College and high school students can now see how Earths climate is changing without leaving their computers.
NASA and other organizations use NASAs global climate computer model (GCM) to see how Earths climate is changing. A GCM calculates many things, such as how much sunlight is reflected and absorbed by Earths atmosphere, the temperature of the air and oceans, the distribution of clouds, rainfall, and snow, and what may happen to the polar ice caps in th
It is now significantly easier to search long stretches of DNA for genetic changes associated with disease, thanks to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The researchers developed a method called direct genomic selection that accelerates the transition between family or population-based studies of disease inheritance patterns and identification of genetic variations that may contribute to disease. That transition normally slows down dramatically wh
An American engineer has produced a mathematical model explaining the elegant shape of the Eiffel Tower that was derived from French engineer Gustave Eiffels writings regarding his own fears about the effects of wind on such a structure.
University of Colorado at Boulder Associate Professor Patrick Weidman said Eiffel, one of the premier structural engineers in history, was determined to build the worlds first tower reaching 300 meters, the nearest metric equivalent to
A quiet revolution is coming our way. Recent successful trials of European semantic-Web applications suggest that machine-readable data will soon usher in an improved Web that will facilitate information reuse, and provide for painless building and maintenance of community portals.
“Computers struggle to attach meaning to information written in common Web languages such as Hypertext Markup Language [HTML],” says Libby Miller, coordinator of the IST SWAD-Europe project. “One way to h
For the first time, a team of astronomers based in Germany has detected the presence of magnetic fields in the central stars of four planetary nebulae. Planetary nebulae are expanding gas shells that remain after Sun-like stars eject their outer layers at the end of their lifetimes. It is a long-standing and unsolved mystery why 80% of all planetary nebulae are not spherical. Theories suggest that magnetic fields play a role in shaping planetary nebulae. The team, led by Stefan Jordan, has now
Cord blood cells limit heart attack damage in animal study
Stem cells from umbilical cord blood effectively treated heart attacks in an animal study, report cardiologist Robert J. Henning, MD, and colleagues at the University of South Florida and James A. Haley Veterans Hospital.
When injected into rats hearts soon after a heart attack, stem cells taken from human umbilical cord blood (HUCB) greatly reduced the size of heart damage and restored pumping func