Tech

Everyone wants to save energy, but there are few individuals who can tell you exactly how much energy the devices in their homes consume. For example, which consumes more power – the dishwasher or the television? To answer such questions and to give consumers a sense of where the energy guzzlers hide, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT in Sankt Augustin, Germany has developed an application that demonstrates the energy consumption of individual devices in the household.

As rescue workers scramble to provide assistance to hundreds of thousands of people following Haiti's earthquake, Earth observation satellite data continues to provide updated views of the situation on the ground.

Following the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January, international agencies requested satellite data of the area from the International Charter on 'Space and Major Disasters'.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – One way to help address the epidemic of obesity in the United States is improved access to pleasant hiking trails and an ambitious parks and recreation program, a recent study suggests, but programs such as this are increasingly being reduced in many states due to budget shortfalls.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — What we learn from our siblings when we grow up has – for better or for worse – a considerable influence on our social and emotional development as adults, according to an expert in sibling, parent-child and peer relationships at the University of Illinois.

Laurie Kramer, a professor of applied family studies in the department of human and community development at Illinois, says that although a parent's influence on a child's development shouldn't be underestimated, neither should a sibling's.

Boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) are the divas of the nanoworld. In possession of alluring properties, they are also notoriously temperamental compared to their carbon-based cousins.

Esophageal carcinoma (EC) is one of the major malignant diseases worldwide. Surgery alone cannot obtain satisfactory effects in patients with EC. Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy has been a hotspot for EC treatment research. Several related randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been published, but opinions vary among clinicians as to the therapeutic effect of the new method. It remains uncertain whether patients with resectable EC can benefit from neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

New York, NY, January 15, 2010—A new Commonwealth Fund survey of safety-net clinic patients in New Orleans finds that, despite being disproportionately low-income and uninsured, these patients had fewer problems affording care and fewer instances of medical debt and inefficient care than most U.S. adults. In fact, the report, Coming Out of Crisis: Patient Experiences In Primary Care In New Orleans, Four Years Post Katrina, finds that, among the clinic patients surveyed, only 27 percent went without needed health care because of cost, compared with 41 percent of adults across the country.

HOBOKEN, N.J. – A research paper that has potential implications for homeland defense, work place safety, and health care has been published in the Journal of Advanced Materials (volume, issue, 2010). Stevens Institute of Technology's Dr. Henry Du, Professor and Director of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, together with Dr.

University of Utah mathematicians developed a new cloaking method that might someday shield buildings from earthquakes and oil rigs and coastal structures from tsunamis.

"We have shown that it is numerically possible to cloak objects of any shape that lie outside the cloaking devices, not just from single-frequency waves, but from actual pulses generated by a multi-frequency source," says Graeme Milton, senior author of the research and a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Utah.

Patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) often do not receive adequate end-of-life care and are unhappy with the medical decisions made as their conditions worsen, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The findings indicate that end-of-life care should be improved to meet the needs of CKD patients.

A significant percentage of U.S. women 70 years or older who were severely cognitively impaired received screening mammography that was unlikely to benefit them, according to a study of 2,131 elderly women conducted by researchers from the University of California, San Francisco.

A Northwestern University study shows that coupling a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent to a nanodiamond results in dramatically enhanced signal intensity and thus vivid image contrast.

"The results are a leap and not a small one -- it is a game-changing event for sensitivity," said Thomas J. Meade, the Eileen Foell Professor in Cancer Research in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Feinberg School of Medicine. "This is an imaging agent on steroids. The complex is far more sensitive than anything else I've seen."

A major 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on 12 January, causing major casualties and damage. The quake was followed by several aftershocks with magnitudes over 5.0.

Such a powerful earthquake can make current maps suddenly out of date, causing additional challenges to rescue workers on the ground. Earth observation satellite images can help rescue efforts by providing updated views of how the landscape and the infrastructure have been affected.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) adversely affects glucose control in patients with type 2 diabetes, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago.

The study "demonstrates for the first time that there is a clear, graded, inverse relationship between OSA severity and glucose control in patients with type 2 diabetes," wrote lead author, Renee S. Aronsohn, M.D., instructor of medicine at the University of Chicago.

We assume that we see things as they really are. But according to a new report in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, if we really want something, that desire may influence how we view our surroundings.