordinary phenomena.

Hidden away in museums for more that 100 years, some recently rediscovered flatfish fossils have filled a puzzling gap in the story of evolution and answered a question that initially stumped even Charles Darwin.

All adult flatfishes--including the gastronomically familiar flounder, plaice, sole, turbot, and halibut--have asymmetrical skulls, with both eyes located on one side of the head. Because these fish lay on their sides at the ocean bottom, this arrangement enhances their vision, with both eyes constantly in play, peering up into the water.

Washington, DC—Although measurement techniques surrounding earthquakes have improved enormously over the last few decades, it has remained very difficult to measure changes in the crust that could enable earthquake prediction. Now, scientists have measured interesting changes in the speed of seismic waves that preceded two small earthquakes by 10 and 2 hours. These measurements, published in the July 10 issue of Nature, are an encouraging sign that hold promise for the field of earthquake prediction.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Asteroids with moons, which scientists call binary asteroids, are common in the solar system. A longstanding question has been how the majority of such moons are formed. In this week's issue of the journal Nature, a trio of astronomers from Maryland and France say the surprising answer is sunlight, which can increase or decrease the spin rate of an asteroid.

WASHINGTON – Few domestic policy areas that the new administration must address will have greater long-range consequences than nanotechnology — a new technology that has been compared with the industrial revolution in terms of its impact on society. If the right decisions are made, nanotechnology will bring vast improvements to almost every area of daily living. If the wrong decisions are made, the American economy, human health and the environment will suffer.

Barcelona, Spain: New figures on assisted reproduction technology (ART) in Europe show that there has been an explosion in the use of ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) to treat infertility, the 24th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Barcelona heard today (Wednesday). Researchers believe that some countries may now be using the procedure too often.

Money is a necessity: it provides us with material objects that are important for survival and for entertainment, and it is often used as a reward. But recent studies have shown that money is not only a device for gaining wealth, but a factor in personal performance, interpersonal relations and helping behavior, as well.

SALT LAKE CITY – Certain songbirds can contract their vocal muscles 100 times faster than humans can blink an eye – placing the birds with a handful of animals that have evolved superfast muscles, University of Utah researchers found.

"We discovered that the European starling (found throughout Eurasia and North-America) and the zebrafinch (found in Australia and Indonesia) control their songs with the fastest-contracting muscle type yet described," says Coen Elemans, who conducted the study as a postdoctoral researcher in biology at the University of Utah.