HOUSTON, TX—October 2, 2013—Study findings published in the October issue of Cornea show that daily dietary supplementation with a unique combination of omega fatty acids (GLA, EPA and DHA) for six months is effective in improving ocular irritation symptoms and halting the progression of inflammation that characterizes moderate to severe dry eye.
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Exposure to common air pollutants found in diesel exhaust pollution can affect the ability of honeybees to recognise floral odours, new University of Southampton research shows.
Honeybees use floral odours to help locate, identify and recognise the flowers from which they forage.
The Southampton team, led by Dr Tracey Newman and Professor Guy Poppy, found that diesel exhaust fumes change the profile of flora odour. They say that these changes may affect honeybees' foraging efficiency and, ultimately, could affect pollination and thus global food security.
Researchers from Université Laval's Faculty of Medicine and CHU de Québec have shown that it is possible to treat venous ulcers unresponsive to conventional treatment with wound dressings made from human skin grown in vitro. A study published recently in the journal Advances in Skin and Wound Care demonstrates how this approach was successfully used to treat venous lower-extremity ulcers in patients who had been chronically suffering from such wounds.
A team of engineers led by computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, has developed a new approach that marries computer vision and hardware optimization to sort cells up to 38 times faster than is currently possible. The approach could be used for clinical diagnostics, stem cell characterization and other applications.
A new study has found that liquid wastes from hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," that was treated and released into local streams in Pennsylvania still contained elevated levels of salts and other contaminants, which could be dangerous to aquatic life and human health.
The study also reports high levels of radioactive materials in stream sediments at the disposal site. Published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, it states that the scientists recommend use of advanced treatment technologies to further remove the potentially harmful material.
How far above sea level is a place located? And where exactly is "sea level"? It is one objective of the geodesists to answer these questions with 1 cm accuracy. Conventional measurement procedures or GPS technologies via satellites, however, reach their limits here. Now optical atomic clocks offer a new approach, because the tick rate of a clock is influenced by gravity. This well-known, but tiny effect was measured with unprecedented precision in 2010 using two optical clocks – however, they were located at the same institute. Now, up to 2000 km may lie between them.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Elevated levels of radioactivity, salts and metals have been found in river water and sediments at a site where treated water from oil and gas operations is discharged into a western Pennsylvania creek.
"Radium levels were about 200 times greater in sediment samples collected where the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility discharges its treated wastewater into Blacklick Creek than in sediment samples collected just upstream of the plant," said Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment.
Colonies of rock ants (Temnothorax albipennis) need to find ideal homes for the safety and productivity of the queen mother and all of her offspring. They are regularly confronted with the dilemma of whether to move to a better property or remain in their current one, but unlike humans who are susceptible to housing bubbles, ants seem to invest in their housing market in ways that are consistent and rational.
Flowering plants evolved from extinct plants related to conifers, ginkgos, cycads, and seed ferns. The oldest known fossils from flowering plants are pollen grains. These are small, robust and numerous and therefore fossilize more easily than leaves and flowers.
WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 1, 2013 -- A trio of researchers at North Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota have turned to computer modeling to help decide which of two competing materials should get its day in the sun as the nanoscale energy-harvesting technology of future solar panels -- quantum dots or nanowires.
A droplet of silicone oil bounces in place on a vibrating fluid bath.
(Photo Credit: Dan Harris and John Bush/MIT)
A droplet of silicone oil walks across the surface of a vibrating fluid bath.
(Photo Credit: Dan Harris and John Bush/MIT)
JUPITER, FL – October 1, 2013 – The membranes surrounding and inside cells are involved in every aspect of biological function. They separate the cell's various metabolic functions, compartmentalize the genetic material, and drive evolution by separating a cell's biochemical activities. They are also the largest and most complex structures that cells synthesize.
Understanding the myriad biochemical roles of membranes requires the ability to prepare synthetic versions of these complex multi-layered structures, which has been a long-standing challenge.
The Energy Department's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently issued a new report, "Non-Hardware ('Soft') Cost-Reduction Roadmap for Residential and Small Commercial Solar Photovoltaics, 2013,"PDF funded by DOE's SunShot Initiative and written by NREL and Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). The report builds off NREL's ongoing soft-cost benchmarking analysis and charts a path to achieve SunShot soft-cost targets of $0.65/W for residential systems and $0.44/W for commercial systems by 2020.
If we're to meet a goal set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Renewable Fuels Standard to use 36 billion gallons per year of biofuels—mostly ethanol—the nation must expand its infrastructure for transporting and storing ethanol. Currently, ethanol is transported via trucks, trains, and barges. For the large volumes required in the future, transportation by pipeline is considered to be the most efficient method to get it to customers.
A pair of breakthroughs in the field of silicon photonics by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Micron Technology Inc. could allow for the trajectory of exponential improvement in microprocessors that began nearly half a century ago—known as Moore's Law—to continue well into the future, allowing for increasingly faster electronics, from supercomputers to laptops to smartphones.