Music and mathematics have a very intimate relationship - otherwise, it'll just be noise. Well, scientists have figured out a way to actually give music a visual mathematical representation in geometric shapes. It gives a new definition to saying that music is beautiful. Check out one of these geometric musical patterns in the full article.

A team of scientists from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Princeton University have made a new study by ecologically measuring how human settling activities have affected biodiversity according to the absence of large mammals.

Being the first study to utilize such a method, results showed mammals that were affected and how this affects ecosystems. If you want to know more about the results of their study, click on the "read more" link.

Have you ever noticed the way light refracts when passing through a transparent object? That same principle became the basis for many of today's lenses.

In a recent study conducted by Princeton University scientists, a way to bend light in a manner which can aid advances in areas such as high-speed communications, medical diagnostics, and even detection of terrorist threats may have been just discovered.

The new principle is based on a new substance called "metamaterials", which are made out of metals and semiconductors arranged in very small alternating patterns that modify their collective properties. This allows them to refract light in the opposite direction and allows new applications that cannot be accomplished by conventional means.

Metamaterials possess a negative index of refraction on a completely opposite scale compared to normal lenses. So what does this mean exactly? One of the most practical uses for this would be the possibility of manufacturing flat lenses instead of curved ones, which are far cheaper and easier to make considering the availability of the materials needed to make metamaterials.

Also, less light is lost when using metamaterials. This extends the possibility of creating lenses with a magnifying power many times over the current microscopes we have. The study of mid-infrared lenses made out of metamaterials is already being conducted by a multi-institutional research center called the Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE).

MIRTHE, lastly, is looking into the possibility of using a new type of laser that relies on mid-infrared lenses for medical purposes, as well as a way to study the environment by detecting trace amounts of gases in the atmosphere and human breath.

Listen up, insomniacs! Princeton University researchers have found that for every sleep you miss out on, you are actually depriving yourself of new brain cells. According to the Princeton team, lack of sleep "affected the hippocampus, a brain region involved in forming memories."

Using the ever-dependable lab rats, they discovered that those who lacked rest had higher levels of corticosterone, a stress hormone. Apart from this, they produced significantly lesser new brain cells in th hippocampus area. What this suggests is that the elevated stress hormone levels due to sleep deprivation have a direct effect on the production of brain cells.

Says Dr. Neil Stanley of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, "It is an interesting finding. It would be interesting to see if partial deprivation - getting a little bit less sleep every night that you need - had the same effect."

Are you listening, gamers? So don't lose sleep over a game. Trust us, you'd need them new brain cells to overcome the big boss over at the next level.

With the growing number of people getting infected with HIV, there certainly is a clamor for a cure. But what to do when it seems to be ever-evasive? The disease, after all, is no laughing matter, and has in fact brought a lot of stigma to those who have it.

But despite the really dark clouds looming over those unfortunate enough to have contacted the virus, a silver lining seems to be peeking out from the sky in the persona of Leor Weinberger and Thomas Shenk. The two are scientists from Princeton, and it is their belief that it may actually be possible to deactivate lingering viral infections such as HIV and herpes with a flick of a genetic switch - albeit indefinitely.

Based on their study, they found out that Tat, an HIV protein, plays "a major part in initiating and also interrupting the cascade of chemical reactions that leads to full-blown infection." Through this, they have then theorized that the Tat protein and enzymes that modify it plays the role of a "resistor."

"The resistor paradigm is a helpful way to think about how HIV enters and exits latency, and it might serve as a useful model for latent infections by other viruses as well," says Shenk.

If their theory works, then we just might be seeing the start to an actual solution for the HIV problems that have affected lives of millions of people, even an entire continent. To read more about this finding, click on the Read link below.

In case you haven't yet encountered it, Sudoku is the latest rage among middle-school nerds and others looking for a "different" sort of mental challenge. It is a mathematical puzzle that involves filling in a grid of 81 squares with varying combinations of the numbers one to nine in which the same numeral cannot appear more than once in any given row across or down, or in any group of nine adjacent squares.

Sounds simple? Well, while some mathematicians over the centuries have suggested that God can be found in numbers, but you'll have a Devil of a time solving a Sudoku puzzle - and with a good reason. Doing Sudoku involves neural pathways that even the most powerful computers can't replicate. Computer scientists now say that studying the way in which humans solve Sudoku puzzles may lead to the development of more intelligent computers.

According to a paper published by John Hopfield of Princeton University, humans brains use a unique set of neural pathways known as "associative memory." This is the process by which we discover patters by studying a partial clue, or as Sherlock Holmes might say, "from one, deduce the whole." Computers can store and process huge amounts of data at blistering speeds, but associative memory is beyond their current capabilities.

