Cool Science

People who illegally upload and share online digital media like music, movies and TV shows may very soon start receiving warning signals from their service providers for copyright infringement. Those who simply turn a deaf ear to the warning notices may even risk penalties with the simplest being a 48 hour internet shutdown though other penalties could be imposed if the culprit fails to heed to the constant notices. The alert system was created by the Center for Copyright Information which is still working out the methods that companies will be allowed to use in order to catch pirates.

This though is not the first time that the stakeholders in the music, movie and TV industries have tried to fight copyright infringement. The first attempt was through law suits that were common a decade or so ago but this did very little to stop people from illegally swapping digital files online. However, the major players in these industries are now taking a different approach to try and reduce rate at which files are illegally exchanged by internet users. The new system aims at educating internet pirates about the dangers and encouraging them to stop the practice. Continue Reading

Gravitational force influences how living organisms respond to one another, their physical and chemical environment as well as how they develop and diversify. It is clear in general how plants respond to the force of gravity. The roots respond by growing towards the force of gravity while the stems grow upwards against gravity to get exposure to the sunlight. Botanists have in the past tried to explain exactly how plant cells are able to sense gravity, communicate with other cells and respond accordingly. However, a recent review of the current knowledge by the American Journal of Botany shows that there is much more we need to know on the mechanisms involved. There is a better molecular explanation of what actually happens. Continue Reading

The DNA databases are well protected resources, as they have a large number of detailed fingerprints that may be employed to discover an individual from cancer, paternity tests, genetic predisposition up to criminal records. It also appears that RNA databases, a derivative of large genome studies are used in the identification of persons. The databases are available in journals and to the public, and have the information from large number of people worldwide.
Having these discoveries, the scientists can improve the health of a patient using the RNA and deep individual data. But this as well brings up some questions concerning the genomic privacy.

The study performed in New York at the Mount Sinai School Medical Department changes the RNA detection process inside out. Scientists Ke Hao and Eric E. Schadt discovered that to get the DNA of an individual by use of RNA data. Nearly all the studies revealed how the RNA relays the genetic information using DNA sequences. Continue Reading

Scientist’s endless efforts to conquer the problem of obesity are not new to the world. People are well-versed with the fact that researchers have been striving hard to eradicate the problem of obesity from its root. Their unstoppable thirst to look for a cure has made it possible to solve many unsolvable health complications. Likewise, a recent revelation of some factual information pertaining to obesity may help to address the doubt regarding effect of fatty foods on the cells of brain. Scientists undertook a research on mice. The research result advises that highly fatty foods initiate the production of some new brain cells which trigger weight gain in mice.

As per the opinion of experts like neuroscientist Seth Blackshaw of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a published online report on March 25th in Nature Neuroscience, except few rare cases, most part of the human brain does not make any new nerve cells. But there is a place called the median eminence, which makes new nerve cells throughout the whole life of a human being and is also a vital place of brain’s metabolism. Continue Reading

For a long time, predicting the future has been known to be almost impossible. In fact, apart from weather forecasting, the task of predicting future events has largely been left to fortunetellers, who have seemed to delight in the fact that little progress has been made by scientists in this field.

However, a recent study published in February could prove to be a groundbreaking study in the search for a scientific formula for examining imminent system collapse. This study seeks to ascertain when a system of a certain level of complexity is headed towards collapse.Using math principles, the research tries to help people to get an understanding of systems even when there is little data available to make any complex computations.Perhaps the background of a study of this nature would have to be the apparently numerous ecological systems and other systems that seem to be collapsing at an unprecedented rate. The need to have a scientific manner of analyzing system collapse is perhaps at its highest now. Continue Reading

Tomorrow, 29 February, only happens once every four years. It’s the only date in a year which isn’t always there. So why do we have this sometimes day in what we call a ‘leap year’?

Let’s start by clarifying what a day and a year actually are. One day is the time it takes for Earth to rotate on its axis, so the same bit of the Earth is pointing at the Sun. This the time from one midnight to the next, or from one midday to the next.

One year is the time it takes for Earth to orbit the Sun once. It’s around 365 ¼ days long, and that ¼ is a problem. If our calendar only had 365 days, then dates would occur earlier and earlier in the seasons. To keep the dates lined up with the seasons, we use a 365 day calendar, but we sometimes add a day at the end of February, making it 29 days long, instead of 28. Continue Reading

You will need:
* Internet access
* Spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel or Open Office

To get the data

1. Get online and visit the CensusAtSchool random sampler. This page will provide responses from a survey called CensusAtSchool. Read the conditions of use and if you agree, then click through to the next page.

2. Select the following data options:

* Reference Year – 2011
* Questions to display – Select data by question

For ‘data by question’, check the following boxes:

* Q8. Eye colour
* Q17. Favourite take-away
* Q20. Getting to school Continue Reading

Is your favourite food pizza? Do you get to school by car? Is your favourite sport netball? Are you 157cm tall?

If you answered yes to all of the above, then your answers agree with ‘averages’ obtained from a random sample of the 2011 CensusAtSchool questionnaire. But does this make you average? ‘Average’ can mean different things depending on who you’re talking to. In everyday language average can mean typical, or something that you wouldn’t be surprised about. However, in statistics average and typical are very different things.

An average summarises a characteristic (such as height) using data taken from different sources. There are different types of average – each tells you something different and all are useful. Continue Reading

Warning: This cooking activity requires boiling water. Younger scientists should get help from an adult.

You will need

• Eggs
• Water
• 2 teabags
• Stove
• Tablespoon
• Teaspoon
• Small saucepan
• Egg timer or stop watch
• 5 star anise (optional)
• 2 Cinnamon sticks (optional)
• 3 tablespoons of soy sauce (optional)

Continue Reading

‘Is it through your grandmother or your grandfather that you consider yourself descended from a monkey?’ the bishop ‘Soapy’ Sam Wilberforce once asked the naturalist Thomas Huxley during a rather heated debate on the topic of evolution.
Following Darwin’s book ‘On the Origin of Species’, a number of people mistakenly believed that the ancestors of modern humans were apes and monkeys. Of course, this makes as much sense as saying your cousins are also your great, great grandparents. Darwin’s argument was that humans and primates are more like very distant cousins – we both share a common ancestor.
Like humans, our closest living relative – the chimpanzee – has also evolved quite a bit over the past few million years. But finding fossils that describe precisely what our shared ancestor may have looked like is a little tricky.
A recent find has come quite close, and has palaeontologists rather excited. At four and a half million years old, Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi for short) would have walked the Earth only a few hundred thousand years after the ancestors of chimpanzees and humans went their separate ways.
Ardi’s bones tell an interesting tale. It seems this species walked upright, just as we do, yet had hands and feet that were capable of grasping branches with ease. Importantly, their pointy canine teeth were smaller than those of other apes, indicating a change in how often males fought one another. This tells us a little about their behaviour.
Such clues hint at what a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees might have looked like. While it’s tempting to picture them with rather chimp-ish characteristics, it seems nothing could be further from the truth.
It’s easy to consider the great apes as ‘primitive’ or ‘unevolved humans’. Using Ardi’s bones to give us a snapshot of our family album, it’s clear that chimpanzees have come just as far in five million years as we humans.

Illustrated by Mike McRae