A 300-year-old, leather-bound instruction manual contains some of the earliest examples of attempts to teach the deaf to communicate.
The manual belonged to Alexander Popham, a deaf teenager from a noble English family who was taught to speak in the 1660s. The leather-bound notebook was discovered in 2008 at a stately English manor called Littlecote House.
A 300-year-old, leather-bound instruction manual contains some of the earliest examples of attempts to teach the deaf to communicate.
The manual belonged to Alexander Popham, a deaf teenager from a noble English family who was taught to speak in the 1660s. The leather-bound notebook was discovered in 2008 at a stately English manor called Littlecote House. | |
Camera-to-sound app lets blind people 'see'
People who have lived in the dark from birth have now found they don't need their eyes to see. A new device developed by Amir Amedi from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and colleagues is giving congenitally blind adults the ability to interpret visual information from sound.
In this video, you can watch people listen to sounds that illustrate an object or a facial expression, then describe what they are "seeing". The system can also be used to read by assigning sounds to letters.
In this video, you can watch people listen to sounds that illustrate an object or a facial expression, then describe what they are "seeing". The system can also be used to read by assigning sounds to letters.
A little radiation is good for mice
X-rays may not heal broken bones, but low doses of ionizing radiation may spark other health benefits, a new study of mice suggests.
Radiation in high doses has well-known harmful effects. Scientists had thought low doses would do less extensive damage but could add up to big problems later. But radiation acts differently at low doses, producing health benefits for mice with an unusual genetic makeup, Randy Jirtle of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and colleagues report online November 1 in the FASEB Journal. Antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamins C and E, erased those health gains.
Radiation in high doses has well-known harmful effects. Scientists had thought low doses would do less extensive damage but could add up to big problems later. But radiation acts differently at low doses, producing health benefits for mice with an unusual genetic makeup, Randy Jirtle of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and colleagues report online November 1 in the FASEB Journal. Antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamins C and E, erased those health gains.
Exposure to low-level radiation can cause leukemia; study of Chernobyl workers
WASHINGTON — Protracted exposure to low-level radiation is associated with a significant increase in the risk of leukemia, according to a long-term study published Thursday in a U.S. research journal.
The study released in the monthly Environmental Health Perspectives was based on a 20-year survey of around 110,000 workers who engaged in cleanup work related to the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986.
The study released in the monthly Environmental Health Perspectives was based on a 20-year survey of around 110,000 workers who engaged in cleanup work related to the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986.
Wrens teach their eggs to sing
Mothers usually set about teaching their offspring the moment they're born. But the females of one Australian bird can't wait that long.
Superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) mothers sing to their unhatched eggs to teach the embryo inside a 'password' — a single unique note — which the nestlings must later incorporate into their begging calls if they want to get fed. |  |
'Finding Nemo' fish talk their way out of conflict
Clownfish, the orange-, black- and white-striped fish made famous in the movie "Finding Nemo," are a gossipy bunch, popping and clicking amid their anemone homes to defend and reinforce their social status, according to new research.
Unlike the 360 other species of territorial marine fish in the Pomacentridae family, clownfish don't make a peep when mating. Researchers wondering why clownfish would bother to make noise in other circumstances discovered that their chatter helps maintain the rank and file among group members. |  |
Fish 'Bodyguards' Protect Coral from Seaweed Attack
When one kind of coral is under attack from killer seaweed, it sends chemical signals to little fish "bodyguards" that come to its rescue and handily take care of the problem, new research shows.
In their experiments, a group of scientists exposed sets of a rapidly growing coral from around Fiji (Acropora nasuta), to filaments of the seaweed species Chlorodesmis fastigiata, which is chemically toxic to corals. Some corals in the study were occupied by one-inch fish called gobies, which, within minutes, would begin neatly biting away at the offending seaweed. |  |
Climate Predictions: Worst-Case May Be Most Accurate, Study Finds
In the wake of superstorm Sandy, climate change is on a lot of people's radar. By some accounts, warmer ocean temperatures intensified the hurricane as it plowed up the Gulf Stream, and rising seas may have exacerbated flooding.
Now, a new climate-change study in the journal Science says warming is here to stay. And future warming will likely be on the high side of predictions, the researchers conclude. |  |
Melting in the Andes: Goodbye glaciers
From the shade of an adobe house overlooking Peru's Santa River, Jimmy Melgarejo squints at the dual peaks of Mount Huascarán looming against a cloudless sky. “The snow keeps getting farther away,” says Melgarejo, a farmer worried about his livelihood. “It's moving up, little by little. When the snow disappears, there will be no water.”
Throughout the Andes, millions of people voice the same concern as they watch climate change eat away at the mountain chain's icy mantle. But although everyone fears a water shortage, they do not know how quickly it will come or how severe it will be. |  |
Supervolcano Rained Acid on Both Poles—But Wasn't So Bad After All?
It was the largest volcanic eruption of the last two million years—an estimated 5,000 times larger than Mount St. Helens's 1980 blast, with enough lava to create two Mount Everests.
