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study worldwide. Precision measurements of neutrino oscillations can be made using artificial neutrino beams, as pioneered by the K2K neutrino experiment where neutrinos from the KEK laboratory were detected using the vast Super Kamiokande neutrino detector near Toyama. T2K is |
a more powerful and sophisticated version of the K2K experiment, with a more intense neutrino beam derived from the newly-built Main Ring synchrotron at the J-PARC accelerator laboratory. The beam was built by physicists from KEK in cooperation with other |
Japanese institutions and with assistance from the US, Canadian, UK and French T2K institutes. Prof. Chang Kee Jung of Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, leader of the US T2K project, said "I am somewhat stunned by this seemingly |
effortless achievement considering the complexity of the machinery, the operation and international nature of the project. This is a result of a strong support from the Japanese government for basic science, which I hope will continue, and hard work and |
ingenuity of all involved. I am excited about more ground breaking findings from this experiment in the near future." The beam is aimed once again at Super-Kamiokande, which has been upgraded for this experiment with new electronics and software. Before |
the neutrinos leave the J-PARC facility their properties are determined by a sophisticated "near" detector, partly based on a huge magnet donated from CERN where it had earlier been used for neutrino experiments (and for the UA1 experiment, which won |
the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the W and Z bosons which are the basis of neutrino interactions), and it is this detector which caught the first events. The first neutrino events were detected in a specialize detector, called |
the INGRID, whose purpose is to determine the neutrino beam's direction and profile. Further tests of the T2K neutrino beam are scheduled for December, and the experiment plans to begin production running in mid-January. Another major milestone should be observed |
soon after -- the first observation of a neutrino event from the T2K beam in the Super-Kamiokande experiment. Running will continue until the summer, by which time the experiment hopes to have made the most sensitive search yet achieved for |
a so-far unobserved critical neutrino oscillation mode dominated by oscillations between all three types of neutrinos. In the coming years this search will be improved even further, with the hope that the 3-mode oscillation will be observed, allowing measurements to |
begin comparing the oscillations of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, probing the physics of matter/ anti-matter asymmetry in the neutrino sector. Other social bookmarking and sharing tools: Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. |
June 22, 2010 Millions of years before humans began battling it out over beachfront property, a similar phenomenon was unfolding in a diverse group of island lizards. Often mistaken for chameleons or geckos, Anolis lizards fight fiercely for resources, responding to rivals by doing push-ups and puffing out their throat... |
says a new study in the journal Evolution. Anolis lizards colonized the Caribbean from South America some 40 million years ago and quickly evolved a wide range of shapes and sizes. "When anoles first arrived in the islands there were no other lizards quite like them, so there was abundant opportunity to diversify," sai... |
their new island homes, Anolis lizards evolved differences in leg length, body size, and other characteristics as they adapted to different habitats. Today, the islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico -- collectively known as the Greater Antilles -- are home to more than 100 Anolis species, ranging from la... |
trunks, to foot-long 'giants' that roam the upper branches of trees. "Each body type is specialized for using different parts of a tree or bush," said Mahler. Alongside researchers from the University of Rochester, Harvard University, and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, Mahler wanted to understand how and w... |
used DNA and body measurements from species living today to reconstruct how they evolved in the past. In addition to measuring the head, limbs, and tail of over a thousand museum specimens representing nearly every Anolis species in the Greater Antilles -- including several Cuban species that were previously inaccessib... |
what species lived on which islands, and when. By doing so, they discovered that the widest variety of anole shapes and sizes arose among the evolutionary early-birds. Then as the number of anole species on each island increased, the range of new body types began to fizzle. Late-comers in lizard evolution underwent fin... |
each island, their descendants were forced to partition the remaining real estate in increasingly subtle ways, said co-author Liam Revell of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC. "Over time there were fewer distinct niches available on each island," said Revell. "Ancient evolutionary changes in body... |
trend on each island. "The islands are like Petri dishes where species diversification unfolded in similar ways," said Mahler. "The more species there were, the more they put the brakes on body evolution." The study sheds new light on how biodiversity comes to be. "We're not just looking at species number, we're also l... |
