Current TV, the channel Al Gore and his cohorts bought, launches Monday. Its utopian vision of being the sounding board for young people and broadcasting content produced by viewers will have to prove profitable.
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New images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a patch of water ice sitting on the floor of an unnamed crater near the Martian north pole. This white patch is present all year round, as the temperature and pressure are not high enough to allow sublimation of water ice. It cannot be frozen carbon dioxide since carbon dioxide ice had already disappeared from the north polar cap at the time the image was taken (late summer in the Martian northern hemisphere).
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Acupuncture is an effective treatment for tension headache, cutting rates for sufferers by almost half, shows a study on bmj.com this week.
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A unique ‘fingerprint’ formed by microscopic surface imperfections on almost all paper documents, plastic cards and product packaging could be used as a cheaper method to combat fraud, scientists suggest.
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Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that a single protein regulates secretion levels in the fruit fly’s salivary gland and its skin-like outer layer.
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In an article in the August 2005 issue of the American Naturalist, Steven Kembel and James Cahill test the validity of foraging trade-off theory using a data set of more than 100 species, compiled from previously published studies. Consistent with other studies, they found that species vary greatly in the precision with which they forage, with grasses generally less precise foragers than broad-leafed plants.
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By combing through dozens of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) studies, psychologists have gained a clear picture of cognitive problems in people who will develop the degenerative brain disease. The meta-analysis reveals that people can show early warning signs across several cognitive domains years before they are officially diagnosed, confirming that Alzheimer’s causes general deterioration and tends to follow a stable preclinical stage with a sharp drop in function.
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A Burnham Institute study has identified a fragment of a protein that senses chemicals that induce a cell to move into the right direction. Guided by this fragment, the molecular machinery needed for cell movement begins accumulating at the leading edge, or front of a cell in response to a variety of chemical messengers, and begins the directed process of migration.
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Fears that chemical byproducts resulting from purifying drinking water with chlorine boost the chances that pregnant women will miscarry were not supported by the results of a major new study. If such threats exist at all, which is uncertain, they likely are modest, it concludes.
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Shenandoah, the third fire blight-resistant pear developed by Agricultural Research Service horticulturist Richard Bell, has recently been released. The luscious new pear will appeal to consumers who enjoy rich-tasting fruit, because its higher-than-average acidity gives it a snappy flavor. Shenandoah’s relatively high acidity is balanced with a high level of sugars that makes it sweet.
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