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Public Release: 15-Jan-2009
PLoS Computational Biology
A novel explanation for a floral genetic mystery
Scientists at the University of Jena, Germany have put forth a novel explanation of the evolutionary driving force behind a genetic switching circuit that regulates flower development and survival. The hypothesis, based around the obligatory pairing of certain molecules, is published Jan. 16 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology.
Contact: Dr. Peter Dittrich
dittrich@minet.uni-jena.de
49-364-194-6460
Public Library of Science
Public Release: 14-Jan-2009
Cell Metabolism
New model system may better explain regulation of body weight
A new mathematical model of the physiological regulation of body weight suggests a potential mechanism underlying the difficulty of losing weight, one that includes aspects of two competing hypotheses of weight regulation.
Contact: Sue McGreevey
smcgreevey@partners.org
617-724-2764
Massachusetts General Hospital
Public Release: 14-Jan-2009
Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Paper refutes notion that eating a certain cereal will result in more male babies
Could eating cereal really make it more likely for someone to have a boy baby than a girl baby? Researchers wrote a paper, "Cereal-Induced Gender Selection?
Most Likely a Multiple Testing False Positive," that will be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. refuting such a notion. The original article "You are What your Mother Eats"generated over 50,000 Google hits due to media interest.
Contact: Jamie Nunnelly
nunnelly@niss.org
919-685-9319
National Institute of Statistical Sciences
Public Release: 13-Jan-2009
Story tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory -- January 2009
A project to speed and safeguard the shipping of thousands of radioisotopes in the US and afar hits the highway this year, but researchers expect the benefits to extend well beyond. Assistance to Navistar in developing a new lightweight truck bumper that can save gasoline without compromising safety is being performed by a materials process team headed by Gail Ludtka of ORNL. Structural defects introduced into carbon nanotubes could lead the way to carbon nanotube circuits, research led by Vincent Meunier of ORNL shows.
Contact: Ron Walli
wallira@ornl.gov
865-576-0226
DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Public Release: 13-Jan-2009
International Journal of Human Factors Modelling and Simulation
The auto change bicycle
Researchers in Taiwan are designing a computer for pedal cyclists that tells them when to change gear to optimize the power they develop while maintaining comfort. The system is described in the latest issue of the International Journal of Human Factors Modeling and Simulation.
Contact: TY Lin
tsylin0912@hotmail.com
886-988-211-181
Inderscience Publishers
Public Release: 12-Jan-2009
Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres
Dirty snow causes early runoff in Cascades, Rockies
Soot from pollution causes winter snowpacks to warm, shrink and warm some more. This continuous cycle sends snowmelt streaming down mountains as much as a month early, a new study finds, which could exacerbate winter flooding and summer droughts. How pollution affects a mountain range's natural water reservoirs is important for water resource managers in the western United States and Canada who plan for hydroelectricity generation, fisheries and farming.
Department of Energy
Contact: Mary Beckman
mary.beckman@pnl.gov
509-375-3688
DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Public Release: 9-Jan-2009
Geophysical Research Letters
GKSS scientists refute argument of climate skeptics
Scientists at the GKSS Research Centre of Geesthacht/Germany and the University of Bern/Suisse have investigated the frequency of warmer than average years between 1880 and 2006 for the first time. The result: the observed increase of warm years after 1990 is not a statistical accident. The results will now be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Contact: Dr. Eduardo Zorita
eduardo.zorita@gkss.de
49-041-528-71856
Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Public Release: 8-Jan-2009
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
New tool enables powerful data analysis
A powerful new tool that can extract features and patterns from enormously large and complex data sets has been developed by scientists at University of California, Davis, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The tool -- a set of problem-solving calculations known as an algorithm -- is compact enough to run on computers with as little as two gigabytes of memory.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Liese Greensfelder
lgreensfelder@ucdavis.edu
530-752-6101
University of California - Davis
Public Release: 8-Jan-2009
Science
Researchers control the assembly of nanobristles into helical clusters
From the structure of DNA to nautical rope to distant spiral galaxies, helical forms are as abundant as they are useful in nature and manufacturing alike. Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have discovered a way to synthesize and control the formation of nanobristles, akin to tiny hairs, into helical clusters and have further demonstrated the fabrication of such highly ordered clusters, built from similar coiled building blocks, over multiple scales and areas.
Wyss Institute at Harvard, Harvard Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems
Contact: Michael Patrick Rutter
mrutter@seas.harvard.edu
617-496-3815
Harvard University
Public Release: 30-Dec-2008
Management Science
Nuanced case for outsourcing by automakers, according to new Management Insights
Automakers who favor the flexibility and price savings of outsourcing production must weigh carefully the product life cycle implications of sacrificing in-house manufacturing, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of Management Science, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.
Contact: Barry List
barry.list@informs.org
443-757-3560
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Public Release: 22-Dec-2008
Dream of quantum computing closer to reality as mathematicians chase key breakthrough
The ability to exploit the extraordinary properties of quantum mechanics in novel applications, such as a new generation of super-fast computers, has come closer following recent progress with some of the remaining underlying mathematical problems.
Contact: Pavel Kurasov
pak@math.su.se
46-462-224-440
European Science Foundation
Public Release: 22-Dec-2008
Journal of Clinical Investigation
Using math to understand hep. C: Patterns paint picture of who will respond to treatment
New research findings show doctors how to predict whether or not a patient with hepatitis C will respond to traditional therapy.