Mahler. The team's findings are published in the journal Evolution. Richard Glor of the University of Rochester and Jonathan Losos of Harvard University were also authors on this study. Other social bookmarking and sharing tools: - D. Luke Mahler, Liam J. Revell, Richard E. Glor, Jonathan B. Losos. Ecological opportuni... |
The word vivisection was first coined in the 1800s to denote the experimental dissection of live animals - or humans. It was created by activists who opposed the practice of experimenting on animals. The Roman physician Celsus claimed that in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE physicians had performed vivisections |
on sentenced criminals, but vivisection on humans was generally outlawed. Experimenters frequently used living animals. Most early modern researchers considered this practice acceptable, believing that animals felt no pain. Even those who opposed vivisection in the early modern period did not usually do so out of consi... |
but because they thought that this practice would coarsen the experimenter, or because they were concerned that animals stressed under experimental conditions did not represent the normal state of the body. Prompted by the rise of experimental physiology and the increasing use of animals, an anti-vivisection movement s... |
1860s. Its driving force, the British journalist Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904), founded the British Victoria Street Society in 1875, which gave rise to the British government's Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876. This law regulated the use of live animals for experimental purposes. R A Kopaladze, 'Ivan P. Pavlov's view |
on vivisection', Integr. Physiol. Behav. Sci., 4 (2000), pp 266-271 C Lansbury, The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection in Edwardian England (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) P Mason, The Brown Dog Affair: The Story of a Monument that Divided the Nation (London: Two Stevens, 1997) N A |
by I. Peterson Unlike an ordinary, incandescent bulb, a laser produces light of a single wavelength. Moreover, the emitted light waves are coherent, meaning that all of the energy peaks and troughs are precisely in step. Now, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has demonstrated experimentally that a clo... |
coherent. Instead of flying about and colliding randomly, the atoms display coordinated behavior, acting as if the entire assemblage were a single entity. According to quantum mechanics, atoms can behave like waves. Thus, two overlapping clouds made up of atoms in coherent states should produce a zebra-striped interfer... |
beams of ordinary laser light overlap. By detecting such a pattern, the researchers proved that the clouds' atoms are coherent and constitute an "atom laser," says physicist Wolfgang Ketterle, who heads the MIT group. These matter waves, in principle, can be focused just like light. Ketterle and his coworkers describe ... |
coherence involving large numbers of atoms is the latest step in a series of studies of a remarkable state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. Chilled to temperatures barely above absolute zero, theory predicted, the atoms would collectively enter the same quantum state and behave like a single unit, or superp... |
in 1995 by Eric A. Cornell and his collaborators at the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, both in Boulder, Bose-Einstein condensates have been the subject of intense investigation ever since (SN: 7/15/95, p. 36; 5/25/96, p. 327). At MIT, Ketterle and his colleagues cool sodi... |
are then confined in a special magnetic trap inside a vacuum chamber. To determine whether the atoms in the resulting condensate are indeed as coherent as photons in a laser beam, the researchers developed a novel method of extracting a clump of atoms from the trap. In effect, they manipulate the magnetic states of the... |
fraction of the original cloud; under the influence of gravity, the released clump falls. The method can produce a sequence of descending clumps, with each containing 100,000 to several million coherent atoms. The apparatus acts like a dripping faucet, Ketterle says. He and his colleagues describe the technique in the ... |
group created a double magnetic trap so that two pulses of coherent atoms could be released at the same time. As the two clumps fell, they started to spread and overlap. The researchers could then observe interference between the atomic waves of the droplets. "The signal was almost too good to be true," Ketterle says. ... |
regular pattern." "It's a beautiful result," Cornell remarks. "This work really shows that Bose-Einstein condensation is an atom laser." From the pattern, the MIT researchers deduced that the condensate of sodium atoms has a wavelength of about 30 micrometers, considerably longer than the 0.04-nanometer wavelength typi... |
improvements to their primitive atom laser, including getting more atoms into the emitted pulses and going from pulses to a continuous beam. Practical use of an atom laser for improving the precision of atomic clocks and for manipulating atoms is still distant, however, Cornell notes. |
The Weekly Newsmagazine of Science Volume 155, Number 19 (May 8, 1999) |<<Back to Contents| By J. Raloff Canadian scientists have identified the likely culprit behind some historic, regional declines |
