GALVESTON, Texas — "You'll be back on your feet in no time" is a phrase familiar to anyone who's ever had to spend time in a hospital. Now, a new study has shown that hospitalized elderly patients who literally "get back on their feet" by taking even short walks around a hospital unit tend to leave the hospital sooner than their more sedentary peers.
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Alexandria, VA – America has made great strides in recent years to reduce carbon emissions by increasing efficiency and turning to other, low or non-carbon energy sources. Meanwhile, carbon emissions in China have grown dramatically during that same time. EARTH looks at this disparity and asks the difficult questions about who is to blame when the coal China is burning is imported from "cleaner" countries and the emissions are produced to manufacture goods exported back to places with lower emissions.
Iron furnaces that once dotted central Pennsylvania may have left a legacy of manganese enriched soils, according to Penn State geoscientists. This manganese can be toxic to trees, especially sugar maples, and other vegetation.
Georgia, US - A team of Bioengineers in the United States have modified a strain of bacteria to increase its ability to produce ethanol. The research, published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering, reveals how adaptation and metabolic engineering can be combined for strain improvement, a positive development for the biofuel industry.
The team focused their research on Zymomonas mobilis, a bacterium noted for its bio-ethanol producing potential. However, the team believed that ethanol production could be increased through improvement of xylose fermentation.
A light-weight bike that costs around £1000 may not get you to work any quicker than a similar, yet heavier and cheaper model, finds research in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com today.
A keen cyclist since childhood, the author Dr Jeremy Groves, owns two bikes. One a second hand 13.5 kg steel framed bike bought for £50 and the other a brand new 9.5 kg carbon framed bike that cost £1000.
A study in the BMJ's Christmas issue published on bmj.com today confirms that there is no need for doctors to fear red heads.
The research concludes that, contrary to popular belief, people with red hair do not bleed any more than other patients.
A myriad of inputs can indicate a body's health bombard pancreatic beta cells continuously, and these cells must consider all signals and "decide" when and how much insulin to release to maintain balance in blood sugar, for example. Reporting in Nature Chemical Biology last month, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have teased out how these cells interpret incoming signals and find that three proteins relay signals similar to an electrical circuit.
Shootings like the one in which a gunman shot a doctor and killed a patient at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in September are "exceedingly rare," but the rate of other assaults on workers in U.S. health care settings is four times higher than other workplaces, conclude two Johns Hopkins emergency physicians after reviewing workplace violence in health settings.
Despite a 30-year warming trend, the last three years in the Bering Sea have been the coldest on record. A University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist says that the cold temperatures have helped produce larger zooplankton in the Bering Sea, which may affect the way Walleye pollock feed.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A benchtop version of the world's smallest battery — its anode a single nanowire one seven-thousandth the thickness of a human hair —has been created by a team led by Sandia National Laboratories researcher Jianyu Huang.
To better study the anode's characteristics, the tiny rechargeable, lithium-based battery was formed inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM) at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), a Department of Energy research facility jointly operated by Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.
RICHLAND, Wash. -- New high resolution images of electrode wires made from materials used in rechargeable lithium ion batteries shows them contorting as they become charged with electricity. The thin, nano-sized wires writhe and fatten as lithium ions flow in during charging, according to a paper in this week's issue of the journal Science. The work suggests how rechargeable batteries eventually give out and might offer insights for building better batteries.
Rice University researchers have moved a step closer to creating robust, three-dimensional microbatteries that would charge faster and hold other advantages over conventional lithium-ion batteries. They could power new generations of remote sensors, display screens, smart cards, flexible electronics and biomedical devices.
Among a large number of Chinese men presenting with chest pain or EKG changes, sequential subjects undergoing cardiac angiography were evaluated for obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) lesions according to their reported recent alcohol intake. The study population consisted of 1,476 consecutive men 36 to 84 years of age; participants were categorized as nondrinkers, light drinkers, moderate drinkers, or heavy drinkers.
