Tech

In the largest study of it kind to establish a link between sleep and diabetes, researchers found that people with diabetes who sleep poorly have higher insulin resistance, and a harder time controlling the disease.

The findings, published in the June issue of Diabetes Care, suggest that poor sleep may contribute to worse outcomes in people with diabetes.

A study of how University of Washington graduate students integrated an Amazon Kindle DX into their course reading provides the first long-term investigation of e-readers in higher education. While some of the study's findings were expected – students want improved support for taking notes, checking references and viewing figures – the authors also found that allowing people to switch between reading styles, and providing the reader with physical cues, are two challenges that e-readers will need to address in cracking the college market.

Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists have engineered a cheap, abundant alternative to the expensive platinum catalyst and coupled it with a light-absorbing electrode to make hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water.

For many practical applications involving lasers, it's important to be able to control the direction of the laser beams. Just ask Han Solo, or the captain of the Death Star. Researchers from North Carolina State University have come up with a very energy-efficient way of steering laser beams that is precise and relatively inexpensive.

Young black men who have sex with men (MSM) get infected with HIV nearly five times more often than MSM from other races, even though they don't have more unprotected sex.

The discrepancy has long mystified public health experts but a new study by investigators at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere now offers a possible explanation for it.

DENVER – It is absolutely unacceptable to subject children to any tobacco smoke exposure in cars, according to the authors of an abstract to be presented Sunday, May 1, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Denver.

"An infant strapped into a car seat is involuntarily and intensely exposed to more than 400 toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke," said abstract co-author Jonathan P. Winickoff, MD, MPH, FAAP. "They have no voice and no choice in whether their parents smoke in the car."

It can be quite jarring for a parent or caregiver to look in the rearview mirror while driving and see their child roaming around the backseat free of their safety restraints. A study on child self-unbuckling by Yale School of Medicine researchers reveals that most children who first unbuckle were age three and under and that many children unbuckle while the vehicle is in motion—putting them at a 3.5-fold increased risk for serious injuries.

DARIEN, Ill. – A study in the May 1 issue of the journal Sleep is the first to show that increased bursts of sleep among infants are significantly associated with growth spurts in body length.

Science is finally confirming what grandma knew all along: infants wake up taller right after they sleep.

Findings from the first study of its kind measuring the link between daily growth and sleep show the two are inextricably linked. Specifically, growth spurts are tied to an increase in total daily hours of sleep as well as an increase in the number of daily sleep bouts, the time from the onset of sleep until awakening.

DENVER – While it may be years before the health effects of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are known, a new study shows that fetal exposure to a chemical found in crude oil is associated with an increased risk of congenital heart disease (CHD).

The study, to be presented Saturday, April 30, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Denver, also showed that babies who had been exposed in utero to a chemical found in cleaning agents and spot removers were at increased risk of CHD.

The incidence of gout is on the rise and duel energy CT has the potential to allow non-invasive diagnosis of the disease, according to radiologists at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver General Hospital, in Vancouver, BC.

Patients who undergo MRI often suffer from elevated anxiety. Patient discomfort may cause poor image quality due to motion artifacts or early termination. Anxiolytic medications are currently used to reduce this anticipated anxiety , but animal-assisted therapy may be a non-invasive alternative treatment with fewer adverse effects, according to an exhibit being presented at the 2011 American Roentgen Ray Society's annual meeting.

The U.S. Federal Court of Appeals has overturned an August 2010 ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, paving the way for broader exploration of how stem cells function and how they can be harnessed to treat a wide range of currently incurable diseases.

The ruling has been welcomed by the Obama Administration, which attempted to lift the ban in 2009, and by the nation's top researchers in the field, including Arnold Kriegstein, MD, PhD, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF.

People don't really care what they're doing—just as long as they are doing something. That's one of the findings summarized in a new review article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

When psychologists think about why people do what they do, they tend to look for specific goals, attitudes, and motivations. But they may be missing something more general - people like to be doing something. These broader goals, to be active or inactive, may have a big impact on how they spend their time.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., April 29, 2011 - With the creation of a 3-D nanocone-based solar cell platform, a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jun Xu has boosted the light-to-power conversion efficiency of photovoltaics by nearly 80 percent.

The technology substantially overcomes the problem of poor transport of charges generated by solar photons. These charges -- negative electrons and positive holes -- typically become trapped by defects in bulk materials and their interfaces and degrade performance.