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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 10, 2013 at 6:45am

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/09/08/climate.change.will.ups...
Climate change will upset vital ocean chemical cycles

Climate change will upset vital ocean chemical cycles
Published: Sunday, September 8, 2013 - 13:31 in Earth & Climate

New research from the University of East Anglia shows that rising ocean temperatures will upset natural cycles of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorus. Plankton plays an important role in the ocean's carbon cycle by removing half of all CO2 from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and storing it deep under the sea -- isolated from the atmosphere for centuries.

Findings published today in the journal Nature Climate Change reveal that water temperature has a direct impact on maintaining the delicate plankton ecosystem of our oceans.

The new research means that ocean warming will impact plankton, and in turn drive a vicious cycle of climate change.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 8, 2013 at 7:11am

https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/content/why-does-higgs-particle-...

Why Does the Higgs Particle Matter?

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 7, 2013 at 7:25am

http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&srchtype=discussedNews&...
Upcoming conference on science journals
an upcoming science communication conference that you might be interested in attending or promoting. The topic of this conference is the evolving relationship between science journals and libraries, public education, research collaboration, university tenure, intellectual property rights, public policy, and more. Click here to view the event page.

This conference is being organized by the National Science Communication Institute (nSCI), a Seattle-based nonprofit whose mission is to improve the communication that happens inside science. You can read more about our group at www.nationalscience.org.

As far as we know, this will be one of the first conferences (if not the first) to really tackle the issue of journals head-on. Our hope is that we can share the knowledge and perspectives gained from this event, and then host other regional conferences and/or a national conference on this subject in 2014 with the goal of finding some common ground for change and improvement in how science journals intersect with research, education, policy, tenure, and more.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 6, 2013 at 6:41am

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=psychologists-iden...
Rating the Best Ways to Study

Some study methods work in many different situations and across topics, boosting test performance and long-term retention. Learning how to learn can have lifelong benefits.
Self-testing and spreading out study sessions—so-called distributed practice—are excellent ways to improve learning. They are efficient, easy to use and effective.
Underlining and rereading, two methods that many students use, are ineffective and can be time-consuming.
Other learning techniques need further testing and evaluation. In the meantime, students and teachers can put proved study methods to use in classrooms and at home.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 6, 2013 at 6:23am

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=poor-choices-finan...
Poor Choices: Financial Worries Can Impair One’s Ability to Make Sound Decisions

New research suggests causative link between income level and cognitive function

The findings are detailed in the August 30 issue of Science.

New work by a team of psychologists and economists supports the notion that humans have limited bandwidth for decision-making. And the capacity to make choices can take a hit once that cognitive load becomes too heavy. The research, based on experimental data collected on people with varying levels of self-reported income in rural India and a New Jersey shopping mall, concludes simply that at least short-term financial stress can max out our mental reserves on par with the level of impairment that results from pulling an all-nighter.

Alternative issues that demand attention, such as calorie counting in a diet, also could reduce cognitive abilities. The difference with money, however, is that one can end a diet anytime; not so with financial stress.

These new results also support other research on an overlapping area of study—an emerging field called self-control, says Kathleen Vohs, a consumer behavior expert at the University of Minnesota who published an accompanying commentary piece on the findings in the same issue of Science.* Self-control studies look at the finite ability of individuals to overcome urges and make decisions. They posit, in a similar vein, that when individuals are faced with many decisions that demand trade-offs—such as a scarcity of food, time or money—and do not have a chance to recover from the resulting brain drain, self-control can tank. That depletion, in turn, could lead to decision-making patterns that impede one’s ability to improve their lot in life, she says. “Because the poor must overcome more urges and make difficult decisions more often than others, they are more likely to overeat, overspend and enact other problematic behaviors,” she wrote.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 6, 2013 at 6:14am

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=computer-game-play...
Computer Game-Playing Shown to Improve Multitasking Skills

A new study reveals, despite polarized opinion about brain-training packages, that playing a 3-D race car-driving video game reduced cognitive decline in subjects aged 60-85

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2013 at 6:50am

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927024813003127
An artificial vasculature for adaptive thermal control of windows

