Tech

FINDINGS:Historically, authorities have used broad media campaigns to encourage the public to prepare for disasters — an approach that has proven largely ineffective. For this new study, UCLA researchers sought to test novel, culturally tailored, informal social networking approaches to improve disaster preparedness, using data on 231 Hispanics in Los Angeles County.

Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia represent an exponentially growing social and health care challenge for American families – not only family members who face the progressive brain disease, but also those who love them.

In the study, Franck and co-lead author Stacey Maskarinec, who both conducted the experiments while graduate students at the California Institute of Technology, placed cells on top of a 50-micron-thick water-based gel designed to mimic human tissue. They added into the gel spheres about a half-micron in diameter that lit up when jostled by the cells' actions. By combining two techniques — laser scanning confocal microscopy and digital volume correlation — the scientists tracked the cells' movement by quantifying exactly how the environment changed each time the cell moved.

SEATTLE – Despite a 100-fold increase in H1N1 influenza cases in the Seattle area during spring 2009, an aggressive infection control program to protect immunocompromised cancer patients and thorough screening measures resulted in no corresponding increase in H1N1 cases among the total patient population at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, according to a new study by researchers and physicians at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the SCCA.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida researchers at work on a malaria elimination study in Africa have become the first to predict the spread of the disease using cell phone records.

The scientists analyzed more than 21 million calls to determine how often residents of Zanzibar travel and where they go. A semi-autonomous region composed of two islands off the coast of Tanzania in East Africa, Zanzibar has drastically reduced malaria in recent years. Its government commissioned the study as part of deliberations on whether to launch a total elimination campaign.

New scientific discoveries are moving society toward the era of "personalized solar energy," in which the focus of electricity production shifts from huge central generating stations to individuals in their own homes and communities. That's the topic of a report by an international expert on solar energy published in the ACS' Inorganic Chemistry, a bi-weekly journal. It describes a long-awaited, inexpensive method for solar energy storage that could help power homes and plug-in cars in the future while helping keep the environment clean.

Getting the most out of every drop of water is a high priority for grape growers in the southern Napa Valley, where summers are hot and dry and vines have to be irrigated to make it through the growing season. But Stanford researchers have found that a significant portion of the water applied to the vines zips right by the plants, hardly even pausing.

This release is available in http://chinese..org/zh/emb_releases/2009-12/jaaj-csa121109.php">Chinese.

An increase in the number of screened carriers for cystic fibrosis (CF) was associated with a decrease in the number of children born with CF in northeast Italy, according to a study in the December 16 issue of JAMA.

December 18, 2009, marks the tenth year since the launch of Terra, one of NASA's "flagship" Earth observing satellites. But the decade is more than just a mechanical milestone. With each additional day and year that the satellite monitors Earth, scientists achieve a lengthened record of Earth's vital signs. It's that record that helps scientists assess the health of Earth's ocean, land, and atmosphere, and determine how these systems are changing.

BOSTON ––– In a new study of terminally ill cancer patients, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found support of patients' spiritual needs by the medical team is associated with greater use of hospice, less aggressive care, and greater quality of life near death. The study is published by the Journal of Clinical Oncology on its web site and later will be published in a print edition.

SAN FRANCISCO -- New climate research reveals how wind shear -- the same atmospheric conditions that cause bumpy airplane rides -- affects how pollution contributes to isolated thunderstorm clouds. Under strong wind shear conditions, pollution hampers thunderhead formation. But with weak wind shear, pollution does the opposite and makes storms stronger.

Adding cerium oxide to phosphate glass rather than the commonly used silicate glass may make glasses that block ultraviolet light and have increased radiation damage resistance while remaining colorless, according to Penn State researchers. These cerium-containing phosphate glasses have many commercial applications for use in windows, sunglasses and solar cells.

"We wanted to get larger amounts of cerium into glass, because of its beneficial properties, and then investigate the properties of the glasses," said Jen Rygel, graduate student in materials science and engineering.

Free infectious HIV-1 is widely thought to be the major form of the virus in the blood of infected persons. U.S. Military HIV Research Program (MHRP) researchers, however, have demonstrated that essentially all of the infectious virus particles can bind to the surface of red blood cells isolated from each of 30 normal (non-infected) human donors. The results were published today in PLoS ONE, and can be accessed here.

Fierce competition over raw materials for new green technologies could become a thing of the past, thanks to a discovery by scientists from the University of Leeds.

Researchers from Leeds' Faculty of Engineering have discovered how to recover significant quantities of rare-earth oxides, present in titanium dioxide minerals. The rare-earth oxides, which are indispensable for the manufacture of wind turbines, energy-efficient lighting, and hybrid and electric cars, are extracted or reclaimed simply and cheaply from the waste materials of another industrial process.

The Key Laboratory for Power Machinery and Engineering of M. O. E, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in Shanghai, showed that the characteristics of ultrafine particles from a compression- ignition engine fueled with low sulfur diesel and evaluated the effects of diesel fuel sulfur on particulate matter from a compression-ignition engine. The study is reported in Volume XX, Issue 23 (December, 2009) of the Chinese Science Bulletin because of its significant research value.