Tech

In a new study, published in the online edition of the journal EBioMedicine, a multi-disciplinary team led by researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has identified key inflammatory mechanisms underlying type 1 diabetes and obesity-related kidney dysfunction.

UPTON, NY-Harnessing the power of the sun and creating light-harvesting or light-sensing devices requires a material that both absorbs light efficiently and converts the energy to highly mobile electrical current. Finding the ideal mix of properties in a single material is a challenge, so scientists have been experimenting with ways to combine different materials to create "hybrids" with enhanced features.

In their perspective article in the journal Science, researchers from Aalto University call for consistent and standardized testing of superhydrophobic, i.e. extremely water-repellent, materials.

Agreeing on a unified testing method is needed to allow community-wide comparison between published results. This would significantly progress development of superhydrophobic materials and their transfer to commercial products in, for instance, self-cleaning and anti-icing applications.

Curiosity is a powerful motivator, leading us to make important discoveries and explore the unknown. But new research shows that our curiosity is sometimes so powerful that it leads us to choose potentially painful and unpleasant outcomes that have no apparent benefits, even when we have the ability to avoid these outcomes altogether.

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Here's the scientific dirt: Soil can help reduce global warming.

While farm soil grows the world's food and fiber, scientists are examining ways to use it to sequester carbon and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

"We can substantially reduce atmospheric carbon by using soil. We have the technology now to begin employing good soil practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said Johannes Lehmann, Cornell University professor of soil and crop sciences, co-author of the Perspectives piece, "Climate-smart Soils," published in Nature, April 6.

HANOVER, N.H. - Robots do many things formerly done only by humans - from bartending and farming to driving cars - but a Dartmouth researcher and his colleagues have invented a "smart" paint spray can that robotically reproduces photographs as large-scale murals.

The computerized technique, which basically spray paints a photo, isn't likely to spawn a wave of giant graffiti, but it can be used in digital fabrication, digital and visual arts, artistic stylization and other applications.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Unconventional oil and gas (UOG) operations combine directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," to release natural gas and oil from underground rock. Recent studies have centered on potential water pollution from this process that may increase endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in surface and ground water and whether populations living near these operations have an increased risk of disease.

The transistor is the most fundamental building block of electronics, used to build circuits capable of amplifying electrical signals or switching them between the 0s and 1s at the heart of digital computation. Transistor fabrication is a highly complex process, however, requiring high-temperature, high-vacuum equipment.

Now, University of Pennsylvania engineers have shown a new approach for making these devices: sequentially depositing their components in the form of liquid nanocrystal "inks."

COLUMBUS, Ohio--Harmful algal blooms dangerous to human health and the Lake Erie ecosystem--such as the one that shut down Toledo's water supply for two days in 2014--could become a problem of the past.

RUSTON, La - Renata Minullina and Abhishek Panchal, biomedical engineering graduate students from Louisiana Tech University and the Institute for Micromanufacturing (IfM), have won the prestigious Poster Presentation Award at the Polymer Materials Science and Engineering Division of the 251st National American Chemical Society (ACS) Meeting held recently in San Diego, California.

Moss growing on urban trees is a useful bio-indicator of cadmium air pollution in Portland, Oregon, a U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station-led study has found. The work--the first to use moss to generate a rigorous and detailed map of air pollution in a U.S. city--is published online in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is characterized by abnormal hemoglobin, which alters the shape of red blood cells, resulting in poor blood flow and eventual death. In developed countries, the survival rate in children with SCD is high due to early medical intervention. However, the risk of adverse effects dramatically increases in SCD patients during early adulthood, and the factors that underlie adult progression of the disease are poorly understood.

Food should be labelled with the equivalent exercise to expend its calories to help people change their behaviour, argues an expert in The BMJ today.

Shirley Cramer, Chief Executive at the Royal Society of Public Health, says giving consumers an immediate link between foods' energy content and physical activity might help to reduce obesity.

It's been known for some time that the immune system can produce antibodies capable of "neutralizing" HIV, and stopping the AIDS-causing virus dead in its tracks.

The problem is, less than a third of people produce "broadly neutralizing" antibodies in response to HIV infection and it takes a year or more before production gets into full swing. Efforts to develop a vaccine that can jumpstart an effective immune response to HIV so far have been unsuccessful.

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- One of the startling discoveries about life on Earth in the past 25 years is that it can - and does - flourish beneath the ocean floor, in the planet's dark, dense, rocky crust.

The only way to get there is by drilling through meters of sediment until you hit rock, so information on this ubiquitous but buried marine biosphere is still scarce.