Stanford
What is the net effect on global temperature of the gases and particles produced when biomass is burned? That long-standing question in climate change has finally been answered, according to Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. In a study published in the Aug. 1 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, he concludes that the particles cause short-term global cooling, but over decades the gases overwhelm this cooling effect to cause long-term global warming.
Physicists conducting experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center have announced new results demonstrating a dramatic difference in the behavior of matter and antimatter. An accelerator there collides electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, to produce an abundance of exotic heavy particle and anti-particle pairs known as B and anti-B mesons. These rare forms of matter and antimatter are short-lived, decaying in turn to other lighter subatomic particles, such as kaons and pions. ''If there were no difference between matter and antimatter, both the B meson and the anti-B meson would exhibit exactly the same pattern of decays. However, our new measurement shows an example of a large difference in decay rates instead,'' said a spokesman.
In an article posted June 10 to the Astrophysical Journal Letters website, astrophysicists at Stanford report spotting a black hole so massive that it's more than 10 billion times the mass of our sun. More important, this heavyweight is so far away that the scientists think it formed when the universe first began to light up with stars and galaxies, so it may provide a window into our cosmological origins.
Physicians who prescribe the regular use of beta-agonist drugs for asthma could be endangering their patients, two new studies by researchers at Cornell and Stanford universities find. One study compiles previously published clinical trials to conclude that patients could both develop a tolerance for beta-agonists and be at increased risk for asthma attacks, compared with those who do not use the drug at all. The second study shows that beta-agonist use increases cardiac risks, such as heart attacks, by more than two-fold, compared with the use of a placebo.
Gravity Probe B -- a NASA mission to test two predictions of Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity -- is orbiting 400 miles above Earth, and all spacecraft systems are performing well. Its solar arrays are generating power, and all electrical systems are powered on. The spacecraft is communicating well with its supporting satellite relay and ground stations. Launched April 20 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., Gravity Probe B is managed by the Marshall Center.
When our human ancestors started eating meat, evolution served up a healthy bonus ? the development of genes that offset high cholesterol and chronic diseases associated with a meat-rich diet, according to a new USC study. Those ancestors also started living longer than ever before ? an unexpected evolutionary twist.
Researchers in North Carolina have developed a data transfer protocol for the Internet that makes today's high-speed Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections seem lethargic. The protocol is named BIC-TCP, which stands for Binary Increase Congestion Transmission Control Protocol. In a recent comparative study run by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), BIC consistently topped the rankings in a set of experiments that determined its stability, scalability and fairness in comparison with other protocols. The study tested six other protocols developed by researchers from schools around the world, including the California Institute of Technology and the University College of London. BIC can reportedly achieve speeds roughly 6,000 times that of DSL and 150,000 times that of current modems.
One of the most riveting detective stories of the last century supposedly ended in 1998, when the Russian government declared that bones excavated from a Siberian mass grave seven years earlier indeed belonged to the Romanovs, Russia's last royal family, who were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
A new study, however, is reopening the book. A team led by Alec Knight, a senior scientist in the Stanford lab of anthropological sciences Assistant Professor Joanna Mountain, argues that previous DNA analyses of the purported Romanov remains - nine skeletons unearthed near Ekaterinburg in central Russia - are invalid.
With the human genome in hand, scientists now know the roughly 30,000 words making up the language of the human body. But what do those words mean? Stuart Kim, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology and genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine, has created the first dictionary that defines them.
Police should hand out more traffic tickets. While Robert Tibshirani, PhD, won't win any popularity contests with that sentiment, the Stanford School of Medicine researcher and his colleagues at the University of Toronto report in a paper being published in the June 28 issue of The Lancet that vigilant traffic law enforcement may reduce fatal car crashes.
A new course at the Stanford School of Medicine teaches first-year doctors-to-be how to hone their observational skills by carefully studying works of art. The brain child of a current Stanford Hospital resident, the course not only is part of the curriculum, but it has scientific backing that proves its value, the school says.
Researchers have published new evidence showing that cells from the bone marrow might help repair or maintain cells in other tissues. In a paper in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe finding chromosomes from a bone marrow transplant in the brain cells of transplant recipients. When people receive a bone marrow transplant after high-dose chemotherapy, some of the transplanted cells regenerate the blood-making cells that were destroyed. In past experiments in mice, scientists found that cells from the transplant could also relocate to tissues throughout the body rather than being restricted to the bone marrow and blood.
A persistent, long-lasting headache or an endlessly painful back may indicate something more serious than a bad week at the office. A new study finds that people who have major depression are more than twice as likely to have chronic pain when compared to people who have no symptoms of depression. This study could change how depression is diagnosed and treated, say Stanford School of Medicine researchers.
Scientists have revealed evidence that increased numbers of households, even where populations are declining, are having a vast impact on the world's biodiversity and environment. Reduction in household size has led to a rapid rise in household numbers around the world and has posed serious challenges to biodiversity conservation, write the researchers. Biodiversity is threatened severely not only by increased numbers of households, but also by less efficient per capita consumption of natural resources, the researchers say. They cite examples that larger numbers of households require more use of natural resources for construction, and that smaller numbers of people per household use on average more energy and goods per person.
Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world -- although the most dramatic effects may not be felt for decades, according to a new study in the journal Nature. "Birds are laying eggs earlier than usual, plants are flowering earlier and mammals are breaking hibernation sooner," said Terry L. Root, a senior fellow with Stanford's Institute for International Studies (IIS) and lead author of the Jan. 2 Nature study. "Clearly, if such ecological changes are now being detected when the globe has warmed by an estimated average of only 1 degree F (0.6 C) over the past 100 years, then many more far-reaching effects on species and ecosystems will probably occur by 2100, when temperatures could increase as much as 11 F (6 C)," Root concluded.
