if the lessons being learned by researchers about the demise of the last great North American ice sheet are correct, estimates of global sea level rise from a melting Greenland ice sheet may be seriously underestimated. Writing this week (Aug. 31) in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team of scientists led by University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist Anders Carlson reports that sea level rise from greenhouse-induced warming of the Greenland ice sheet could be double or triple current estimates over the next century........

At the end of the day, drought tolerance in corn has to equate to good yields and good quality, not just good looks, said a Texas AgriLife Research scientist. Dr. Wenwei Xu, AgriLife Research corn breeder from Lubbock, is working with crosses between temperate and tropically adapted varieties of corn to find a drought-tolerant plant that performs well under reduced irrigation........

Engineers have created a tiny motorized positioning device that has twice the dexterity of similar devices being developed for applications that include biological sensors and more compact, powerful computer hard drives. The device, called a monolithic comb drive, might be used as a "nanoscale manipulator" that precisely moves or senses movement and forces. The devices also can be used in watery environments for probing biological molecules, said Jason Vaughn Clark, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering, who created the design........

An increasing number of students are packing more than their computers and iPods when leaving for college. They are bringing along prescribed psychiatric medications. And once on campus, experiencing new freedom from supervision by mom, dad and hometown mental health providers in taking those medications may present an opportunity to experiment with stopping those meds........

A little known fungus tucked away in the gut of Asian longhorned beetles helps the insect munch through the hardest of woods as per a team of entomologists and biochemists. Scientists say the discovery could lead to innovative methods of controlling the invasive pest, and potentially offer more efficient ways of breaking down plant biomass for generating biofuels........

University Park, Pa. -- A little known fungus tucked away in the gut of Asian longhorned beetles helps the insect munch through the hardest of woods according to a team of entomologists and biochemists. Researchers say the discovery could lead to innovative methods of controlling the invasive pest, and potentially offer more efficient ways of breaking down plant biomass for generating biofuels........

Estrogen therapys may sharpen mental performance in women with certain medical conditions, but University of Florida scientists suggest that recharging a naturally occurring estrogen receptor in the brain may also clear cognitive cobwebs. The discovery suggests that drugs can be developed to offset "senior moments" correlation to low estrogen levels, as well as to protect against neurological diseases, all while avoiding the problems linked to adding estrogen to the body........

Bacteria rarely come as loners; more often they grow in crowds and squat on surfaces where they form a community together. These so-called biofilms develop on any surface that bacteria can attach themselves to. The dilemma we face is that neither disinfectants and antibiotics, nor phagocytes and our immune system can destroy these biofilms. This is a particular problem in hospitals if these bacteria form a community on a catheter or implant where they could potentially cause a serious infection. Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig have now identified one of the fundamental mechanisms used by the bacteria in biofilms to protect themselves against the attacking phagocytes. The researchers are now publishing their findings in the renowned specialist publication PLoS ONE, together with colleagues from Australia, Great Britain and the USA the discovery being that biofilm bacteria use chemical weapons to defend themselves........

Montana State University microbiologist Matthew Fields spends his days trying to understand how interactions on a microscopic scale could change how we think of energy production, climate change and even soil contamination. Fields studies the physiology and behavior of microbes - the tiny organisms that have inhabited virtually every square inch of the earth's surface for the past 3.5 billion years........

A chemical engineering professor at The University of Texas at Austin is part of a team that has developed a chlorine-tolerant membrane that should simplify the water desalination process, increasing access to fresh water and possibly reducing greenhouse gases. "If we make the desalination process more efficient with better membranes, it will be less expensive to desalinate a gallon of water, which will expand the availability of clean water around the world," Professor Benny Freeman says........

Papers delivered at three conferences in the US and Europe this summer report on new research at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering studying interactions of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with bubble-blowing robots. The preliminary studies, by Professor Maja Matariand#263 and PhD student David Feil-Seifer of the USC Interaction Laboratory, confirm what has been widely reported anecdotally: that ASD children in a number of cases interact more easily with mechanical devices than with humans........

Individuals who visit dermatology clinics for tattoo removal are more likely to be women than men, and may be motivated by the social stigma associated with tattoos and negative comments by others, according to a report in the recent issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals........

Leading world researchers convene in Brazil July 21-25 amid growing concern that evaporation and ongoing destruction of world wetlands, which hold a volume of carbon similar to that in the atmosphere today, could cause them to exhale billows of greenhouse gases. Meeting in the city of Cuiaba on the edge of South America's vast Pantanal, the largest wetland of its kind, some 700 experts from 28 nations at the 8th INTECOL International Wetlands Conference will prescribe measures urgently needed to better understand and manage these vibrant ecosystems, ranked among the planet's most threatened, and slow their decline and loss........

Revisiting a once-abandoned technique, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have successfully created a sophisticated, yet affordable, method to turn ordinary glass into a high-tech solar concentrator. The technology, which uses dye-coated glass to collect and channel photons otherwise lost from a solar panel's surface, could eventually enable an office building to draw energy from its tinted windows as well as its roof........

A lone granite boulder found against all odds high atop a glacier in Antarctica may provide additional key evidence to support a theory that parts of the southernmost continent once were connected to North America hundreds of millions of years ago. Writing in the July 11 edition of the journal Science, an international team of U.S. and Australian researchers describe their findings, which were made in the Transantarctic Mountains, and their significance to the problem of piecing together what an ancient supercontinent, called Rodinia, looked like. The U.S. researchers were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)........

Purdue University is operating a virtual environment that enables researchers and engineers to interpret raw data collected with powerful instruments called dynamic atomic force microscopes. The online tools, thought to bethe first of their kind for the instruments, represent a research trend, with tools for other applications also being developed, said Arvind Raman, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering........

The latest bright idea in energy-efficient lighting for homes and offices uses big science in nano-small packages to dim the future Edison's light bulb. In the recent issue of Nature Photonics, available online, researchers at the University of Michigan and Princeton University announce a discovery that pushes more appealing white light from organic light-emitting devices........

How does a magnet that cannot transport electricity transform into a superconductor that is a perfect conductor of electricity? That question has baffled physics researchers for more than 20 years. Solving this mystery has become somewhat of a quest because the answer holds immense potential for power transmission with no energy loss, super-fast levitating trains, powerful supercomputers, and a host of other applications. Collaboration among scientists from England, Canada and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory is bringing scientists much closer to the answer. Their results are published in the July 10 issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Nature........

Music can soothe the savage breast much better if played by musicians rather than clever computers, as per a new University of Sussex-led study reported in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE Neuroresearchers looked at the brain's response to piano sonatas played either by a computer or a musician and observed that, while the computerised music elicited an emotional response especially to unexpected chord changes - it was not as strong as listening to the same piece played by a professional pianist........

White noise is a random signal with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal''s power spectral density has equal power in any band, at any centre frequency, having a given bandwidth. White noise is considered analogous to white light which contains all frequencies.

At SimplyNoise you can use a slider to find a comfort zone and enjoy the auditory zen. The site claims you can use it for aid sleep, to block distractions, mask Tinnitus, configure audio equipment, and sooth .........