A year after the BP explosion and oil spill, those trying to find someone to blame are misguided, says psychological scientist E. Scott Geller, Alumni Distinguished professor at Virginia Tech, and author of a new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Geller has spent much of his 42-year career developing interventions to keep people safe, particularly helping companies develop a culture that promotes occupational safety.
Tech
Pull into the auto repair shop with a smashed bumper, and there's no wait while they order a replacement. Instead, the technician downloads specifications from the manufacturer's database. You both watch as a laser beam probing a container of liquid plastic material almost magically builds a new bumper inch by inch.
Magnetics researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) colored lots of eggs recently. Bunnies and children might find the eggs a bit small—in fact, too small to see without a microscope. But these "eggcentric" nanomagnets have another practical use, suggesting strategies for making future low-power computer memories.
After the manufacturer of the Alzheimer's drug memantine submitted a supplementary analysis of study data, the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) sees proof of a benefit of the drug for cognitive function, as well as indications of a benefit for activities of daily living, at least for a treatment period of 6 months. This changes the conclusions of the first IQWiG benefit assessment of 2009. IQWiG had repeatedly called upon the manufacturer Merz to provide a renewed analysis of study data appropriate to the research question.
Researchers have been examining the diverse behaviours of caterpillars to find solutions for the new generation of search and rescue soft robots.
Despite their extreme flexibility and adaptability, current soft-bodied robots are often limited by their slow speed, leading the researchers to turn to terrestrial soft-bodied animals for inspiration.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers at Oregon State University have found a way to use magnetic "nanobeads" to help detect chemical and biological agents, with possible applications in everything from bioterrorism to medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring or even water and food safety.
When fully developed as a hand-held, portable sensor, like something you might see in a science fiction movie, it will provide a whole diagnostic laboratory on a single chip.
The research could revolutionize the size, speed and accuracy of chemical detection systems around the world.
People who have strokes are often left with moderate to severe physical impairments. Now, thanks to a glove developed at McGill, stroke patients may be able to recover hand motion by playing video games. The Biomedical Sensor Glove was developed by four final-year McGill Mechanical Engineering undergrads under the supervision of Professor Rosaire Mongrain. It is designed to allow patients to exercise in their own homes with minimal supervision, while at the same time permitting doctors to monitor their progress from a distance, thus cutting down on hospital visits and costs.
WASHINGTON, April 26—The world's foremost researchers in laser science, optoelectronics and quantum optics will present their findings at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO: 2011), May 1 – 6 at the Baltimore Convention Center. The more than 1,700 presentations at the conference will cover areas from energy and biophotonics to ultrafast lasers and quantum communication. Below is a sampling of the premiere research that will be presented next week at CLEO: 2011 (www.cleoconference.org).
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Amphibian declines around the world have forced many species to the brink of extinction, are much more complex than realized and have multiple causes that are still not fully understood, researchers conclude in a new report.
The search for a single causative factor is often missing the larger picture, they said, and approaches to address the crisis may fail if they don't consider the totality of causes – or could even make things worse.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., April 25, 2011 - Novel properties of ferroelectric materials discovered at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are moving scientists one step closer to realizing a new paradigm of electronic memory storage.
A new study led by ORNL's Peter Maksymovych and published in the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters revealed that contrary to previous assumptions, domain walls in ferroelectric materials act as dynamic conductors instead of static ones.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Researchers at MIT have found a way to make significant improvements to the power-conversion efficiency of solar cells by enlisting the services of tiny viruses to perform detailed assembly work at the microscopic level.
Rice University bioengineering students responded to an ophthalmologist's cry for help with a device to diagnose dry eye, the itching and burning sensation that results when a person doesn't produce enough tears or the tears evaporate too quickly.
A team of five seniors made a portable unit that controls the air around a patient's eyes so doctors can study and treat those who suffer from this painful condition.
"We read to know we are not alone," wrote C.S. Lewis. But how do books make us feel we are not alone?
"Obviously, you can't hold a book's hand, and a book isn't going to dry your tears when you're sad," says University at Buffalo, SUNY psychologist Shira Gabriel. Yet we feel human connection, without real relationships, through reading. "Something else important must be happening."
The exponentially increasing amount of digital information, along with new challenges in storing valuable data and massive datasets, are changing the architecture of today's newest supercomputers as well as how researchers will use them to accelerate scientific discovery, said Michael Norman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).