UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS - While teaching a course on financial information analysis, Asst. Prof. Panos Patatoukas observed that capital market participants and policy makers are increasingly turning to accounting earnings data from corporate financial reports for hints regarding the prospects of the aggregate stock market. This observation indicated that, at the aggregate level, accounting earnings data could be relevant for gauging the value of the entire stock market.
Tech
DURHAM, N.C. -- The cost of complying with tougher EPA air-quality standards could spur an increased shift away from coal and toward natural gas for electricity generation, according to a new Duke University study.
The stricter regulations on sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and mercury may make nearly two-thirds of the nation's coal-fired power plants as expensive to run as plants powered by natural gas, the study finds.
(Boston) – Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have shown that using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure blood flow over atherosclerotic plaques could help identify plaques at risk for thrombosis. The findings, which appear in the March issue of Circulation Cardiovascular Imaging, offer a non-invasive application in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with atherosclerosis.
A research team led by Professor Makoto Fujita of the University of Tokyo, Japan, and complemented by Academy Professor Kari Rissanen of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, has made a fundamental breakthrough in single-crystal X-ray analysis, the most powerful method for molecular structure determination. The team's breakthrough was reported in Nature on 28 March 2013 (published online 27 March 2013).
COLUMBUS, Ohio—Two annually dated ice cores drawn from the tropical Peruvian Andes reveal Earth's tropical climate history in unprecedented detail—year by year, for nearly 1,800 years.
Researchers at The Ohio State University retrieved the cores from a Peruvian ice cap in 2003, and then noticed some startling similarities to other ice cores that they had retrieved from Tibet and the Himalayas. Patterns in the chemical composition of certain layers matched up, even though the cores were taken from opposite sides of the planet.
Analysis of a bronze battering ram from a 2000 year-old warship sheds light on how such an object would have been made in ancient times.
Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.
While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life.
Low testosterone levels may herald the subsequent development of rheumatoid arthritis in men, suggests research published online in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
Sex hormones are thought to play a part in the development of rheumatoid arthritis, and both men and women with the condition tend to have lower levels of testosterone in their blood than healthy people. But it is not clear whether this is a contributory factor or a consequence of the disease.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University, and the University of Crete in Greece have found a new way to switch magnetism that is at least 1000 times faster than currently used in magnetic memory technologies. Magnetic switching is used to encode information in hard drives, magnetic random access memory and other computing devices. The discovery, reported in the April 4 issue of Nature, potentially opens the door to terahertz and faster memory speeds.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- When a current passes between two electrodes — one thinner than the other — it creates a wind in the air between. If enough voltage is applied, the resulting wind can produce a thrust without the help of motors or fuel.
Migrations happen for a reason, not randomly. A new study, based on computer simulation, attempts to explain the effect of so-called directional migration – migration for a reason – on cooperative behaviours and social cohesion. These results appear in a study about to be published in EPJ B by Hongyan Cheng from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and colleagues.
In their latest experiment, Prof. Andrea Cavalleri from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter at the Hamburg-based Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) and Dr. Michael Gensch from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) investigated together with other colleagues from the HZDR, the United Kingdom, and Japan if and how superconductivity can be systematically controlled. The objective of their research is to improve the usability of superconducting materials for such new technologies as, for example, the processing of information.
Although bladder cancer is the sixth most common form of cancer in the U.S. and the most expensive to treat, the basic method that doctors use to treat it hasn't changed much in more than 70 years.
Research from the University of Cincinnati shows that perhaps the ancient Puebloans weren't as into the maize craze as once thought.
Nikki Berkebile, a graduate student in anthropology in UC's McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, has been studying the subsistence habits of Puebloans, or Anasazi, who lived on the southern rim of the Grand Canyon in the late 11th century. Traditional ethnographic literature indicates these ancient American Indians were heavily dependent on maize as a food source, but Berkebile isn't so sure about that.
PITTSBURGH—Beekeepers and researchers nationally are reporting growing evidence that a powerful new class of pesticides may be killing off bumblebees. Now, research at the University of Pittsburgh points toward another potential cause: metal pollution from aluminum and nickel.