Iran leader urges military to increase 'preparedness'
Tehran (AFP) April 19, 2015 -
Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged his armed forces Sunday to increase their "defensive preparedness", denouncing a US warning that military action is an option if there is no nuclear deal.
In a speech to commanders and troops, the supreme leader said "the other side with insolence threaten us all the time", denying Iran was seeking an atomic bomb and insisting its military doctrine is defe ...
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Study of immune system regulation to improve treatment of chronic disease
Birmingham, England (UPI) Apr 20, 2015 -
Researchers at the University of Birmingham, in England, say they've uncovered a unique pathway that plays a central role in regulating the body's immune system.
By better understanding the pathway and the manner in which pathogenic immune cells are deployed during an inflammatory response, researchers hope to improve the ways chronic disease like diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis are t ...
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Mayor in standoff with chemical firms in Israel's Haifa
Jerusalem (AFP) April 20, 2015 -
Municipal rubbish trucks blocked the entrances to a refinery and four chemical plants in Israel's third city Haifa Monday following a scare over high cancer rates, a municipal spokesman said.
The standoff began on Sunday morning when Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav ordered municipal rubbish trucks to block access to the plants after warnings linking high cancer rates in the area to air pollution.
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Limited soil nutrients may hamper plants ability to slow climate change
Missoula, Mont. (UPI) Apr 20, 2015 -
Some climate models suggest runaway global temperatures will be held in check - at least a little bit - by the uptick in green growth enabled by a warming planet. In other words, the plant life encouraged by global warming will pull excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, thus slowing global warming.
But new research out of the University of Montana suggests those models are flaw ...
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US says most humpback whales no longer endangered
Miami (AFP) Apr 21, 2015 -
The humpback whale has long been considered an endangered species, but the US government said Monday that the population has rebounded in most areas and no longer needs protection.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration proposed a "more tailored conservation approach" that would reclassify the humpback into 14 distinct population segments, 10 of which would be taken off the en ...
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Niger says 2.5 million suffering food insecurity
Niamey (AFP) Apr 21, 2015 -
More than 2.5 million people in Niger are suffering from food insecurity because of a shortfall in the cereal harvest due to bad weather and crop pests, the agriculture minister said Saturday.
"A survey conducted since December 2014 indicated that 15.7 percent of the population, or 2,588,128 people, are in a situation of food insecurity, including 410,297 in severe insecurity," Maidagi All ...
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Powerful quake hits Taiwan and Japan, tsunami warning lifted
Taipei (AFP) April 20, 2015 -
One man died and another was hospitalised Monday after a fire caused by a powerful quake off Taiwan that set buildings shaking in the capital Taipei and sparked a short-lived tsunami warning in far southwestern Japan.
Japanese forecasters had warned the 6.6 magnitude earthquake could cause a tsunami as high as one metre (three feet) affecting several islands in the Okinawa chain. But they li ...
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Scientists develop mesh that captures oil - but lets water through
Columbus OH (SPX) Apr 19, 2015 -
The unassuming piece of stainless steel mesh in a lab at The Ohio State University doesn't look like a very big deal, but it could make a big difference for future environmental cleanups. Water passes through the mesh but oil doesn't, thanks to a nearly invisible oil-repelling coating on its surface.
In tests, researchers mixed water with oil and poured the mixture onto the mesh. The water ...
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Aptly named vampire squids enjoy long lives in the dark
Kiel, Germany (UPI) Apr 20, 2015 -
Unlike most soft-bodied cephalopods, which produce and release their eggs all at once (usually right before they die), deep-water vampire squids release their eggs in stages - a hundred here, a hundred there.
Researchers say their unique reproductive behavior is evidence that vampire squids likely live longer lives than their shallower peers.
A team of researchers from Germany's ...
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China's struggle for water security
Daegu, South Korea (AFP) April 18, 2015 -
Way back in 1999, before he became China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao warned that water scarcity posed one of the greatest threats to the "survival of the nation".
Sixteen years later, that threat looms ever larger, casting a forbidding shadow over China's energy and food security and demanding urgent solutions with significant regional, and even global, consequences.
The mounting pressu ...
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Billion dollar ivory and gold trade fuelling DR Congo war: UN
Nairobi (AFP) April 17, 2015 -
Smuggling of ivory, gold and timber worth over a billion dollars a year is fuelling war by funding dozens of rebel groups in Democratic Republic of Congo, a UN report warned Friday.
"Militarised criminal groups with transnational links are involved in large-scale smuggling" of "gold, minerals, timber, charcoal and wildlife products such as ivory" of up to $1.3 billion each year from eastern ...
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MIT study links family income, test scores, brain anatomy
Boston (UPI) Apr 17, 2015 -
It goes without saying that poor children aren't born less intelligent. But a long list of studies show children in low-income households consistently rank below their more well-off peers when it comes to standardized testing and other measures of academic achievement.
A new study goes a step further, linking poverty to changes in the adolescent brain. When researchers at MIT scanned th ...
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How many gold atoms make gold metal?
