Local elites in post-communist accession countries have a limited knowledge of the EU and were not engaged in the accession process, according to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

“Local officials, business people, the media and the cultural intelligentsia feel that the accession process is relevant only to national decision-makers and has little to do with them,” says Dr. Jim Hughes of London School of Economics, who led the project, which is part of the exte

Scientists from the University of Strathclyde, collaborating with an international team from Imperial College, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory(RAL), ITU (Karlsruhe) and the University of Jena, have successfully turned the radioactive isotope Iodine-129, a major waste product in the nuclear power industry, into the more friendly isotope Iodine-128 using laboratory lasers. This is the first time an isotope has been transmuted. They announced their discovery today in The Institute of Physics journal Jour

Researchers use new synthetic hydro-gel

Carnegie Mellon University’s Jeffrey Hollinger and his research team will receive $1.12 million over the next four years from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a new therapy for regenerating bone.

Bone, often called the structural steel and reinforced concrete of the human body, supports the body the way a steel framework supports a skyscraper, and it protects its vital organs the way a cast-concrete roof protects

Glaciers, it turns out, aren’t so different from people – they can gain weight in their bottoms and be less active, scientists have discovered.

Glaciers, the heavyweights of landscape erosion, grow not just from snow accumulating on their surfaces but also from beneath by freezing of meltwater which can affect the rate at which they can erode, according to a team of scientists, including one from Michigan State University.

Their discovery, reported in a cover story in the Aug

They might not normally merit a second glance, but those everyday objects around the house are constantly undergoing intense scrutiny, categorization and classification by babies trying to make sense of a world only months new to them.

There is a lot going on in the heads of babies – probably more than most people think, says Texas A&M University psychologist Teresa Wilcox, who studies the way babies think about and interact with their physical world. She’s examining how and when babies be

Every year, malaria kills as many as 2.5 million people. Ninety percent of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and most are children. While four species of the single-celled organism Plasmodium cause malaria, Plasmodium falciparum is the deadliest. Harbored in mosquito saliva, the parasite infects its human host as the mosquito feeds on the victim’s blood. Efforts to control the disease have taken on an increased sense of urgency, as more P. falciparum strains show resistance to anti-malar