A process that spins starch into fine strands could take the sting out of removing bandages, as well as produce less expensive and more environmentally-friendly toilet paper, napkins and other products, according to Penn State food scientists.
"There are many applications for starch fibers," said Lingyan Kong, graduate student, food science, "Starch is the most abundant and also the least expensive of natural polymers."
Using a decision support system for ordering chest CT examinations translates into positive examinations three-quarters of the time, a new study shows.
The study, conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, of 93,818 chest CT examinations done with the assistance of a decision support system, found that 76% of patients had a positive finding on their CT.
Blacksburg, Va., May 1, 2012 - Virginia Tech released today the results of its 2012 rating for adult football helmets that is designed to assess a helmet's ability to reduce the risk of concussion. A total of three helmets achieved a "5 star" mark, which is the highest rating awarded by the Virginia Tech Helmet Ratings™. In addition to the Riddell Revolution Speed, which was the only helmet to receive 5 stars last year, the Rawlings Quantum Plus and Riddell 360 also earned 5 stars as the best available helmets.
On 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
It will take Venus about six hours to complete its transit, appearing as a small black dot on the Sun's surface, in an event that will not happen again until 2117.
In this month's Physics World, Jay M Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, Massachusetts, explores the science behind Venus's transit and gives an account of its fascinating history.
"The ACL, like other ligaments and tendons, is a fibrous cable-like structure," Pins said. "So the original idea was to use thin collagen threads, bundled into cables that mimic the natural structures in the body, as a scaffold for the tissue engineering that would be used to replace the ACL.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Researchers at the University at Buffalo School of Management have proposed a better way of measuring the capabilities of IT service providers in a study recently published in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
Everyone wants to present themselves in the best light - especially when it comes to finding a partner. Some rely on supplying honest information about their attributes while others exaggerate for good effect. A new study by researchers at the University of Bristol, published in PNAS, has discovered how male crickets could use similar tactics to attract a mate.
Climate researchers are producing some of the fastest growing datasets in science. Five years ago, the amount of information generated for the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report was 35 terabytes—equivalent to the amount of text in 35 million books, occupying a bookshelf 248 miles (399 km) long. By 2014, when the next IPCC report is published, experts predict that 2 petabytes of data will have been generated for it—that's a 580 percent increase in data production.
An extraordinary outburst produced by a black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of old, volatile stellar black holes. The discovery, made by astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, provides new insight into the nature of a mysterious class of black holes that can produce as much energy in X-rays as a million suns radiate at all wavelengths.
It's very difficult to kick a star out of the galaxy.
In fact, the primary mechanism that astronomers have come up with that can give a star the two-million-plus mile-per-hour kick it takes requires a close encounter with the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core.
So far astronomers have found 16 of these "hypervelocity" stars. Although they are traveling fast enough to eventually escape the galaxy's gravitational grasp, they have been discovered while they are still inside the galaxy.
New research published online in the FASEB Journal suggests that a specific enzyme, called 5-lipoxygenase, plays a key role in cell death induced by microgravity environments, and that inhibiting this enzyme will likely help prevent or lessen the severity of immune problems in astronauts caused by spaceflight. Additionally, since space conditions initiate health problems that mimic the aging process on Earth, this discovery may also lead to therapeutics that extend lives by bolstering the immune systems of the elderly.
Pasadena, CA—The Big Bang produced lots of hydrogen and helium and a smidgen of lithium. All heavier elements found on the periodic table have been produced by stars over the last 13.7 billion years. Astronomers analyze starlight to determine the chemical makeup of stars, the origin of the elements, the ages of stars, and the evolution of galaxies and the universe. Now for the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of arsenic and selenium, neighboring elements near the middle of the periodic table, in an ancient star in the faint stellar halo that surrounds the Milky Way.
Penn State University astronomers using the world's largest radio telescope, at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have discovered flaring radio emission from an ultra-cool star, not much warmer than the planet Jupiter, shattering the previous record for the lowest stellar temperature at which radio waves were detected.
Scientists have discovered that they can dramatically increase the life span of mice with progeria (premature ageing disease) and heart disease (caused by Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy) by reducing levels of a protein called SUN1. This research was done by A*STAR's Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) in collaboration with their partners at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States and the Institute of Cellular and System Medicine in Taiwan.
A water-rich polka dot pattern takes over the traditional rectangular patchwork of fields in this time series animation of 40 years of Landsat images. In the dry Texas panhandle near the town of Dalhart, this transformation is due to center-pivot irrigation, a farming method that improves water distribution to fields. It was invented by farmer Frank Zybach in 1949.