Excessive noise, such as jet aircraft flying overhead, impairs children’s reading ability and long-term memory, a Cornell University environmental psychologist and his European colleagues conclude in a study of schoolchildren living near airports.

“This is the first long-term study of the same children before and after airports near them opened and closed. It nails down that it is almost certain that noise is causing the differences in children’s ability to learn to read,” says Ga

UH Solar Cell Research Has Applications for Space Exploration, Clean Cars

New technologies designed to harness the power of the sun may hold the key to successful moon colonies, cheaper and lighter-weight satellites, and cleaner-burning, more efficient car engines.

Solar cells, electronic devices that convert sunlight into useful electricity, would be an important resource for powering future industrial bases or colonies on the moon. Alex Freundlich, research professor of ph

Research to Aid Astronauts Also Could Help Bed-Ridden Patients on Earth

These boots weren’t made for walkin’, but “space boots” under development at the University of Houston may help astronauts stay healthy and readjust more quickly to walking again on terra firma.

University of Houston researchers have developed technology that could help combat the loss of muscle mass, strength and coordination experienced by astronauts during long-duration stints in microgravity. The sys

New Report on 25 Most Endangered Primates Documents Increased Pressures on Mankind’s Closest Living Relative

New evidence of the peril facing the world’s apes, monkeys, lemurs and other primates, with one in every three now endangered with extinction, is revealed in a new report – The World’s Top 25 Most Endangered Primates-2002 released today by Conservation International (CI) and the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN-The World Conservation Union. Primate species and su

When animals metabolize food or when plants photosynthesize it, electrons are moved across cell membranes. The “extension cords” of this bioelectrical circuit are mostly iron-containing proteins called cytochromes.

Chemist Kenneth S. Suslick and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created synthetic cytochromes by making a small cyclic peptide that binds to the iron millions of times more strongly than without the peptide. The scientists report their discovery i

Shewanella bacterium can remove toxic metals from environment

Rockville, MD. – Scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and collaborators elsewhere have deciphered the genome of a metal ion-reducing bacterium, Shewanella oneidensis, that has great potential as a bioremediation agent to remove toxic metals from the environment.

The genome sequence sheds new light on the biochemical pathways by which the bacterium “reduces” and precipitates chromium, uranium and