Helsinki, Finland (SPX) Apr 21, 2015 -
Researchers at the Nanoscience Center at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, have shown that dramatic changes in the electronic properties of nanometre-sized chunks of gold occur in well-defined size range. Small gold nanoclusters could be used, for instance, in short-term storage of energy or electric charge in the field of molecular electronics.
Funded by the Academy of Finland, the re ...
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Technique could slash energy used to produce many plastics
Boulder CO (SPX) Apr 19, 2015 -
A new material developed at the University of Colorado Boulder could radically reduce the energy needed to produce a wide variety of plastic products, from grocery bags and cling wrap to replacement hips and bulletproof vests.
Approximately 80 million metric tons of polyethylene is produced globally each year, making it the most common plastic in the world. An essential building block for ...
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Control of quantum bits in silicon paves way for large quantum computers
Sydney, Australia (SPX) Apr 21, 2015 -
A UNSW-led research team has encoded quantum information in silicon using simple electrical pulses for the first time, bringing the construction of affordable large-scale quantum computers one step closer to reality.
Lead researcher, UNSW Associate Professor Andrea Morello from the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, said his team had successfully realised a new contro ...
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The Game-Changing Water Revolution: Interview with Stanley Weiner
Washington DC (SPX) Apr 19, 2015 -
Globally, water demand is threatening to dangerously outpace supply, while in the US, dry states such as Texas and California are suffering from shortages and the future forebodes more suffering. For the North American shale boom, the lack of water is suffocating.
Amid this doom and gloom, a water revolution emerges, led by energy industry figures who realized the endless potential of tapp ...
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New understanding of electromagnetism could enable 'antennas on a chip'
Cambridge UK (SPX) Apr 21, 2015 -
A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have unravelled one of the mysteries of electromagnetism, which could enable the design of antennas small enough to be integrated into an electronic chip. These ultra-small antennas - the so-called 'last frontier' of semiconductor design - would be a massive leap forward for wireless communications.
In new results published in the jour ...
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How unwanted CDs and DVDs could help cut carbon emissions
Washington DC (SPX) Apr 19, 2015 -
Now that most consumers download and stream their movies and music, more and more CDs and DVDs will end up in landfills or be recycled. But soon these discarded discs could take on a different role: curbing the release of greenhouse gases.
In the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, scientists report a way to turn the discs into a material that can capture carbon dioxide, a k ...
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Inventing a 2-D liquid
Philadelphia PA(SPX) Apr 21, 2015 -
Where water and oil meet, a two-dimensional world exists. This interface presents a potentially useful set of properties for chemists and engineers, but getting anything more complex than a soap molecule to stay there and behave predictably remains a challenge.
A University of Pennsylvania team has now shown how to make nanoparticles that are attracted to this interface but not to each oth ...
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Plumping up shrivelled market for France's famed prunes
Paris (AFP) Apr 21, 2015 -
France's famous Agen prunes have seen their market share shrivel in recent years under pressure from Chilean growers, but local farmers have ploughed money into modern methods in a bid to save their plums.
The rolling valleys in the Lot-et-Garonne region of southwest France are speckled with the white flowers of plum blossoms at this time of year.
They are all from the Ente plum vari ...
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Unraveling the origin of the pseudogap in a charge density wave compound
Lemont IL (SPX) Apr 21, 2015 -
The pseudogap, a state characterized by a partial gap and loss of coherence in the electronic excitations, has been associated with many unusual physical phenomena in a variety of materials ranging from cold atoms to colossal magnetoresistant manganese oxides to high temperature copper oxide superconductors. Its nature, however, remains controversial due to the complexity of these materials and ...
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Latin America most dangerous region for land activists: report
San Francisco (AFP) Apr 21, 2015 -
Latin America was the most dangerous place for environmental and land activists, accounting for three quarters of all killings last year, according to a report Monday.
A total of 116 activists were killed around the world last year, with 87 taking place in Latin America, according to the report from Britain-based watchdogs Global Witness.
Honduras was the most dangerous country for l ...
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Graphene looking promising for future spintronic devices
Goteborg, Sweden (SPX) Apr 21, 2015 -
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have discovered that large area graphene is able to preserve electron spin over an extended period, and communicate it over greater distances than had previously been known. This has opened the door for the development of spintronics, with an aim to manufacturing faster and more energy-efficient memory and processors in computers. The findings wil ...
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Dispersant used to clean gulf spill more toxic to corals than the oil
Philadelphia, PA (SPX) Apr 19, 2015 -
The dispersant used to remediate the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is more toxic to cold-water corals than the spilled oil, according to a study conducted at Temple University. The study comes on the eve of the spill's fifth anniversary, April 20th.
In this collaborative study between researchers from Temple and the Pennsylvania State University, the researchers ex ...
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Engineers now understand how complex carbon nanostructures form
Columbia MO (SPX) Apr 21, 2015 -
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are microscopic tubular structures that engineers "grow" through a process conducted in a high-temperature furnace. The forces that create the CNT structures known as "forests" often are unpredictable and are mostly left to chance. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has developed a way to predict how these complicated structures are formed.
By understanding ho ...
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