Tech

CHICAGO, IL – 40,000 high school football kids get a concussion every year, but contrary to equipment manufacturers' claims, the specific brand of helmet and helmet age were not associated with lower risk of concussion, say researchers presenting their work today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.

Have you ever noticed the way water flows around boulders in a fast-moving river, creating areas of stillness and intense motion? What if those forces of fluid flow could be controlled at the smallest levels?

The National Food Institute has gathered the findings of the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration's studies of pesticide residues in Danish food in the period 2004-2011. The calculations of the intake show that pesticide residues in foods on the Danish market do not constitute a health risk.

Millions of people in low-income countries still depend on public computer and Internet access venues despite the global proliferation of mobile phones and home computers. However, interest in providing such public access has waned in recent years, especially among development agencies, as new technologies become available.

Laser frequency combs-high-precision tools for measuring different colors of light in an ever-growing range of applications such as advanced atomic clocks, medical diagnostics and astronomy-are not only getting smaller but also much easier to make.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can now make the core of a miniature frequency comb in one minute.* Conventional microfabrication techniques, by contrast, may require hours, days or even weeks.

Delaying clamping of the umbilical cord after birth benefits newborn babies, according to a systematic review published in The Cochrane Library. The authors found babies' blood and iron levels were healthier when the cord was clamped later.

Children with high proportions of poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in cord blood at birth are more likely to develop respiratory and skin allergies in their early teens, according to research published July 10 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Malin Barman and colleagues from the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

Preparing semiconductor quantum dots is sometimes more of a black art than a science. That presents an obstacle to further progress in, for example, creating better solar cells or lighting devices, where quantum dots offer unique advantages that would be particularly useful if they could be used as basic building blocks for constructing larger nanoscale architectures.

Everyone knows that as we grow older our bones become more fragile. Now a team of U.S. and German scientists led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley has shown that this bone-aging process can be significantly accelerated through deficiency of vitamin D - the sunshine vitamin.

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have many advantages over their silicon-based counterparts. They offer transparency, low cost, and high power conversion efficiencies under cloudy and artificial light conditions. However, until now their overall efficiency has been lower than silicon-based solar cells, mostly because of the inherent voltage loss during the regeneration of the sensitizing dye.

Fears of depleting the Earth's supply of oil are unwarranted, according to new research, which concludes that the demand for oil – as opposed to the supply – will reach its own peak and then decline.

"Peak oil" prognosticators have painted pictures of everything from a calm development of alternatives to calamitous shortages, panic and even social collapse as the world reaches its peak of oil production – and then supplies fall.

Rosemont, IL (July 8, 2013) –There have been dramatic decreases in the number and severity of lower limb amputations over the past decade, according to a new study published in the July 2013 issue of Foot & Ankle International. At the same time, orthopaedic advances in treating diabetic foot ulcers have become more commonplace, hopefully decreasing the need for amputation.

New research has shown surface ice melt will be the dominant process controlling ice-loss from Greenland. As outlet glaciers retreat inland the other process, iceberg production, remains important but will not grow as rapidly.

The Greenland ice sheet is often considered an important potential contributor to future global sea-level rise over the next century or longer. In total, it contains an amount of ice that would lead to a rise of global sea level by more than seven metres, if completely melted.

Pre-eclampsia affects 3-5% of pregnant women and can lead to preterm delivery, prematurity, perinatal morbidity and mortality. Although preterm birth and low birth weight are associated with excess risk of CP, the causes remain largely unknown.

Some studies have found an excess risk of CP in children born at term from mothers with pre-eclampsia while others have reported no association.

Introductory chemistry students learn that oil and water repel each other. So do other hydrophobic substances, which carry no electric charge, and hydrophilic substances, which carry an electric charge that allows them to mix with water.