Roughly 74,000 years ago, Indonesia's Toba supervolcano pumped massive amounts of sun-shrouding ash and gases into the atmosphere, cooling the planet, possibly devastating early humanity, and—a new study reveals—raining sulfuric acid on both poles. |  |
The year 2040: Double the pollen, double the allergy suffering?
ANAHEIM, CA. (November 9, 2012) – With this year's unseasonably warm temperatures and extended seasons, many have coined 2012 as being the worst for allergies. But if you thought your symptoms were worse than ever, just wait until the year 2040.
According to a study being presented by allergist Leonard Bielory, M.D., at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), pollen counts are expected to more than double by 2040.
According to a study being presented by allergist Leonard Bielory, M.D., at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), pollen counts are expected to more than double by 2040.
Wikipedia buzz predicts blockbuster movies' takings weeks before release
Patterns of activity on Wikipedia can predict the opening box office takings of blockbuster movies a month before they are released, according to scientists.
Taha Yasseri, a physicist at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, has created a mathematical model that takes into account data such as the number of readers and editors for the Wikipedia page of an upcoming movie and shown that it correlates with takings on the film's opening weekend. |  |
Excellent Idea of the Day: Attend to Your Dreams
Paying attention to dreams can provide insights into mental health problems and may help with their treatment, according to forthcoming study in the International Journal of Jungian Studies.
As the name of that journal suggests, the theory goes back to the work of psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung. In the early 1900s, he proposed that many images in dreams stem from the human collective unconscious. He believed that dream symbols carried meaning about a patient's emotional state that could improve understanding of the individual and also aid in their treatment. |  |
Meth May Fight Flu Virus, Study Suggests
Meth kills brain cells, fuels tooth decay, loads the body with toxins and weakens the heart, muscles and immune system. But the otherwise body-wrecking drug may also have flu-fighting properties, new research suggests.
A group of scientists from the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan set out to study how methamphetamine interacts with influenza A virus in lung cells. Previous research has suggested that chronic meth abuse makes individuals more susceptible to pathogens such as HIV. The team wanted to investigate how the drug might reduce users' resistance to flu viruses. |  |
Human Enhancement Technologies Alarming
The Royal Society, along with the Academy of Medical Sciences, British Academy, and Royal Academy of Engineering, recently concluded a workshop called Human Enhancement and the Future of Work in which they considered the growing impact and potential risks of augmentation technologies.
In their final report, the collaborative team of scientists and ethicists raised serious concerns about the burgeoning trend, and how humanity is moving from a model of therapy to one in which human capacities are greatly improved. The implications, they concluded, should be part of a much wider public discussion. |  |
What sets newly found super Earth apart? It's simple as night and day. (+video)
Astronomers have uncovered evidence for a super Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star 42 light-years away in the southern-hemisphere constellation Pictor.
If the data truly signal a planet, the object could host liquid water on its surface, the team estimates. Liquid water is seen as a key ingredient for organic life. So far, astronomers have detected more than 840 planets orbiting other stars. A handful of those are super Earths that fall within their stars' habitable zones. But only two – including this newly announced planet candidate – are far enough away from their stars to allow for a day-night cycle. The others orbit so close to their stars that they've become tidally locked, presenting the same face to their stars as they swing about their orbits. |  |
How Do Alien Worlds Reveal Themselves?
You might think that finding a planet orbiting a distant star would simply require a bigger telescope -- after all, bigger telescopes reveal fainter and finer details. So why not build a really, really big 'scope and you can chalk up dozens of exoplanetary discoveries! Right? Not quite.
Detecting these alien worlds is made difficult because of their close proximity to bright stars, making them incredibly challenging to see directly. Also, if the exoplanet is located far enough away from its host star, the meager light it reflects would be too faint for even the biggest optical telescope. It is for these reasons that increasingly ingenious indirect techniques of detection are being relied upon. Only 7 percent of exoplanets discovered so far have been observed directly. |  |
Climate change threat to Arabica coffee crops
Climate change could severely reduce the areas suitable for wild Arabica coffee before the end of the century.
That is the conclusion of work by a UK-Ethiopian team published in the academic journal Plos One. It supports predictions that a changing climate could damage global production of coffee - the world's second most traded commodity after oil. Wild Arabica is important for the sustainability of the coffee industry because of its genetic diversity. |  |
For Ancient Maya, Climate Change Giveth and Taketh Away
For centuries, the mystery of the Maya civilization’s rise and fall has captivated explorers and scholars. In one of the first accounts of the region, the American explorer John Lloyd Stephens wrote: “Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations; reached their golden age, and perished, entirely unknown.”
“To us,” he continued in an 1841 travel journal, “it was all a mystery.” Now, with the help of modern science, part of that mystery is being put to rest. A new analysis of 2,000-year-old stalagmites suggests the role that climate change played in both the Maya civilization’s achievements and in its undoing. |  |
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