Tech

Frying is one of the world's most popular ways to prepare food — think fried chicken and french fries. Even candy bars and whole turkeys have joined the list. But before dunking your favorite food in a vat of just any old oil, consider using olive. Scientists report in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that olive oil withstands the heat of the fryer or pan better than several seed oils to yield more healthful food.

Action-packed science-fiction movies often feature colourful laser bolts. But what would a real laser missile look like during flight, if we could only make it out? How would it illuminate its surroundings? The answers lie in a film made at the Laser Centre of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw.

"We're using less expensive raw materials in smaller amounts, we have fewer production steps, and have potentially lower total energy consumption," PhD candidate Fredrik Martinsen and Professor Ursula Gibson of the Department of Physics at NTNU explain.

They recently published their technique in Scientific Reports.

Their processing technique allows them to make solar cells from silicon that is 1000 times less pure, and thus less expensive, than the current industry standard.

Glass fibers with a silicon core

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 21, 2014—Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered exceptional properties in a garnet material that could enable development of higher-energy battery designs.

The ORNL-led team used scanning transmission electron microscopy to take an atomic-level look at a cubic garnet material called LLZO. The researchers found the material to be highly stable in a range of aqueous environments, making the compound a promising component in new battery configurations.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Publicly traded corporations are increasingly publishing social responsibility reports for investors, who now consider such information alongside traditional financial data before investing in a company.

But according to new research from a University of Illinois expert in financial reporting and financial statement analysis, less-numerate investors are more susceptible to style and presentation effects of the reports, potentially leading them to make unintended judgments about the company.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass--The boom in oil and gas produced through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is seen as a boon for meeting U.S. energy needs. But one byproduct of the process is millions of gallons of water that's much saltier than seawater, after leaching salts from rocks deep below the surface.

HUNTSVILLE, TX (10/21/14) -- One out of every five female students experience stalking victimization during their college career, but many of those cases are not reported to police, according to a study by the Crime Victims' Institute (CVI) at Sam Houston State University.

Fewer cords, smaller antennas and quicker video transmission. This may be the result of a new type of microwave circuit that was designed at Chalmers University of Technology. The research team behind the circuits currently holds an attention-grabbing record. Tomorrow the results will be presented at a conference in San Diego.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed new software that estimates how much farther electric vehicles can drive before needing to recharge. The new technique requires drivers to plug in their destination and automatically pulls in data on a host of variables to predict energy use for the vehicle.

"Electric cars already have range-estimation software, but we believe our approach is more accurate," says Dr. Habiballah Rahimi-Eichi, a postdoctoral researcher at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work.

October 20, 2014 – (BRONX, NY) – Rates of depression and anxiety vary widely among different segments of the U.S. Hispanic and Latino population, with the highest prevalence of depressive symptoms in Puerto Ricans, according to a new report from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL).

Adults typically believe that life gets better — today is better than yesterday was and tomorrow will be even better than today. A new study shows that even depressed individuals believe in a brighter future, but this optimistic belief may not lead to better outcomes. The findings are published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

An abbreviated version of the Confusion Assessment Method, or CAM, test is highly sensitive and specific for diagnosing delirium, according to a study being published in Annals of Internal Medicine (http://www.annals.org/article.aspx?doi=10.7326/M14-0865). Delirium is common in hospitalized older patients but it often goes undiagnosed. Widely used since the 1990s, the CAM test is regarded as an accurate assessment tool for delirium.

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Ospreys do not carry significant amounts of human pharmaceutical chemicals, despite widespread occurrence of these chemicals in water, a recent U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Baylor University study finds. These research findings, published by Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management is the first published study that examines the bioaccumulation of pharmaceuticals in the water-fish-osprey food web.

Scientists have developed new geochemical tracers that can identify hydraulic fracturing flowback fluids that have been spilled or released into the environment.

The tracers have been field-tested at a spill site in West Virginia and downstream from an oil and gas brine wastewater treatment plant in Pennsylvania.

What started out as a mathematical oddity, has now become a new kind of laser technology. Two years ago, physicists at TU Wien predicted a paradoxical laser effect: Under certain conditions, a laser can be switched on not by supplying it with more energy, but by taking energy away from the laser. First experimental signatures of this effect were recently reported at TU Wien. In collaboration with colleagues at Washington University in St.