Tech

An expert panel has created a new evidence-based guideline for managing sickle cell disease (SCD), with a strong recommendation for the use of the drug hydroxyurea and transfusion therapy for many individuals with SCD, although high-quality evidence is limited, with few randomized clinical trials conducted for this disease, according to an article in the September 10 issue of JAMA.

Truly two-dimensional objects are rare. Even a thin piece of paper is trillions of atoms thick. When physicists do succeed in producing 2D systems, quantum interactions can lead to new phenomena and Nobel prizes.

Recreational sailors who become "citizen oceanographers" could help provide vital scientific knowledge about the world's oceans by sampling and testing remote waters from their yachts, according to a UNSW Australia-led team of researchers.

In 2013, Dr Federico Lauro, a UNSW microbiologist and national sailing champion, led an international scientific expedition across the Indian Ocean aboard S/Y Indigo V, a 61 foot (18 metre) sailing yacht, to pioneer this method of data collection.

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released a long-anticipated update to the source-of-record for cetane number data. This information is vital to the development of new, energy-efficient, low-carbon fuels and compatible engines. Researchers, as well as members of the engine, vehicle, and fuel industries, rely on these numbers to target compounds for development of new fuels capable of greater energy efficiency, cleaner emissions, and maximum performance in diesel engines.

The sharp X-ray vision of DESY's research light source PETRA III paves the way for a new technique to produce cheap, flexible and versatile double solar cells. The method developed by scientists from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Roskilde can reliably produce efficient tandem plastic solar cells of many metres in length, as a team around senior researcher Jens W. Andreasen reports in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.

Defects damage the ideal properties of many two-dimensional materials, like carbon-based graphene. Phosphorus just shrugs.

That makes it a promising candidate for nano-electronic applications that require stable properties, according to new research by Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues.

Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists have married two unconventional forms of carbon – one shaped like a soccer ball, the other a tiny diamond – to make a molecule that conducts electricity in only one direction. This tiny electronic component, known as a rectifier, could play a key role in shrinking chip components down to the size of molecules to enable faster, more powerful devices.

But high doses were no better than dummy (placebo treatment), the findings indicated.

The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil are able to cross over from the bloodstream into heart cells where they work to stabilise heart rhythm and protect against heart attacks.

This is particularly important for people with epilepsy because they have a significantly higher risk of having a heart attack than those without the condition.

ITHACA, N.Y. – Engineers have created a shape-changing "soft" robot that can tread over a variety of adverse environmental conditions including snow, puddles of water, flames, and the crushing force of being run over by an automobile.

Videos: https://cornell.box.com/softrobot

COLUMBUS, Ohio—For the first time, researchers have been able to open a kind of window into the inner workings of a lithium-ion battery.

Using a neutron beam, chemists and engineers at The Ohio State University were able to track the flow of lithium atoms into and out of an electrode in real time as a battery charged and discharged.

Nearly half of older adults – 18 million people—have difficulty or get help with daily activities, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and the Urban Institute analyzed data from a national sample of older adults drawn from Medicare enrollment files. In all, 8,245 people were included in the 2011 the National Health and Aging Trends Study. The analysis was published in the current (September 2014) issue of the Milbank Memorial Quarterly.

Unlike electronic circuits, optical, or "photonic", circuits work with light rather than electricity, which makes them 10 to 100 times faster. They are also more energy-efficient because they show lower heat loss, better signal-to-noise ratios and are less susceptible to interference. Used especially for communications (e.g. fiber optics), optical circuits may use tiny optical cavities as 'switches' that can block or allow the flow of light, similarly to transistors in electronics.

Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers have demonstrated how combining the two-dimensional materials in a stack could create perfect crystals capable of being used in next generation transistors.

Graphene is a semiconductor when prepared as an ultra-narrow ribbon – although the material is actually a conductive material. Researchers from Empa and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now developed a new method to selectively dope graphene molecules with nitrogen atoms. By seamlessly stringing together doped and undoped graphene pieces, they were able to form "heterojunctions" in the nanoribbons, thereby fulfilling a basic requirement for electronic current to flow in only one direction when voltage is applied – the first step towards a graphene transistor.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Disturbing news for women on college campuses: a new study from the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) indicates that female college students who are victims of sexual assault are at a much higher risk of becoming victims again.

In fact, researchers found that college women who experienced severe sexual victimization were three times more likely than their peers to experience severe sexual victimization the following year.