in Atlantic salmon. The researchers find that a near-ubiquitous water pollutant can render young, migrating fish unable to survive a life at sea. Heavy, late-spring spraying of forests with a |
pesticide laced with nonylphenol during the 1970s and '80s was the clue that led the biologists to unmask that chemical's role in the transitory decline of salmon in East Canada. |
Though these sprays have ended, concentrations of nonylphenols in forest runoff then were comparable to those in the effluent of some pulp mills, industrial facilities, and sewage-treatment plants today. Downstream |
of such areas, the scientists argue, salmon and other migratory fish may still be at risk. Nonylphenols are surfactants used in products from pesticides to dishwashing detergents, cosmetics, plastics, and |
spermicides. Because waste-treatment plants don't remove nonylphenols well, these chemicals can build up in downstream waters (SN: 1/8/94, p. 24). When British studies linked ambient nonylphenol pollution to reproductive problems |
in fish (SN: 2/26/94, p. 142), Wayne L. Fairchild of Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Moncton, New Brunswick, became concerned. He recalled that an insecticide used on local |
forests for more than a decade had contained large amounts of nonylphenols. They helped aminocarb, the oily active ingredient in Matacil 1.8D, dissolve in water for easier spraying. Runoff of |
the pesticide during rains loaded the spawning and nursery waters of Atlantic salmon with nonylphenols. Moreover, this aerial spraying had tended to coincide with the final stages of smoltificationthe fish's |
transformation for life at sea. To probe for effects of forest spraying, Fairchild and his colleagues surveyed more than a decade of river-by-river data on fish. They overlaid these numbers |
with archival data on local aerial spraying with Matacil 1.8D or either of two nonylphenol-free pesticides. One contained the same active ingredient, aminocarb, as Matacil 1.8D does. Most of the |
lowest adult salmon counts between 1973 and 1990 occurred in rivers where smolts would earlier have encountered runoff of Matacil 1.8D, Fairchild's group found. In 9 of 19 cases of |
Matacil 1.8D spraying for which they had good data, salmon returns were lower than they were within the 5 years earlier and 5 years later, they report in the May |
Environmental Health Perspectives. No population declines were associated with the other two pesticides. The researchers have now exposed smolts in the laboratory to various nonylphenol concentrations, including some typical of |
Canadian rivers during the 1970s. The fish remained healthyuntil they entered salt water, at which point they exhibited a failure-to-thrive syndrome. "They looked like they were starving," Fairchild told Science |
News. Within 2 months, he notes, 20 to 30 percent died. Untreated smolts adjusted normally to salt water and fattened up. Steffen S. Madsen, a fish ecophysiologist at Odense University |
in Denmark, is not surprised, based on his own experiments. To move from fresh water to the sea, a fish must undergo major hormonal changes that adapt it for pumping |
out excess salt. A female preparing to spawn in fresh water must undergo the opposite change. Since estrogen triggers her adaptation, Madsen and a colleague decided to test how smolts |
would respond to estrogen or nonylphenol, an estrogen mimic. In the lab, they periodically injected salmon smolts with estrogen or nonylphenol over 30 days, and at various points placed them |
in seawater for 24 hours. Salt in the fish's blood skyrocketed during the day-long trials, unlike salt in untreated smolts. "Our preliminary evidence indicates that natural and environ- mental estrogens |
screw up the pituitary," Madsen says. The gland responds by making prolactin, a hormone that drives freshwater adaptation. Judging by Fairchild's data, Madsen now suspects that any fish that migrates |
between fresh and salt water may be similarly vulnerable to high concentrations of pollutants that mimic estrogen. From Science News, Vol. 155, No. 19, May 8, 1999, p. 293. Copyright |
Show kids that science and fun go hand in hand The loveable characters from PBS’ award-winning The Magic School Bus™ will help children explore the scientific properties of polymers. Create goop, melt snow, extract polymers from milk, make snow erupt, and much more! Self-contained, bus-shaped kit includes 20 experiment... |
a data notebook, science components, and 10 containers of polymers, including super balls, rainbow beads, snow, and gel crystals. Warning! This set contains chemicals that may be harmful if misused. Read cautions on individual containers carefully. Not to be used by children except under adult supervision. Recommended ... |
Advanced Science, Simple Operation Demonstrate the movement of invisible charged particles with this unique device. Designed in conjunction with the Contemporary Physics Education Project (CPEP), the Detector uses the analogy of magnetics. Students watch and plot the resulting paths of collisions between charged and ne... |
Scientists collect samples of the natural world to try to answer questions about our environment. So many questions and so much we still don't know. The samples collected each represent a particular time and place in our environment. Think about your home. If a scientist had collected the plants and insects from your l... |
the same or different than ones you would find today? The collected samples are the basic tool for the scientist's research and discovery. A museum specimen is made from the collected sample. We prepare them for study and add them to the research collections. Then they are ready to be used by scientists, not only this ... |
