Culture
From paint on a wall to tinted car windows, thin films make up a wide variety of materials found in ordinary life. But thin films are also used to build some of today's most important technologies, such as computer chips and solar cells. Seeking to improve the performance of these technologies, scientists are studying the mechanisms that drive molecules to uniformly stack together in layers--a process called crystalline thin film growth. Now, a new research technique could help scientists understand this growth process better than ever before.
WASHINGTON -- Researchers have used an extremely bright mid-infrared laser to perform an analytical technique known as spectroscopic ellipsometry. The new approach captures high-resolution spectral information in less than a second and could offer new insights into quickly changing properties of a variety of samples from plastics to biological materials.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- When Jeff Weakley tweezed open a blister-like bulge on his foot, he was not expecting to find a piece of tooth from a shark that bit him while he was surfing off Flagler Beach in 1994.
He also did not imagine that a DNA test of the tooth, conducted by scientists at the Florida Museum of Natural History, would reveal the kind of shark that had nabbed his foot nearly a quarter century ago: a blacktip.
PHILADELPHIA -- Prostate cancer represents a major health challenge and there is currently no effective treatment once it has advanced to the aggressive, metastatic stage. A new has revealed a key cellular mechanism that contributes to aggressive prostate cancer, and supporting a new clinical trial. The study was published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
Epinephrine has been included in resuscitation guidelines worldwide since the 1960s. It is believed that epinephrine increases the chance of restoring a person's heartbeat and improves long-term neurological outcome through increasing coronary and cerebral perfusion pressure. However, recent studies have raised doubts about the benefit of epinephrine regarding neurological outcomes in cardiac arrest. Moreover, epinephrine use in the stabilization of a cardiogenic shock in post-myocardial infarction patients has been found to increase the incidence of refractory shock.
Two NASA space telescopes have teamed up to identify, for the first time, the detailed chemical "fingerprint" of a planet between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. No planets like this can be found in our own solar system, but they are common around other stars.
The planet, Gliese 3470 b (also known as GJ 3470 b), may be a cross between Earth and Neptune, with a large rocky core buried under a deep crushing hydrogen and helium atmosphere. Weighing in at 12.6 Earth masses, the planet is more massive than Earth, but less massive than Neptune (which is more than 17 Earth masses).
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Domestic violence survivors commonly suffer repeated blows to the head and strangulation, trauma that has lasting effects that should be widely recognized by advocates, health care providers, law enforcement and others who are in a position to help, according to the authors of a new study.
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are among the most enigmatic and powerful events in the cosmos. Around 80 of these events--intensely bright millisecond-long bursts of radio waves coming from beyond our galaxy--have been witnessed so far, but their causes remain unknown.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - In a world of sympathetic villains and flawed heroes, people still like fictional characters more when they have a strong sense of morality, a new study finds.
Researchers found that people best liked the heroes they rated as most moral, and least liked villains they rated as most immoral.
Antiheroes and morally ambiguous characters like Walter White - the chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin in the show Breaking Bad - were more complicated for people to rate on likability.
Baltimore, MD--How do the communities of microbes living in our gastrointestinal systems affect our health? Carnegie's Will Ludington was part of a team that helped answer this question.
For nearly a century, evolutionary biologists have probed how genes encode an individual's chances for success--or fitness--in a specific environment.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Military veterans exposed to combat were more likely to exhibit signs of depression and anxiety in later life than veterans who had not seen combat, a new study from Oregon State University shows.
The findings suggest that military service, and particularly combat experience, is a hidden variable in research on aging, said Carolyn Aldwin, director of the Center for Healthy Aging Research in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at OSU and one of the study's authors.
Beryllium, a hard, silvery metal long used in X-ray machines and spacecraft, is finding a new role in the quest to bring the power that drives the sun and stars to Earth. Beryllium is one of the two main materials used for the wall in ITER, a multinational fusion facility under construction in France to demonstrate the practicality of fusion power. Now, physicists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and General Atomics have concluded that injecting tiny beryllium pellets into ITER could help stabilize the plasma that fuels fusion reactions.
DURHAM, N.C. -- A typical child plays many roles, such as friend, neighbor, son or daughter. Simply reminding children of that fact can lead to better problem-solving and more flexible thinking, finds new research from Duke University.
"This is some of the first research on reminding kids about their multi-faceted selves," said lead author Sarah Gaither, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke.
"Such reminders boost their problem-solving skills and how flexibly they see their social worlds - all from a simple mindset switch."
Carolyn "Lindy" McBride is studying a question that haunts every summer gathering: How and why are mosquitoes attracted to humans?
Few animals specialize as thoroughly as the mosquitoes that carry diseases like Zika, malaria and dengue fever.
When governments and institutions deploy epidemic forecast models when facing an outbreak, they sometimes fail to factor in human behavior and over-allocate precious resources as a result. Thanks to new research authored by a Texas A&M University engineering professor, that may no longer be the case.