Tag: Wednesday Morning Science Supplement

Known as quants, these are the mathematicians and physicists who devised the financial instruments and computer programs fueling stock markets’ spectacular rise and collapse.

And while in good times they became financial rock stars, quants — short for quantitative analysts — are now being cast as villains of an industry that abandoned its values.

The findings, published Tuesday in the monthly journal Radiology, are the first to show that the stone core of the statue is a highly detailed sculpture of the queen, Huppertz said.

“Until we did this scan, how deep the stucco was and whether a second face was underneath it was unknown,” he said. “The hypothesis was that the stone underneath was just a support.”

The discoveries were announced Wednesday by Washington D.C.-based Conservation International, which spent the past several months analyzing more than 600 animal species the group found during its expedition to the South Pacific island nation in July and August.

Of the animals discovered, 50 spider species, three frogs and a gecko appear to have never been described in scientific literature before, the conservation group said. The new frogs include a tiny brown animal with a sharp chirp, a bug-eyed bright green tree frog and another frog with a loud ringing call. One of the jumping spiders is shiny and pale green, while another is furry and brown.

Developers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, a government-backed organization, said their “cybernetic human,” shown Monday, wasn’t ready to help with daily chores or work side by side with people – as many hope robots will be able to do in the future.

“Technologically, it hasn’t reached that level,” said Hirohisa Hirukawa, one of the robot’s developers. “Even as a fashion model, people in the industry told us she was short and had a rather ordinary figure.”

The spacewalk 220 miles up took place on the eve of space shuttle Discovery’s launch to the orbiting outpost.

American commander Mike Fincke and Yuri Lonchakov, a Russian, wrapped up all the chores left over from a spacewalk just before Christmas. They accomplished everything faster than anticipated, in well under five hours, and accepted congratulations from Moscow flight controllers as they floated back inside.

The findings, issued by National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement, add to already mounting evidence that doctors are ordering too many diagnostic tests, driving up the cost of healthcare in the United States and potentially harming patients.

While diagnostic scans give doctors valuable information and many times are necessary, doctors fear too much radiation exposure can cause cancer, especially in younger people.

The $280 million mission was designed to answer one of the biggest question marks of global warming: What happens to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide spewed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas? How much of it is sucked up and stored by plants, soil and oceans and how much is left to trap heat on Earth, worsening global warming?

“It’s definitely a setback. We were already well behind,” said Neal Lane, science adviser during former President Bill Clinton’s administration. “The program was weak and now it’s really weak.”

Darwin held back the book to avoid offending his wife, said Ruth Padel, the naturalist’s great-great-granddaughter. “She said he seemed to be putting God further and further off,” Padel said in her north London home. “But they talked it through, and she said, “Don’t change any of your ideas for fear of hurting me.'”

The 1859 publication of “On the Origin of Species” changed scientific thought forever – and generated opposition that continues to this day. It is this elegant explanation of how species evolve through natural selection that makes Darwin’s 200th birthday on Feb. 12 such a major event.

Was Darwin right? Should schoolchildren be exposed to contrary views in science class? These two controversies continue to rage, partly because both sides are evenly matched.

Most scientists and courts that have ruled on the matter say that overwhelming evidence backs Darwin’s explanation of the origin and evolution of species, including humans, by natural selection.

A graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, came across the tusk while working in a canyon on the island’s remote north shore earlier this month. Nearby were several rib bones and possible thigh bones, said Lotus Vermeer, the Nature Conservancy’s Santa Cruz Island project director.

“We’ve never discovered mammoth remains in this particular location on this island before,” Vermeer said.