Tech

London, UK (September 3, 2010) – More people are likely to believe scientific studies claiming that oil drilling is riskier, not safer, than was previously thought, according to a new study of attitudes in California. What's more the findings, which appear in the journal Public Understanding of Science (PUS), published by SAGE, show that scientists' efforts to influence public opinion have a limited effect.

Afla-Guard®, a biological control used to thwart the growth of fungi on peanuts, can be used on corn as well, according to a study by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists who helped develop it.

After extensive study and research trials in Texas, Afla-Guard® was registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for use on corn, beginning with the 2009 crop.

CAMDEN — One mention of E. coli conjures images of sickness and food poisoning, but the malevolent bacteria may also be the key to the future of renewable energy.

Desmond Lun, an associate professor of computer science at Rutgers University–Camden, is researching how to alter the genetic makeup of E. coli to produce biodiesel fuel derived from fatty acids.

"If we can engineer biological organisms to produce biodiesel fuels, we'll have a new way of storing and using energy," Lun says.

The first clinical trials on a new investigational drug being developed to treat infections caused by Hepatitis C virus have been successfully completed.

Completion of the initial phase (phase 1a) of trials of INX-189, discovered and first prepared by researchers at Cardiff University's Welsh School of Pharmacy in 2008, means the chances of it becoming an approved medicine have significantly improved.

Hurricane Earl lashed the North Carolina coast last night and this morning, September 3, and is now headed for Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This morning's image from the GOES-13 satellite saw Hurricane Earl's clouds covering most of the northeastern U.S.

Global agricultural expansion cut a wide swath through tropical forests during the 1980s and 1990s. Over half a million square miles of new farmland – an area roughly the size of Alaska – was created in the developing world between 1980 and 2000, of which over 80 percent was carved out of tropical forests, according to Stanford researcher Holly Gibbs.

Graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of graphitic carbon, has great potential to make electronic devices such as radios, computers and phones faster and smaller. But its unique properties have also led to difficulties in integrating the material into such devices.

In a paper published Sept. 1 in the journal Nature, a group of UCLA researchers demonstrate how they have overcome some of these difficulties to fabricate the fastest graphene transistor to date.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Protecting helicopters in combat from heat-seeking missiles is the goal of new laser technology created at the University of Michigan and Omni Sciences, Inc., which is a U-M spin-off company.

"Battlefield terrain in places like Afghanistan and Iraq can be so rough that our troops have often had to rely on helicopters, and they can be easy targets for enemies with shoulder-launched missiles," said Mohammed Islam, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.— Scientists have long thought that social networks, which features many distant connections, or "long ties," produces large-scale changes most quickly. But in a new study, Damon Centola, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has reached a different conclusion: Individuals are more likely to acquire new health practices while living in networks with dense clusters of connections — that is, when in close contact with people they already know well.

Tropical Depression Nine strengthened yesterday into Tropical Storm Gaston, but today it ran into dry and stable air and weakened back into a depression again.

STEPHENVILLE -- Think you're uncomfortable in the extreme Texas summer heat? Try being an ovulating 1,200-pound mother cow.

Studies have shown that heat-stressed dairy cows suffer from damage to their ovarian follicles. Moreover, the eggs produced by the damaged follicles may also be damaged, said Dr. Todd Bilby, Texas AgriLife Extension Service dairy specialist.

Worse, after becoming heat-stressed, other studies have shown the eggs she ovulates for the next 40 or 50 days are likely to be damaged as well, according to Bilby.

Prompted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a UC Santa Barbara scientist has come up with a new way of predicting how contaminants like oil will spread. He was able to forecast several days in advance that oil from that spill would wash ashore in particular parts of the Gulf of Mexico.

"We predicted where the oil was going to go," says Igor Mezic, a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara who studies fluid dynamics. "We were able to do 3-day predictions pretty accurately."

A new discovery by scientists at the Universities of East Anglia and Frankfurt could make it possible in future to identify the source of banned CFCs that are probably still being released into the atmosphere.

A team of McGill chemists have discovered that a technique known as photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy could be used to identify the composition of pigments used in art work that is decades or even centuries old. Pigments give artist's materials colour, and they emit sounds when light is shone on them.

The Department of Computer Science and Technology, Peking University, Beijing, China, has shown that a novel dynamic memory mapping (DMM) model brings about additional flexibility to virtual resource management, leading to the feature-adjustable design of a virtual machine monitor (VMM). The study is reported in Issue 53 (June, 2010) of SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences because of its significant research value.