Tech

DENVER — Young adults from middle income families are more likely to rack up student loan debt—and in greater amounts—than students from both lower and higher income backgrounds, finds new research to be presented at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Although George Church's next book doesn't hit the shelves until Oct. 2, it has already passed an enviable benchmark: 70 billion copies—roughly triple the sum of the top 100 books of all time. But they fit on your thumbnail.

That's because Church, the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and his team encoded the book, "Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves", in DNA, which they then read and copied.

TUCSON, Ariz. (August 17, 2012) -- Mo Ehsani, Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the University of Arizona, has designed a new, lightweight underground pipe he says could transform the pipeline construction industry.

Instead of conventional concrete or steel, Ehsani's new pipe consists of a central layer of lightweight plastic honeycomb, similar to that used in the aerospace industry, sandwiched between layers of resin-saturated carbon fiber fabric.

The ocean, the ground, rocks and trees act as carbon drains but are far from places where greenhouses gases are concentrated, especially CO2. A Spanish researcher has proposed human, agricultural and livestock waste, such as urine, as a way to absorb this gas.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate's (S&T) new low-cost device for dismantling dangerous pipe bombs may look like a tinkerer's project, but that's no accident. The Semi Autonomous Pipe Bomb End-cap Remover (SAPBER) is unassuming in appearance, but sophisticated enough to preserve the forensic evidence needed to track down the perpetrator.

DENVER — Almost half of college students judge men and women with similar sexual histories by the same standard and hold equally negative attitudes towards both their male and female peers who they believe hook up "too much," suggests new research to be presented at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Engineers at a company co-founded by a University of Texas at Dallas professor have identified a material that can reduce the pollution produced by vehicles that run on diesel fuel.

The material, from a family of minerals called oxides, could replace platinum, a rare and expensive metal that is currently used in diesel engines to try to control the amount of pollution released into the air.

A team of researchers led by George Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor, has already broken new engineering ground with the development of soft, silicone-based robots inspired by creatures like starfish and squid.

Now, they're working to give those robots the ability to disguise themselves.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Almost 41 percent of Ohioans have visited a lake, pond, river or creek in the state in the past year, and of those, nearly one-half usually spend their water-related recreational time at Lake Erie, according to preliminary findings in a new report.

These figures and other findings in the report suggest that Ohio residents value their lakes and rivers, and particularly Lake Erie, as natural resources, but also help to clarify the risk that Ohioans face from contaminants in those same bodies of water, researchers say.

CORAL GABLES, FL (August, 15, 2012)--University of Miami scientists have developed a way to switch fluorescent molecules on and off within aqueous environments, by strategically trapping the molecules inside water-soluble particles and controlling them with ultraviolet light. The new system can be used to develop better fluorescent probes for biomedical research.

Previous studies have used water-soluble particles to bring organic molecules into water. What is novel about this system is the use of a photoswitching mechanism in combination with these particles.

Scientists using the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have made the first spectroscopic observations of the noble gas helium in the tenuous atmosphere surrounding the Moon. These remote-sensing observations complement in-situ measurements taken in 1972 by the Lunar Atmosphere Composition Experiment (LACE) deployed by Apollo 17.

A long-time staple of science fiction is the tractor beam, a technology in which light is used to move massive objects – recall the tractor beam in the movie Star Wars that captured the Millennium Falcon and pulled it into the Death Star. While tractor beams of this sort remain science fiction, beams of light today are being used to mechanically manipulate atoms or tiny glass beads, with rapid progress being made to control increasingly larger objects.

Scientists demonstrate, for the time, a solid-state "MASER" capable of operating at room temperature, paving the way for its widespread adoption – as reported today in the journal Nature.

MASER stands for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Devices based on this process (and known by the same acronym) were developed by scientists more than 50 years ago, before the first LASERs were invented. Instead of creating intense beams of light, as in the case of LASERs, MASERs deliver a concentrated beam of microwaves.

In our zest for cleanliness, have we permanently muddied our nation's waters?

A science team from Arizona State University, in collaboration with federal partners,has completed the first statewide analysis of freshwater bodies in Minnesota, finding widespread evidence of the presence of active ingredients of personal care products in Minnesota lakes, streams and rivers.

surface. The researchers found that larger males were able to dominate smaller males in these battles -- no matter how their forceps appeared. But when smaller males fought each other, the one with the more asymmetric forceps was usually the winner.

The study is one of very few to look at asymmetry in body features that function as a weapon, "and weapons should be under strong selection, since they are used both to fight with other males for mates and to capture prey," Zink said.