Tech

A number of environmental toxins pose considerable health threats to humans, and the heavy metal cadmium (Cd) ranks high on the list. Most of us are exposed to it through plant-derived foods such as grains and vegetables. Now, new research offers ways in which investigators can reduce the amount of Cd found in the food we eat, according to a review published online September 12th in the Cell Press journal Trends in Plant Science.

A new paper appearing in the September 2012 edition of the Bulletin of The American Ceramic Society for the first time provides a scientific explanation of why some glass cookware sold in the United States is more susceptible than others to "explosive" shattering and the possibility of exposing consumers to injury from flying glass shards.

An invisible quick response (QR) code has been created by researchers in an attempt to increase security on printed documents and reduce the possibility of counterfeiting, a problem which costs governments and private industries billions of pounds each year.

Publishing their research today, 12 September, in IOP Publishing's journal Nanotechnology, the researchers from the University of South Dakota and South Dakota School of Mines and Technology believe the new style of QR code could also be used to authenticate virtually any solid object.

A couple of years ago, Hesham Rakha misjudged a yellow traffic light and entered an intersection just as the light turned red. A police officer handed him a ticket.

The negative consequences of age discrimination in many countries are more widespread than discrimination due to race or gender, yet differential treatment based on a person's age is often seen as more acceptable and even desirable, according to the newest edition of the Public Policy & Aging Report (PP&AR).

Researchers from the University of Rochester and Texas A&M University have found that, over a period of five months following the disastrous 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, naturally-occurring bacteria that exist in the Gulf of Mexico consumed and removed at least 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas that spewed into the deep Gulf from the ruptured well head.

The researchers analyzed an extensive data set to determine not only how much oil and gas was eaten by bacteria, but also how the characteristics of this feast changed with time.

People face this predicament all the time—can you determine a person's character in a single interaction? Can you judge whether someone you just met can be trusted when you have only a few minutes together? And if you can, how do you do it? Using a robot named Nexi, Northeastern University psychology professor David DeSteno and collaborators Cynthia Breazeal from MIT's Media Lab and Robert Frank and David Pizarro from Cornell University have figured out the answer.

Electronic Jewelry for Health

Bracelets and amulets are in the works at Dartmouth's Institute for Security, Technology, and Society (ISTS). Rather than items of mere adornment, the scientists and engineers are constructing personal mobile health (mHealth) devices—highly functional jewelry, as it were.

WASHINGTON -- Teens who play mature-rated, risk-glorifying video games may be more likely than those who don't to become reckless drivers who experience increases in automobile accidents, police stops and willingness to drink and drive, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico 2010 could have been avoided if the experiences of earlier disasters had been put to use, researcher Charles Woolfson, Linköping university, claims. The United States government is now accusing BP of gross negligence and deliberate misconduct, and taking the company to court.

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the ocean south of the southern coast of the US. The explosion led to the deaths of eleven people and an unfathomable environmental catastrophe.

PHILADELPHIA — Computers may be getting faster every year, but those advances in computer speed could be dwarfed if their 1's and 0's were represented by bursts of light, instead of electricity.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have made an important advance in this frontier of photonics, fashioning the first all-optical photonic switch out of cadmium sulfide nanowires. Moreover, they combined these photonic switches into a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information.

In the search for alternative energy, scientists have focused on the sun and the wind. There is also tremendous potential in harnessing the power of the ocean's waves, but marine energy presents specific challenges that have made it a less promising resource.

Warmer air temperatures since the 1980s may explain significant increases in zinc and other metal concentrations of ecological concern in a Rocky Mountain watershed, reports a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Colorado Boulder.

The decision has been taken by the German government to transform the energy system and phase out nuclear energy power. The transition process is gaining impetus but much remains to be done. During the course of which, the production of wind energy is to be dramatically expanded – not only through costly offshore facilities, but onshore as well. "There is still immense potential inland that remains to be tapped, such as in the low mountain ranges," says Tobias Klaas, scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES in Kassel.

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have patented and are commercializing GaAs nanowires grown on graphene, a hybrid material with competitive properties. Semiconductors grown on graphene are expected to become the basis for new types of device systems, and could fundamentally change the semiconductor industry. The technology underpinning their approach has recently been described in a publication in the American research journal Nano Letters.