Category Archives: Science

Helping Many People Boosts Social Standing More Than Helping Many Times, Says MU Anthropologist

By Guest PostJuly 6, 2013Culture, General, ScienceAmazon, caribbean island, charity, commerce websites, dominica, dominican village, ebay, evolution of language, helping many people, helping many times, human social interaction, modeling, mu anthropologist, organismal biology, positive reputation, public images, shane macfarlan, social standing, species, specific behaviors, university of missouri

Research could guide business and political decisions as well as charity work

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A business may build a better reputation as a good corporate citizen by donating $100,000 to ten charities, as opposed to $1 million to one charity, suggested University of Missouri anthropologist Shane Macfarlan. Contrary to earlier assumptions in theoretical biology, Macfarlan’s research found that helping a greater number of people builds a positive reputation more than helping a few people many times. The results of this research can offer guidance to businesses and politicians on how to improve their public images.

“Good reputations are good business. For example, buyers tend to purchase from merchants with numerous positive ratings on internet-based commerce websites, such as Amazon and eBay,” said Shane Macfarlan, post-doctoral anthropology researcher in MU’s College of Arts and Science. “Beyond the realm of commerce, the power of a positive reputation may have influenced the evolution of language and cooperation in our species. In our study, we found that an individual’s reputation improves more after helping a greater number of people compared to performing a greater number of helpful acts for fewer people.” (more…)

Altitude sickness may hinder ethnic integration in the world’s highest places

By Guest PostJuly 4, 2013General, Scienceabu dhabi, access to sea, altitude sickness, andes dwellers, biological tolerance, Bolivia, China, chinese province, chinese security forces, christopher paik, clinica chimica acta, demographic patterns, effect of elevation, enze han, ethnic demographics, ethnic friction, ethnic integration, ethnic segregation, gansu, han chinese, highest places, himalayas, life on high, low oxygen conditions, migration patterns, modern times, new york university, population, princeton university, qinghai, qinghai tibet railway, role of factors, Sichuan, soil quality, tibetan autonomous region, tibetan name, tibetan plateau, tibetan settlements, traditional han settlements, university of london, wangyal shawa, world, yunnan

Ethnic segregation in nations straddling the world’s highest terrains may be reinforced by the biological tolerance different peoples have to altitude, according to one of the first studies to examine the effect of elevation on ethnic demographics.

Research from Princeton University published in the journal Applied Geography suggests that people native to low-lying areas can be naturally barred from regions such as the Tibetan Plateau, the Andes or the Himalayas by altitude sickness, which is caused by low oxygen concentration in the air and can be life-threatening. As a result, the homogeny of the local population can increase with elevation. In nations shared by people of high- and lowland extractions, this separation can potentially increase ethnic tension. (more…)

Orbiting astronaut controls robot on Earth, testing feasibility of CU-Boulder project on far side of the moon

By Guest PostJuly 4, 2013Scienceantenna film, big bang, california, chris cassidy, earth moon, faint whispers, international space station, jack burns, k10 robot, kapton film, l2, lagrange point, laura kruger, lunar, moon, nasa rover, orbiting astronaut, orion spacecraft, robot on earth, surface telerobotics tests, terry fong

An astronaut orbiting Earth in the International Space Station has remotely directed a NASA rover in California to unfurl an “antenna film” that scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder are developing for use on the unexplored far side of the moon.

When astronaut Chris Cassidy used a Space Station computer to pilot the robot across a mock lunar surface at NASA’s Ames Research Center on June 17, he demonstrated for the first time that an astronaut in an orbiting spacecraft could successfully control a robot in real time on a planetary surface. The technique could have future applications for humans visiting Mars, an asteroid or the moon. (more…)

Testing Artificial Photosynthesis

By Guest PostJuly 3, 2013Scienceanode, artificial photosynthesis, atmospheric carbon dioxide, berkeley lab, caltech, camilo diaz botia, cathode, charge carriers, diesel, earth abundant elements, energy conversion, fossil fuel energy, gasoline, h2, hydrocarbon, hydrogen, jcap, jcap north, jcap south, joel ager, mean concentration, membrane cap, micro scale, microfluidic test bed, miguel modestino, o2, optimization, rachel segalman, rafael gomez sjoberg, sophia haussener

Berkeley Lab Researchers Develop Fully Integrated Microfluidic Test-bed for Solar-driven Electrochemical Energy Conversion Systems

With the daily mean concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide having reached 400 parts-per-million for the first time in human history, the need for carbon-neutral alternatives to fossil fuel energy has never been more compelling. With enough energy in one hour’s worth of global sunlight to meet all human needs for a year, solar technologies are an ideal solution. However, a major challenge is to develop efficient ways to convert solar energy into electrochemical energy on a massive-scale. A key to meeting this challenge may lie in the ability to test such energy conversion schemes on the micro-scale.

