Tech
DALLAS - Feb. 20, 2019 - Elizabeth Delacruz can't crawl or toddle around like most youngsters nearing their second birthday.
A rare metabolic disorder that decimated her mobility has also led to cortical blindness - her brain is unable to process images received from an otherwise healthy set of brown eyes. And multiple times a day Elizabeth suffers seizures that continually reduce her brain function. She can only offer an occasional smile or make soft bubbly sounds to communicate her mood.
Fossil-hunting can be grueling, but it's usually not gross. Paleontologists typically work with things that have been dead for millions of years, mineralized into rock and no longer smelly. At the end of a day in the field, the researchers just have to dust themselves off and wash muddy boots and sweaty clothes. But for a new study delving into the ecosystems that dinosaurs lived in, a team of paleontologists found themselves scraping swamp rabbits and armadillos off the Louisiana highway.
A new way of protecting concrete from fire damage using materials recycled from old tyres has been successfully tested by researchers at the University of Sheffield.
The team used fibres extracted from the textile reinforcement commonly embedded into tyres to guarantee their performance. Adding these fibres to the concrete mix was shown to reduce the concrete's tendency to spall - where surface layers of concrete break off - explosively under the intense heat from a fire.
Mechanical ventilation of children in intensive care units is often necessary, but can damage the lungs of critically ill patients
It's possible to change ventilator settings to reduce the risk of damage without putting child patients at risk, according to engineering researchers at the University of Warwick
They successfully tested their new treatment strategies on simulated patients using data from real patients collected at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, published in the journal Intensive Care Medicine
A new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reports that protecting coral reefs from fishing and pollution does not help coral populations cope with climate change. The study also concludes that ocean warming is the primary cause of the global decline of reef-building corals and that the only effective solution is to immediately and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Chestnut Hill, Mass. (2/19/2019) - In the latest wrinkle to be discovered in cubic boron arsenide, the unusual material contradicts the traditional rules that govern heat conduction, according to a new report by Boston College researchers in today's edition of the journal Nature Communications.
Usually, when a material is compressed, it becomes a better conductor of heat. That was first found in studies about a century ago. In boron arsenide, the research team found that when the material is compressed the conductivity first improves and then deteriorates.
Women are more likely than men to believe the Bible is literally true, but a recent Baylor University study finds this may have more to do with how people relate to God than it does gender. Both men and women who report high levels of closeness to God take the Bible more literally - and this confidence grows stronger as they seek intimacy with God through prayer and Bible study.
The study -- "To Know and Be Known: An Intimacy-Based Explanation for the Gender Gap in Biblical Literalism" -- is published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
For 15 years, scientists have tried to exploit the "miracle material" graphene to produce nanoscale electronics. On paper, graphene should be great for just that: it is ultra-thin - only one atom thick in fact and therefore two-dimensional, it is excellent for conducting electrical current and should be ideal for future forms of electronics that are faster and more energy efficient. In addition, graphene consists of carbon atoms - of which we have an unlimited supply.
A new type of light-emitting diode lightbulb could one day light homes and reduce power bills, according to Penn State researchers who suggest that LEDs made with firefly-mimicking structures could improve efficiency.
"LED lightbulbs play a key role in clean energy," said Stuart (Shizhuo) Yin, professor of electrical engineering. "Overall commercial LED efficiency is currently only about 50 percent. One of the major concerns is how to improve the so-called light extraction efficiency of the LEDs. Our research focuses on how to get light out of the LED."
Climate change increases environmental fluctuations and extreme weather phenomena. They generate many kinds of problems in the nature. A study conducted at the University of Jyvaskyla has shown that varying environmental conditions increase the potential for invasive species to spread.
Invasive species are species that spread to new areas as a result of human activity and can displace local species and be harmful in addition to nature also to forestry and agriculture.
The tell-tale tremors of Parkinson's disease emerge from abnormal activity in a brain region crucial for voluntary movement. Using a mouse model of the disease, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) identified unusual patterns of brain activity that appear to underlie its signature symptoms.
Scientists have discovered that grasses are able to short cut evolution by taking genes from their neighbours.
The findings suggest wild grasses are naturally genetically modifying themselves to gain a competitive advantage.
Understanding how this is happening may also help scientists reduce the risk of genes escaping from GM crops and creating so called "super-weeds" - which can happen when genes from GM crops transfer into local wild plants, making them herbicide resistant.
Yuuki Watanabe has always been fascinated by speed and power. As a child, he recalls being transfixed by the raw strength of great white sharks (Carcharadon carcharias). 'They look cool' says Watanabe, from the National Institute of Polar Research, Japan. However, he now has another reason for being in awe of these charismatic predatory sharks: 'they are an endothermic fish', he says. In other words, they maintain a warmer body temperature than the surrounding water - in contrast to most fish, which simply go with the thermal flow.
Hiroshima, Japan, February 19, 2019--Hiroshima University, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and Panasonic Corporation announced the successful development of a terahertz (THz) transceiver that can transmit or receive digital data at 80 gigabits per second (Gbit/s). The transceiver was implemented using silicon CMOS integrated circuit technology, which would have a great advantage for volume production.
Aimy Wissa, assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering (MechSE) at Illinois, leads an interdisciplinary research team to study click beetles to inspire more agile robots. The team, which includes MechSE Assistant Professor Alison Dunn and Dr. Marianne Alleyne, a research scientist in the Department of Entomology, recently presented their ongoing and novel work on the quick release mechanism of click beetles at the 2019 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) Annual Meeting.