Tech

Typical clovers have three leaves, unless you happen to be lucky, and NASA's Aqua satellite has provided three different views of Ireland to mark Saint Patrick's Day on March 17, 2011. With the luck o' the Irish, NASA's Aqua satellite was fortunate to capturemostly clear views of the Emerald Isle in these near-infrared/visible, infrared and microwave light views acquired by Aqua's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on March 3, 2011, at 13:11 UTC.

GRENOBLE, France -- (March 16, 2011) -- An international team of computing experts from the United States, Switzerland and Singapore has created a breakthrough technique for doubling the efficiency of computer chips simply by trimming away the portions that are rarely used.

SEATTLE—Online messaging can deliver organized follow-up care for depression effectively and efficiently, according to a randomized controlled trial of 208 Group Health patients that the Journal of General Internal Medicine e-published in advance of print.

Scientists have long been aware of a link between naval sonar exercises and unusual mass strandings of beaked whales. Evidence of such a link triggered a series of lawsuits in which environmental groups sued the U.S. Navy to limit sonar exercises to reduce risk to whales. In 2008, this conflict rose to the level of the US Supreme Court which had to balance potential threat to whales from sonar against the military risk posed by naval forces inadequately trained to use sonar to detect enemy submarines.

NASA's Aqua and TRMM satellites are providing data to scientists about the Southern Atlantic Ocean Sub-tropical Storm Arani, a rare occurrence in the southern ocean. Rainfall data and cloud top temperatures revealed some heavy rain and strong thunderstorms exist in Arani as it continues to pull away from Brazil.

NOAA's Satellite and Information Service classified Arani as a T1 on the Dvorak intensity scale which would indicate an estimated wind speed of about 29 knots (~33 mph).

(Edmonton) If you have time to quickly swipe your pager or cell phone three times, that would be your best bet to get rid of most of the bacteria. And a simple tissue moistened with saline would do the trick. But if you only have time for a single swipe of a 'dirty' phone – you'd be better off reaching for a disinfectant wipe.

Those are the highlights of a recently published research study that appeared online in PubMed, with the discoveries having been made by a team of researchers in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta.

Just as a chain is as strong as its weakest link, a building is as secure against the environment as its most degraded joint sealants, about 50 percent of which fail in less than 10 years after installation.

The upshot for U.S. homeowners is that moisture damage due to failed sealants is responsible for much of the $65 billion to $80 billion they collectively shell out for house repairs annually.

PHILADELPHIA – For seniors, voting can be difficult: standing with a walker or cane in the voting booth, struggling to read the tiny print on the ballot or trying to punch the tiny button to vote for the intended. Despite the desire to vote, the typical voting process leaves many seniors disenfranchised, particularly for residents of long term care facilities.

While most electronic components benefit from decreased size, antennas—whether in a cell phone or on an aircraft—suffer limitations in gain, efficiency, system range, and bandwidth when their size is reduced below a quarter-wavelength.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists trying to help Florida growers find a replacement for methyl bromide are studying an alternative soil treatment that uses molasses as one of its ingredients.

An article in the current issue of Global Change Biology Bioenergy proposes a new method to account for CO2 emissions from biomass combustion in bioenergy systems.

CO2 emissions resulting from bioenergy production have traditionally been excluded from most emission inventories and environmental impact studies because bioenergy is carbon- and climate- neutral as long as CO2 emissions from biofuel combustion are sequestered by growing biomass. Its climate impact has not therefore been considered.

Fresh insight into the way the parasite that causes malaria reproduces could lead to new treatments to help curb the spread of the disease.

Scientists studying the disease have found that upsetting the parasite's reproductive strategy could prevent infections from transmitting from person to person.

New York, NY, March 16, 2011—An estimated nine million working-age adults—57 percent of people who had health insurance through a job that was lost—became uninsured in the last two years, according to the Commonwealth Fund 2010 Biennial Health Insurance Survey, released today.

Soon, drug delivery that precisely targets cancerous cells without exposing the healthy surrounding tissue to the medication's toxic effects will no longer be an oncologist's dream but a medical reality, thanks to the work of Professor Sylvain Martel, Director of the Nanorobotics Laboratory at Polytechnique Montréal.

The standard retreatment regimen for tuberculosis has low treatment response rates and is associated with poor long term outcomes in certain subgroups of patients, particularly those infected with both HIV and multi-drug resistant TB.