science wire

A new study by a Cambridge University criminologist reveals just how dangerous it was to be a monarch in Europe before the modern era. On 30 January 1649 Charles I was executed on a balcony overlooking Whitehall in central London. A huge crowd, restrained by ranks of militia, gathered to witness his beheading.

Federal programs are more vulnerable to being altered or killed when Congress changes party control, especially if they've been on the books for less than 10 years, according to new research by Harris School political scientists Christopher Berry and William Howell. With the winds behind a new GOP majority in the House, the study suggests that programs created in the first two years of Obama's presidency are the most likely to get tossed overboard.

Art 25 Jan 11 The Renaissance sculpted tomb-monument of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was altered when being moved from Thetford to Framlingham in the mid-16th Century.

Press release issued 24 January 2011 Pioneering neurosurgical treatment, a world first in Bristol, which very accurately targets brain networks involved in depression, could help people who suffer with severe and intractable depression.

Policy 24 Jan 11 The Oxford Centre for Asian Archaeology, Art and Culture, based in Oxford University's School of Archaeology, has received its first major research award since its launch in October last year.

What the Romans in Britain lacked in aesthetics they more than made up for in efficiency - and a Stanford researcher shows how they did it by recreating and firing a kiln based on the late Iron Age and Roman models in Britain.

When we don't feel confident about our government, we choose indirect ways of showing support, such as buying U.S.-based products, according to a new study is online and will be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, co-authored by Eugenia C. Wu, assistant professor of marketing in Cornell's Johnson School.

Liverpool, UK - 17 January 2011: Researchers at the University of Liverpool are investigating if a lung cancer screening programme could be implemented effectively at hospitals and cancer centres across the UK. The pilot UK Lung Screening (UKLS) trial, in partnership with Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital; Papworth Hospital, Cambridge; and the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, London, is funded by the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) and builds on a programme of research into the feasibility of lung cancer screening.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham's School of Sport and Exercise Sciences are looking for volunteers to take part in a study examining whether exercise can enhance antibody response to vaccinations, such as the seasonal flu jab. The study will test the effect of a brisk walk on the antibody response to pneumococcal and influenza inoculations.

Annual-resolved European summer climate has, for the first time ever, been reconstructed over the past 2,500 years. Tree rings reveal possible links between past climate variability and changes in human history. Climate change coincided with periods of socioeconomic, cultural and political turmoil associated with the Barbarian Migrations, the Black Death and Thirty Years' War.

The views of leading UK Muslims on some of the most contentious issues affecting Muslims in Britain are to be compiled and published online in the second phase of a groundbreaking project.

Two pioneering eighteenth-century doctors and the unusual uses to which they put their gardens are the focus of a new study by a Bristol University historian. Funded by a grant from the Wellcome Trust , Dr Clare Hickman of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology will investigate how surgeon John Hunter (1728-93) and vaccination pioneer Edward Jenner (1749-1823) used their gardens to further their outstanding medical activities.

Jan.

A new study to examine the long-term effects of late language development in children is to be carried out by psychologists at The University of Manchester.

An endangered Greek dialect which is spoken in north-eastern Turkey has been identified by researchers as a "linguistic goldmine" because of its startling closeness to previous forms of the Greek language. Fieldwork examining Romeyka, a little-studied form of Greek still spoken in the area around Trabzon, on Turkey's Black Sea coast, has revealed a number of features that it shares with the Koine (or common) Greek of Hellenistic and Roman times.

Arts 04 Jan 11 The study of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire has been boosted by the opening of a new research hub at Oxford University.

'Mischief: sculptures and drawings by Lucia Nogueira' - opens at Kettle's Yard on January 15, running until March 13, 2011.

A tiny 165-year-old pamphlet, stored in a box at a Yorkshire public library, has been identified by a University of Manchester academic as the only surviving copy of a Chartist hymn book. Dr Mike Sanders, who came across the 'National Chartist Hymn Book' in Todmorden public library, has confirmed it contains 16 hymns sung by the Victorian radicals who campaigned for democracy and workers' rights.

University of Sussex Review of 2010 It's been an eventful year, to put it mildly.

A University of Manchester Professor - and one of the UK's greatest champions for the intellectually disabled - has told of his amazing January 1939 escape from Nazi Austria in a new book.

Almost since the beginning of recorded history, people have used concrete substances in everything from infrastructure to artwork.

PA 359/10 The largest surviving family-owned library of medieval manuscripts in Britain can now be enjoyed by everyone thanks to the publication of a new book telling its fascinating story. The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts. Texts, Owners and Readers is the culmination of a major research project at The University of Nottingham into this nationally important regional collection.

New online tool helps examine miracles over time A unique online catalogue, which will for the first time make it possible to look at when, where and how miracles have occurred through the ages, has been launched by researchers at the University of Sheffield.

A new exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science explores the world of early Islamic scientific instrument makers as they sought a delicate balance between function and beauty.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. Honey is the original sweetener, manufactured by honey bees long before humans discovered and appropriated it.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. In 1851, Lorenzo Langstroth, a Congregational minister and young ladies' school principal based in Philadelphia, revolutionized the practice of beekeeping.