Benefits of a Smoking Cessation

What do comic books, a reggae band and alternative fuels have in common? They are all part of a project to help save critically endangered mountain gorillas ( Gorilla beringei beringei ) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). [More] - 7 days ago

Whereas standard behind- and in-the-ear hearing aids work well in relatively quiet, more intimate settings, these devices often lose their effectiveness in larger, public spaces where background noise puts the hard of hearing at a disadvantage. Although the technology to solve this problem--induction-loop systems that broadcast sound directly to hearing aids and cochlear implants--has been available for years, implementation has lagged, advocates say, because not enough is being done to promote their use. [More] - 3 weeks ago

Will Turner : “If we can outrun her, we can take her. We should turn and fight.” Captain Jack Sparrow : “Why fight when you can negotiate?” [More] - 4 weeks ago

When NASA announced last month the finding of water ice in several impact craters on Mars , and either water or hydroxyl widely dispersed on the moon 's surface, the solar system became a little more familiar because it seemed a tad more hospitable to life as we know it on Earth.But is that because the rest of the cosmos has much in common with Earth or vice versa? Water, the unique molecule that cradles and nurtures life here, is apparently common and perhaps abundant in the solar system. Observational evidence suggests that water as a solid, liquid or gas is present at the poles of Mercury, within the thick clouds of Venus, on Mars, inside asteroids and comets, and on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Scientists also have speculated that Jupiter's moons Europa , Ganymede and Callisto have vast subsurface oceans of liquid water. They have also detected through spectroscopy water frost on Pluto's moon, Charon. Of course, scientists have known that H 2 O also seems to be ubiquitous beyond the solar system. They've detected it in one form or another in interstellar gas and even in such unlikely places as the atmospheres of stars. Perhaps it shouldn't be such a revelation. After all, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, followed by helium and oxygen. [More] - 5 weeks ago

Black holes have been a part of popular culture for decades now, most recently playing a central role in the plot of this year’s Star Trek movie. No wonder. These dark remnants of collapsed stars seem almost designed to play on some of our primal fears: a black hole harbors unfathomable mystery behind the curtain that is its “event horizon,” admits of no escape for anyone or anything that falls within, and irretrievably destroys all it ingests.To theoretical physicists, black holes are a class of solutions of the Einstein field equations, which are at the heart of his theory of general relativity. The theory describes how all matter and energy distort spacetime as if it were made of elastic and how the resulting curvature of spacetime controls the motion of the matter and energy, producing the force we know as gravity. These equations unambiguously predict that there can be regions of spacetime from which no signal can reach distant observers. These regions--black holes--consist of a location where matter densities approach infinity (a “singularity”) surrounded by an empty zone of extreme gravitation from which nothing, not even light, can escape. A conceptual boundary, the event horizon, separates the zone of intense gravitation from the rest of spacetime. In the simplest case, the event horizon is a sphere--just six kilometers in diameter for a black hole of the sun’s mass. [More] - 6 weeks ago

Does sex really persuade us to buy a product? Why do economies slip into depressions? And how much do we let our emotions influence our decision making? A spate of new books tries to answer these and other questions about how we make our choices, why they are sometimes so far off the mark and what their consequences are. Animal Spirits--How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2009) examines the relation between economic fluctuations and psychological forces. Economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller explore how “animal spirits”--the term coined by economist John Maynard Keynes to describe levels of consumer confidence--lie at the core of such questions as why there is unemployment and why minorities are often particularly poor. [More] - 2 months ago

Clinton didn’t inhale, Obama did--and maybe Reagan should have. New research suggests that THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its mind-bending properties, kills developing neurons, yet oddly, the same chemical saves neurons in adults with Alzheimer’s disease.“Marijuana is not the ‘soft drug’ people like to think it is,” says neuro­pharmacologist Veronica Campbell of Trinity College in Dublin, whose latest study uncovered the harmful effects of THC on young neurons. When Campbell and her co-workers treated brain cells from newborn or adolescent rats with THC, the neurons died, but THC did not have such deadly effects on neurons taken from adult rats. In fact, work from other labs shows that THC benefits adult neurons. “We don’t know why,” Campbell says. Several possi­bilities are being investigated for this “Jekyll and Hyde” effect. [More] - 2 months ago

The United Nations' climate diplomat has historically worked in the background as presidents, government ministers and celebrities made a public case for action.But Yvo de Boer has been anything but a wallflower. [More] - 2 months ago