Alexandria, VA – A new generation of lidar, or Light Detection and Ranging technology, is bringing the laser-based survey method down to Earth. The new technology involves mounting instruments atop cars, boats and even backpacks. These new mobile mapping systems will give geoscientists a whole new way to map and study the world.
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Continued expansion of industrial-scale oil palm plantations on the island of Borneo will become a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 unless strong forest and peatland protections are enacted and enforced, according to a National Academy of Sciences study.
A research team at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has succeeded in describing the structure and function of the outermost layer of the skin – the stratum corneum – at a molecular level. This opens the way not only for the large-scale delivery of drugs via the skin, but also for a deeper understanding of skin diseases.
"You could say that we've solved the puzzle of the skin barrier, something that has great potential significance for dermatology," says principal investigator Lars Norlén, associate professor at Karolinska Institutet's Dermatology and Venereology Unit.
A plant disease normally found in subarctic climates has been identified for the first time in the UK in buttercups as far south as Herefordshire.
Sclerotinia subarctica, a fungus known to affect both crops and wild plants, has also been found in carrots and meadow buttercups in Perthshire by plant scientists at the Warwick Crop Centre in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick.
It is closely related to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum which commonly causes disease in crop plants such as lettuce, carrot and oilseed rape.
SAN DIEGO—Sickle cell disease (SCD), an inherited condition that causes red blood cells to sometimes deform into a crescent shape, affects an estimated 100,000 Americans, typically those of African descent. However, far more have sickle cell trait (SCT), caused when individuals carry just a single copy of the disease-causing mutation in their genes. Rather than all their red blood cells being affected, those with SCT carry a mix of affected red blood cells and normal ones.
While working on a research sailboat gliding over glassy seas in the Pacific Ocean, oceanographer Giora Proskurowski noticed something new: The water was littered with confetti-size pieces of plastic debris, until the moment the wind picked up and most of the particles disappeared.
DENVER (April 25, 2012) – A team of scientists from University of Colorado Denver has developed a novel energy system that increases the amount of energy harvested from microbial fuel cells (MFCs) by more than 70 times. The new approach also greatly improves energy efficiency. MFCs are emerging as a way to use bacteria to directly harvest electricity from biodegradable materials, such as wastewater or marine sediments
BOULDER, Colo.— Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built a quantum simulator that can engineer interactions among hundreds of quantum bits (qubits)—10 times more than previous devices. As described in the April 26 issue of Nature*, the simulator has passed a series of important benchmarking tests and scientists are poised to study problems in material science that are impossible to model on conventional computers.
Scientists at USC have developed a potential pathway to cheap, stable solar cells made from nanocrystals so small they can exist as a liquid ink and be painted or printed onto clear surfaces.
The solar nanocrystals are about four nanometers in size — meaning you could fit more than 250,000,000,000 on the head of a pin — and float them in a liquid solution, so "like you print a newspaper, you can print solar cells," said Richard L. Brutchey, assistant professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
NEW YORK (April 25, 2012) – The first-known camera trap photos of an Amur leopard in China have recently been taken by protected area staff in Hunchun Amur Tiger National Nature Reserve in Jilin Province according to the Wildlife Conservation Society. Coupled with Jilin Province's recent announcement of a survey estimating 8-11 leopards across that northern province, the photographs suggest that leopards may be returning to China.
One in three households in Baltimore misreports its smoke alarm coverage, with the vast majority of errors due to over-reporting coverage, according to a study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. Reasons for over-reporting included study participants incorrectly assuming all of their alarms were working because they weren't beeping, and not having alarms on every level of the home. While previous research has found varying validity for self-report of smoke alarm coverage, this study is unique for also examining the reasons why individuals misreport.
Two lamps are brighter than one. This simple truism does not necessarily apply to lasers, as a team of scientists, led by the Vienna University of Technology found out. When one laser is shining and next to it another laser is turned on gradually, complex interactions between the two lasers can lead to a total shutdown and no light is emitted anymore. For technologies connecting the fields of electronics and photonics, this result may be very important. The new findings have now been published in the journal "Physical Review Letters".
The coolest new nanomaterial of the 21st century could boost the efficiency of the next generation of solar panels, a team of Michigan Technological University materials scientists has discovered.
Graphene, a two-dimensional honeycomb of carbon atoms, is a rising star in the materials community for its radical properties. One of those properties is electrical conductivity, which could make it a key ingredient in the next generation of photovoltaic cells, says Yun Hang Hu, a professor of materials science and engineering.
San Diego, CA — Periodontitis, inflammation of the tissue surrounding the teeth, affects more than half of adults and is linked to an increased risk of stroke and other heart problems. To evaluate whether fish oil supplementation could be an adjunct therapy for periodontitis, Dr. Alison Coates from the University of South Australia and colleagues from the School of Dentistry at University of Adelaide in Australia reviewed evidence from eight unique studies that involved humans.
SAN DIEGO— Over the past three decades, researchers have firmly established that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil, including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), have healthy effects on the heart. Omega-3 fatty acids seem to help both in preventing cardiovascular disease as well as in preventing future heart attacks, strokes, and other adverse events in people who have established cardiovascular disease.