Tech

Estimates of malaria incidence derived from routine surveillance data suggest that 225 million episodes of malaria occurred worldwide in 2009. This estimate is lower than other published figures, such as those from the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), particularly for estimates of malaria incidence outside Africa. Richard Cibulskis and colleagues at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland present a critique of different estimation methods of the worldwide incidence of malaria in this week's PLoS Medicine.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Forest thinning to help prevent or reduce severe wildfire will release more carbon to the atmosphere than any amount saved by successful fire prevention, a new study concludes.

There may be valid reasons to thin forests – such as restoration of forest structure or health, wildlife enhancement or public safety – but increased carbon sequestration is not one of them, scientists say.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — When one tiny circuit within an integrated chip cracks or fails, the whole chip – or even the whole device – is a loss. But what if it could fix itself, and fix itself so fast that the user never knew there was a problem?

Kyoto, Japan -- Researchers at Kyoto University have announced a breakthrough with broad implications for semiconductor-based devices. The findings, announced in the December 20 issue of the journal Nature Communications, may lead to the development of ultra-high-speed transistors and high-efficiency photovoltaic cells.

This ALD method for manufacturing fuel cells requires 60 per cent less of the costly catalyst than current methods.

-This is a significant discovery, because researchers have not been able to achieve savings of this magnitude before with materials that are commercially available, says Docent Tanja Kallio of Aalto University.

Boron Nanoribbons Reveal Surprising Thermal Properties in BundlesSize matters… but apparently so does shape – when it comes to conducting heat in very small spaces.

PASADENA, Calif. -- Identifying the composition of the earth's core is key to understanding how our planet formed and the current behavior of its interior. While it has been known for many years that iron is the main element in the core, many questions have remained about just how iron behaves under the conditions found deep in the earth. Now, a team led by mineral-physics researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has honed in on those behaviors by conducting extremely high-pressure experiments on the element.

Atomic force microscope cantilever tips with integrated heaters are widely used to characterize polymer films in electronics and optical devices, pharmaceuticals, paints, and coatings. These heated tips are also used in research labs to explore new ideas in nanolithography and data storage, and to study fundamentals of nanometer-scale heat flow. Until now, however, no one has used a heated nano-tip for electronic measurements.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. ╨ Engineers have discovered details about the behavior of ultrafast laser pulses that may lead to new applications in manufacturing, diagnostics and other research.

Copenhagen, Denmark – A new German-based project is setting out to rescue biodiversity data at risk of being lost, because they are not integrated in institutional databases, are kept in outdated digital storage systems, or are not properly documented.

The project, run by the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, provides a good example for a GBIF recommendation to establish hosting centres for biodiversity data. This is one of a set of data management recommendations just published by GBIF.

Intensive agriculture practices developed during the past century have helped improve food security for many people but have also added to nitrate pollution in surface and groundwaters. New research has looked at water quality measurement over the last 140 years to track this problem in the Thames River basin.

Most commonly used raw materials in butanol production have so far been starch and cane sugar. In contrast to this, the starting point in the Aalto University study was to use only lignocellulose, otherwise known as wood biomass, which does not compete with food production.

Another new breakthrough in the study is to successfully combine modern pulp - and biotechnology. Finland's advanced forest industry provides particularly good opportunities to develop this type of bioprocesses.

However, large-scale clinical trials have highlighted the beneficial effect of cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) in the improvement of symptoms and reduction of mortality, and CRT is now recommended in the major European and American guidelines for the treatment and prevention of heart failure.(1)

In this meeting of the JWG - the work group made up of European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) - the last revision of the text was carried out that will make up norm EN 45545, which affects the entire railroad industry, the operators, fire-testing laboratories and standardization entities. This meeting took place on the Leganés campus of the UC3M, under the auspices of the Master's in Fire Safety Engineering Program, from the Pedro Juan de Lastanosa Institute.

Are wage differences between men and women decreasing as more women attain managerial positions? A new Swedish report from the Uppsala Center for Labor Studies (UCLS) at Uppsala University and the Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation (IFAU) concludes that they are not. Manager gender is tied to neither wages nor, accordingly, wage differences on the labour market.