Tech

In a paper published this month in Nano Research, Rice University chemist Bob Hauge's team describes a method for making "odako," bundles of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT). Named for the traditional Japanese kites they resemble, they may lead to the production of meter-long strands of nanotubes, no wider than a piece of DNA.

How many sweets fit into a jar? This question depends on the shapes and sizes of the sweets, the size of the jar, and how it is filled. Surprisingly, this ancient question remains unanswered because of the complex geometry of sweet-packing. Moreover, as any contestant knows, guessing the number of sweets in the jar is difficult because the sweets located at the center of the jar are hidden from view and can't be counted. Researchers at New York University have now determined how sweets pack from inside the jar, making it easier to more accurately count them.

PASADENA, Calif.—Using a combination of theoretical modeling, energy calculations, and field observations, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have for the first time described a mechanism that explains how some of the ocean's tiniest swimming animals can have a huge impact on large-scale ocean mixing.

Their findings are being published in the July 30 issue of the journal Nature.

Researchers at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer have found that head and neck cancer patients who test positive for the human papillomavirus (HPV) have much better survival rates than patients who don't have the virus, according to a new study in the journal Cancer Prevention Research. The researchers also discovered that blacks in the study had a very low rate of HPV infection, and consequently worse survival, which may explain why African-American patients traditionally have had a poor prognosis for head and neck cancer.

A Queen's University Belfast academic is working on research that could help protect the lives of military based in Afghanistan.

Professor Wei Sha from Queen's School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering has been testing how safe vehicles with titanium alloys are when attacked by bullets or explosions.

Professor Sha's research examines the damage tolerance of the popular material titanium. It is the first research of its kind to reveal the reasons behind the deformation and damage of titanium alloys under strong impact or fast applied force.

New Orleans, LA – The latest findings of the North Carolina-Louisiana Prostate Cancer Project reveal potential new targets for reducing racial disparities in prostate cancer survival and highlight the importance of the health care delivery system. The study reports differences in physician trust, access to care, and continuity of care between African American and Caucasian men which result in advanced prostate cancer at the time of diagnosis and contribute to the higher death rate among African American men.

Call it a "shrimp cocktail" for your fuel tank. Scientists in China are reporting development of a catalyst made from shrimp shells that could transform production of biodiesel fuel into a faster, less expensive, and more environmentally friendly process. Their study is scheduled for the Aug. 20 issue of ACS' Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly journal.

Scientists from CSIRO's Food Futures Flagship have made a breakthrough in efforts to extend the sensory range of 'electronic noses' (e-noses) by developing a system for comparing their performance against the much-superior nose of the common house fly.

"Although e-noses already have many uses – such as detecting spoilage in the food industry and monitoring air quality – they are not as discriminating as biological noses," according to CSIRO scientist, Dr Stephen Trowell.

Men who have a regular, ongoing relationship with a health care provider are more likely to receive prostate cancer screening and less likely to be diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, regardless of their race, according to a University of North Carolina study published in the current issue of the journal Cancer.

A new urine test developed with funding from the Wellcome Trust will allow doctors to diagnose Chlamydia infection in men within the hour, improving the ability to successfully treat the infection on the spot and prevent re-transmission.

Chlamydia, caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis, is the most common sexually-transmitted bacterial infection in the UK, particularly amongst sexually active men and women aged 16-24 years.

With the rapid-fire release of data, studies presented at medical conferences in the age of instant information can have an almost immediate impact on patient treatment, said Matthew T. Roe, M.D., M.H.S., lead author of the study and associate professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center and at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham N.C.

"We were interested in whether practice patterns changed after the presentation of these studies," he said. "That's indeed what we showed."

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 28, 2009 -- The tubes that power X-ray machines are shrinking, improving the clarity and detail of their Superman-like vision. A team of nanomaterial scientists, medical physicists, and cancer biologists at the University of North Carolina has developed new lower-cost X-ray tubes packed with sharp-tipped carbon nanotubes for cancer research and treatment.

TEMPE, Ariz. – We could soon see the potential of laser technology expand dramatically.

Ways to make lasers smaller are being discovered through collaborative efforts of researchers at Arizona State University and Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The work opens up possibilities for using nanoscale lasers to significantly improve the performance of computers and speed up Internet access .

WASHINGTON -- With a sustained national commitment, the United States could obtain substantial energy-efficiency improvements, new sources of energy, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through the accelerated deployment of existing and emerging energy technologies, according to AMERICA'S ENERGY FUTURE: TECHNOLOGY AND TRANSFORMATION, the capstone report of the America's Energy Future project of the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering.

The online logic puzzle called FunSAT, could help integrated circuit designers select and arrange transistors and their connections on silicon microchips.

Designing chip architecture for the best performance and smallest size is an exceedingly difficult task that's outsourced to computers these days. But computers simply flip through possible arrangements in their search. They lack the human capacities for intuition and visual pattern recognition that could yield a better or even optimal design. That's where FunSAT comes in.