It won't help the Titanic, but a newly derived, simple law may help researchers improve their climate models and glaciologists predict where icebergs will calve off from their parent ice sheets, as per a team of Penn State researchers. "To predict the future of the ice sheet and to understand the past, we have to put the information into a computer," says Richard B. Alley, the Evan Pugh professor of geosciences. "The models we have do not currently have any way to figure out where the big ice sheets end and where the ice calves off to form icebergs"........

What we eat can say a lot about us - where we live, how we live and eventually even when we lived. From the analysis of the intestinal contents of the 5,200-year-old Iceman from the Eastern Alps, Professor James Dickson from the University of Glasgow in the UK and his team have shed some light on the mummy's lifestyle and some of the events leading up to his death. By identifying six different mosses in his alimentary tract, they suggest that the Iceman may have travelled, injured himself and dressed his wounds. Their findings1 are reported in the recent issue of Springer's journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, which is specially dedicated to Oetzi the Iceman........

In developing a model to explain the motion of atoms in a magnetic field, researchers have overcome a decades-old obstacle to understanding a key component of magnetic resonance. The new understanding may eventually lead to better control of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and higher resolution MRI diagnoses........

Research into the development of invisibility devices has spurred two physicists' thought on the behaviour of light to overcome the seemingly intractable problem of optical singularities which could soon lead to the manufacturing of a perfect cat's eye. A research paper published in a New Journal of Physics' focus issue 'Cloaking and Transformation Optics' called 'The Transmutation of Singularities in Optical Instruments', written by Thomas Tyc, Masaryk University, and Ulf Leonhardt, the University of St. Andrews and Singapore National University, shows that it is possible to reflect light from all directions........

In a new article in the current issue of American Journal of Sociology authors Daniel A. Menchik and Xiaoli Tian (both of the University of Chicago) study how we use emoticons, subject lines, and signatures to define how we want to be interpreted in email. The authors find that "a shift to email interaction requires a new set of interactional skills to be developed"........

low levels of stress or strain in regions of a semiconductor device as small as 10 nanometers across. Their recent results* not only will impact the design of future generations of integrated circuits but also lay to rest a long-standing disagreement in results between two different methods for measuring stress in semiconductors........

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) held a rescue robot exercise in Texas last week in which about three dozen robots were tested by developers and first responders in order to develop a standard suite of performance tests to help evaluate candidate mechanical rescuers. This exercise was sponsored by the Department of Homeland Securitys Science and Technology Directorate to develop performance standards for robots for use in urban search and rescue missions........

Facial recognition systems perform some very challenging tasks such as checking an individuals photo against a database of known or suspected criminals. The task can become nearly impossible when the systems acquire poor facial imagesa situation that occurs all too often in real-world environments. Now, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have observed that several simple steps can significantly improve the quality of facial images that are acquired at border entry points such as airports and seaports.*........

New ways of squeezing out greater efficiency from solar photovoltaic cells are emerging from computer simulations and lab tests conducted by a team of physicists and engineers at MIT. Using computer modeling and a variety of advanced chip-manufacturing techniques, they have applied an antireflection coating to the front, and a novel combination of multi-layered reflective coatings and a tightly spaced array of lines called a diffraction grating to the backs of ultrathin silicon films to boost the cells' output by as much as 50 percent........

We've all seen the satellite images of Earth at night--the bright blobs and shining webs that tell the story of humanity's endless sprawl. These pictures are no longer just symbols of human impact, however, but can be used to objectively measure it, as per a research studyin the December 2008 issue of Geocarto International, a peer-evaluated journal on geoscience and remote sensing........

Laboratory scientists have posited an explanation for superconductivity that may open the door to the discovery of new, unconventional forms of superconductivity. In a November 20 Nature letter, research led by Tuson Park and Joe D. Thompson describes a new explanation for superconductivity in non-traditional materials-one that describes a potentially new state of matter in which the superconducting material behaves simultaneously as a nonmagnetic material and a magnetic material........

Eventhough Americans are becoming increasingly aware of toxic chemical exposure from everyday household products like bisphenol A in some baby bottles and lead in some toys, women do not readily connect typical household products with personal chemical exposure and related adverse health effects, as per research from the recent issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.......

A detailed analysis of black carbon -- the residue of burned organic matter -- in computer climate models suggests that those models may be overestimating global warming predictions. A new Cornell study, published online in Nature Geosciences, quantified the amount of black carbon in Australian soils and observed that there was far more than expected, said Johannes Lehmann, the paper's lead author and a Cornell professor of biogeochemistry. The survey was the largest of black carbon ever published........

In the last 10 years, e-mail has gone from a novelty to a necessity. What was once a pastime is now an essential form of communication, with a number of people opening their inboxes to find dozens of e-mails waiting. But how do people respond to those e-mails? Do they act rationally, responding to the most important first, making sure the process is efficient? Or do they send e-mails randomly, when they are at their computers or when they have time, without any regard to efficiency?.......

They've made electronics that can bend. They've made electronics that can stretch. And now, they've reached the ultimate goal -- electronics that can be subjected to any complex deformation, including twisting. Yonggang Huang, Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and John Rogers, the Flory-Founder Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have improved their so-called "pop-up" technology to create circuits that can be twisted. Such electronics could be used in places where flat, unbending electronics would fail, like on the human body........

DC--Construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States is in danger of coming to a standstill, partly due to the high cost of the requirement whether existing or anticipated to capture all emissions of carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas. But an MIT analysis suggests an intermediate step that could get construction moving again, allowing the nation to fend off growing electricity shortages using our most-abundant, least-expensive fuel while also reducing emissions........

To prevent global warming, scientists and policymakers are exploring a variety of options to significantly cut the amount of carbon dioxide that reaches the atmosphere. One possible approach involves capturing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide at the source -- an electric power plant, for example -- and then injecting them underground........

Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter, also known as positrons, shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma "jet". This new ability to create a large number of positrons in a small laboratory opens the door to several fresh avenues of anti-matter research, including an understanding of the physics underlying various astrophysical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts........

Tomislav Domazet-Loso and Diethard Tautz from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plon, Gera number of, have systematically analysed the time of emergence for a large number of genes - genes which can also initiate diseases. Their studies show for the first time that the majority of these genes were already in existence at the origin of the first cells. The search for further genes, especially those which are involved in diseases caused by several genetic causes, is thus facilitated. Furthermore, the research results confirm that the basic interconnections are to be found in the function of genes - causing the onset of diseases - can also be found in model organisms (Molecular Biology and Evolution)........

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star. Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the "Southern Fish"........