AAAS Annual Meeting Newsroom

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Gamma-ray bursts' highest power side unveiled by Fermi telescope
Detectable for only a few seconds but possessing enormous energy, gamma-ray bursts are difficult to capture because their energy does not penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. Now, thanks to an orbiting telescope, astrophysicists are filling in the unknowns surrounding these bursts and uncovering new questions.

NASA, US Department of Energy

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Computer scientist developing intersections of the future with fully autonomous vehicles
Intersections of the future will not need stop lights or stop signs, but will look like a somewhat chaotic flow of driverless, autonomous cars slipping past one another as they are managed by a virtual traffic controller, says computer scientist Peter Stone.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Twists to quantum technique for secret messaging give unanticipated power
The co-inventor of quantum cryptography Artur Ekert will review advances in the secure communication protocol, up to the latest unpublished results, on Feb. 18 at the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
UVic researchers among presenters at global science conference
Using superheroes to learn about neuroscience and how climate change can cause energy spikes and wetland loss are among the topics tackled by UVic researchers at this year's AAAS annual meeting.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
'Duet of 1' possible with hand-controlled voice synthesizer
New technology at the University of British Columbia makes it possible for a person to speak or sing just by using their hands to control a speech synthesizer.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
'Beam me up, Scotty:' ASU professor uses Star Trek themes to communicate science
Before firing up the dilithium crystals in your warp drive, you should know what you are getting into, said Lawrence Krauss, ASU Foundation Professor at Arizona State University. When applied to the known laws of physics, some features of Star Trek – the endearing science fiction franchise that hooked millions of viewers on the possibility of intergalactic space travel – don't always hold up.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Iowa State researchers: Information flow can help farmers cope with climate change
The instant communications technology that nurtured grassroots revolutions in the Arab world could also help farmers cope with climate change.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Teaching science to the religious? Focus on how theories develop
Brown biology Professor Ken Miller understands that most students are religious. He is too. The way to teach science to religious students is to show how scientific ideas come to be, he says. Students can learn that religious people engage in scientific explorations of nature, and that theories are based on observation and logic, not some anti-religious agenda.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
European scientists call for greater integrity, openness, clarity and public engagement
European-based speakers representing the fields of nuclear energy, genetically modified organisms, and harm reduction science in tobacco made the plea on Feb. 18 at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Vancouver, Canada. The panelists, each with pertinent experience of real-life scientific support to policy-making, offered first-hand advice on best practices and pitfalls when architecting science policy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting

Physical Review Letters
Atomtronics: A new phase
A new theoretical study of ultracold atoms, held in an optical trap, finds exotic new phases of matter.

National Institute of Standards and Technology, Office of Naval Research

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
UC Davis MIND Institute researchers to present on autism at AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver
Two UC Davis MIND Institute researchers will lead a symposium on relationships between genetic, epigenetic and environmental influences on the development of autism in children during the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting, Feb. 16-18 in Vancouver, Canada.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
New combo of chemo and well-known malaria drug delivers double punch to tumors
Blocking autophagy -- the process of "self-eating" within cells -- is turning out to be a viable way to enhance the effectiveness of a wide variety of cancer treatments. Specifically, blocking the action of an acidic inner cell part, which acts like a stomach and chews up proteins for recycling, is the main attack strategy.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting

Molecular Neurodegeneration
Alzheimer's drugs may have adverse side effects
Alzheimer's disease drugs now being tested in clinical trials may have potentially adverse side effects. A study with mice suggests the drugs could act like a bad electrician, causing neurons to be miswired and interfering with their ability to send messages to the brain. Ironically, they could impair memory. The findings will be presented Saturday, Feb. 18, at the 2012 AAAS annual meeting.

National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Research at AAAS highlights national, international 'excellence gaps' in education
News media and think tanks often call attention to achievement gaps in education, highlighting test-score differences between racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. A related issue that gets little attention is the "excellence gap," the fact that minority and underprivileged students make up a disproportionately small share of top scorers on national and international assessments.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
IU's Menczer to present latest work on tracking ideas in social media
Indiana University's Filippo Menczer has shown how to "out" political astroturfers through his complex networks laboratory's study of information diffusion on Twitter. Now the Truthy team has added new features for analyzing political social media that includes the capability for citizens to interact with the data and then explore the impact, partisanship and sentiment of the users involved in the diffusion of a meme.

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
From 'science from above' to 'science in the community'
For the first time in the 130-year history of international polar years, people living in polar regions were not just objects of study -- they led studies.

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
The star factory: observing Arp 220
Using the Herschel Space Observatory, Wilson's group has found Arp 220 to have large amounts of very warm molecular hydrogen gas, a surprising find that implies molecular hydrogen is the dominant coolant in the high-temperature gas. Wilson's team has also observed a massive wind from the center of the galaxy, removing molecular gas from the central star forming core.

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Obstacles holding back healthier foods from your table
There are lots of new ideas out there for giving you extra protection against chronic diseases through the food you eat. But many good ideas may never make it to market.

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Repelling the knapweed invasion
Judith Myers' research has helped reduce the threat of knapweed. The rangeland plant had spread through the interior of British Columbia, ruining pastureland for cattle and impacting local economies.

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting

Environmental Health Perspectives
Landscape fire smoke contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, new research suggests
Worldwide, smoke from landscape fires contributed to an average of 339,000 deaths per year between 1997 and 2006, according to new research published in Environmental Health Perspectives and released today during the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Australian Research Council, University of Tasmania, NASA

Public Release: 18-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Peat fires could accelerate climate change
Douglas Woolford of Wilfrid Laurier University will present findings that show how the fire season is becoming longer, and Mike Flannigan of the University of Alberta will highlight the increased risk of peat fires.

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Public Release: 17-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
AAAS-SFU research: Linking human evolution and climate change
It's not a take on climate change we often hear about. But Mark Collard, a Simon Fraser University Canada Research Chair and professor of archaeology, will talk about how climate change impacts human evolution at the world’s largest science fair. Collard will give a talk called Environmental drivers of technological evolution in small-scale populations during a seminar called Climate Change and Human Evolution: Problems and Prospects.

Public Release: 17-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
Man-made photosynthesis to revolutionize food and energy production
Improving natural photosynthesis to make new fuels and boost crop production is the focus of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council funded research presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting today. It could see us one step closer to bottling the sun's energy or turbocharging plants to produce bumper crops.

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

Public Release: 17-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting
AAAS-SFU research: Controlling forest fires
Simon Fraser University statistician Rick Routledge will share his knowledge of what layers of charcoal in lake-bottom sediment can tell us about an area’s forest fire history, at the world’s largest science fair in Vancouver. Routledge is speaking at Forest Fires in Canada: Impacts of Climate Change and Fire Smoke, a three-hour seminar at the 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science conference.

Public Release: 17-Feb-2012

2012 AAAS Annual Meeting

Nature
Scientists learn how to 'out run damage' with imaging technique
"From the beginning, the resolution of images recorded by biologists has been limited by damage due to the radiation used," said physicist John C. H. Spence, a Regents' Professor in physics at Arizona State University. "But what happens if a pulse of imaging radiation is used that terminates before damage begins, yet contains sufficient photons to generate a useful scattering pattern?"

National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy


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