Tech

PASADENA, Calif.—East Africa's Turkana Basin has been a hot savanna region for at least the past 4 million years—including the period of time during which early hominids evolved in this area—says a team of researchers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). These findings may shed light on the evolutionary pressures that led humans to walk upright, lose most of our body hair, develop a more slender physique, and sweat more copiously than other animals.

ITHACA, N.Y. – Moore's law marches on: In the quest for faster and cheaper computers, scientists have imaged pore structures in insulation material at sub-nanometer scale for the first time. Understanding these structures could substantially enhance computer performance and power usage of integrated circuits, say Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and Cornell University scientists.

Quebec City − Health-care costs for patients in just the first six months after they have a stroke is more than $2.5 billion a year in Canada, according to a study presented today at the Canadian Stroke Congress.

The Canadian Stroke Network's Burden of Ischemic Stroke (BURST) study found that the direct and indirect health-care costs for new stroke patients tally an average $50,000 in the six-month period following a new stroke. There are about 50,000 new strokes in Canada each year.

New York, NY, June 8, 2010—The new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMI) must be inclusive and flexible in developing and implementing payment initiatives, continuously monitor their impact, and rapidly disseminate them if they appear to be successful, in order to realize the potential for improved health care delivery and reduced spending, according to a new Health Affairs article by Commonwealth Fund researchers.

Traditional surveillance cameras can be of great assistance to law enforcement officers for a range of scenarios—canvassing a crowd for criminal activity, searching for who left a suitcase beneath a bench, or trying to pick out a suspect who has fled a crime scene and blended into a teeming throng in the subway.

Quebec City – An innovative use of virtual reality is emerging as a major technique in brain recovery for stroke patients, Dr. Mindy Levin told the Canadian Stroke Congress today.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers at Purdue University have developed a potential new tool for medical diagnostics, testing food and water for contamination, and crime-scene forensics.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (6/7/10) – A nano-scale solar cell inspired by the coaxial cable offers greater efficiency than any previously designed nanotech thin film solar cell by resolving the "thick & thin" challenge inherent to capturing light and extracting current for solar power, Boston College researchers report in the current online edition of the journal Physica Status Solidi.

PITTSBURGH—In response to the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, a University of Pittsburgh engineering professor has developed a technique for separating oil from water via a cotton filter coated in a chemical polymer that blocks oil while allowing water to pass through. The researcher reports that the filter was successfully tested off the coast of Louisiana and shown to simultaneously clean water and preserve the oil.

Vancouver, British Columbia (June 7, 2010) – Researchers from the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) and the University of British Columbia today released a comprehensive study revealing that the 2008 IAS-USA therapy guidelines for commencing HIV treatment would create significant benefits for individuals infected with HIV and society as a whole.

Childhood hardships may be related to future pregnancy outcomes, in part through their association with smoking during pregnancy and adult socioeconomic position, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Common drugs used to treat conditions such as diabetes and obesity could be used to successfully treat hepatitis C virus infection.

Research led by the University of Leeds has found drugs such as anti-diabetic drug Metformin and AICAR, used to combat obesity, can prevent the hepatitis C virus from replicating in the body.

SALT LAKE CITY—A study presented at SNM's 57th Annual Meeting suggests that medication ingested to control blood-sugar levels can skew the results of cancer screenings using positron emission tomography (PET), a molecular imaging technique, by increasing absorption in the gut of the PET imaging agent called fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG), which mimics sugar inside the body.

SALT LAKE CITY—Research unveiled at SNM's 57th Annual Meeting may change the way that a novel form of radiotherapy is set up and tested prior to treatment. This technique, known as radiomicrosphere therapy, involves the injection of tiny highly radioactive beads that "nestle up" with cancerous tumors and destroy them with precision. However, technologists and physicians must work together to carefully plan each patient's treatment using molecular imaging to ensure that the beads do not wander off into other areas of the body.

"Now she's taking that experience and applying it to these very different areas," Marschilok continues. "Could a variation on one of the battery systems one day be applied to powering homes and buildings? That's the kind of perspective she has and it's what battery research really needs."