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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 5, 2017 at 7:02am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 3, 2017 at 7:41am

Languages Are Still a Major Barrier to Global Science

A third of new scientific findings are published in languages other than English, contributing to biases in our understanding and hinderances to the advance of science and research, a new study has found.

English is now considered the common language of global science. All major scientific journals seemingly publish in English, despite the fact that their pages contain research from across the globe.

Language hinders new findings getting through to practitioners in the field and causes the international community missing important science, said researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK.

They argue that whenever science is only published in one language, barriers to the transfer of knowledge are created.

The researchers call on scientific journals to publish basic summaries of a studys key findings in multiple languages and universities to encourage translations as part of their outreach evaluation criteria.

The researchers point out an imbalance in knowledge transfer in countries where English is not the mother tongue - much scientific knowledge that has originated there is available only in English and not in their local languages.

Researchers surveyed the web platform Google Scholar in a total of 16 languages for studies on biodiversity conservation published during a single year, 2014.

Of the over 75,000 documents, including journal articles, books and theses, some 35.6 per cent were not in English.

Of these, the majority was in Spanish (12.6 per cent) or Portuguese (10.3 per cent). Simplified Chinese made up six per cent and three per cent were in French.

Random sampling showed that only around half of non-English documents included titles or abstracts in English.

This means that around 13,000 documents on conservation science published in 2014 are unsearchable using English keywords.

This can result in sweeps of current scientific knowledge - known as systematic reviews - being biased towards evidence published in English, researchers said.

This, in turn, may lead to over-representation of results considered positive or statistically significant, and these are more likely to appear in English language journals deemed high-impact.

In addition, information on areas specific to countries where English is not the mother tongue can be overlooked when searching only in English.

For environmental science, this means important knowledge relating to local species, habitats and ecosystems - but also applies to diseases and medical sciences.

But native English speakers tend to assume that all the important information is available in English which is not the case in real terms. On the other hand, non-native English speakers tend to think carrying out research in English is the first priority, often ending up ignoring non-English science and its communication.

The research was published in the journal PLOS Biology.

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbi...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2016 at 9:55am

Vera Rubin Didn't Discover Dark Matter

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/vera-rubin-didnt-di...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 29, 2016 at 10:32am

Scientists face Intimidation and death threats in the US!

Troubling Signs for Science under Trump

The next four years are looking grim for science in America

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta-stones/troubling-signs...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 28, 2016 at 11:31am

The Postmortem Skin Microbiome to Estimate the Postmortem Interval

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.01...

Necrobiome. Heard about it before? It is the microbiological ecology of dead bodies. The genetic signatures of that microbial community as it waned and waxed after death can be used to build an algorithm that could pinpoint a corpse's time of death, to an accuracy of just two summertime days and can be used in forensic science.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 28, 2016 at 11:18am

China's pollution is causing millions of premature deaths.

A team of researchers led by Professor Zhu Tong from Peking university used PM2.5 data from over 500 ground observation stations in China, re-analyzing them using a newly developed integrated exposure-response (IER) model to estimate the risk of premature death due to exposure to PM2.5. They found that 84 percent of China’s population live in areas where the yearly average PM2.5 exceeded 35 micrograms per cubic meter, the upper limit set in ambient air quality standards by the World Health Organization. Their model predicted that this exposure to high PM2.5 levels resulted in 1.37 million premature deaths, of which 50 percent, 28 percent and 12 percent were due to cerebrovascular disease, ischemic heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease respectively. The study also points out that if the concentration of PM2.5 meets the WHO standards, the risk of premature death can decrease by 39 percent, 23 percent and 66 percent respectively, revealing the non-linear relationship between the decrease of PM2.5 and the improvement of different health conditions. 

Estimating adult mortality attributable to PM_2.5 exposure in China with assimilated PM_2.5 concentrations based on a ground monitoring network

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310956

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 20, 2016 at 11:31am

Earth’s surface is shattered by roads into over 600,000 fragments – more than half of which are smaller that one square kilometre – severely reducing the ability of ecosystems to function effectively, a new study has found.

Roads have made it possible for humans to access almost every region but this comes at a very high cost ecologically to the planet’s natural world. Despite substantial efforts to conserve the world’s natural heritage, large tracts of valuable roadless areas remain unprotected, researchers said.

The researchers from the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development in Germany used a dataset of 36 million kilometres of roads across the landscapes of the earth. They are dividing them into more than 600,000 pieces that are not directly affected by roads.

Of these remaining roadless areas only seven per cent are larger than 100 square kilometres. The largest tracts are to be found in the tundra and the boreal forests of North America and Eurasia, as well as some tropical areas of Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Only nine per cent of these areas undisturbed by roads are protected.

