Tech

The failure of some obese individuals to generate or detect adequate signals to stop eating has been frequently been reported in medical science. Researchers at the University of Leeds, UK have devised a simple metric to quantify satiety responsiveness - Satiety Quotient (SQ) – and are applying it to their research to find out why some people struggle to manage their weight and whether certain foods may help to amplify sensations of fullness.

New findings from a NASA-funded instrument have resolved a decades-old puzzle about a fog of low-energy X-rays observed over the entire sky. Thanks to refurbished detectors first flown on a NASA sounding rocket in the 1970s, astronomers have now confirmed the long-held suspicion that much of this glow stems from a region of million-degree interstellar plasma known as the local hot bubble, or LHB.

BERKELEY — What if computer screens had glasses instead of the people staring at the monitors? That concept is not too far afield from technology being developed by computer and vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.

According to findings from a new study by University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Jane Risen, and Chicago Booth doctoral student Juliana Schroeder, it may at least be a start.

Researchers often use microelectronic devices embedded with biological components to interrogate biology, but such devices can do much more – perhaps even control biology.

As such, researchers have looked to patterned assemblies of proteins and cells for in vitro metabolic engineering to characterize—and potentially control—cell metabolism on a chip. New devices are envisioned to recreate animal and human physiological functions on a chip, and such capabilities could revolutionize drug development.

Set goal, work to achieve goal, attain goal and react accordingly — that's the script we write when we set our sights on an achievement.

But what happens when the script isn't followed, and you learn too soon that you will accomplish what you set out to do? New research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business finds that the positive reaction one would have when succeeding is lessened if it doesn't follow the expected course.

A powerful new tool that can help advance the genetic engineering of "fuel" crops for clean, green and renewable bioenergy, has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The JBEI researchers have developed an assay that enables scientists to identify and characterize the function of nucleotide sugar transporters, critical components in the biosynthesis of plant cell walls.

Ultrafast real-time optical imaging is an effective and important tool for studying dynamical events, such as shock waves, neural activity, laser surgery and chemical dynamics in living cells. Limited by the frame rate, conventional imaging system such as charge-coupled device (CCD) and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) imaging device can not image fast dynamic processes.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The magnets cluttering the face of your refrigerator may one day be used as cooling agents, according to a new theory formulated by MIT researchers.

A new method of building materials using light, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, could one day enable technologies that are often considered the realm of science fiction, such as invisibility cloaks and cloaking devices.

Engineers across the globe have been racing to design smaller, cheaper and more efficient rechargeable batteries to meet the power storage needs of everything from handheld gadgets to electric cars.

In a paper published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, researchers at Stanford University report that they have taken a big step toward accomplishing what battery designers have been trying to do for decades – design a pure lithium anode.

The National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) in Japan, has achieved an electrical current of 100,000 amperes, which is by far the highest in the world, by using the new idea of assembling the state-of-the-art yttrium-based high-temperature superconducting tapes to fabricate a large-scale magnet conductor.

Much artificial-intelligence research addresses the problem of making predictions based on large data sets. An obvious example is the recommendation engines at retail sites like Amazon and Netflix.

But some types of data are harder to collect than online click histories —information about geological formations thousands of feet underground, for instance. And in other applications — such as trying to predict the path of a storm — there may just not be enough time to crunch all the available data.

Imagine a smog-free Los Angeles, where electric cars ply silent freeways, solar panels blanket rooftops and power plants run on heat from beneath the earth, from howling winds and from the blazing desert sun.

"We describe how tropomodulin interacts with the slow-growing end of actin filaments," says coauthor Yadaiah Madasu, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Dominquez lab. "From a clinical point of view, we know that mutations in tropomodulin can trigger an accumulation of irregular actin filament bundles, which contribute to nemaline myopathy or other skeletal muscle disorders typified by delayed motor development and muscle weakness."