Benjamin D. Hattona, b, 1,
Ian Wheeldona, 2,
Matthew J. Hancockd,
Mathias Kollea, b,
Joanna Aizenberga, b,
Donald E. Ingbe
Highlights

•

We demonstrate the fabrication of flexible, transparent microfluidic layers for window or solar panel cooling.
•

Experimental evaluation of cooling rates for fluidic layers as a function of flow rate, temperature.
•

Heat transfer model to evaluate the experimental results, and design scaled up implementation.
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Optical absorption measurements, as a function of fluidic composition and color change.
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Incorporating fluidic flow is a means to develop adaptive solar and window technologies.

Abstract

Windows are a major source of energy inefficiency in buildings. In addition, heating by thermal radiation reduces the efficiency of photovoltaic panels. To help reduce heating by solar absorption in both of these cases, we developed a thin, transparent, bio-inspired, convective cooling layer for building windows and solar panels that contains microvasculature with millimeter-scale, fluid-filled channels. The thin cooling layer is composed of optically clear silicone rubber with microchannels fabricated using microfluidic engineering principles. Infrared imaging was used to measure cooling rates as a function of flow rate and water temperature. In these experiments, flowing room temperature water at 2 mL/min reduced the average temperature of a model 10×10 cm2 window by approximately 7–9 °C. An analytic steady-state heat transfer model was developed to augment the experiments and make more general estimates as functions of window size, channel geometry, flow rate, and water temperature. Thin cooling layers may be added to one or more panes in multi-pane windows or as thin film non-structural central layers. Lastly, the color, optical transparency and aesthetics of the windows could be modulated by flowing different fluids that differ in their scattering or absorption properties.
Graphical abstract

A transparent, bio-inspired, convective cooling layer for building windows and solar panels has been developed to help reduce heating by solar absorption. The windows contain a vasculature network of millimeter-scale, fluid-filled channels. The design maintains a continuous flow of water to directly cool the window surface or change the optical absorption.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2013 at 6:31am

http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=biotechs-first-m...
Biotech’s First Musical Instrument Plays Proteins Like Piano Keys [Slide Show]

A biophysicist and composer have banded together to create a music box that turns biology into sound

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2013 at 6:30am

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pds.3482/abstract
Number of antigens in early childhood vaccines and neuropsychological outcomes at age 7–10 years

Shahed Iqbal1,*,
John P. Barile2,
William W. Thompson3,
Frank DeStefano1

ABSTRACT
Purpose

Concerns have been raised that children may be receiving too many immunizations under the recommended schedule in the USA. We used a publicly available dataset to evaluate the association between antibody-stimulating proteins and polysaccharides from early childhood vaccines and neuropsychological outcomes at age 7–10 years.
Methods

Children aged 7–10 years from four managed care organizations underwent standardized tests for domain-specific neuropsychological outcomes: general intellectual function, speech and language, verbal memory, attention and executive function, tics, achievement, visual spatial ability, and behavior regulation. Vaccination histories up to 24 months of age were obtained from medical charts, electronic records, and parents' records. Logistic regressions and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to determine associations between total antigens up to 7, 12, and 24 months and domain-specific outcomes.
Results

On average, children (N = 1047) received 7266, 8127, and 10 341 antigens by ages 7, 12, and 24 months, respectively. For adjusted analyses, increase (per 1000) in the number of antigens was not associated with any neuropsychological outcomes. Antigen counts above the 10th percentile, compared with lower counts, were also not associated with any adverse outcomes. However, children with higher antigen counts up to 24 months performed better on attention and executive function tests (odds ratio for lower scores = 0.51, 95% confidence interval = 0.26, 0.99). Similar results were found with SEM analysis (b = 0.08, p = 0.02).
Conclusions

We did not find any adverse associations between antigens received through vaccines in the first two years of life and neuropsychological outcomes in later childhood. Published 2013. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 5, 2013 at 6:29am

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=vaccinated...
Vaccinated Kids Show No Long-Term Ill Effects

No measurable increase in risk for neurological conditions could be found in a large cohort of preadolescent children who had been vaccinated on schedule when infants.

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