Tech

STANFORD, Calif. — Some sour news for lactose-intolerant people who hoped that raw milk might prove easier to stomach than pasteurized milk: A pilot study from the Stanford University School of Medicine shows little difference in digestibility between the two.

The study was small — it involved 16 participants — but the lead investigator said the results were highly consistent among all the participants and deflate some of the claims surrounding raw, or unpasteurized, milk.

For soil microbiology, it is the best of times. While no one has undertaken an accurate census, a spoonful of soil holds hundreds of billions of microbial cells, encompassing thousands of species. "It's one of the most diverse microbial habitats on Earth, yet we know surprisingly little about the identities and functions of the microbes inhabiting soil," said Jim Tiedje, Distinguished Professor at the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University. Tiedje, along with MSU colleagues and collaborators from the U.S.

There have been plenty of fad diets that captured the public's imagination over the years, but Harvard scientists have identified what may be the strangest of them all – sunlight and electricity.

ARCATA, Calif.—Woodland salamanders perform a vital ecological service in American forests by helping to mitigate the impacts of global warming.

Most modern electronics, from flat-screen TVs and smartphones to wearable technologies and computer monitors, use tiny light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. These LEDs are based off of semiconductors that emit light with the movement of electrons. As devices get smaller and faster, there is more demand for such semiconductors that are tinier, stronger and more energy efficient.

The use of cocaine dropped sharply across the United States from 2006 to 2010, while the amount of marijuana consumed increased significantly during the same period, according to a new report.

Studying illegal drug use nationally from 2000 to 2010, researchers found the amount of marijuana consumed by Americans increased by more than 30 percent from 2006 to 2010, while cocaine consumption fell by about half. Meanwhile, heroin use was fairly stable throughout the decade.

URBANA, Ill. – Women in rural India who participate in a vocational training program learn more than just life skills. A recent University of Illinois study found that mothers who participated in a program designed to educate and empower women gained a network of peers that led to increased bargaining strength in the home, and significantly improved their children's consumption of rice and dairy.

A team of MIT researchers has used a novel material that's just a few atoms thick to create devices that can harness or emit light. This proof-of-concept could lead to ultrathin, lightweight, and flexible photovoltaic cells, light emitting diodes (LEDs), and other optoelectronic devices, they say.

In a significant advance for the growing field of synthetic biology, Rice University bioengineers have created a toolkit of genes and hardware that uses colored lights and engineered bacteria to bring both mathematical predictability and cut-and-paste simplicity to the world of genetic circuit design.

Jena (Germany) Vast fields of sunflowers, sprawling pine trees and slim cypresses, as well as vineyards as far as the eye can see – these are typical memories of Tuscany for all those who have been there. By contrast, Professor Dr.

There's promising news from the front on efforts to produce fuels through artificial photosynthesis. A new study by Berkeley Lab researchers at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) shows that nearly 90-percent of the electrons generated by a hybrid material designed to store solar energy in hydrogen are being stored in the target hydrogen molecules.

This news release is available in German.

Simulations are an important development tool in the automobile and utility vehicle industries – they enable engineers to see into the future. The properties of vehicle components, such as how they respond in an accident, their reliability, or their energy efficiency can be investigated using simulations before the first component is manufactured. To continue to maintain the prediction power of the results, however, all of the influences that the vehicle is exposed to later on in actual operation must be taken into account – including those of drivers and operators.

SALT LAKE CITY, March 7, 2014 – Using an inexpensive inkjet printer, University of Utah electrical engineers produced microscopic structures that use light in metals to carry information. This new technique, which controls electrical conductivity within such microstructures, could be used to rapidly fabricate superfast components in electronic devices, make wireless technology faster or print magnetic materials.

The study appears online March 7 in the journal Advanced Optical Materials.

Ever worry about losing your mobile-phone reception? The problem is a weak microwave signal. The same problem hampers cosmologists looking at the early universe, a glimpse embodied in the cosmic microwave background. Or take a pressing earthly example: oncologists often locate and identify tumors using MRI scans. All three of these efforts---communications, cosmology, medicine---depend on discriminating weak microwave or radio signals from a noisy environment.