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The microclimates created by the action of wind farms is unlikely to affect the ability of peatland to capture carbon, scientists consider. Previous studies by other researchers have established that wind farms do create localised microclimates, with slightly different temperatures and levels of humidity caused by the action of the turbine blades.

Living cells must alter their external form actively, otherwise functions like cell division would not be possible. At the Technical University of Munich (TUM) the biophysicist Professor Andreas Bausch and his team have developed a synthetic cell model to investigate the fundamental principles of the underlying cellular mechanics.

A research team of the Laboratory of Plant Reproduction and Developmen t (RDP - Inra, ENS de Lyon, CNRS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1), has just revealed that organs sense their own growth and can therefore control their final shape.

An innovative collaboration between neuroscientists and developmental psychologists that investigated how infants' brains process other people's actions provides the first evidence that directly links neural responses from the motor system to overt social behavior in infants. The research will be published April 12 in Psychological Science , the peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Sensory neurons in human muscles provide important information used for the perception and control of movement. Learning to move in a novel context also relies on the brain's independent control of these sensors, not just of muscles, according to a new study published in the journal Current Biology.

The quantum mechanical entanglement of particles plays an important role in many technical applications. To date, however, the effect has been difficult to measure experimentally. Physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the University of Innsbruck and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona have now developed a new protocol to detect entanglement of many-particle quantum states using established measuring methods.

Bacteria are the most abundant form of life on Earth, and they are capable of living in diverse habitats ranging from the surface of rocks to the insides of our intestines. Over millennia, these adaptable little organisms have evolved a variety of specialized mechanisms to move themselves through their particular environments.

Critically ill patients in intensive care commonly become delirious and agitated during treatment, causing them to pull out breathing tubes and interfere with other essential medical devices. Now a study led by The University of Queensland has shown that patient delirium and agitation can be reduced by administering a little-used drug known as dexmedetomidine.

Motor neuron connections are refined in the weeks before and just after birth, and they are crucial for normal development later, University of Queensland research suggests. The discovery could lead to a better understanding of developmental disorders such as autism and epilepsy, say two School of Biomedical Sciences neuroscientists, Associate Professors Peter Noakes and Mark Bellingham.

From powder to solid metal pieces - with a bit of technical trickery, processes that are already used successfully for other materials can now also be used for aluminium.

Researchers at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), the University of Vienna, and the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona have achieved a new milestone in quantum physics: they were able to entangle three particles of light in a high-dimensional quantum property related to the "twist" of their wavefront structure.

A fifth of car fuel-efficiency savings are eroded by increased driving Around a fifth of the energy-saving benefits of fuel-efficient cars are eroded because people end up driving them more, according to a study into British motoring habits over the last 40 years. Using data from 1970 to 2011, energy experts at the University of Sussex found a long-term 'rebound effect' among British car-drivers of around 20 per cent.

The rate that fish are captured by predators can double when boats are motoring nearby, according to pioneering work led by the University of Exeter and co-authored by the University of Bristol, published today in Nature. Dr Stephen Simpson of Exeter's Biosciences department and an international research team, including Bristol's Dr Andy Radford , found that noise from passing motorboats increases stress levels in young coral reef fish and reduces their ability to flee from predators.

Engineers at MIT, Penn State University, and Carnegie Mellon University have devised a way to manipulate cells in three dimensions using sound waves. These "acoustic tweezers" could make possible 3-D printing of cell structures for tissue engineering and other applications, the researchers say. Designing tissue implants that can be used to treat human disease requires precisely recreating the natural tissue architecture, but so far it has proven difficult to develop a single method that can achieve that while keeping cells viable and functional.

Autonomous Ground Vehicles and Aircraft Demonstrate New Collaborative Capabilities for Keeping Warfighters Safe-CMU News - Carnegie Mellon University CMU's unmanned ground vehicle. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin Company, using a UH-60MU BLACK HAWK helicopter enabled with Sikorsky's MATRIX™ Technology and CMU's Land Tamer® autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV), recently participated in a joint autonomy demonstration that proved the capability of new, ground-air cooperative missions.

3D printing techniques have quickly become some of the most widely used tools to rapidly design and build new components. A team of engineers at the University of Bristol has developed a new type of 3D printing that can print composite materials, which are used in many high performance products such as tennis rackets, golf clubs and aeroplanes.

In experiments on the fruit fly model organism Drosophila melanogaster, Heidelberg University biologists gained new insight into how feeding behaviour is encoded and controlled. The research team led by Ingrid Lohmann of the Centre for Organismal Studies (COS) studied the function of a special developmental gene of the Hox gene family.

Magnesium infused with dense silicon carbide nanoparticles could be used for airplanes, cars, mobile electronics and more Matthew Chin At left, a deformed sample of pure metal; at right, the strong new metal made of magnesium with silicon carbide nanoparticles. Each central micropillar is about 4 micrometers across.

ANN ARBOR-By studying videos from high-stakes court cases, University of Michigan researchers are building unique lie-detecting software based on real-world data. Their prototype considers both the speaker's words and gestures, and unlike a polygraph, it doesn't need to touch the subject in order to work.

Computer simulations have allowed scientists to work out how a puzzling 555-million-year-old organism with no known modern relatives fed, revealing that some of the first large, complex organisms on Earth formed ecosystems that were much more complex than previously thought. The international team of researchers from Canada, the UK and the USA, including Dr Imran Rahman from the University of Bristol, studied fossils of an extinct organism called Tribrachidium , which lived in the oceans some 555 million years ago.