ScienceBlog.com

On Tuesday, March 27, there was a serious failure in a high-pressure test at CERN of a Fermilab-built “inner-triplet” series of three quadrupole magnets in the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider. The magnets focus the particle beams prior to collision at each of four interaction points around the accelerator. Safety precautions were followed during the test, and no one was injured.

French scientists have shown that a memory of a traumatic event can be wiped out, although other, associated recollections remain intact. This is what a scientist in the Laboratory for the Neurobiology of Learning, Memory and Communication, working with an American team, has recently demonstrated in the rat. This result could be used to cure patients suffering from post-traumatic stress.

New research by political scientists concludes that available data does not appear to support the claim that Hispanic immigration poses a threat to American identity. Among the key findings of this study are that Hispanics acquire English and lose Spanish rapidly beginning in the 2nd generation; appear to be as religious and at least as committed to the work ethic as native-born whites; and largely reject a purely ethnic identification and exhibit levels of patriotism equal to native-born whites by the 3rd generation.

Many of us will be familiar with cravings for sweet food, after having overindulged in alcohol the night before. It appears that Egyptian fruit bats also crave particular types of sugar to reduce the effects of ethanol toxicity. Francisco Sanchez from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) will present data demonstrating this on Sunday 1st of April at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Meeting in Glasgow.

I suppose it’s somewhat fitting that the first time I write a blog, it’s not on myspace or livejournal or any of the thousands of other sites. It’s fitting that it’s scienceblog. Write on what you know. Or like. Or pretend to know. I’ve been reading this site for 2 months now and have decided [...]

According to Publishers Weekly, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and conservationist Terry L. Maple have written A Contract with the Earth, which the Johns Hopkins University Press will publish on November 1, 2007. I will certainly review that book for my newspaper clients and post my review on my Science Shelf web site.

From Keith Haring to Liberace to Freddy Mercury, HIV/AIDS and popular culture have been intimately linked. Many pop culture icons are using their status to help in the fight against the pandemic.

Researchers have discovered that arthritis pain, unlike that induced as part of an experiment, is processed in the parts of the brain concerned with emotions and fear.

Thousands of people with liver and kidney disease die every year from too much ammonia in their blood, and scientists from the United States and Japan have found a possible solution. In the April 2007 issue of The FASEB Journal they report that a protein which excretes ammonia through pufferfish gills is similar to human Rh blood proteins. By targeting human Rh proteins, new treatments will help people with damaged livers and kidneys remove toxic ammonia from their bloodstream.

More than half a million people in the European Union and a million in the United States suffer from disorders in or serious defects of some part of their bone structure. Operations involving grafts or implants, required to mitigate the damage, depend decisively on the materials used.

So you thought Northern Lights were big in Alaska? “That’s nothing,” says Randy Gladstone of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “Jupiter has auroras bigger than our entire planet.” Last month, Gladstone and colleagues used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to capture this picture.

Imagine the desperation of trying to fight lethal infections when antibiotics fail to work. That scenario — commonly found with “hospital superbugs” — may well improve thanks to a discovery by a research team at the University of British Columbia, in collaboration with UBC spin-off company Inimex Pharmaceuticals, that has identified a peptide that can fight infection by boosting the body’s own immune system.

For depressed people with bipolar disorder who are taking a mood stabilizer, adding an antidepressant medication is no more effective than a sugar pill, according to results published online on March 28, 2007 in the “New England Journal of Medicine.”

The landing site is unknown. The rockets are still on the drawing board. Some of the astronauts haven’t even been born yet. Never mind all that. NASA’s journey to Mars has already begun.

Drinking green tea could help in the fight against HIV/AIDS, according to research published by the University of Sheffield and Baylor College of Medicine, in Texas, USA.

Smokers perform worse at work than non-smokers, finds a study of US navy female service members published in Tobacco Control.

The legal profession, its associations, firms and law schools have spent years and considerable money encouraging lawyers to do more pro bono work. A new study by University at Buffalo sociologist Robert Granfield, Ph.D., finds, however, that mandatory law school programs, bar association campaigns and good will are not the principle spurs provoking lawyers to work for the public good.

A study led by scientists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill may have identified a molecular mechanism involved in the development of schizophrenia.

DNA testing carried out by University of Leicester geneticists and funded by The Wellcome Trust has thrown new light on the ancestry of one of the USA’s most revered figures, the third President, Thomas Jefferson.

Up to 10 percent of women newly diagnosed with cancer in one breast develop cancer in the opposite breast. Results of a major clinical trial show that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are highly effective tools for quickly identifying these opposite breast cancers, detecting diseased tissue that other screening methods missed.