Roads introduce many problems to nature. For instance, they interrupt gene flow in animal populations,facilitate the spread of pests and diseases, and increase soil erosion and the contamination of rivers and wetlands.

Then there is the free movement of people made possible by road development in previously remote areas, which has opened these areas up to severe problems such as illegal logging, poaching and deforestation.

Most importantly, roads trigger the construction of further roads and the subsequent conversion of natural landscapes, a phenomenon the study labels “contagious development.”

“Our global map provides guidance on the location of the most valuable roadless areas,” said Pierre Ibisch, from the Eberswalde University. In many cases they represent remaining tracks of extensive functional ecosystems, and are of key significance to ecological processes, such as regulating the hydrological cycle and the climate,” said Ibisch.

The researchers used a large data base generated through crowd-sourcing platform to produce a global map for roadless.

All roads affect the environment in some shape or form including timber extraction tracks and minor dirt roads, and the impacts can be felt far beyond the road edge.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 17, 2016 at 8:33am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 17, 2016 at 6:51am

A “crater” in Antarctica once thought to be the work of a meteorite impact is actually the result of ice melt, new research finds.

The hole, which is in the Roi Baudouin ice shelf in East Antarctica, is a collapsed lake — a cavity formed when a lake of meltwater drained — with a “moulin,” a nearly vertical drainage passage through the ice, beneath it, researchers found on a field trip to the area in January 2016.

Combining their fieldwork with satellite data and climate modeling, the researchers found that East Antarctica is more vulnerable to melt than was previously realized. Warm winds to the region blow away the snow cover, which darkens the surface of the ice, the team reported Dec. 12 in the journal Nature Climate Change. Darker surfaces absorb more heat from the sun than lighter surfaces, so they are more prone to melt. These floating ice sheets don’t contribute much to sea level rise ­— as they’re already in the ocean — but they provide an important backstop against the flowing of land-based ice from continental Antarctica into the ocean.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 15, 2016 at 7:38am

A funny and scientific way of explaining Father Christmas:

The mystery of how Father Christmas can deliver presents to 700 million children in one night, fit down the chimney and arrive without being seen or heard has been explained in a scientific way by a physicist at the University of Exeter.

Santa and his reindeer zoom around the world at such speed that - according to relativity theory - they would shrink, enabling Father Christmas and a huge sack of presents to fit down chimneys.

Dr Katy Sheen, a physicist in the Geography department at the University of Exeter, has also found a scientific explanation for why Santa is not heard arriving by children, and why they rarely catch a glimpse of him on Christmas eve.

Santa's stealth delivery is partly explained by special relativity theory devised by Albert Einstein, whom Dr Sheen thinks bares a passing resemblance to Santa.

Relativity theory explains how Father Christmas can fit down the chimney. At the speeds he needs to travel to deliver presents to every child, Father Christmas shrinks - or gets thinner - in the direction he is travelling. And he has to be careful not to stop for a mince pie in a chimney, or he could grow back to full size!

Relativity also explains why Father Christmas appears not to have aged throughout the ages, because relativity can slow down clocks.

The physicist has calculated that Santa and his reindeer would have to travel at about 10 million kilometres per hour to deliver presents to every child expected to celebrate Christmas in 31 hours (taking into account world time zones).

If millions of children have been good, and deserve bigger stockings, he may need to travel even faster. Such speed would make him change from red to green and, at greater speeds, he would disappear! Children would not be able to recognise him as he would appear as a rainbow-coloured blur, eventually disappearing to the human eye.

Travelling at more than 200,000 times faster than Usain Bolt, the world's fastest man, the laws of physics explain why Father Christmas is rarely seen by children while delivering presents.

The Doppler effect would make Santa change colour because the light waves he releases would get squashed at such a high speed.

The Doppler effect also explains why children cannot hear Father Christmas arrive. As Santa and his sleigh approach, the sound of bells and his deep 'ho, ho, ho' would get higher and higher (like when an ambulance siren whizzes by) and then become completely silent, because he would move beyond human hearing range. Even the sound of Santa urging on Rudolph would become unrecognisable, and then inaudible to the human ear.

If children hear a bang on Christmas night, it may not be the sound of Santa dropping his presents, landing on their roof in his sleigh, or sliding down the chimney with a plop. Santa's reindeer could have broken the speed of sound, resulting in a 'sonic boom.'

Dr Sheen, a physicist working in the University of Exeter's Geography department, is not planning to present her research to a peer-reviewed journal (it's prepared with the festive spirit in mind), and has done the calculations in her own time to interest children in science and physics.

-Eureka Alert

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