Road block: Economists predict that there will be two billion motor vehicles on the roads by 2030, as private vehicle ownership spreads to the developing world. The image shows an urban motorway in Beijing, China. (Photo: Bev Sykes.) From the sheer amount of bad news coming through the 24/7 news cycle, one may get the impression that the world is on the road to apocalypse. To counter this impre...

This article summarizes key incentives for vendors, users, government and individuals to participate in the standardization process. It argues that standards can expand markets at all points in the market life cycle, with overall impact measured in billions of dollars. The authors hope to encourage standards involvement, and also future research and analysis that might quantify the financial va...

Although it has been possible to transfer electrocardiograms via a phone line for more than 100 years, use of internet-based patient monitoring and communication systems in daily care is uncommon. Despite the introduction of numerous health-monitoring devices, and despite most patients having internet access, the implementation of individualised healthcare services is still limited. On the othe...

Bandgap engineering of graphene is an essential step toward employing graphene in electronic and sensing applications. Recently, graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) were used to create a bandgap in graphene and function as a semiconducting switch. Although GNRs with widths of <10 nm have been achieved, problems like GNR alignment, width control, uniformity, high aspect ratios, and edge roughness must b...

An adult human being has about 100 000 billion cells. The nucleus of each cell carries all our genetic material: a total of two meters of DNA containing some 30 000 genes. When genes are expressed (activated), genetic information is copied from DNA to messenger molecules, messenger RNA (mRNA), which then orchestrate formation of proteins. Proteins are involved in the life processes of all organ...

By analogy with Earth, methane in the Martian atmosphere is a potential signature of ongoing or past biological activity. During the past decade, Earth-based telescopic observations reported "plumes" of methane of tens of parts per billion by volume (ppbv), and those from Mars orbit showed localized patches, prompting speculation of sources from subsurface bacteria or nonbiological sources. Fro...

Estella Lewis’s handbook for teachers, Teaching History in Secondary Schools, published 1960, is examined to reflect upon the teaching of history UK during postwar period, a text that addresses “problem” “non-academic” children attending secondary modern schools. ideas, attitudes, and values towards this question are explored fully order show her contesting education aims, content, methods. Her...

Bustling around their reef homes, Red Sea dascyllus damselfish (Dascyllus marginatus) do quite well out of their co-habiting arrangement with hood coral (Stylophora pistillata). ‘The coral provide the fish with shelter from predators and a place for social interactions and egg laying’, says Nur Garcia-Herrera, from the Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Germany. Yet the agreement isn’t entirely one sided...

Story of a billboard I have been standing in the middle of a busy crossroad in front of a bustling market in the center of Hanoi for almost 20 years. The people who gave birth to me were from the city’s Propaganda Department. They built me with a large metal frame to make sure market goers notice me. My first outfit was the picture of a young couple and their two cute kids. The husband, a facto...