Tech

Two new studies reveal how altering the composition of trees in forests is influencing not only the carbon cycle, but air surface temperatures to a significant degree as well. The results highlight how human-made changes to forests hold more severe consequences than previously believed. Worldwide, reforested areas are increasingly prominent; for example, in Europe, 85% of forests were managed by humans as of 2010.

MADISON, Wis. -- The material at the heart of the lithium ion batteries that power electric vehicles, laptop computers and smartphones has been shown to impair a key soil bacterium, according to new research published online in the journal Chemistry of Materials.

The study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota is an early signal that the growing use of the new nanoscale materials used in the rechargeable batteries that power portable electronics and electric and hybrid vehicles may have untold environmental consequences.

Pursuing scientific or engineering careers in industry, government or private research after getting a Ph.D. used to be considered a one-way ticket out of academia.

But new University of Washington research finds numerous benefits -- to students, researchers and academic institutions looking to diversify their faculty -- in making that return trip easier.

Irvine, Calif., Feb. 4, 2016 -- If you find yourself toggling over to look at Facebook several dozen times a day, it's not necessarily because the experience of being on social media is so wonderful. It may be a sign that you're not getting enough sleep.

In a recently completed study, researchers at the University of California, Irvine demonstrated that lack of sleep - in addition to affecting busy college students' moods and productivity - leads to more frequent online activities such as browsing Facebook.

In the fifth year of the Syrian refugee crisis, donors and humanitarian agencies still remain unsure about which policies and interventions have been most effective, and continue to rely on a largely reactive response, say a group of researchers, aid workers and Syrian medical professionals.

Response approaches to date have often been short-termist, sometimes duplicating work and have very little evidence of effectiveness or impact, they say.

Sandwich systems of thin film transition metal oxides display surprising properties at their interfaces. In case of the paradigmatic example of Lanthan-Aluminate ( LaAlO3) and Strontium-Titanate (SrTiO3) both materials are insulators and non-magnetic, while their interface has been observed to display ferromagnetism, high electrical conductivity and even superconductivity.

The battery life of implantable heart monitors must be improved to reduce the need for replacement and the risks this carries for patients, argue two senior doctors in The BMJ today.

Cardiologists John Dean and Neil Sulke say over half of patients with pacemakers will need new batteries and many need several replacements.

Not only is money wasted replacing batteries before they've expired, this "exposes patients to risk of serious complications, including life threatening infection," they warn.

Researchers at MIT and Texas Instruments have developed a new type of radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that is virtually impossible to hack.

If such chips were widely adopted, it could mean that an identity thief couldn't steal your credit card number or key card information by sitting next to you at a café, and high-tech burglars couldn't swipe expensive goods from a warehouse and replace them with dummy tags.

For years, retired Maj. David Underwood has noticed that whenever he drove under power lines and around other electromagnetic fields, he would feel a buzz in what remained of his arm. When traveling by car through Texas' open spaces, the buzz often became more powerful.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered a new phase of the material boron nitride (Q-BN), which has potential applications for both manufacturing tools and electronic displays. The researchers have also developed a new technique for creating cubic boron nitride (c-BN) at ambient temperatures and air pressure, which has a suite of applications, including the development of advanced power grid technologies.

As a core communication device, the mobile phone is becoming increasingly popular in our daily lives. A wide variety of functional units and friendly operating systems make mobile phones eminently suitable for smart technological applications, and mobile phones have also attracted the interest of scientists.

At the atomic level, bismuth displays a number of quirky physical phenomena. A new study reveals a novel mechanism for controlling the energy transfer between electrons and the bismuth crystal lattice. Mastering this effect could, ultimately, help convert waste heat back into electricity, for example to improve the overall efficiency of solar cells. These findings have now been published in EPJ B by Piotr Chudzinski from Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Underrepresented students' first-semester GPA may be a better predictor of whether they'll graduate college than their ACT score or their family's socioeconomic status, a new study found.

The U.S. could soon decrease its dependence on importing valuable rare-earth elements that are widely used in many industries, according to a team of Penn State and U.S. Department of Energy researchers who found a cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to extract these metals from coal byproducts.

Using compost is the single best thing you can do to protect your family from any danger associated with lead in urban soils. Good compost will also guarantee that you will have plenty of vegetables to harvest.

That's the main finding of a paper appearing this month in the Journal of Environmental Quality. The University of Washington-led study looked at potential risks associated with growing vegetables in urban gardens and determined that the benefits of locally produced vegetables in cities outweigh any risks from gardening in contaminated soils.