Tech
Quantum cryptography is a technology that allows one to distribute a cryptographic key across an optical network and to exploit the laws of quantum physics to guarantee its secrecy. It makes use of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle – observation causes perturbation – to reveal eavesdropping on an optical fiber.
Controlling juniper trees by cutting them down and burning them where they fall keeps invasive cheatgrass at bay and allows native perennials to become re-established, according to findings by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) rangeland scientists Jon Bates and Tony Svejcar conducted a study at a site dominated by a stand of invasive western junipers to assess different management strategies after the junipers have been cut down. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency.
Researchers at New York University have developed an innovative way to look at the development of osteoarthritis in the knee joint—one that relies on the examination of sodium ions in cartilage. Their work, which appears in the Journal of Magnetic Resonance, may provide a non-invasive method to diagnose osteoarthritis in its very early stages.
AURORA, Colorado (August 27, 2010) – Rare but devastating, eye cancer can strike anyone at any time and treating it often requires radiation that leaves half of all patients partially blind.
But a new technique developed by Scott Oliver, MD, assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, may change all that.
Oliver has discovered that silicone oil applied inside the eye can block up to 55 percent of harmful radiation, enough to prevent blindness in most patients.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., August 27, 2010 -- Technology developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory that extends the life of light-emitting diode lamps has been licensed to LED North America.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Vitamin A and beta-carotene supplements are unsafe for HIV-positive women who breastfeed because they may boost the excretion of HIV in breast milk---thereby increasing the chances of transmitting the infection to the child, a pair of new studies suggest.
LIVERMORE, Calif. – Radiocarbon dating is used to determine the age of everything from ancient artifacts to prehistoric corals on the ocean bottom.
But in a recent study appearing in the Aug. 26 edition of the journal, Nature, a Lawrence Livermore scientist and his colleagues used the method to trace the pathway of carbon dioxide released from the deep ocean to the atmosphere at the end of the last ice age.
In the new age of coalition governments, the question of whether two heads are better than one is more relevant than ever. A study published today in the journal Science, neuroscientists from UCL (University College London) and Aarhus University, Denmark, shows that two heads can be better than one – but only if you have the right partner.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Much of the world's electronic waste is being shipped to China for recycling and the cottage industry that has sprung up there to recover usable materials from computers, cell phones, televisions and other goods may be creating significant health and environmental hazards.
A University of Oklahoma technology—GeoChip—played a critical role in an intensive study of the dispersed oil plume that formed at a depth between 3,600 and 4,000 feet some 10 miles from BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
An OU research team led by Jizhong Zhou, director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics, developed the new generation GeoChip, which contributed to the findings of the study by simultaneously detecting more than 150,000 different functional genes for various microbial ecological and biogeochemical processes.
The interaction between the molecules of gecko toe hair and the wall is a molecular attraction called van der Waals force. A gecko can hang and support its whole weight on one toe by placing it on the glass and then pulling it back. It only sticks when you pull in one direction – their toes are a kind of one-way adhesive, Cutkosky said.
A research study has for the first time revealed data about dental cavities, periodontal disease, oral treatment needs, the use of dental prostheses and dental hygiene habits among the adult population in the Valencia region. The results show that 90% of people have cavities and 20-35% need prostheses.
"These data will make it possible to draw comparisons with other studies carried out in other autonomous regions and nationwide ones", José Manuel Almerich, co-author of the study and a scientist at the University of Valencia (UV), tells SINC.
Atheist or agnostic doctors are almost twice as willing to take decisions that they think will hasten the end of a very sick patient's life as doctors who are deeply religious, suggests research published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
And doctors with a strong faith are less likely to discuss this type of treatment with the patient concerned, the research shows.