RUSTON, La. – Dr. Ville Kaajakari, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Louisiana Tech University, is being featured by MEMS Investor Journal, a national online industry publication, for developing a technology that harvests power from a small generator embedded in the sole of a shoe.
MEMS are tiny "smart" devices that combine computer chips with micro-components such as sensors, gears, flow-channels, mirrors and actuators.
PITTSBURGH—The same inexpensive, but high-quality optical sensors employed in the common computer mouse can enable small mobile phones and digital music players to be used as their own pointing and gestural input devices, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII).
The Basque Neiker-Tecnalia technological centre, in collaboration with the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), has demonstrated the benefit of alperujo as a supplement to the diet of dairy sheep during periods when grazing is not available.
DENVER, CO—April 26, 2010—A new study from the Journal of Marriage and Family reveals that teenagers who have experienced several family changes are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviour, become sexually active early, or become parents outside of marriage, than kids who have always lived in the same family arrangement (whether with married parents or a single parent). The findings show that white adolescents, compared to their African-American peers, are more likely to become sexually active earlier, and experience a nonmarital birth.
St. Louis, MO, April 26, 2010 – Energy in, energy out, it's the basic equation to weight loss, or is it? With more than two thirds of Americans classified as overweight or obese1, a study in the May/June 2010 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior examines how motivation might be a large contributor to sticking with weight loss programs.
"Just think how often your fancy new mobile phone or computer has become little more than a paperweight because the battery lost its zeal for doing its job," says John Chmiola, a chemist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). "At a time when cellphones can do more than computers could do at the beginning of the Clinton presidancy, it would be an understatement to say that batteries have not been holding up their end of the mobile device bargain."
EAST LANSING, Mich. —States aiming to lead the emerging biofuel industry may need to ante up substantial subsidies and tax incentives to ethanol producers just to get in the game, Michigan State University researchers say.
"State subsidies have played an important role in ethanol plant location decisions," explained Mark Skidmore, MSU professor of agricultural, food and resource economics. "The size of the incentives is important, too –– the larger the subsidy or tax credit, the more likely it is that an ethanol plant will locate in that state."
MADISON, WI, April 26, 2010-Grass buffer strips are commonly used in crop production to reduce herbicide runoff. These practices are encouraged through incentives, regulations or laws, and are effective at lowering herbicide concentration in runoff. However, subsurface filtration (under the buffer strips) is not as well documented, and neither are the effects of trees integrated into buffer strips with grasses. Understanding these effects is crucial as agriculture producers continue to adopt these strategies.
In this week's BMJ, Nigel Hawkes, freelance journalist and Director of Straight Statistics, a campaign for the better use of statistical data, investigates how the way that patients are allocated diagnostic codes by a hospital can have a big effect on a hospital's performance.
It follows two articles published by the BMJ last week arguing that using death rates to judge hospital performance is a bad idea.
Breastfeeding is best, but what happens when something goes wrong? And why do so many women struggle with this "natural" process even after carefully following all the well-meaning advice they've gotten from their health care providers? Not surprisingly, some women have more difficulty than others and there are many factors associated with experiencing breastfeeding problems – especially in the first week after birth. For example, being African-American, having less than a high school education, and being poor are all associated with suboptimal breastfeeding outcomes.
We all know that eating a calcium-rich diet is important for keeping our bones healthy and strong. This concept is clearly on display in any elementary school cafeteria where the walls are decorated with colorful posters with celebrity icons encouraging children to make sure they drink milk every day. However, emerging research suggests that urging school-aged children to pay attention to their dairy intake might actually be too late to optimize their bone health.
According to legend, it was The Fountain of Youth that the famed Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon was seeking when he landed on the Floridian coast in 1513. It has long been said that he who drinks from the Fountain will have his youth restored. Without a doubt, the quest for eternal youth is as ancient as any pursuit. However, although we are now living longer than ever, there is now growing concern that quantity of years is not nearly as important as quality of those years.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Wettability — the degree to which a liquid either spreads out over a surface or forms into droplets — is crucial to a wide variety of processes. It influences, for example, how easily a car's windshield fogs up, and also affects the functioning of advanced batteries and fuel-cell systems.
They paved paradise and, it turns out, actually did put up a parking lot. A big one. Some 700 feet deep in the waters off California's jewel of a coastal resort, Santa Barbara, sits a group of football-field-sized asphalt domes unlike any other underwater features known to exist.
About 35,000 years ago, a series of apparent undersea volcanoes deposited massive flows of petroleum 10 miles offshore. The deposits hardened into domes that were discovered recently by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Santa Barbara (UCSB).
A new study links nicotine poisoning with weight gain, and concludes that active smokers, not only those who stop, put on more weight than non-smokers. After four years of analysis in the University of Navarra, those who put on least weight were those who had never smoked.