Tech

The ancient city of Rome was not built in a day. It took nearly a decade to build the Colosseum, and almost a century to construct St. Peter's Basilica. But now the city, including these landmarks, can be digitized in just a matter of hours.

A new computer algorithm developed at the University of Washington uses hundreds of thousands of tourist photos to automatically reconstruct an entire city in about a day.

Nanotubes and nanowires are promising building blocks for future integrated nanoelectronic and photonic circuits, nanosensors, interconnects and electro-mechanical nanodevices. But some fundamental issues remain to be resolved – among them, how to position and manipulate the tiny tubes.

MAYWOOD, Il. – A key statistic that consumer groups and the media often use when compiling hospital report cards and national rankings can be misleading, researchers report in a new study.

The statistic is called the mortality index. A number above 1.0 indicates a hospital had more deaths than expected within a given specialty. Lower than 1.0 means there were fewer than the expected number of deaths.

Scientists have found that laser therapy is equivalent to two different dosages of corticosteroid medications for treating vision loss from the blockage of small veins in the back of the eye, a condition known as branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO). Furthermore, laser treatment was shown to have fewer complications for patients.

This research was part of the Standard Care vs. Corticosteroid for Retinal Vein Occlusion (SCORE) Study, a phase III clinical trial conducted at 84 sites and supported by the National Eye Institute (NEI) at the National Institutes of Health.

Treating second-degree burns with a nanoemulsion lotion sharply curbs bacterial growth and reduces inflammation that can otherwise jeopardize recovery, University of Michigan scientists have shown in initial laboratory studies.

U-M burn surgeon Mark R. Hemmila, M.D., reports today at the Interscience Conference for Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy on results achieved with a nanoemulsion developed at U-M and licensed by U-M to Ann Arbor-based NanoBio Corporation.

There are components that save lives: if a car rolls over during an accident, the 'B-pillar' plays a key role. It forms one of the connections between the floor and roof of the vehicle and is designed to prevent the passenger cell from deforming too much. The materials from which the B-pillar is manufactured therefore need to meet very exacting requirements: to save fuel they need to be ultra-lightweight, yet at the same time need to be tremendously strong and must not break. Yet what does the optimum component actually look like?