Contact: Nancy Solomon
solomonn@slu.edu
314-977-8017
Saint Louis University
Public Release: 19-Dec-2008
Open Tropical Medicine Journal
Case Western Reserve professor helps control infectious diseases with models and math
Professor David Gurarie is developing mathematical models to track and analyze symptoms, treatment outcomes and environmental conditions that affect diseases like malaria and schistosomiasis, also known as "snail fever." These models would allow doctors to make predictions towards effective treatment.
Contact: Jason A. Tirotta
jason.tirotta@case.edu
216-368-6890
Case Western Reserve University
Public Release: 17-Dec-2008
Icarus
Moon's polar craters could be the place to find lunar ice, scientists report
Scientists have discovered where they believe would be the best place to find ice on the moon.
Royal Society University Research Fellowship, Leverhulme Research Fellowship, NASA
Contact: Leighton Kitson
leighton.kitson@durham.ac.uk
44-019-133-46074
Durham University
Public Release: 17-Dec-2008
Nature
A microscale system to study frustration in buckled monolayers of microspheres at Penn
A team of University of Pennsylvania physicists has demonstrated a simple system based on micron-sized spheres in water to study and control geometric frustration. Their research, published in the Dec. 18 edition of the journal Nature, elucidates open questions about frustration and frustration relief and provides a new tool for scientists grappling with these issues in a variety of fields from magnetism to basic statistical mechanics.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Jordan Reese
jreese@upenn.edu
215-573-6604
University of Pennsylvania
Public Release: 16-Dec-2008
PNAS Early Edition
Dartmouth researchers develop computational tool to untangle complex data
A group of Dartmouth researchers have developed a mathematical tool that can be used to unscramble the underlying structure of time-dependent, interrelated data, like the votes of legislators over their careers, second-by-second activity of the stock market, or levels of oxygenated blood flow in the brain.
Contact: Sue Knapp
sue.knapp@dartmouth.edu
603-646-3661
Dartmouth College
Public Release: 15-Dec-2008
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
U of T scientists solve mystery of Giant's Causeway with kitchen materials
Physicists at the University of Toronto have cracked the mystery behind the strange and uncannily well-ordered hexagonal columns found at such popular tourist sites as Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway and California's Devil's Postpile, using water, corn starch and a heat lamp. Using a combination of field observation, experiments and mathematical theory, they have solved the problem of what decides the size of the columns.
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Contact: Stephen Morris
smorris@physics.utoronto.ca
416-978-6810
University of Toronto
Public Release: 15-Dec-2008
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
New tool could unpick complex cancer causes and help sociologists mine Facebook
Researchers at the University of Warwick's Department of Statistics and Center for Complexity Science have devised a new research tool that could help unpick the complex cell interactions that lead to cancer and also allow social scientists to mine social networking sites such as Facebook for useful insights.
Contact: Dr. Sach Mukherjee
S.N.Mukherjee@warwick.ac.uk
44-024-761-50207
University of Warwick
Public Release: 12-Dec-2008
Geophysical Research Letters
On the trail of polar lows
Scientists from the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht have developed a mathematical method that enables a reconstruction of the occurrence of small-scale polar storms -- so-called polar lows -- in the North Atlantic.
Contact: Matthias Zahn
matthias.zahn@gkss.de
49-040-428-383-531
Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Public Release: 11-Dec-2008
Mathematical models of adaptive immunity
More than five million people die every year from infectious diseases, despite the availability of numerous antibiotics and vaccines. The discovery of penicillin to treat bacterial infections, along with the development of vaccines for previously incurable virus diseases such as polio and smallpox, achieved great reductions in mortality during the mid-20th century.
Contact: Paul Garside
paul.garside@strath.ac.uk
44-014-154-84694
European Science Foundation
Public Release: 10-Dec-2008
Asian students top latest global math, science study, report Boston College researchers
Students from Asian countries were top performers in math and science at both the fourth and eighth grade levels, according to TIMSS 2007, the world's largest assessment of student math and science achievement, with 425,000 students surveyed across 59 countries.
Contact: Patricia Delaney
delaneyp@bc.edu
Boston College
Public Release: 9-Dec-2008
Applied Physics Letters
The clear future of electronics
A group of scientists at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has fabricated a working computer chip that is almost completely clear -- the first of its kind. The new technology, called transparent resistive random access memory, is described in this week's issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters, which is published by the American Institute of Physics.
Contact: Jason Bardi
jbardi@aip.org
301-209-3091
American Institute of Physics
Public Release: 9-Dec-2008
Psychological Science
Conscious vs. unconscious thought in making complicated decisions
It may be surprising to learn that recent studies have suggested that the best way to deal with complex decisions is to not think about them at all -- that unconscious thought will help us make the best choices. Although this may seem like an appealing strategy, new research in Psychological Science cautions that there are limitations in the efficacy of unconscious thought making the best decisions.
Contact: Barbara Isanski
bisanski@psychologicalscience.org
Association for Psychological Science
Public Release: 9-Dec-2008
Current Directions in Psychological Science
When 2 + 2 = major anxiety: Math performance in stressful situations
New research indicates that working memory is a key component of math anxiety. These findings suggest that worrying about a situation (such as solving an arithmetic problem in front of a group of people) takes up the working memory that is available for figuring out the math problem, resulting in poor performance in problem solving during stressful situations.
Contact: Barbara Isanski
bisanski@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science
Public Release: 8-Dec-2008
Significance
The crash of 2008: A mathematician's view
Markets need regulation to stay stable. We have had thirty years of financial deregulation. Now we are seeing chickens coming home to roost. This is the key argument of Professor Nick Bingham, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in an article published today in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society.
Contact: Jennifer Beal
jbeal@wiley.com
44-012-437-70633
Wiley-Blackwell
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