Whirlpools on the nanoscale could multiply magnetic memory

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"We spent 15 percent of home energy on gadgets in 2009, and we're buying more gadgets all the time," says Peter Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Fischer lets you know right away that while it's scientific curiosity that inspires his research at the Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS), he intends it to help solve pressing problems.

Small increase in cancer risk following CT scans in childhood and adolescence

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Study leader, Professor John Mathews from the University of Melbourne said this small increase in cancer risk must be weighed against the undoubted benefits from CT scans in diagnosing and monitoring disease.

The study findings are reported in the British Medical Journal today and involved researchers at eight other centres in Australia, Oxford University, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.

Registry questions superiority of bivalirudin over heparin

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21 May 2013, Paris, France: Results from a large observational study reported at EuroPCR 2013 today question whether bivalirudin is superior to heparin in the absence of GPIIb/IIIa blockade, showing similar 30-day mortality in patients with non-ST segment elevation acute coronary syndromes (NSTE-ACS) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

European and US NSTE-ACS guidelines currently recommend bivalirudin alone as an alternative to unfractionated heparin plus GP IIb/IIIa receptor inhibitors in patients undergoing an intended urgent or early invasive strategy.

New blood-thinner measures may cut medication errors

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Blood thinners are the preferred treatment option to prevent heart attacks, blood clots and stroke, but they are not without risk, and not just because of their side effects. These high-risk drugs, known as anticoagulants, account for nearly 7 percent of medication errors in hospitalized patients.

Study shows low rate of late lumen loss with bioresorbable DESolve device

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21 May 2013, Paris, France: The DESolve bioresorbable coronary scaffold system achieves good efficacy and safety with low rates of late lumen loss and major coronary adverse events at six months, show first results from the pivotal DESolve Nx trial reported at EuroPCR 2013 today.

Study finds COPD is over-diagnosed among uninsured patients

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ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─More than 40 percent of patients being treated for COPD at a federally funded clinic did not have the disease, researchers found after evaluating the patients with spirometry, the diagnostic "gold standard" for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

New archaeological 'high definition' sourcing sharpens understanding of the past

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A new method of sourcing the origins of artefacts in high definition is set to improve our understanding of the past.

Dr Ellery Frahm at the University of Sheffield developed the new technology to better study Mesopotamian obsidian tools unearthed in Syria, where cultural heritage is threatened by the ongoing conflict.

Study links chemicals widely found in plastics and processed food to elevated blood pressure in children and teens

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Study: Empathy plays a key role in moral judgments

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CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Is it permissible to harm one to save many? Those who tend to say "yes" when faced with this classic dilemma are likely to be deficient in a specific kind of empathy, according to a report published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

Encouraging signs for bee biodiversity

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Declines in the biodiversity of pollinating insects and wild plants have slowed in recent years, according to a new study.

Researchers led by the University of Leeds and the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands found evidence of dramatic reductions in the diversity of species in Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands between the 1950s and 1980s.

But the picture brightened markedly after 1990, with a slowdown in local and national biodiversity losses among bees, hoverflies and wild plants.