science wire

SAN JOSE, Calif. The "Hockey Stick" graph, a simple plot representing temperature over time, led to the center of the larger debate on climate change, and skewed the trajectory of at least one researcher, according to Michael Mann , Distinguished Professor of Meteorology , Penn State.

Sofya Raskhodnikova suggests that "differential privacy" is needed to maximize accuracy of analysis while preventing identification of individual records.

Patterns created by the brain's grid cells, which are believed to guide navigation, are modified by the shape of the environment, according to UCL researchers. This means grid patterns aren't a universal metric for the brain's GPS system to measure distance, as previously thought. Grid cells in the brain appear to form an internal map of the local environment by signalling periodically to create a 'grid-pattern' that helps animals to navigate, even in the dark.

Home sale prices were down in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to the third quarter but up compared with the previous year, and the rate of home sales also dropped, according to the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Washington.

Dietary guidelines broadly recommend a daily intake of 10,000 kilojoules (2,400 calories) for men and 8,000 kilojoules (1,900 calories) for women.

The RBA Shadow Board continues to recommend with confidence that the cash rate be held at its current level of 2.5 per cent The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) should keep interest rates on ho

Stanford Professor Jo Boaler says that students most effectively learn "math facts" working on problems that they enjoy, rather than through exercises and drills they fear.

Privacy isn't what it used to be. Post-Sony, post-Snowden, we know our digital world is insecure, yet most of us continue to share a vast amount of personal information over networks.

The University of Cambridge is to be one of the five universities that will lead the new Alan Turing Institute, announced the Rt Hon Dr Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills today.

Sussex academics to explore bees, brains and bubbles at Brighton Science Festival Sussex academics will explore the human brain, provide a bee's eye view of the world, and demonstrate geometry using bubble blowing at the Brighton Science Festival starting next month.

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics schools vary in many ways, but they share eight major common elements.

Does glass ever stop flowing? Researchers at the University of Bristol and Kyoto University have combined computer simulation and information theory, originally invented for telephone communication and cryptography, to answer this puzzling question. Watching a glass blower at work we can clearly see the liquid nature of hot glass.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. If Johnny has five apples and seven oranges, and he wants to share them with three of his friends, can a computer understand the text to figure out how many pieces of fruit each person gets?

Pictured from left to right are UW-Madison computer sciences Professor Tom Reps, graduate students Jason Breck and David Bingham Brown, and Professor Ben Liblit.

Imagine that you could tell your phone that you want to drive from your house in Boston to a hotel in upstate New York, that you want to stop for lunch at an Applebee's at about 12:30, and that you don't want the trip to take more than four hours.

Michael Mitzenmacher and Stuart Shieber, faculty members at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), are among 47 leading computer scientists named 2014 Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Study encourages development of mathematical thinking in primary classrooms Education researchers at the University of Sussex and the University of Dundee have been involved in a project which has ha

International Research Effort Gives Neuroscientists Better Feeling About Sense of Touch-Carnegie Mellon News - Carnegie Mellon University Discovery Will Help Scientists To Understand the Neuroscience Behind Somatosensation By Jocelyn Duffy / 412-268-2900 PITTSBURGH-Our sense of touch is one we often take for granted, until our leg falls asleep and we aren't able to stand, or when we experience acute pain.

For decades, neuroscientists have been trying to design computer networks that can mimic visual skills such as recognizing objects, which the human brain does very accurately and quickly. Until now, no computer model has been able to match the primate brain at visual object recognition during a brief glance.

A new £2.7 million international training network project, led by a team at Lancaster University, will develop a generation of medical statisticians dedicated to achieving early stage drug development success. The four-year research and training initiative, which has attracted funding from the European Union, is due to get underway next year.

PA 319/14 The problems of food shortages, water scarcity and insufficient clean energy threaten to intensify as the global population grows.

Shoulder to shoulder in the Northwest Labs, students gathered around laptops-200 at a time-at the CS 50 Fair on December 8.

Scientists and cinematographers have much more in common than meets the eye—b oth study the forces behind attraction and rejection, whether between atoms or fictional characters.

An ANU mathematician has developed a new way to uncover simple patterns that might underlie apparently complex systems, such as clouds, cracks in materials or the movement of the stockmarket. The method, named fractal Fourier analysis, is based on new branch of mathematics called fractal geometry. The method could help scientists better understand the complicated signals that the body gives out, such as nerve impulses or brain waves.

Knowledge Lab granted 1.38 million dollars this week to support 15 data-driven projects about how ideas are formed and circulated. Supported by the John Templeton Foundation , the grants encompass 11 different institutions, will welcome eight new researchers to Knowledge Lab's Metaknowledge Research Network , and support the work of eight existing members.

In 1714, the British Parliament offered large rewards for finding longitude at sea. Men around the world submitted schemes but only one woman, Jane Squire, published a proposal her own name.

Patrick Suppes' long career at Stanford began in 1950. As both a philosopher and scientist, he influenced a large number of fields.

Press release issued: 25 November 2014 Cyber security experts from the University of Bristol have advised the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) on how to protect the personal data of millions of citizens.

Maths stars shine in Australian Academy of Science awards 25 November 2014 The Australian Academy of Science has honoured both early career and life-long achievement with awards to two University of Sydney academics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics.

ATTENTION: Reporters, producers covering higher education and science WHAT: President Barack Obama will present the National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology & Innovation to 19

Our brains are plastic. They continually remould neural connections as we learn, experience and adapt.

From a mechanical perspective, granular materials are stuck between a rock and a fluid place, with behavior resembling neither a solid nor a liquid.

If you're dreaming of a white Thanksgiving, dream on. For winter-hardened places like Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit and Beckley, West Virginia, the chance of measureable snow on the ground for Nov.

FACULTY HONOR: Three Princeton researchers' work selected for 'The Best Writing on Mathematics: 2014' Posted November 6, 2014; 03:40 p.m. The work of three Princeton Univers

Our structure (research) Impact of our research Postgraduate research 06 Nov 2014 A new fiendishly-challenging online brain-teaser, featuring cryptic clues, has been launched by mathematicians at The University of Manchester.

The odds are building against any change in official interest rates on Melbourne Cup day, the Australian National University RBA Shadow Board has found.

As transistors get smaller, they also grow less reliable. Increasing their operating voltage can help, but that means a corresponding increase in power consumption.

Most modern cryptographic schemes rely on computational complexity for their security. In principle, they can be cracked, but that would take a prohibitively long time, even with enormous computational resources.

Our structure (research) Impact of our research Postgraduate research 23 Oct 2014 A review of sentencing following the 2011 English riots has shown that sentences were much harsher than realised at first. And just as people got caught up in the riots and acted out of character the study, carried out by The University of Manchester and Liverpool John Moores University, found that the courts themselves got caught up in a similar kind of collective hysteria.

Maths professor appointed to commonwealth science council 17 October 2014 Professor Nalini Joshi from the University of Sydney's School of Mathematics and Statistics has been appointed to the Federal Government's newly-created Commonwealth Science Council.

John Villasenor recommends more rigorous training protocols to protect those charged with treating people who are sick John Villasenor Lindsey Tanner/AP In this photo from Oct.

Prof. Alex Eskin is among the 16 scholars of mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science and the mathematical modeling of living systems who have been selected as 2014 Simons Investigators.

Ada Lovelace Day is an annual celebration of the contributions of women to science, technology engineering, and mathematics.

Jillian Wisniewski spent Thanksgiving 2009 at a U.S. Army base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, with just weeks until the end of her deployment and return to the U.S. Back then