September 23, 2011, 10:46 AM EDT
By Leigh Baldwin
Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- A neutrino beam was measured as traveling faster than the speed of light, appearing to break the limit set by Albert Einstein in 1905.
The data come as a “complete surprise” and more research is needed before the results are verified, said Sergio Bertolucci, research director at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said in an e-mailed statement today.
Neutrinos, subatomic particles fired from CERN’s Geneva base to a laboratory 730 kilometers (454 miles) away in Gran Sasso, Italy, were clocked at a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light, the organization said. The tests first produced unusual results last year, with scientists spending the ensuing months trying to rule out any flaw in their methods that could have skewed the numbers.
“To me as a theoretician it screams systemic error,” Roberto Trotta, an astrophysicist at Imperial College, London, said in a telephone interview. “There is probably something in the experiment that the experimenters still don’t understand.”
Scientists involved in the trial said the research has been examined closely since the results occurred.
“After many months of studies and cross checks we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement,” said Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern in Switzerland, who worked on the research.
Replicate Experiment
Now the task is to replicate CERN’s experiment, possibly in Japan where there are several neutrino detectors, the most complex piece of equipment required, Trotta said. Until then, it’s too early to draw conclusions, he said.
“It’s not the first time you’re getting unexpected results from neutrino experiments,” Trotta said.
CERN’s findings fit with those of a 2007 experiment by the University of Minnesota, Subir Sarkar, a physicist at Oxford University in the U.K. They also chime with data recorded in 1987, when Japanese observers detected neutrinos from an explhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifoding star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy visible from the earth’s southern hemisphere, hours before the supernova was seen by an amateur astrologer in New Zealand, he said.
“The implications are that Einstein’s special relativity is wrong and that’s earth-shattering stuff,” Trotta said.
Still, the most likely explanation is a mistake by CERN, not Einstein, Trotta said. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,” he said.
Business Week
Friday, September 23, 2011
Neutrinos Caught Speeding May Break Einstein’s Cosmic Limit
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Girls may learn math anxiety from female teachers
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer – Mon Jan 25, 7:44 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Little girls may learn to fear math from the women who are their earliest teachers. Despite gains in recent years, women still trail men in some areas of math achievement, and the question of why has provoked controversy. Now, a study of first- and second-graders suggests what may be part of the answer: Female elementary school teachers who are concerned about their own math skills could be passing that along to the little girls they teach.
Young students tend to model themselves after adults of the same sex, and having a female teacher who is anxious about math may reinforce the stereotype that boys are better at math than girls, explained Sian L. Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago.
Beilock and colleagues studied 52 boys and 65 girls in classes taught by 17 different teachers. Ninety percent of U.S. elementary school teachers are women, as were all of those in this study.
Student math ability was not related to teacher math anxiety at the start of the school year, the researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But by the end of the year, the more anxious teachers were about their own math skills, the more likely their female students — but not the boys — were to agree that "boys are good at math and girls are good at reading."
In addition, the girls who answered that way scored lower on math tests than either the classes' boys or the girls who had not developed a belief in the stereotype, the researchers found.
"It's actually surprising in a way, and not. People have had a hunch that teachers could impact the students in this way, but didn't know how it might do so in gender-specific fashion," Beilock said in a telephone interview.
Beilock, who studies how anxieties and stress can affect people's performance, noted that other research has indicated that elementary education majors at the college level have the highest levels of math anxiety of any college major.
"We wanted to see how that impacted their performance," she said.
After seeing the results, the researchers recommended that the math requirements for obtaining an elementary education teaching degree be rethought.
"If the next generation of teachers — especially elementary school teachers — is going to teach their students effectively, more care needs to be taken to develop both strong math skills and positive math attitudes in these educators," the researchers wrote.
Janet S. Hyde, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the study a "great paper, very clever research."
"It squares with an impression I've had for a long time," said Hyde, who was not part of the research team.
Hyde was lead author of a 2008 study showing women gaining on men in math skills but still lagging significantly in areas such as physics and engineering.
Girls who grow up believing females lack math skills wind up avoiding harder math classes, Hyde noted.
"It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," she said.
