Tech

WASHINGTON -- Nearly half of college students who are U.S. military veterans reported thinking of suicide and 20 percent said they had planned to kill themselves, rates significantly higher than among college students in general, according to a study presented at the American Psychological Association's 119th Annual Convention.

Scientists can make graphene out of just about anything with carbon -- even Girl Scout Cookies.

Graduate students in the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour proved it when they invited a troop of Houston Girl Scouts to their lab to show them how it's done.

The work is part of a paper published online today by ACS Nano. Rice scientists described how graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of the same material in pencil lead, can be made from just about any carbon source, including food, insects and waste.

People who buy an expensive solid wooden table or wardrobe want to be certain that their new piece of furniture is absolutely faultless. Pianos – whether upright or grand – can only produce an opulent tone if their soundboard, bridge and keyboard are made of high-quality materials. And wood that is free of imperfections is also essential in house building and window construction: load-bearing wooden beams need to be of the highest quality, as even the smallest crack can cause them to fail.

Personal photos occupy an ever-expanding amount of hard drive space. Baby, family and vacation photos can now number in the thousands. While some poke fun at the digital glut, others see a unique opportunity.

Researchers at the University of Washington have created a way to take hundreds or thousands of digital portraits and in seconds create an animation of the person's face.

The tool can make a face appear to age over time, or choose images from the same period to make the person's expression gradually change from a smile to a frown.

When it comes to broadband speeds, U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs) largely deliver on their promises, says a report issued today by the Federal Communications Commission, but "throughput" is only one of several metrics listed in the report that affect network performance. ISPs should provide a broadband "nutrition label"—easy-to-understand information about service-limiting factors—and users need better ways of measuring the performance their ISPs are delivering, concludes a study from the Georgia Tech College of Computing.

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, August 2, 2011– A multidisciplinary team at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has developed a new training method using a desktop webcam to improve ergonomic posture and reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) among office workers using computers.

MIAMI – August 3, 2011 -- Scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science have discovered a technique to track urban atmospheric plumes thanks to a unique isotopic signature found in vehicle emissions.

A University of Washington computer scientist is calling on the international academic community and engineers working in industry to take a bolder approach when designing how people find information online.

In a two-page commentary titled "Search needs a shake-up," published in the Aug. 4 issue of the journal Nature, UW professor of computer science and engineering Oren Etzioni calls on experts to, literally, think outside the search box. The piece is being published on the 20-year anniversary of Tim Berners Lee unveiling his World Wide Web project.

U.S. production of ethanol for fuel has been rising quickly, topping 13 billion gallons in 2010. With the usual rail, truck and barge transport methods under potential strain, existing gas pipelines might be an efficient alternative for moving this renewable fuel around the country. But researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) caution that ethanol, and especially the bacteria sometimes found in it, can dramatically degrade pipelines.

Detergent-like compounds called saponins are best known for their cleansing properties, but U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are studying these compounds' potential for helping protect plants from insect attack.

A novel therapy that reduces elevated blood levels of a potentially toxic protein in women with preeclampsia, a dangerous complication of pregnancy, may someday address the therapeutic dilemma posed by the condition – balancing life-threatening risks to the mother with the dangers that early delivery poses to an immature fetus. In a paper receiving online release in the journal Circulation, a team of U.S.

Dr Xiao-Qi Zhou and colleagues at the University of Bristol's Centre for Quantum Photonics and the University of Queensland, Australia, have shown that controlled operations — ones that are implemented on the condition that a "control bit" is in the state 1 — can be dramatically simplified compared to the standard approach.

A new robot using high-precision tactile sensors and flexible motor control technology has taken Japan one step closer to its goal of providing high-quality care for its growing elderly population. Developed by researchers at RIKEN and Tokai Rubber Industries (TRI), the new robot can lift a patient up to 80kg in weight off floor-level bedding and into a wheelchair, freeing care facility personnel of one of their most difficult and energy-consuming tasks.