PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — For years many health experts believed that increasing insurance co-payments for routine doctor visits helped control costs. Patients faced with the higher price tag, they theorized, would simply cut back unnecessary visits, saving themselves and insurers money.
Tech
Power-generating rubber films developed by Princeton University engineers could harness natural body movements such as breathing and walking to power pacemakers, mobile phones and other electronic devices.
The latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-P is proceeding through more checks in preparation for its launch, which is no earlier than March 1.
The GOES-P spacecraft continues being processed at the Astrotech Facility in Titusville, Fla. The Imager, Sounder and Solar X-Ray Imager have completed cleaning and inspections. The optical port covers have been successfully installed. Those covers are one of the last mechanisms to be deployed once GOES-P gets into orbit.
PITTSBURGH—In response to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute (LTI) have publicly released spoken and textual data they've compiled on Haitian Creole so that translation tools desperately needed by doctors, nurses and other relief workers on the earthquake-ravaged island can be rapidly developed.
Magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy – which analyzes the biochemistry rather than the structure of tissues – may someday be able both to pinpoint the precise location of prostate cancer and to determine the tumor's aggressiveness, information that could help guide treatment planning. In the January 27 online issue of Science Translational Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report how spectroscopic analysis of the biochemical makeup of prostate glands accurately identified the location of tissue confirmed to be malignant by conventional pathology.
A collaboration led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from biomass. Deploying the tools of synthetic biology, the JBEI researchers engineered a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.
BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, January 27, 2010 –The United States has an inefficient and expensive health care system, but it could be improved with a new integrated health care system detailed in a new study in the American Journal of Public Health (February 2010 Vol. 100 No. 2).
Just as cooking helps people digest food, pretreating polycarbonate plastic — source of a huge environmental headache because of its bisphenol A (BPA) content — may be the key to disposing of the waste in an eco-friendly way, scientists have found. Their new study is in ACS' Biomacromolecules, a monthly journal.
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say they have shown that mismatched alloys are a good match for the future development of high performance thermoelectric devices. Thermoelectrics hold enormous potential for green energy production because of their ability to convert heat into electricity.
Internet telephony has developed from a niche product into standard technology in recent years. Most telephone providers switched their background technology to Voice over IP, or VoIP for short, long ago. BITKOM, the German association for information technology, cites the economical rates and additional functions such as interaction between e-mail and voicemail as the primary forces driving this change.
A new approach for managing bugs in computer software has been developed by a team led by Prof. George Candea at EPFL. The latest version of Dimmunix, available for free download, enables entire networks of computers to cooperate in order to collectively avoid the manifestations of bugs in software.
Rockville, MD — A new study reported in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science found that UV-blocking contact lenses can reduce or eliminate the effects of the sun's harmful UV radiation.
Every year, billions of dollars worth of vaccines are shipped to thousands of medical providers across the country, and every year doctors must dispose of tens of millions of dollars worth of those vaccines because they became too warm or too cold while in storage.
The Atlantic blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, long prized as a savory meal at a summer party or seafood restaurant, is a multi-million dollar source of income for those who harvest, process and market the crustacean along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Unfortunately, the blue crab population has been declining in recent years under the assault of viruses, bacteria and man-made contaminants.
LIVERMORE, Calif. - Most people know that diamond is one of the hardest solids on Earth, so strong that it can easily cut through glass and steel. Surprisingly, very little is known about the strength of diamond at extreme conditions. But new research by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists shows that diamond becomes even stronger during rapid compression.