Tech

Does your laptop sometimes get so hot that it can almost be used to fry eggs? New technology may help cool it and give information technology a unique twist, says Jairo Sinova, a Texas A&M University physics professor.

Sinova and colleagues from Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, Institute of Physics ASCR, University of Cambridge and University of Nottingham have had their research published in the renowned journal Nature Physics.

An adhesive used in products like laminate countertops may also help cement a place for economically viable biofuels, according to a Kansas State University researcher.

Susan Sun directs K-State's Bio Materials and Technology Laboratory, where she studies bio-based materials. Her research group is studying adhesives made from by-products of soybean, corn, sorghum and biomass fuels.

A new European Earth observation satellite will be launched in the early hours of Monday morning (2 November 2009) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.

The European Space Agency Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS - pronounced SMOSS) satellite aims to measure both moisture levels in the Earth's soils and the saltiness (salinity) of the surface waters of the world's oceans from space for the very first time. British scientists and engineers have been involved in the mission from the start.

New research from Queen Mary, University of London and Harvard Medical School has revealed precisely why taking fish oils can help with conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.

In a paper published in Nature today*, researchers describe how the body converts an ingredient found in fish oils into another chemical called Resolvin D2 and how this chemical reduces the inflammation that leads to a variety of diseases.

Where Latinos are born and their immigration status affect the quality of health care they receive in the US, according to Professor Michael Rodríguez and colleagues from the UCLA Department of Family Medicine and the Network for Multicultural Research on Health and Healthcare based in Los Angeles, California. New information from this just-released study highlights the need for improved health systems for immigrants – documented or undocumented, US-born or foreign-born.

Scientists in California are reporting development of a new generation of the microcapsules used in carbon-free copy paper, in which capsules burst and release ink with pressure from a pen. The new microcapsules burst when exposed to light, releasing their contents in ways that could have wide-ranging commercial uses from home and personal care to medicine. Their study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a weekly publication.

Where does it come from? Scientists in Arizona are reporting a surprising answer to that question, which has puzzled and perplexed generations of men and women confronted with layers of dust on furniture and floors. Most of indoor dust comes from outdoors. Their report is scheduled for the Nov. 1 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

ESA's SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) and Proba-2 (PRoject for OnBoard Autonomy) satellites are scheduled for launch on Monday 2 November at 02:50 CET on a Russian Rockot launcher from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia.

Residents can serve a vital role in educating Congress, the medical community, and the general public regarding the efficacy of cutting-edge technologies like CT colonography (CTC) as well as the importance of radiologists' training and education and the role that radiologists serve in the provision of quality health care, according to an article published in the November issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).

MADISON, WI, OCTOBER 27, 2009 -- Phosphorus is an essential element in production agriculture, however fertilizer runoff and wastewater discharge have led to massive eutrophication problems in water bodies worldwide.

MADISON, WI, OCTOBER 27, 2009 -- Worldwide leaders in agricultural research, science policy, and soil science will address emerging developments in plant and soil sciences as daily plenary lectures during the 2009 Annual Meetings of the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA), Nov. 1-5 in Pittsburgh, PA.The meeting will be held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA. The four daily plenary lecturers are:

The United Kingdom's deepest diving Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), Autosub6000, has been put through its paces during an extremely successful engineering trials cruise on the RRS Discovery, 27 September to 17 October 2009.

Autosub6000 was working in regions of the Iberian Abyssal Plain in the North Atlantic deeper than 5600 metres and also around the steep and rugged terrain of the Casablanca Seamount, between Madeira and Morocco. The vehicle was designed and constructed by engineers at the Underwater Systems Laboratory in the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

CSIRO researchers have identified wheat and barley lines resistant to Crown Rot – a disease that costs Australian wheat and barley farmers $79 million in lost yield every year.

Crown Rot, which is a chronic problem throughout the Australian wheat belt, is caused by the fungus Fusarium.

Dr Chunji Liu and his CSIRO Plant Industry team in Brisbane are using sophisticated screening methods to scan over 2400 wheat lines and 1000 barley lines from around the world to find the ones resistant the fungal disease.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- The design of a consultation room can improve the quality of a visit to the physician's office. A collaborative research study developed by Nurture by Steelcase and Mayo Clinic, was conducted to understand the extent to which a consultation room designed to support present-day clinical encounters could affect the consultation between patients and clinicians. The results of this randomized trial, the first of its kind, will appear in the October issue of Health Environments Research and Design Journal (HERD).

ATLANTA—October 28, 2009—A new report from an American Cancer Society (ACS) scientific advisory subcommittee on cancer and the environment says exposure to carcinogens should be minimized or eliminated whenever feasible, and calls for new strategies to more effectively and efficiently screen the large number of chemicals to which the public is exposed.