Tech

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Refineries could trim millions of dollars in energy costs annually by using a new method developed at Purdue University to rearrange the distillation sequence needed to separate crude petroleum into products.

The researchers have demonstrated their method on petroleum plants that separate crude, showing that 70 of the new sequences they identified could enable oil refineries to improve the energy efficiency of this step anywhere from 6 percent to 48 percent, said Rakesh Agrawal, the Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Expanding Michigan State University's global health outreach, a team of researchers is working in the Dominican Republic to establish a model for HIV/AIDS care that can be exported to other resource-limited countries.

The team, led by Reza Nassiri, the director of MSU's Institute of International Health, is treating patients and educating doctors at the Santo Domingo HIV/AIDS clinic.

TEMPE, Ariz. – Scientists at Arizona State University have developed an elegant method for significantly improving the memory capacity of electronic chips.

Led by Michael Kozicki, an ASU electrical engineering professor and director of the Center for Applied Nanoionics, the researchers have shown that they can build stackable memory based on "ionic memory technology," which could make them ideal candidates for storage cells in high-density memory. Best of all, the new method uses well-known electronics materials.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used.

The tiny cells could turn a person into a walking solar battery charger if they were fastened to flexible substrates molded around unusual shapes, such as clothing.

Israel can make natural gas usage a bigger part of its energy portfolio without jeopardizing its security, but even more importantly, the nation needs to make conservation measures a priority in its future energy plans, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.

Building a new ski run by bulldozing a mountainside, rather than only cutting its shrubs and trees, is far more damaging ecologically, yet might offer only a week's earlier start to the downhill season, says a new UC Davis study.

Even that extra week of revenue may be partly offset by higher summer maintenance costs.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---It's commonly known that plants interact with each other on an everyday basis: they shade each other out or take up nutrients from the soil before neighboring plants can get them. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan have learned that plants also respond to the past.

The research appears in the February 2010 issue of the American Naturalist.

OAK BROOK, Ill. – In a new study published in the January issue of Radiology, 42 percent of women eligible for breast cancer screening with MRI declined to undergo the procedure.

Blacksburg, Va. – An unusual bowstring truss iron bridge that carried traffic across Roaring Run in Bedford County, Va. for almost 100 years is now a picturesque footbridge at the I-81 Ironto, Va. rest stop. Built in 1878, it is the oldest standing metal bridge in Virginia. In early December, a Virginia Tech undergraduate conducted a load-bearing analysis of the structure.

A team of researchers from the University of Vigo, Rutgers University in the United States and Imperial College London, in the United Kingdom, has developed "laser spinning", a novel method of producing glass nanofibres with materials. They have been able to manufacture bioglass nanofibres, the bioactive glass used in regenerating bone, for the first time.

The premiere issue of an aging-focused newsletter deals with two pressing societal concerns — the economic downturn and health care reform — from the perspective of older minority adults.

WHAT'S HOT is the newest publication from The Gerontological Society of America (GSA), the country's largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging. Support for this issue was provided by sanofi-aventis.

Due to a lack of suitable studies, it remains unclear whether children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes benefit more or less from long-term treatment with rapid-acting insulin analogues than with short-acting human insulin. Certainly, there is no proof of additional benefit from the available results from clinical trials of maximum one year duration. This applies both in the comparison with human insulin and in the comparison between analogues only.

Many alcoholic beverages contain byproducts of the materials used in the fermenting process. These byproducts are called "congeners," complex organic molecules with toxic effects including acetone, acetaldehyde, fusel oil, tannins, and furfural. Bourbon has 37 times the amount of congeners that vodka has. A new study has found that while drinking a lot of bourbon can cause a worse hangover than drinking a lot of vodka, impairment in people's next-day task performance is about the same for both beverages.

A widely used test for measuring nighttime blood pressure may interfere with patients' sleep, thus affecting the results of the test, reports a study in an upcoming issue of Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).

Patients with sudden loss of kidney function, called acute kidney injury (AKI), are more likely to die prematurely after leaving the hospital—even if their kidney function has apparently recovered, according to an upcoming study in Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). "Our study found that risk of death remains elevated long after the acute kidney injury," comments Jean-Phillipe Lafrance, MD (Center for Health Quality, Outcomes, and Economic Research, Bedford, MA).