ROCHESTER, N.Y. ― Bausch & Lomb today announced that the company's Lo-Torque® lens design demonstrates significantly better rotational recovery, which can lead to more consistent vision, compared with Acuvue's accelerated stabilization design. These findings from two clinical studies were presented at Academy 2009, the American Academy of Optometry annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Tech
Looking sharp and looking for light - Berkeley Lab researchers have engineered a new class of bowtie-shaped devices that capture, filter and steer light at the nanoscale. These "nano-colorsorter" devices act as antennae to focus and sort light in tiny spaces, a useful technique for harvesting broadband light for color-sensitive filters and detectors.
Slowing the growth in U.S. health care spending will most likely require adoption of an array of strategies as well as an improved approach to moving promising strategies into widespread use, according to a new analysis by the RAND Corporation.
The most-promising option for curbing health care spending is changing the way doctors and hospitals are paid to provide care, but implementing such a system must overcome significant obstacles in order to be successful, according to the study published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.
DALLAS – Nov. 11, 2009 – A new national initiative involving UT Southwestern Medical Center will match volunteers who want to take part in medical research studies with the scientists who are leading those studies.
ResearchMatch is a national partnership that will provide a free meeting place – via the Web – where volunteers can be matched to a scientific research project, or clinical trial, for which they might qualify.
Pediatricians and pediatric oncologists express differing views on religion and spirituality, largely based on the types of patients they treat, according to a survey that will appear in the current edition of the journal Social Problems.
Silicon nanowires are attracting significant attention from the electronics industry due to the drive for ever-smaller electronic devices, from cell phones to computers. The operation of these future devices, and a wide array of additional applications, will depend on the mechanical properties of these nanowires. New research from North Carolina State University shows that silicon nanowires are far more resilient than their larger counterparts, a finding that could pave the way for smaller, sturdier nanoelectronics, nanosensors, light-emitting diodes and other applications.
NOAA deployed the seventh in a series of "smart buoys" to monitor weather conditions and water quality in the Chesapeake Bay today. The buoy, located at the mouth of Severn River near Annapolis, Md., will be used by commercial and recreational boaters to navigate safely and provide data for educators and scientists to monitor the Bay's changing conditions.
The Congo Basin — with its massive, lush tropical rain forest — was far different 150 million to 200 million years ago. At that time Africa and South America were part of the single continent Gondwana. The Congo Basin was arid, with a small amount of seasonal rainfall, and few bushes or trees populated the landscape, according to a new geochemical analysis of rare ancient soils.
Zoo Atlanta recently became the first zoological institution in the world to obtain voluntary blood pressure readings from a gorilla. This groundbreaking stride was made possible by the Gorilla Tough Cuff, a blood pressure reading system devised through partnership with the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University researchers are making progress in developing a new type of transistor that uses a finlike structure instead of the conventional flat design, possibly enabling engineers to create faster and more compact circuits and computer chips.
The fins are made not of silicon, like conventional transistors, but from a material called indium-gallium-arsenide. Called finFETs, for fin field-effect-transistors, researchers from around the world have been working to perfect the devices as potential replacements for conventional transistors.
Researchers at Queen's University have found a link between two genes involved in cancer formation in humans, by examining the genes in worms. The groundbreaking discovery provides a foundation for how tumor-forming genes interact, and may offer a drug target for cancer treatment.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- New Mayo Clinic research studied the association between prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels and prostate size and found that routine annual evaluation of prostate growth is not necessarily a predictor for the development of prostate cancer. However the study suggests that if a man's PSA level is rising quickly, a prostate biopsy is reasonable to determine if he has prostate cancer.
MADISON, WI, NOVEMBER 9, 2009 -- Agricultural soils accumulate trace metals, particularly copper and zinc, as a result of their presence in wastes (sewage biosolids and manures) and fungicides that are applied over long periods of time. Regulations and guidelines for tolerable concentrations of these potentially plant-toxic elements in soils are based on the assumption that the toxic effects of the metals are substantially independent and not additive.
A research team at Harvard Medical School estimates 2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance and thus had reduced access to care. That figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001.
The researchers, who released their analysis today, pointedly say the health reform legislation pending in the House and Senate will not significantly affect this grim picture.