Tech

Depending on the age of asthmatic children, on their exposure to molds or dampness in their bedroom, and on the severity of their asthma, vitamin C has greater or smaller beneficial effect against asthma, according to a study published in the Clinical and Translational Allergy.

Proposals that vitamin C might be beneficial in the treatment of asthma date back to the 1940s, but the findings from controlled trials have been conflicting.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When Kathryn Orzech attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia, she participated in drama and choir. Rehearsals that would have ended at 10 p.m. in high school now went much later. Social opportunities around the dorm — card games, trips to late-night snack hangout spots — beckoned but without parents around to wield the cudgel of a curfew.

From SARS to swine flu, virus outbreaks can be unpredictable — and devastating. But now a new application through the ubiquitous social networking site Facebook, developed in a Tel Aviv University lab, is poised to serve as a better indicator of how infections spread among populations.

A century-old food preservation technology is finding a new life amid 21st century concerns about food safety and nutrition, because it more than doubles the levels of certain healthful natural antioxidants in fruit. That's in addition to its effects in killing harmful bacteria, viruses and mold in food.

URBANA – University of Illinois scientists have engineered a new strain of yeast that converts seaweed into biofuel in half the time it took just months ago. That's a process that's important outside the Corn Belt, said Yong-Su Jin, a University of Illinois assistant professor of microbial genomics and a faculty member in its Institute for Genomic Biology.

"The key is the strain's ability to ferment cellobiose and galactose simultaneously, which makes the process much more efficient," Jin said.

Sending information by varying the properties of electromagnetic waves has served humanity well for more than a century, but as our electronic chips steadily shrink, the signals they carry can bleed across wires and interfere with each other, presenting a barrier to further size reductions. A possible solution could be to encode ones and zeros, not with voltage, but with electron spin, and researchers have now quantified some of the benefits this fresh approach might yield.

A new type of laser scanning confocal microscope (LSCM) holds the promise of diagnosing skin cancer in a single snapshot.

Typical LSCMs take 3-D images of thick tissue samples by visualizing thin slices within that tissue one layer at a time. Sometimes scientists supplement these microscopes with spectrographs, which are devices that measure the pattern of wavelengths, or "colors," in the light reflected off of a piece of tissue.

Watching a funny movie or sitcom that produces laughter has a positive effect on vascular function and is opposite to that observed after watching a movie that causes mental stress according to research conducted at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

"The idea to study positive emotions, such as laughter came about after studies had shown that mental stress caused blood vessels to constrict", says Dr. Michael Miller, Professor of Medicine and lead investigator.

The echocardiographic response (reduction of left ventricular end-systolic volume) evaluated at 6 months follow-up, demonstrated to be a better predictor of long-term mortality than improvement in clinical status in a large population of CRT patients. Therefore, assessment of occurrence of left ventricular reverse remodeling at mid-term follow-up may be an adequate surrogate end point in heart failure patients treated with CRT.

WASHINGTON – While most research into video games and aggressive behavior has focused on violent games, competitiveness may be the main video game characteristic that influences aggression, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Device management using a home monitoring system with daily telemetry in patients with ICDs (implantable cardioverter defibrilators) is a safe alternative to conventional monitoring and could decrease the number of inappropriate shocks, according to results of the ECOST study, a multicentre randomised trial performed in France.

Winston-Salem, N.C. -- New research from Wake Forest University has advanced the field of plastic-based flexible electronics by developing, for the first time, an extremely large molecule that is stable, possesses excellent electrical properties, and inexpensive to produce.

The first nuclear power plant being considered for production of electricity for manned or unmanned bases on the Moon, Mars and other planets may really look like it came from outer space, according to a leader of the project who spoke here today at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

James E. Werner said that innovative fission technology for surface power applications is far different from the familiar terrestrial nuclear power stations, which sprawl over huge tracts of land and have large structures such as cooling towers.

An international team of scientists, funded in the UK by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), has sequenced the genome of a Chinese cabbage variety of a plant called Brassica rapa, a close relative of oilseed rape. The research, which is published today (28 August) in the journal Nature Genetics, could help improve the efficiency of oilseed rape breeding, as well as that of a host of other important food and oil crops.

A new skin test can determine the age of wild animals while they are still alive, providing information needed to control population explosions among nuisance animals, according to a report here today at the National Meetingof the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Randal Stahl, Ph.D., said that the improved method will provide important information about the health and stability of herds, flocks and other populations of wild animals, which lack the established birth dates of prized cattle, horses, and many household pets.