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Habitat research methods give a new peek at tiger life with conservation

Twelve years ago, a team led by Jianguo “Jack” Liu at Michigan State University showed that China needed to revisit how it was protecting its pandas. Now research on tiger habitat in Nepal, published in Ecosphere journal of the Ecological Society of America, again shows that conservation demands not only good policy, but also monitoring even years down the road.

“Understanding long-term outcomes of conservation programs is crucial and requires innovative methods,” Liu said. “Now we’re learning that Nepal’s outstanding efforts to protect tigers are best supported with close monitoring because conservation situations are so dynamic. In both cases, the key is to understand how the people who live near the valued wildlife are faring as well.” (more…)

The 2014 Solar Decathlon Europe: Brown/RISD/Erfurt team designs Techstyle Haus

Technology

Students at Brown, RISD, and the University of Erfurt are tackling a great challenge: Build a house that uses 90 percent less energy than a typical house, make it liveable, flexible, durable, and lightweight enough to be shipped from Providence to France — and design it better than 19 other top teams from around the world. That’s the Solar Decathlon. The Brown-RISD-Erfurt team calls its entry the “Techstyle Haus.” (more…)

Fact checking politicians gets results

Politics

New research indicates that American politicians are affected by the practice of fact-checking, thereby reducing the risk of misinformation and strengthening democratic accountability. (more…)

Ghostly Specter Haunts the ‘Coldest Place in the Universe’

Science

At a cosmologically crisp one degree Kelvin (minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit), the Boomerang nebula is the coldest known object in the universe — colder, in fact, than the faint afterglow of the Big Bang, the explosive event that created the cosmos.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile have taken a new look at this object to learn more about its frigid properties and to determine its true shape, which has an eerily ghost-like appearance. (more…)

Have you assessed your machine safety lately?

Technology

If the answer is no, then we have things to talk about. Read on!

Every day we rely on the help of machines to complete our daily tasks. Machines have become like the ‘bridesmaids’ of humans. We have constructed them and engineered them over thousands of years to be our sidekicks, our helpers, our seconds. So much so that we can forget that they are there sometimes. (more…)

UCLA psychologists report new insights on human brain, consciousness

Science

UCLA psychologists have used brain-imaging techniques to study what happens to the human brain when it slips into unconsciousness. Their research, published Oct. 17 in the online journal PLOS Computational Biology, is an initial step toward developing a scientific definition of consciousness.

“In terms of brain function, the difference between being conscious and unconscious is a bit like the difference between driving from Los Angeles to New York in a straight line versus having to cover the same route hopping on and off several buses that force you to take a ‘zig-zag’ route and stop in several places,” said lead study author Martin Monti, an assistant professor of psychology and neurosurgery at UCLA. (more…)

Small bits of genetic material fight cancer’s spread

Health

A class of molecules called microRNAs may offer cancer patients two ways to combat their disease.

Researchers at Princeton University have found that microRNAs — small bits of genetic material capable of repressing the expression of certain genes — may serve as both therapeutic targets and predictors of metastasis, or a cancer’s spread from its initial site to other parts of the body. The research was published in the journal Cancer Cell. (more…)

Dolphins Assist Scientists Studying Effects of Data-logging Tags

Nature, Science

For scientists studying marine mammals in the wild, data-logging tags are invaluable tools that allow them to observe animals’ movements and behaviors that are otherwise hidden beneath the waves much of the time. The tags, which temporarily attach to animals using suction, record sounds and gather information about animals’ pitch, speed, and depth. But what effect do the tags have on the animals?

Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMUCC) are working with dolphins and their trainers at Dolphin Quest at The Kahala Hotel and Resort in Oahu to answer that question, among others. (more…)