On the trail of polar lows

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This has made it possible to determine, for the first time, the frequency of such polar lows in the past.

Subsequent statistical analysis of data generated for the last 60 years revealed no direct correlation between global warming and the incidence of polar lows.

The results from the Institute for Coastal Research in Geesthacht have now been published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Treacherous winds

Europa does the wave to generate heat

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One of the moons in our solar system that scientists think has the potential to harbor life may have a far more dynamic ocean than previously thought.

If the moon Europa is tilted on its axis even slightly as it orbits the giant planet Jupiter, then Jupiter's gravitational pull could be creating powerful waves in Europa's ocean, according to Robert Tyler, an oceanographer with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and author of a letter in the Dec. 11 Nature. As those waves dissipate, they would give off significant heat energy.

Once upon a time, scales were displayed in parlors, not hidden in bathrooms

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Stepping onto a scale after a calorie-filled holiday season isn't an activity many 21st-century Americans relish.

But in the late 19th century, scales were all the rage at festive gatherings — the 1800s' answer to Guitar Hero.

Whispering bats are 100 times louder than previously thought

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Cost of hatchling turtles' dash for freedom

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Charting HIV's rapidly changing journey in the body

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HIV is so deadly largely because it evolves so rapidly. With a single virus as the origin of an infection, most patients will quickly come to harbor thousands of different versions of HIV, all a little bit different and all competing with one another to most efficiently infect that person's cells. Its rapid and unique evolution in every patient is what allows HIV to evade the body's defenses and gives the virus great skill at developing resistance to a pantheon of antiviral drugs.

Inexperienced prostitutes most at risk of sexual infections

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Less experienced prostitutes are more likely to have sexually transmitted infections (STIs). A study of more than a thousand female sex workers in Cambodia, reported in the open access journal BMC Infectious Diseases, has shown that girls who were new to the sex industry were twice as likely to have gonorrhoea or chlamydia.

An enzyme that mutates antibodies also targets a cancer-causing oncogene

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New studies reveal differing perceptions of nature-altering science

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Two new National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored research studies say public acceptance of the relatively new, nature-altering science of nanotechnology isn't a foregone conclusion. Instead, the studies indicate continued concern.

Researchers at Yale University say that when people learn about this novel technology they become sharply divided along cultural lines, while a separate study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Arizona State University says nanotechnology seems to be failing the moral litmus test of religion.

What you give, might not always be received

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A fundamental process in the transmission of genes from mother to child has been identified by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University. The new study published in the December issue of the journal Nature Genetics identifies a mechanism that plays a key role in how mutations are transmitted from one generation to the next, providing unprecedented insight into metabolic diseases.