Tech

Australia's own distinctive red soils could play a part in the formation of the stinking swathes of blue green algae often shovelled off east coast beaches in summer.

A QUT team of scientists is taking an in-depth look at how iron, which gives our iron-rich soil its red colour, reaches water to potentially contribute to the algal blooms, which not only have a foul smell, but also make our eyes sting, cause fich kills and smother seagrass.

The nectar of the almond tree produces an extraordinary and dangerous poison. This is the only known plant to have this poison in its flowers' nectar. A study carried out at the University of Haifa has revealed that bees are mysteriously drawn to the toxic substance.

A recent study by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh found that workers with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were comparable to non-impaired individuals in keyboarding speed. Individuals who were trained in touch typing demonstrated faster typing speeds than those using a visually-guided ("hunt and peck") method, regardless of impairment. Researchers also noted slightly impaired mouse skills in workers with RA.

A new study led by Mount Sinai researchers in collaboration with scientists from Cornell University and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has found higher prenatal exposure to phthalates—manmade chemicals that interfere with hormonal messaging—to be connected with disruptive and problem behaviors in children between the ages of 4 and 9 years. The study, which is the first to examine the effects of prenatal phthalate exposure on child neurobehavioral development, will be published January 28, on the Environmental Health Perspectives website.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — For years many health experts believed that increasing insurance co-payments for routine doctor visits helped control costs. Patients faced with the higher price tag, they theorized, would simply cut back unnecessary visits, saving themselves and insurers money.

Power-generating rubber films developed by Princeton University engineers could harness natural body movements such as breathing and walking to power pacemakers, mobile phones and other electronic devices.

The latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-P is proceeding through more checks in preparation for its launch, which is no earlier than March 1.

The GOES-P spacecraft continues being processed at the Astrotech Facility in Titusville, Fla. The Imager, Sounder and Solar X-Ray Imager have completed cleaning and inspections. The optical port covers have been successfully installed. Those covers are one of the last mechanisms to be deployed once GOES-P gets into orbit.

Just as cooking helps people digest food, pretreating polycarbonate plastic — source of a huge environmental headache because of its bisphenol A (BPA) content — may be the key to disposing of the waste in an eco-friendly way, scientists have found. Their new study is in ACS' Biomacromolecules, a monthly journal.

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say they have shown that mismatched alloys are a good match for the future development of high performance thermoelectric devices. Thermoelectrics hold enormous potential for green energy production because of their ability to convert heat into electricity.

PITTSBURGH—In response to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute (LTI) have publicly released spoken and textual data they've compiled on Haitian Creole so that translation tools desperately needed by doctors, nurses and other relief workers on the earthquake-ravaged island can be rapidly developed.

Magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy – which analyzes the biochemistry rather than the structure of tissues – may someday be able both to pinpoint the precise location of prostate cancer and to determine the tumor's aggressiveness, information that could help guide treatment planning. In the January 27 online issue of Science Translational Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report how spectroscopic analysis of the biochemical makeup of prostate glands accurately identified the location of tissue confirmed to be malignant by conventional pathology.

A collaboration led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from biomass. Deploying the tools of synthetic biology, the JBEI researchers engineered a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, January 27, 2010 –The United States has an inefficient and expensive health care system, but it could be improved with a new integrated health care system detailed in a new study in the American Journal of Public Health (February 2010 Vol. 100 No. 2).

Internet telephony has developed from a niche product into standard technology in recent years. Most telephone providers switched their background technology to Voice over IP, or VoIP for short, long ago. BITKOM, the German association for information technology, cites the economical rates and additional functions such as interaction between e-mail and voicemail as the primary forces driving this change.

A new approach for managing bugs in computer software has been developed by a team led by Prof. George Candea at EPFL. The latest version of Dimmunix, available for free download, enables entire networks of computers to cooperate in order to collectively avoid the manifestations of bugs in software.