Beilock did note that not all of the girls in classrooms with math-anxious teachers fell prey to the stereotype, but "teachers are one source," she said.
Teacher math anxiety was measured on a 25-question test about situations that made them anxious, such as reading a cash register receipt or studying for a math test. A separate test checked the math skills of the teachers, who worked in a large Midwestern urban school district.
Student math skills were tested in the first three months of the school year and again in the last two months of the year.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
AP
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Boom in tiny bedbugs is causing big trouble
By Barbara Barrett, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Fri May 15, 5:50 pm ET
WASHINGTON — The biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II has sent a collective shudder among apartment dwellers, college students and business travelers across the nation.
The bugs — reddish brown, flat and about the size of a grain of rice — suck human blood. They resist many pesticides and spread quickly in certain mattress-heavy buildings, such as hotels, dormitories and apartment complexes.
Two shelters have closed temporarily in Charlotte, N.C. , because of bedbugs, a Yahoo chat group dedicates itself to sufferers and countless bedbug blogs provide forums for news, tips and commiseration. State inspectors say that more emphasis may be needed to tackle the creatures.
Federal officials have taken notice of the resurgence. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency held its first-ever bedbug summit, and now a North Carolina congressman wants to take on the insect.
Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield just introduced legislation that would authorize $50 million that's already in the Department of Commerce budget to train health inspectors how to recognize signs of the insects.
The Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2009 also would require public housing agencies to submit bedbug inspection plans to the federal government. It would add bedbugs to a rodent and cockroach program in the Department of Health and Human Services . It also would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research bedbugs' impact on public mental health.
Butterfield's letter to congressional colleagues about the legislation attracted lots of attention: It was topped with a full-color picture of the insect sitting on human skin.
"Unfortunately, in recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence in bedbugs," the letter reads. "That's right — they're back in the sack — and biting."
Bedbugs have hit hotels and homes in every state. The creatures are amazing hitchhikers, experts say, and easily travel in suitcases, boxes or packages. They can live for up to a year without food.
Apparently no state has a central reporting system for bedbugs, according to Butterfield's office, and since the bug carries no known diseases, many health departments don't consider it a public health threat.
That leaves the critters falling through the cracks among regulators, said Michael Potter , an entomologist at the University of Kentucky and one of the country's bedbug experts.
"Most health departments say, 'Hey, we don't deal with bedbugs,' " Potter said.
Those who've suffered outbreaks say that the anxiety it induces can be debilitating. Potter said many sufferers tossed out furniture and could spend thousands of dollars on repeated treatments from pesticide companies. They call him about anxiety, insomnia, shame and the incessant annoyance of itchy red welts on their skin.
"They're, like, ready to blow their brains out," Potter said. "It's emotionally distressing. Anyone that has never had a bedbug problem is not one to judge whether we're dealing with a medical, emotional public health issue."
In Congress , Butterfield first introduced his bill a year ago after hearing from a constituent who'd brought bedbugs into her home from a hotel trip. The bill died in committee last year, but Butterfield aides say they hope that higher attention will help the measure this year.
The co-sponsors include Reps. Don Young , R- Alaska , Ben Chandler , D- Ky. , Bobby L. Rush , D- Ill. , Betty McCollum , D- Minn. , Corrine Brown , D- Fla. , Steve Cohen , D- Tenn. , Brad Miller , D- N.C. , and Eddie Bernice Johnson , D- Texas .
Butterfield also has received support from the National Pest Management Association , which says that bedbug calls to pest control companies are up 70 percent in the past five years.
Greg Baumann , a Raleigh, N.C. , pest control expert and the vice president of technical services for the National Pest Management Association , said that a decade ago few pest control companies dealt routinely with bedbugs.
"Now it's everyone today," he said.
Baumann said companies could use pesticides on the bugs but that they also tried such alternatives as extreme heat, freezing and isolating the insects through mattress covers.
Since the EPA restricted the use of several effective pesticides in the 1980s, bedbugs have built resistance to the chemicals that now are on the market, said Potter, the University of Kentucky entomologist. Public education is important, he said, but the industry also needs a good insecticide.
"Whether that bill is going to solve the problem — certainly it's a start," he said.
