Tech

Boston, MA – Exposure in the womb to bisphenol A (BPA) – a chemical used to make plastic containers and other consumer goods – is associated with behavior and emotional problems in young girls, according to a study led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Medical Center, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A Mayo Clinic study finds no correlation between the use of shock waves to break up kidney stones and the long-term development of diabetes. The study was released Friday during a meeting of the American Urological Association.

KIT researchers have developed a new concept for rechargeable batteries. Based on a fluoride shuttle -- the transfer of fluoride anions between the electrodes -- it promises to enhance the storage capacity reached by lithium-ion batteries by several factors. Operational safety is also increased, as it can be done without lithium. The fluoride-ion battery is presented for the first time in the Journal of Materials Chemistry by Dr. Maximilian Fichtner and Dr. Munnangi Anji Reddy.

Playing computer-based physical therapy games can help people with Parkinson's disease improve their gait and balance, according to a new pilot study led by the UCSF School of Nursing and Red Hill Studios, a California serious games developer.

More than half the subjects in the three-month research project showed small improvements in walking speed, balance and stride length.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Nearly one in six pregnancies end in miscarriage or stillbirth, but parents' losses are frequently minimized or not acknowledged by friends, family or the community.

"Women who have not gone through a stillbirth don't want to hear about my birth, or what my daughter looked like, or anything about my experience," said one woman, responding in a University of Michigan Health System-led study that explored how Internet communities and message boards increasingly provide a place for women to share feelings about these life-altering experiences.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers at Purdue University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a device small enough to fit on a computer chip that converts continuous laser light into numerous ultrashort pulses, a technology that might have applications in more advanced sensors, communications systems and laboratory instruments.

"These pulses repeat at very high rates, corresponding to hundreds of billions of pulses per second," said Andrew Weiner, the Scifres Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

HIV infection is commonly associated with other sexual infections, such as herpes simplex virus (HSV). Infection with HSV facilitates the risk of HIV infection and negatively impacts the clinical course of HIV disease. Therefore, it would be highly beneficial to identify multi-faceted microbicide compounds that are efficient against HIV-1 and other sexually transmitted infections.

Constraints on creativity imposed by computer-aided design (CAD) tools are being overcome, thanks to a novel system that incorporates eye-tracking technology.

'Designing with Vision', a system devised by researchers at The Open University and the University of Leeds, is breaking down rigid distinctions between human and machine. This should help designers to recover intuitive elements of the design process that are otherwise suppressed when working with CAD.

Cities release more heat to the atmosphere than the rural vegetated areas around them, but how much influence these urban "heat islands" have on global warming has been a matter of debate. Now a study by Stanford researchers has quantified the contribution of the heat islands for the first time, showing that it is modest compared with what greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.

It's a pattern that no doubt repeats itself daily in hundreds of millions of offices around the world: People sit down, turn on their computers, set their mobile phones on their desks and begin to work. What if a hacker could use that phone to track what the person was typing on the keyboard just inches away?

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.

Cyber war, long considered by many experts within the defense establishment to be a significant threat, if not an ongoing one, may never take place according to Dr Thomas Rid of King's College London. A nuclear war never happened, however, and that was due to the preparedness of the Cold War.

Building on earlier work showing how nanowires carved in impurity-laden diamond crystal can efficiently emit individual photons, researchers have developed a scalable manufacturing process to craft arrays of miniature, silver-plated-diamond posts that enable even greater photon control.

The development supports efforts to create robust, room-temperature quantum computers by setting the stage for diamond-based microchips. Additionally, the technology could support new tools capable of measuring magnetic fields at the nanometer scale.

NAIROBI, KENYA (14 October 2011)— On a continent battered by weather extremes, famine and record food prices, new research released today from the World Agroforestry Centre documents an exciting new trend in which hundreds of thousands of poor farmers in Southern Africa are now significantly boosting yields and incomes simply by using fast growing trees and shrubs to naturally fertilize their fields.

Virginia Tech released today results from the first study ever to instrument child football helmets. Youth football helmets are currently designed to the same standards as adult helmets, even though little is known about how child football players impact their heads. This is the first study to investigate the head impact characteristics in youth football, and will greatly enhance the development of improved helmets specifically designed for children.