In his paper, Hopfield provides an algorithm of associative memory. He believes this algorithm could be implemented in silicon chips. "[Associative memory] may account for our strong psychological feeling of 'right' or 'wrong' when we retrieve a memory from a minimal clue," says Hopfield. "This fact may account for our strong psychological feeling of 'right' or 'wrong' when we retrieve a memory from a minimal clue."

An Australian colleague, computer scientist Andrew Paplinski believes that Hopfield's model could lead to more accurate facial recognition computer technology.

Which way is North? Princeton scientists say they have evidence that today's North Pole could have been originally located along the equatorial line. What's more interesting is that the planetary somersault may have been caused by an erupting supervolcano. Either that, or a mountain range so large that it created an imbalance in the Earth's rotation. To illustrate the major shift in the Earth's axis, the scientists ask one to imagine Alaska at the equator. This theory is not new and has been around for 140 years, but the evidence is most definitely new...

The magnetic grains discovered by scientists in layers of rock sediment on the ocean floor are like entries in Earth’s diary. When rock particles sink to the ocean floor to form layers of new sediment, tiny magnetic grains align with the magnetic lines of the Earth. As the rock hardens it becomes a reliable record of where Earth’s magnetic field was pointing at the time of the rock’s formation. If dramatic geological event did take place, the magnetic grains will have an different orientation than present day rock formation.

Known as the True Polar Wander, the theory suggests that if an object of sufficient weight  formed far from the equator, the planet’s rotation would gradually pull the heavy object away from the axis which the Earth spins around. If the supervolcano or some massive formation caused the Earth's spin to become imbalanced, the planet would tilt and rotate until the  extra weight was relocated to a point along the equator. Incidentally, polar wander is not the same as continental drift.

“The sediments we have recovered from Norway offer the first good evidence that a true polar wander event happened about 800 million years ago,” said Adam Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences. “If we can find good corroborating evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this sort of dramatic change.”

In case were you wondering if Earth will do another somersault, Maloof says probably not. "The Earth’s surface is pretty well balanced today.”

Let's just take his word for it for now...

Previous research has shown that taller people get paid more, for some strange reason. Now, it seems, taller people have been found to be smarter, according to a new study.

According to researchers Anne Case and Christina Paxson on Princeton University, "As early as age three - before schooling has had a chance to play a role - and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests." In addition to this, they relate the acquiring of higher salaries by tall people as related to the jobs they choose, which seem to require more of a person mentally. Of course, they also mention that how the person is taken care of in his early years will also impact their future mental acuity.

One strange thing about this, though. Their findings were mostly based on two British studies examining kids born in 1958 and 1970. Not exactly a big indicator of current trends in intelligence, but for tall people with low self-esteem, that should be a boost, at the very least.

You can purchase the study if you wish, but their abstract can be acquired for free from the National Bureau of Economic Research Wesbite:

It has long been recognized that taller adults hold jobs of higher status and, on average, earn more than other workers. A large number of hypotheses have been put forward to explain the association between height and earnings. In developed countries, researchers have emphasized factors such as self esteem, social dominance, and discrimination. In this paper, we offer a simpler explanation: On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter. As early as age 3 — before schooling has had a chance to play a role — and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests. The correlation between height in childhood and adulthood is approximately 0.7 for both men and women, so that tall children are much more likely to become tall adults. As adults, taller individuals are more likely to select into higher paying occupations that require more advanced verbal and numerical skills and greater intelligence, for which they earn handsome returns. Using four data sets from the US and the UK, we find that the height premium in adult earnings can be explained by childhood scores on cognitive tests. Furthermore, we show that taller adults select into occupations that have higher cognitive skill requirements and lower physical skill demands.

For 35 years, scientists have been puzzled as to why deuterium appears to be distributed unevenly in the Milky Way Galaxy. A deuterium by the way is a stable isotope of Hydrogen, present in all the oceans of the earth. However, it also exists in space where it was supposed to be burned forever during star formations; thus, it was considered as a way to trace star formations. The less deuterium, the more stars present in that certain part of the sector.

A recent discovery by NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite seems to be supporting a theory presented by Princeton University's Bruce Draine that deuterium might preferentially be bonded to interstellar dust grains. The satellite is detecting telltale spectral fingerprints of deuterium in the ultraviolet energy range. The higher the interstellar dust, the lower deuterium - and vice versa.

Therefore, the decrease of deuterium in a sector does not necessarily mean that there are more star formations there, but rather that the deuterium may have bonded itself to interstellar dust. Scientists are now rethinking the whole chemical evolution of galaxies.

You might think it's no biggie, but imagine growing up thinking you're a woman and later on finding out that you're actually a man biologically (it happens!)? If what Draine thinks is true, it could shake up the very foundations of existing knowledge about space. Now that a more credible institution is supporting his claims, you might want to take a look under those pants, errr, skies.