news 2010

Study finds food in early life affects fertility The reproductive success of men and women is influenced by the food they receive at an early stage in life, according to new research by the University of Sheffield. The research, which was published online this month (17 December 2010) in the journal Ecology, is the first study of its kind to show that early life food can have a serious influence on the life-long fertility of individuals.

You only live once: our flawed understanding of risk helps drive financial market instability Our flawed understanding of how decisions in the present restrict options in the future means that we may underestimate the risk associated with investment decisions, according to new research - News release Our flawed understanding of how decisions in the present restrict our options in the future means that we may underestimate the risk associated with investment decisions, according to new research by Dr Ole Peters from Imperial College London.

Analyzing the isotope ratios of ancient raindrops preserved in soils and lake sediments, Stanford researchers have shown that a wave of mountain building began in British Columbia, Canada, about 49 million years ago and rolled south to Mexico. The finding helps put to rest the idea that there was once a Tibet-like plateau across the western United States that collapsed and eroded into the mountains we see today.

Australians are more interested in science than sport and feel that politicians are failing to listen to the advice of the nation's scientists, according to the latest ANUpoll, released today. The latest ANUpoll looked at public attitudes about science. It found that far from being a nation of sports obsessives, Australians would prefer to hear about health issues, medical discoveries and the environment in their news bulletins.

Paper: "Coupled Ocean'Acoustic Prediction of Transmission Loss in a Continental Shelfbreak Region: Predictive Skill, Uncertainty Quantification, and Dynamical Sensitivities" Ocean variability - the perpetual changing of currents, temperatures, salinity and the contours of the seafloor - alters the way sound travels through the water.

While in the early 1990s, an average of 1.5 articles linked to HIV/AIDS could be found in every issue of the main broadsheet newspapers, levels of coverage have dropped to below 0.5 articles per newspaper issue since 2008. Coverage in French and US-based newspapers has decreased particularly dramatically during this period.

Do ants hold the key to the fuel of the future? Formic acid provides more efficient and safer storage of hydrogen.

In 1953, Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau published his groundbreaking book The Silent World , which has since sold five million copies and captured the imagination of generations of armchair adventurers. While breathtaking in its pioneering approach and imagery, it fell short on one minor detail: the underwater world is anything but silent.

May 2010 saw the launch of the largest-ever research project on Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK. Professor David Gordon, Director of the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research , describes the scope and background of this new study, which it is hoped will make a major contribution to tackling the problems of poverty and deprivation in 21st-century Britain.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Young people who are overexposed to antibacterial soaps containing triclosan may suffer more allergies, and exposure to higher levels of Bisphenol A among adults may negatively influence the immune system, a new University of Michigan School of Public Health study suggests. Triclosan is a chemical compound widely used in products such as antibacterial soaps, toothpaste, pens, diaper bags and medical devices.

The tile drainage systems in upper Mississippi farmlands - from southwest Minnesota to across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio - are the biggest contributors of nitrogen runoff into the Gulf of Mexico, reports a Cornell/University of Illinois-Urbana study. Nitrogen runoff has been identified as a major contributor to dead zones in the Gulf, where nitrogen fertilizes algae and causes it to bloom, which in turn, depletes oxygen from the water and suffocates other life forms over thousands of square miles each summer.

— A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science suggests that over the next century recruitment of new corals could drop by 73 percent, as rising CO2 levels turn the oceans more acidic. The research findings reveal a new danger to the already threatened Caribbean and Florida reef Elkhorn corals.

Science | Environment Pete Wilton | 18 Nov 10 A recent expedition to the Indian Ocean returned with a new species of squid and a haul of strange and unusual creatures netted from the deep. I asked the expedition's Principal Scientist, Alex Rogers from Oxford University's Department of Zoology, about the team's bumper catch and what these deep-sea animals can tell us about ocean ecosystems, biodiversity and mitigating man's impact on our oceans.

These news items have previously appeared on the University of Edinburgh website and are archived here for reference. Please note that some of the links referenced in news items may no longer be active.

BERKELEY — Dire or emotionally charged warnings about the consequences of global warming can backfire if presented too negatively, making people less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. "Our study indicates that the potentially devastating consequences of global warming threaten people's fundamental tendency to see the world as safe, stable and fair.

Media coverage of the UN's Copenhagen summit on climate change in 2009 'under-reported' the climate science, according to a new study published by Oxford University's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ). It finds that most journalists reported extensively on 'the drama and minutiae of the negotiations' but that in the balance between capturing the drama and explaining the essential background to climate change, the science received scant coverage.

A NASA analysis of satellite data has quantified, for the first time, the amount of older and thicker "multiyear" sea ice lost from the Arctic Ocean due to melting. Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, scientists have observed the continued disappearance of older "multiyear" sea ice that survives more than one summer melt season.

Innsbruck climatologists demand a differentiated discussion Glaciers of large mountain regions contribute, to some extent considerably, to the water supply of certain populated areas. However, in a recent study conducted by Innsbruck glaciologists and climatologists it has been shown that there are important regional differences.

The nature-nurture debate is a 'giant step' closer to being resolved after scientists studying bees documented how environmental inputs can modify our genetic hardware. The research team was led by Professor Ryszard Maleszka of The Australian National University's College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, working with colleagues from the German Cancer Institute in Heidelberg, Germany.

Evidence of an intense warming period in the Universe's early history, described as a form of "cosmic climate change", has been found by an international team of astronomers. The findings, shortly to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, were made by researchers measuring the temperature of gas that lies in between galaxies.