even generations to come. Teachers and Museum Docents use specimens in our collections to bring the facts and concepts of science to life. Anyway, you get the idea. Specimens and objects in the Museum's Nature to You Loan Program are particularly helpful for the kindergarten through high school ages. The Research Colle... |
students with the more advanced concepts. Have you ever used a field guide to identify that bird you saw in your backyard? Or that little squirrel-like mammal that just scooted off through the rocks? Or that flower you saw in the park? Artists rely heavily on collections of specimens when they create the illustrations ... |
see details to make accurate paintings. Different coloration and shapes help you see the differences between the chipmunk and the ground squirrel -- or the coyote and the neighbor's scrawny dog. Have you seen dioramas at a museum? Paintings in the background of exhibits are based on specimens. You've used specimens if ... |
resource that helps you discover the secrets of the world around you. Specimens form the core of a museum's philosophy. They are critical for research, for teaching, for our enjoyment of nature through art. Specimens at the San Diego Natural History Museum support our mission to understand the natural world of Southern... |
you to enjoy and benefit from the specimens we collect--but we also want your grandchildren to have those same experiences with specimens. For your grandchildren to be able to learn from the specimens, we need to prevent damage to the specimens. |
Symptoms of Spondylolysis and Spondylolisthesis Spondylolysis and spondylolisthesis may not cause any obvious symptoms for some children. In others, spondylolysis can cause pain that spreads across the lower back. Pain may be worse when children arch their backs. If the slipping is severe for children with spondylolist... |
the nerves in the lower part of the back. This can lead to: - Pain that goes down one or both legs - A numb feeling in one or both feet - Weakness in your child’s legs - Trouble controlling bladder or bowel movements Spondylolysis and Spondylolisthesis Diagnosis Doctors look |
first for signs of cracks in the bones of your child's back. These cracks are called stress fractures. We look for stress fractures first because spine slippage, though rare in children, usually happens to those who have the fractures first. The doctor will ask your child if the pain is |
worse when they arch their back. This is a common sign of stress fractures. Most often, these fractures are in the lower part of the backbone. Next, we most likely will take X-rays of your child’s backbone. This helps doctors make sure your child has a stress fracture. If we |
cannot see the crack clearly on the X-ray, we may ask to do a bone scan. If we find a crack in the bone, we will probably take a three-dimensional X-ray called a CT (computed tomography) scan. This will give us an even better look at the fracture and help |
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project Programs Densho Digital Archive Free searchable database containing over 700 transcribed and indexed video oral histories and 10,700 photos and documents that trace Japanese American history from immigration to wartime detention to civil rights-era |
redress. Users include teachers, students, historical preservationists, journalists, legal scholars, documentary makers, and the general public. Densho trains hundreds of classroom teachers every year on how to teach with primary sources about the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. |
Densho Online Encyclopedia The Densho Encyclopedia is a free and publicly accessible website that provides concise, accurate, and balanced information on many aspects of the Japanese American story during World War II. It is designed and written for a non-specialist |
audience that includes high school and college students and instructors, multiple generations of Nikkei community members, confinement sites preservation groups, amateur and professional historians, librarians, journalists, documentarians, and the general public. The Encyclopedia is thoroughly cross indexed and article... |
linked to relevant primary and secondary materials from the Densho archive and from other websites that include still and moving images, documents, databases, and oral history interview excerpts as well as standard bibliographical sources. Recent Successes and Current Challenges Over |
the last two years, Densho has added over 200 new oral histories to its online archive, launched a new 350 article online encyclopedia, and trained over 500 classroom teachers. Densho's work in historic preservation and education has been recognized by |
awards from NPower, the Washington State Historical Society, the Japanese American Citizens League, Humanities Washington, the American Library Association, Microsoft Technology for Good, and the Microsoft Alumni Foundation A current need of Densho is to support the marketing of Densho's |
Austrian architect and urbanist Wagner studied architecture at the School of Architecture at Vienna Academy, Austria, where he later became a teacher. Among his students were the renowned Art Nouveau architects Josef Maria Olbrich and Josef Hoffmann. From 1895 he was influenced by new art styles, more suited to the nee... |
