Tech

Since the recent ban on mephedrone, many so-called "legal substitutes" available on the internet are in fact banned cathinones (chemically related to amphetamines) and just as risky, warn experts in a letter to this week's BMJ.

One such product is Energy 1 (NRG-1), also advertised as naphyrone (naphthylpyrovalerone, O-2482), write Simon Brandt and colleagues. These products are offered as legal substitutes for the recently criminalised "legal highs," the mephedrone derivatives.

Specialist medical training programmes should retain some flexibility to help trainee doctors make the right career choices, according to a study published on bmj.com today.

Some UK medical graduates choose a specialty as soon as they qualify and others after a few years of postgraduate work. But changes to postgraduate medical training mean that junior doctors will generally have to make choices sooner than in the past.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – An incidental discovery in a wood products lab at Oregon State University has produced a new pressure-sensitive adhesive that may revolutionize the tape industry – an environmentally benign product that works very well and costs much less than existing adhesives based on petrochemicals.

The new adhesive can be produced from a range of vegetable oils, and may find applications for duct tape, packaging tape, stick-on notes, labels, even postage stamps – almost any type of product requiring a pressure-sensitive adhesive.

Star Trek tractor beams get a step closer - on the nano scale

Star Trek fans will remember "tractor beams," lasers that allowed the Starship Enterprise to trap and move objects. Tel Aviv University is now turning this science fiction into science fact -- on a nano scale.

AMES, Iowa – Changing climate could affect the diversity of plants and animals, and we can get a glimpse of what this may look like by studying the effects of drought in a relatively pristine ecosystem, according to an Iowa State University researcher.

Diane Debinski has been studying the meadows in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of the Rocky Mountains since 1992. She has found that if the area's climate becomes drier as the earth's temperature climbs, it could lead to a change in the types of plants and animals that live there.

PITTSBURGH—AquaLux 3D, a new projection technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, can target light onto and between individual water droplets, enabling text, video and other moving or still images to be displayed on multiple layers of falling water.

Every picture tells a story, but how do you know that a digital photo has not been manipulated to change the tale being told? A new approach to adding an encrypted watermark to digital images allows the an image to be validated against a pass key, according to research published in the International Journal of Signal and Imaging Systems Engineering.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - Robots that revolutionized gynecologic and urologic surgery in the past decade now offer the option of removing at least a portion of their diseased thyroid gland without the hallmark neck incision, researchers said.

PITTSBURGH—Researchers based at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a method for predicting dust and sandstorms that uses infrared satellite images to determine when conditions are ripe for the destructive phenomena, a technique that could be implemented globally and that the research team used to forecast a 2008 New Mexico dust storm—the area's largest in decades—two days beforehand.

The tests were carried out in the municipality of Hengelo, where the busy Castorweg road was resurfaced last fall. As part of the project, around 1,000 square meters of the road's surface were covered with air-purifying concrete paving stones. For comparison purposes, another area of 1.000 square meters was surfaced with normal paving stones.

Long-term supplementation with dietary antioxidants has beneficial effects on sugar and fat metabolism, blood pressure and arterial flexibility in patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Nutrition and Metabolism report these positive results in a randomized controlled trial of combined vitamin C, vitamin E, coenzyme Q10 and selenium capsules.

Cautious optimism

In 2009, and in absolute terms, about 19.9% (608 TWh) of Europe's total electricity consumption (3042 TWh) came from renewable energy sources. Hydro power contributed with the largest share (11.6%), followed by wind (4.2%), biomass (3.5%), and solar (0.4%).