Berkeley Lab researchers, working at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), have developed the first fully integrated microfluidic test-bed for evaluating and optimizing solar-driven electrochemical energy conversion systems. This test-bed system has already been used to study schemes for photovoltaic electrolysis of water, and can be readily adapted to study proposed artificial photosynthesis and fuel cell technologies. (more…)

Cloud modeling expands estimate of life-supporting planets

By Guest PostJuly 2, 2013Sciencebrazil, cloud cover, cloud modeling, dark side, dorian abbot, dwarf stars, earth like planets, earth size planet, global climate simulation, indonesia, james webb, jun yang, kepler mission, larger habitable zone, life supporting planets, milky way galaxy, NASA, nicolas cowan, northwestern university, one dimensional, space telescope, sub stellar region, thermostat, university of chicago

Larger habitable zone suggests 60 billion planets could sustain water, life

A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of star in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets. This cloud behavior dramatically expanded the estimated habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the sun. (more…)

Big feet preference in rural Indonesia defies one-size-fits-all theory of attractiveness

By Guest PostJuly 2, 2013Scienceanthropologist, big feet preference, brazil, cambodia, cultural transmission, culture, genetics, geoff kushnick, human evolution, India, indonesian island, iran, journal human nature, karo batak, lithuania, mate attractive, northern part, papua new guinea, recent evolution, rural indonesia, sexual selection, sumatra, Tanzania, theory of attractiveness, united states, university of washington, urban ecology, villages, western media

People in most cultures view women with small feet as attractive. Like smooth skin or an hourglass figure, petite feet signal a potential mate’s youth and fertility.

Because they signal reproductive potential, a preference for mates with these qualities may have evolved in the brains of our Pleistocene ancestors and are viewed by evolutionary psychologists as evidence that the preference is hard-wired into our genetic makeup. (more…)

NASA’s Voyager 1 Explores Final Frontier of Our ‘Solar Bubble’

By Guest PostJune 29, 2013Sciencecharged particles, cosmic ray, depletion region, ed stone, energetic particle data, final frontier, heliosphere, interstellar arrival, interstellar space, johns hopkins university, jupiter, leonard burlaga, magnetic field, magnetosphere, Milky Way, NASA, solar bubble, solar originating particles, stamatios krimigis, twin spacecraft, voyager 1, voyager project scientist

PASADENA, Calif. — Data from Voyager 1, now more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, suggest the spacecraft is closer to becoming the first human-made object to reach interstellar space.

Research using Voyager 1 data and published in the journal Science today provides new detail on the last region the spacecraft will cross before it leaves the heliosphere, or the bubble around our sun, and enters interstellar space. Three papers describe how Voyager 1’s entry into a region called the magnetic highway resulted in simultaneous observations of the highest rate so far of charged particles from outside heliosphere and the disappearance of charged particles from inside the heliosphere. (more…)

Spiral galaxies like Milky Way bigger than thought, says CU-Boulder study

By Guest PostJune 28, 2013Scienceboulder, brian keeney, casa, charles danforth, circumgalactic gas, cos, cos on hubble, cosmic origins spectrograph, diameter, galaxy evolution, higgs centre, Hubble Space Telescope, intergalactic interactions, james green, john stocke, light year, michael shull, Milky Way, missing link, scotland, spiral galaxy, supermassive black holes, theoretical physics, university of colorado, university of edinburgh

Let’s all fist bump: Spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way appear to be much larger and more massive than previously believed, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study by researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

CU-Boulder Professor John Stocke, study leader, said new observations with Hubble’s $70 million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, or COS, designed by CU-Boulder show that normal spiral galaxies are surrounded by halos of gas that can extend to over 1 million light-years in diameter. The current estimated diameter of the Milky Way, for example, is about 100,000 light-years. One light-year is roughly 6 trillion miles. (more…)