Tech

A new study out of Western University (London, Canada) has found the majority of transgender patients have had a negative experience when it comes to receiving emergency department (ED) care. The findings, by first author Greta Bauer, PhD, is in press at the Annals of Emergency Medicine, the official publication of the American College of Emergency Physicians, and is now posted online.

WASHINGTON – Two existing definitions of chronic multisymptom illness (CMI) -- one by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and another from a study of Kansas Gulf War veterans -- should be used by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to guide research and treatment of Gulf War veterans, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Determining which definition to use in different circumstances should be based on specific needs.

Mobile hand-held consumer electronic products have a rapid growing market today, witnessed by the popularity of Apple products.

The way we secure digital transactions could soon change. An international team has demonstrated a form of quantum cryptography that can protect people doing business with others they may not know or trust – a situation encountered often on the internet and in everyday life, for example at a bank's ATM.

Blacksmiths and metallurgists in the West have been puzzled for centuries as to how the unique patterns on the famous Damascus steel blades were formed. Different mechanisms for the formation of the patterns and many methods for making the swords have been suggested and attempted, but none has produced blades with patterns matching those of the Damascus swords in the museums. The debate over the mechanism of formation of the Damascus patterns is still ongoing today.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed the equivalent of GPS directions for future plant scientists to understand how plants adapt to the environment and to improve plants' productivity and biofuel potential.

To achieve this new trick, Cummer and his colleagues turned to the developing field of metamaterials—the combination of natural materials in repeating patterns to achieve unnatural properties. In the case of the new acoustic cloak, the materials manipulating the behavior of sound waves are simply plastic and air. Once constructed, the device looks like several plastic plates with a repeating pattern of holes poked through them stacked on top of one another to form a sort of pyramid.

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published a report that aligns solar policy and market success with state demographics. By organizing the 48 contiguous states into four peer groups based on shared non-policy characteristics, the NREL research team was able to contextualize the impact of various solar policies on photovoltaic (PV) installations.

The researchers found chimpanzees showed contagious yawning to familiar chimpanzees, familiar humans, and unfamiliar humans, but not to unfamiliar chimpanzees or an unfamiliar species (gelada baboons). "That humans known and unknown elicited empathy similarly to group members, and more than unknown chimpanzees, shows flexibility in engagement," says Campbell. "We can use this information to try to influence this flexible response in order to increase empathy toward unfamiliar chimpanzees, and we hope we will be able to apply such knowledge to humans as well," Campbell continues.

People who sustain the most common type of hip fracture, known as a femoral neck fracture, are at increased risk of complications. A special type of MRI developed at Hospital for Special Surgery in collaboration with GE Healthcare can show a detailed image following fracture repair, without the distortion caused by metal surgical screws that are problematic in standard MRIs.

Incandescent light bulbs are now banned in the EU, while energy-saving lamps remain a bone of contention. In 2016, it will be lights out for halogen bulbs over 10 watts as well. LEDs (light-emitting diodes) therefore have the best chance of becoming the light source of the future. Experts reckon that LED retrofit lamps for use in standard bulb fittings will overtake traditional energy-saving bulbs for the first time from 2015. By 2020 it is predicted that LEDs will have captured between 88 and 90 percent of the lighting market.

Mobile hand-held consumer electronic products have a rapid growing market today, witnessed by the popularity of Apple products.

Cameras with hyperspectral sensors can observe far more than the human eye. Unlike the retina, which has only three color receptors (red, green and blue), these sensors can generate 130 different color values per pixel. Using this high-grade color resolution, an entire range of different materials can be differentiated impeccably – even if, at first glance, they appear the same to the human eye. This is because every substance has its own individual color spectrum, irrespective of how its surface reflects the light hitting it.

URBANA, Ill. – Perched high on the bluffs of the big river valleys in the Midwest are some of the last remnants of never-farmed prairie grasslands. These patches, edged by forest, are slowly being taken over by shrubs. A recent University of Illinois study examined the soil microbes on nine patches, also called "balds," that had varying degrees of shrub invasion and found an interesting shift in the composition of the microbial community.

March 10, 2014 -- Death rates from opioids have been soaring in the U.S. since the 1990s. To support the appropriate use of these controlled substances and inform public health interventions to prevent drug abuse, most states have implemented a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP).