news 2013

More than a third of marriages between 2005 and 2012 began online, according to new research at the University of Chicago, which also found that online couples have happier, longer marriages. Although the study did not determine why relationships that started online were more successful, the reasons may include the strong motivations of online daters, the availability of advance screening and the sheer volume of opportunities online.

Humans, like other animals, compare things. We care not only how well off we are, but whether we are better or worse off than others around us, or than we were last year. New research by scientists at the University of Bristol shows that such comparisons can give individuals an evolutionary advantage.

Researchers at the University of Warwick have been awarded £1.1 million to develop the statistics needed to pool the vast quantities of data generated by brain scans. The University has also been awarded £500,000 to improve quality control in 3D printing. Both projects are joint between the Department of Statistics and WMG, exploiting the unique strengths of each group.

Researchers at the Universities of Leeds and Chicago have uncovered an important mechanism behind the generation of astrophysical magnetic fields such as that of the Sun. Scientists have known since the 18th Century that the Sun regularly oscillates between periods of high and low solar activity in an 11-year cycle, but have been unable to fully explain how this cycle is generated.

A population-level study discovers small-scale details about individuals' choices. Studies of human mobility usually focus on either the small scale - determining the origins, destinations and travel modes of individuals' daily commutes - or the very large scale, such as using air-travel patterns to track the spread of epidemics over time.

Researchers use volcanic islands to measure how rainfall sets the pace of landscape formation. If you've ever stood on a hill during a rainstorm, you've probably witnessed landscape evolution, at least on a small scale: rivulets of water streaming down a slope, cutting deeper trenches in the earth when the rain turns heavier.

AUSTIN, Texas — As the nation continues to grapple with the long-simmering issue of gun control, solutions are stymied by heated debates. To effectively influence a divided America, elected officials must take a broad perspective rather than focusing on specific incidents, according to a new psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin.

The more choices people have, the riskier the decisions they make, according to a new study which sheds light on how we behave when faced with large amounts of information. Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Lugano set up a gambling game in which they analysed how decision-making is affected when people are faced with a large number of potential gambles.

Templeton Foundation awards $5.2 million for Computation Institute's Metaknowledge Network The march of science is stumbling and easily sidetracked, fraught with bias, fads and dead ends. A new research initiative based at the University of Chicago and the Computation Institute will use the latest computational tools to scrutinize this imperfect path and better understand how knowledge was and is created.

Researchers have produced a mathematical model to describe how conflicting opinions are resolved over articles that appear on Wikipedia, the collaboratively-edited encyclopaedia. The study maps the evolution of opinion over time, showing that even widely diverging opinions eventually converge. The researchers say this pattern in collective human behaviour is reminiscent of the interaction of particles in physics, such as when wind-blown grains of sand eventually create sand dunes.

Currently, approximately 10 million adults in Britain smoke. A one percentage point decline would equate to 500,000 people who will not suffer the health effects of smoking." —Professor Theresa Marteau, Director of the University of Cambridge's Behaviour and Health Research Unit Experts believe that plain packaging of tobacco products would cut smoking, a new study has found.

Last year, a team of University of Pennsylvania physicists showed how to undo the " coffee-ring effect ," a commonplace occurrence when drops of liquid with suspended particles dry, leaving a ring-shaped stain at the drop's edges. Now the team is exploring how those particles stack up as they reach the drop's edge, and they discovered that different particles make smoother or rougher deposition profiles at the drop edge depending on their shape.

Building a quantum computer is one of the great challenges of modern physics, and it is hoped that the new teleportation protocol will lead to advances in this area." —Sergii Strelchuk For the last ten years, theoretical physicists have shown that the intense connections generated between particles as established in the quantum law of 'entanglement' may hold the key to eventual teleportation of information.

By showing that tiny particles injected into a liquid crystal medium behave as predicted by existing mathematical theorems, physicists have opened the door for the creation of a host of new materials with properties that do not exist in nature.

Future sea level rise due to the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could be substantially larger than estimated in Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, according to new research from the University of Bristol. The study, published today , is the first of its kind on ice sheet melting to use structured expert elicitation (EE) together with an approach which mathematically pools experts' opinions.

The achievements of McGill researchers were again recognized in Québec Science's annual selection of the top discoveries, with two McGill-led breakthroughs making the top 10 list for 2012. Moreover, McGill ranked first among all Quebec universities for the number of discoveries featured in the magazine's annual roundup since it was created 20 years ago.