Tech
Business leaders and investors are increasingly rating companies not just on short-term financial performance but on their ability to create long-term value for shareholders.
Today the most commonly used metrics to gauge a firm's success are profitability ratios such as return on capital (ROC), total shareholder return (TSR) and earnings per share (EPS). While these provide useful information, they are focused on the short-term and do little to reflect underlying economic performance or to precisely capture the creation (or destruction) of long-term shareholder value.
Each hair-thin glass fiber in a buried fiber optic cable contains tiny internal flaws--and that's a good thing for scientists looking for new ways to collect seismic data in places from a busy urban downtown to a remote glacier.
Unlike wine, which generally improves with time, beer does not age well. Usually within a year of bottling, the beverage starts to develop an unpleasant papery or cardboard-like flavor that drinkers describe as "stale." Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have engineered lager yeast to make more molecules that protect beer against staling, resulting in improved flavor stability.
Most people spend the majority of their time at home, yet little is known about the air they breathe inside their houses. That's why some atmospheric chemists are turning their attention toward indoor air, using tools developed for monitoring pollutants outside. By cataloguing compounds in indoor air, scientists could someday link them with health effects, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.
Research from Oxford University calls us to reconsider how behaviours may spread through societies of wild animals, and how this might provide new insights into human social networks.
Oral powders or gels, sold as medical devices in the European Union (EU), aren't regulated to the same safety standards as those applied to medicines, reveals research published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
As a result, these products, which look like medicines, can be marketed with very limited clinical data and accompanied by poor quality product information.
This is of particular concern for children taking them, say the researchers, who call for the regulation of these products to be revised.
Using innovative RNA sequencing techniques, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) Institute for Genome Sciences identified a promising novel treatment for lymphatic filariasis, a disabling parasitic disease that is difficult to treat. The potential new therapy is an experimental cancer drug called JQ1 and targets proteins found prominently in the worm's genome; it appears to effectively kill the adult worms in a laboratory setting, according to the study which was published today in the journal mSystems.
The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) adopted in 2000 aims to protect Europe's water resources. By 2027, EU Member States are required to bring all water bodies into a "good ecological" and "good chemical state". There's still a long way to go. This is due, for example, to the fact that a few existing substances, for which there are currently no suitable possibilities for reducing pollution, lead to environmental quality standards being exceeded across the board in Germany and Europe - and thus to poor water quality.
Social media has been identified by a number of studies as being a significant factor in mental health problems, especially in young people. But imagine if the power of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram could also be harnessed to identify those with depression symptoms and signpost them to support services.
By analysing social media (SM) content using machine-learning techniques, it may be possible to identify which SM users are currently experiencing low mood, and then use this to show adverts for mental health services to people who need them.
Nanocrystalline zinc oxide (ZnO) is currently one of the most commonly used semiconductor metal oxide nanomaterials due to its unique catalytic and electro-optical characteristics. The inherent and distinctive physicochemical properties of ZnO nanostructures are dependent on a variety of factors that are determined by the applied synthetic procedure and the character of the resulting nanocrystal-ligand interface. Thus, the preparation of stable ZnO nanostructures, especially nanoparticles with sizes below 10 nm, i.e.
Using computer simulation, Alberto Ferrari calculated a design proposal for a shape memory alloy that retains its efficiency for a long time even at high temperatures. Alexander Paulsen manufactured it and experimentally confirmed the prediction. The alloy of titanium, tantalum and scandium is more than just a new high-temperature shape memory alloy.
Our use of battery-operated devices and appliances has been increasing steadily, bringing with it the need for safe, efficient, and high-performing power sources. To this end, a type of electrical energy storage device called the supercapacitor has recently begun to be considered as a feasible, and sometimes even better, alternative to conventional widely used energy-storage devices such as Li-ion batteries. Supercapacitors can charge and discharge much more rapidly than conventional batteries and also continue to do so for much longer.
Utilization of fossil fuels, which represents an increasing environmental risk, can be made more environmentally friendly by adding wood - as concluded based on the preliminary results of the year-long study carried out by thermal engineers of Tallinn University of Technology. In search of less polluting ways of energy production, increasing the amount of biomass as a source of raw materials offers a good way to use fossil fuels and reduce emissions.
Every character has a back story, and so do high-temperature superconductors, which conduct electricity with no loss at much higher temperatures than scientists once thought possible. To figure out how they work, researchers need to understand their "normal" state, which gives rise to superconductivity when the material is cooled below a critical transition temperature and the density of free-flowing electrons is tweaked in a process known as "doping."
Researchers from Duke University and HSE University have succeeded in creating artificial tactile perception in monkeys through direct brain stimulation. This breakthrough can be used to create upper-limb neuroprostheses, capable of delivering a tactile sensation. The study's results were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.