GEN-ERIC News

Britain is preparing territorial claims on tens of thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean floor around the Falklands, Ascension Island and Rockall in the hope of annexing potentially lucrative gas, mineral and oil fields, the Guardian has learned. The UK claims, to be lodged at the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, exploit a novel legal approach that is transforming the international politics of underwater prospecting. Britain is accelerating its process of submitting applications to the UN - which is fraught with diplomatic sensitivities, not least with Argentina - before an international deadline for registering interests.

Microwaves used for zapping instant meals can also be used to determine the fat and salt content of supermarket food, according to research carried out at two Manchester universities. One of the research team, PhD student Sing Kwei Ng, has scooped a top industry prize for his work to determine the amount of fat in beef. The study began after researchers realised that as microwaves heat different types of food at different rates, they must also be sensitive to food content such as water, salt and fat. The aim of the project is to develop a new fast and non-invasive method of predicting the fat content in meat products. This type of constant real-time monitoring during the production process could help reduce waste, maximise yield, reduce laboratory testing and save energy.

A system in the brain already known to regulate food intake also serves as a direct “remote control” for the way fat is stored and metabolized in the body, say University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers. What is known as the melanocortin system, the researchers say, controls fat metabolism and the way it accumulates in the body completely independently of food intake. The finding, the researchers report, could lead to the development of new and urgently needed medications to treat the growing, worldwide obesity epidemic. The melanocortin system was previously identified as a “control loop” in the central nervous system (CNS) that receives hormonal signals from the gut—like those given off by “hunger” and “satiety” hormones such as ghrelin and leptin—and responds to these sensations of hunger or fullness by causing the body to either ingest or burn calories. Tschöp and colleagues say that beyond responding to signals of hunger or satiety, the melanocortin system also controls whether extra energy (glucose) will be converted to fat and whether it will be stored or metabolized. “Understanding how specific CNS circuits directly control fat storage and metabolism is essential in order to achieve a breakthrough in this important area of research,” the authors write.

Why do some juries take weeks to reach a verdict, while others take just hours? How do judges pick the perfect beauty queen from a sea of very similar candidates? We have all wondered exactly why we did not win a certain award. Now, new psychological research explains how groups come to a collective decision. Jean-François Bonnefon, a University of Toulouse psychologist, conducted the first empirical investigation of the “doctrinal paradox.” This occurs when judges, say a hiring committee or a jury, must evaluate several factors about a candidate, (e.g. a possible employee or a defendant in a trial) and come to a majority decision. When different opinions arise, the way they conduct the majority vote can be more important than the opinions themselves. For example, a seven-judge committee must decide whether to promote a candidate to a position requiring a young, trilingual person. Each judge estimates whether the candidate is young, and whether she is trilingual. In the end, 4 out of 7 judges think she is young and 4 out of 7 think that she is trilingual, but only two of the judges think she is both. How should the committee proceed” They can all vote on the profile, and reject the candidate, or they can vote separately on each criterion and promote the candidate. Bonnefon investigated which voting procedure was preferred by judges, and how this preference could change in different contexts.

Once, again, Boston has been subjected to a bomb scare concerning an odd circuit board. Star Simpson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, was arrested at gunpoint Friday morning at Logan Airport when authorities suspected she had a bomb strapped to her chest. Simpson was wearing a black sweatshirt that had a circuit board with wires, green LED lights and a 9-volt battery attached to it. When an airport employee asked about her shirt, Simpson walked away without answering so the employee called the authorities, the Boston Globe has reported. The back of Simpson’s sweatshirt said “socket to me…Course VI,” a reference to MIT’s electrical engineering and computer science program.Simpson is a second-year student in the electrical engineering and computer science department of MIT’s School of Engineering, according to the MIT Web site.