CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Many industrial plants depend on water vapor condensing on metal plates: In power plants, the resulting water is then returned to a boiler to be vaporized again; in desalination plants, it yields a supply of clean water. The efficiency of such plants depends crucially on how easily droplets of water can form on these metal plates, or condensers, and how easily they fall away, leaving room for more droplets to form.
Culture
Smartphones and tablets have become an integral part of our daily lives. The capabilities of these handily sized mini-computers seem almost boundless as we phone friends, shoot holiday snaps, lose ourselves in a new music download or access the internet to obtain the boarding card for our next fl ight in comfort. Does it not seem logical, then, that we should make use of these constant companions as the key to our cars, front doors or lockers as well? A few such solutions are already available, but what's still missing is widespread market acceptance.
Shopping is more than the rational exchange of goods against money. Emotions, however, do not only play a role when buying a red sports car or the fiftieth pair of shoes. At the stock exchange or during auctions, bidders also are often influenced by irrational motives. In the current issue of the International Journal of Electronic Commerce, KIT scientists point out that the end price of auctions depends on the framework conditions and the emotional pressure of the bidders (DOI 10.2753/JEC1086-4415170201).
Philadelphia, Pa. (January 3, 2013) – When initial computed tomography (CT) scans show bleeding within the brain after mild head injury, decisions about repeated CT scans should be based on the patient's neurological condition, according to a report in the January issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.
University of Cincinnati research is revealing how gender and civil status shaped devotional networks in 18th century colonial Latin America, and how economically independent, single women played a key role in shaping the spiritual economy of their communities. Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara, a UC assistant professor of history, will present her research on Sunday, Jan. 6, at the annual meeting of the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH), in New Orleans. The conference is held in conjunction with the 127th annual meeting of the American Historical Association.
DURHAM, N.C. -- You're standing in line somewhere and you decide to open a pack of gum. Do you share a piece with the coworker standing to one side of you, or with the stranger on the other?
Most humans would choose the person they know first, if they shared at all.
But bonobos, those notoriously frisky, ardently social great apes of the Congo, prefer to share with a stranger before sharing with an animal they know. In fact, a bonobo will invite a stranger to share a snack while leaving an acquaintance watching helplessly from behind a barrier.
MAYWOOD, Il. - Millions of Americans read physician ratings on websites such as Healthgrades.com, but such ratings are based on scores from an average of only 2.4 patients, a Loyola University Medical Center study has found.
The study of 500 randomly selected urologists found that 79.6 percent of physicians were rated by at least one of the 10 free physician-review websites researchers examined. Eighty-six percent of physicians had positive ratings, with 36 percent receiving highly positive ratings. Healthgrades had the most physician ratings.
In Ethiopia, where more than 1.2 million people are infected with HIV, disclosure of infection by patients is important in the fight against the disease. A new study led by a Brown sociology researcher investigates HIV-positive status disclosure rates among men and women in Africa's second most populous country.
A new paper in Nature looked at the probability of keeping average global temperatures from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels under varying levels of climate policy stringency - basically, mitigation costs. It also sought to quantify and rank the uncertainties associated with efforts to mitigate climate change, including questions about the climate itself, uncertainties related to future technologies and energy demand, and political uncertainties as to when action will be taken.
Reston, Va. (January 2, 2013) – New research published in the January issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine shows that 18F-fludeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) imaging offers significant prognostic stratification information at initial staging for patients with locally advanced breast cancer. When compared to conventional imaging, 18F-FDG PET/CT more accurately showed lesions in the chest, abdomen and bones in a single session, changing management for more than 50 percent of the patients in the study.
Side effects are a major reason that drugs are taken off the market and a major reason why patients stop taking their medications, but scientists are now reporting the development of a new way to predict those adverse reactions ahead of time. The report on the method, which could save patients from severe side effects and save drug companies time and money, appears in ACS' Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.
Even the best medicines in the world can be rendered ineffective if they are not taken as prescribed. The problem known as medication "non-adherence" is a major health issue in the United States, contributing to worse outcomes for people who have diabetes and other chronic diseases.
Now a study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) and the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research has identified a significant factor that contributes to poor drug adherence – ineffective communication.
Many scenarios in business and communication require that two parties share information without either being sure if they can trust the other. Examples include secure auctions and identification at ATM machines. Exploiting the strange properties of the quantum world could be the answer to dealing with such distrust: researchers at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at the National University of Singapore have used the quantum properties of light to perform the world's first demonstration of a 'secure bit commitment' technology.
Medical centers that elect to keep psychiatric files private and separate from the rest of a person's medical record may be doing their patients a disservice, a Johns Hopkins study concludes.
In a survey of psychiatry departments at 18 of the top American hospitals as ranked by U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals in 2007, a Johns Hopkins team learned that fewer than half of the hospitals had all inpatient psychiatric records in their electronic medical record systems and that fewer than 25 percent gave non-psychiatrists full access to those records.
SAN FRANCISCO – January 2, 2013 – A new study finds that certain changes in blood vessels in the eye's retina can be an early warning that a person is at increased risk for glaucoma, an eye disease that slowly robs people of their peripheral vision. Using diagnostic photos and other data from the Australian Blue Mountains Eye Study, the researchers showed that patients who had abnormally narrow retinal arteries when the study began were also those who were most likely to have glaucoma at its 10-year end point.