function, material and construction, in the book "Modern Architecture" (1895). In 1898, he built his first Art Nouveau building, the Majolica House in Vienna, a functional structure with the facade covered in multicolored majolica tiles. He also designed in 1894, the Vienna metropolitan railway system. Otto Wagner was ... |
in 1899. He was one of the most influential artists of the turn of the century : architect, urnbanist, applied artist and theoretician, his writings laid the groundwork for Modernism in architecture. In his architectural works, he was receptive to the use of modern methods of building (steel frame construction) and new... |
Gaia theory is a class of scientific models of the geo-biosphere in which life as a whole fosters and maintains suitable conditions for itself by helping to create an environment on Earth suitable for its continuity. The first such theory was created by the atmospheric scientist and chemist, Sir James |
Lovelock, who developed his hypotheses in the 1960s before formally publishing the concept, first in the New Scientist (February 13, 1975) and then in the 1979 book "Quest for Gaia". He hypothesized that the living matter of the planet functioned like a single organism and named this self-regulating living system |
after the Greek goddess, Gaia, using a suggestion of novelist William Golding. Gaia "theories" have non-technical predecessors in the ideas of several cultures. Today, "Gaia theory" is sometimes used among non-scientists to refer to hypotheses of a self-regulating Earth that are non-technical but take inspiration from ... |
scientists, "Gaia" carries connotations of lack of scientific rigor, quasi-mystical thinking about the planet arth, and therefore Lovelock's hypothesis was received initially with much antagonism by much of the scientific community. No controversy exists, however, that life and the physical environment significantly in... |
spectrum of hypotheses, ranging from the undeniable (Weak Gaia) to the radical (Strong Gaia). At one end of this spectrum is the undeniable statement that the organisms on the Earth have radically altered its composition. A stronger position is that the Earth's biosphere effectively acts as if it is a |
self-organizing system, which works in such a way as to keep its systems in some kind of meta-equilibrium that is broadly conducive to life. The history of evolution, ecology and climate show that the exact characteristics of this equilibrium intermittently have undergone rapid changes, which are believed to have cause... |
extinctions and felled civilisations. Biologists and earth scientists usually view the factors that stabilize the characteristics of a period as an undirected emergent property or entelechy of the system; as each individual species pursues its own self-interest, for example, their combined actions tend to have counterb... |
Opponents of this view sometimes point to examples of life's actions that have resulted in dramatic change rather than stable equilibrium, such as the conversion of the Earth's atmosphere from a reducing environment to an oxygen-rich one. However, proponents will point out that those atmospheric composition changes cre... |
even more suitable to life. Some go a step further and hypothesize that all lifeforms are part of a single living planetary being called Gaia. In this view, the atmosphere, the seas and the terrestrial crust would be results of interventions carried out by Gaia through the coevolving diversity of |
living organisms. While it is arguable that the Earth as a unit does not match the generally accepted biological criteria for life itself (Gaia has not yet reproduced, for instance), many scientists would be comfortable characterising the earth as a single "system". The most extreme form of Gaia theory is |
that the entire Earth is a single unified organism; in this view the Earth's biosphere is consciously manipulating the climate in order to make conditions more conducive to life. Scientists contend that there is no evidence at all to support this last point of view, and it has come about |
because many people do not understand the concept of homeostasis. Many non-scientists instinctively see homeostasis as an activity that requires conscious control, although this is not so. Much more speculative versions of Gaia theory, including all versions in which it is held that the Earth is actually conscious or p... |
of some universe-wide evolution, are currently held to be outside the bounds of science. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Gaia". |
The American Revolutionary War began in 1775 and ended in 1783. The British ruled the American colonists and they had become increasingly rebellious. General Gage had ordered 700 British soldiers |
to Concord to destroy a weapon's depot belonging to the colonists. On the way, they are met by some rebellious colonists and the British fire, killing eight Americans and wounding |
ten. This was known as ‘the shot heard round the world' and the war was on. The first major battle occurred on June 17, 1775 at Boston, Massachusetts. It was |
known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British are used to marching proudly out before taking aim and firing. The Americans have been ordered not to fire until they |
can see the whites of their eyes. They are dug in along the high ground of Breed's Hill. As the British close in, the Americans begin firing halting the advance. |
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