Tech

Children with high proportions of poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in cord blood at birth are more likely to develop respiratory and skin allergies in their early teens, according to research published July 10 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Malin Barman and colleagues from the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

Preparing semiconductor quantum dots is sometimes more of a black art than a science. That presents an obstacle to further progress in, for example, creating better solar cells or lighting devices, where quantum dots offer unique advantages that would be particularly useful if they could be used as basic building blocks for constructing larger nanoscale architectures.

Everyone knows that as we grow older our bones become more fragile. Now a team of U.S. and German scientists led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley has shown that this bone-aging process can be significantly accelerated through deficiency of vitamin D - the sunshine vitamin.

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have many advantages over their silicon-based counterparts. They offer transparency, low cost, and high power conversion efficiencies under cloudy and artificial light conditions. However, until now their overall efficiency has been lower than silicon-based solar cells, mostly because of the inherent voltage loss during the regeneration of the sensitizing dye.

Fears of depleting the Earth's supply of oil are unwarranted, according to new research, which concludes that the demand for oil – as opposed to the supply – will reach its own peak and then decline.

"Peak oil" prognosticators have painted pictures of everything from a calm development of alternatives to calamitous shortages, panic and even social collapse as the world reaches its peak of oil production – and then supplies fall.

Rosemont, IL (July 8, 2013) –There have been dramatic decreases in the number and severity of lower limb amputations over the past decade, according to a new study published in the July 2013 issue of Foot & Ankle International. At the same time, orthopaedic advances in treating diabetic foot ulcers have become more commonplace, hopefully decreasing the need for amputation.

New research has shown surface ice melt will be the dominant process controlling ice-loss from Greenland. As outlet glaciers retreat inland the other process, iceberg production, remains important but will not grow as rapidly.

The Greenland ice sheet is often considered an important potential contributor to future global sea-level rise over the next century or longer. In total, it contains an amount of ice that would lead to a rise of global sea level by more than seven metres, if completely melted.

Pre-eclampsia affects 3-5% of pregnant women and can lead to preterm delivery, prematurity, perinatal morbidity and mortality. Although preterm birth and low birth weight are associated with excess risk of CP, the causes remain largely unknown.

Some studies have found an excess risk of CP in children born at term from mothers with pre-eclampsia while others have reported no association.

Introductory chemistry students learn that oil and water repel each other. So do other hydrophobic substances, which carry no electric charge, and hydrophilic substances, which carry an electric charge that allows them to mix with water.

HOUSTON – (July 9, 2013) – A Rice University laboratory pioneering memory devices that use cheap, plentiful silicon oxide to store data has pushed them a step further with chips that show the technology's practicality.

The team led by Rice chemist James Tour has built a 1-kilobit rewritable silicon oxide device with diodes that eliminate data-corrupting crosstalk.

A paper on the new work appears this week in the journal Advanced Materials.

Using nanostructured glass, scientists at the University of Southampton have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional digital data by femtosecond laser writing. The storage allows unprecedented parameters including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1000°C and practically unlimited lifetime.

Global atmospheric change, stagnation of yield increases, uncertain societal acceptance, and government policies are some of the greatest barriers to meeting the growing demand for food, feed and fuel from our major crops, said guest lecturer Stephen Long at the 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and World Food Prize Foundation (WFPF) Charles Valentine Riley Memorial Lecture on June 25 in Washington, D.C.

While the results may not be representative of the UK as a whole, nevertheless, excess drinking and drug taking in pregnancy is a pairing that is likely to be more common than generally thought, say the authors.

It is known that women prescribed maintenance methadone use other illicit drugs, but the extent to which they do this has never been quantified in the UK, nor are there any figures on the prevalence of drug and alcohol use during pregnancy for this group of women, they add.

Buyers want larger size animals to obtain the maximum meat yield, so go for thoroughbreds and riding horses, the study indicates.

The researchers looked at the animals put up for sale at seven randomly selected auction markets in Britain in August and September 2011, and the type preferred by dealers buying on behalf of abattoirs.

The auctions were in North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Wales (Powys), Berkshire and Cheshire and traded equines only, but of all types, breed and age.

Carbon capture and storage has been heralded as a new technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In an effort to help slow climate change, human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) is captured at point-source emitters like power stations and sequestered in underground rocks. In porous rocks like sandstone, the CO2 is trapped in tiny spaces or pores, which act like a sponge and soak up the injected fluid.