Tech

Coral Gables, FL (September 10, 2013) - Liberals and conservatives are looking for the same thing when they join online dating websites, according to new research co-authored by University of Miami political scientist Casey Klofstad. The study, published in Political Behavior, shows that both liberals and conservatives are looking for a partner who is like themselves.

INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 10, 2013 — Unlikely as it may sound, giant pandas Ya Ya and Le Le in the Memphis Zoo are making contributions toward shifting production of biofuels away from corn and other food crops and toward corn cobs, stalks and other non-food plant material.

INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 10, 2013 — Nature has provided the food industry with the perfect packages to imitate in the drive to embrace a new genre of boxes, bottles, fast-food clam shells and other sustainable packaging material for the 21st century, according to a presentation on the topic here today.

This news release is available in French.

Montreal, September 10, 2013 — Dreams of washboard abs and toned arms may seem to be the main motivation for the average teen to lace up their running shoes. But over 1,000 Montreal high school students disagree. Teens, it seems, are smarter than their parents when it comes to approaching exercise as something that affects one's whole body.

Farmers can now get a birds-eye view ­of their fields – in full HD – thanks to Michigan State University landing its first drone.

MSU researchers are using its first unmanned aerial vehicle to help farmers maximize yields by improving nitrogen and water management and reducing environmental impact such as nitrate leaching or nitrous oxide emissions.

INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 10, 2013 — One of the first analyses of laws banning disposal of electronic waste (e-waste) in municipal landfills has found that state e-waste recycling bans have been mostly ineffective, although California's Cell Phone Recycling Act had a positive impact on cell phone recycling. However, e-waste recycling rates remain "dismally low," and many demographic groups remain unaware of their alternatives for properly disposing of e-waste, according to the study.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have created a new compound that can be integrated into silicon chips and is a dilute magnetic semiconductor – meaning that it could be used to make "spintronic" devices, which rely on magnetic force to operate, rather than electrical currents.

By combining the experience of self-reported positive and negative emotions among 1,400 US-residents, researchers created four affective profiles which they then used to discern differences in happiness, depression, life satisfaction and happiness-increasing strategies. The differences between these profiles suggested that promoting positive emotions can positively influence a depressive-to-happy state (defined as increasing levels of happiness and decreasing levels of depression across the affective profile model), as well as increasing life satisfaction.

Scientists have developed a strain of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) that could be used as a vaccine against the disease, according to a study to be published in mBio. The mutant MERS virus, rMERS-CoV-ΔE, has a mutation in its envelope protein that makes it capable of infecting a cell and replicating its genetic material, but deprives it of the ability to spread to other tissues and cause disease.

INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 9, 2013 — Mention cars that get barely 3 miles to a gallon and are built forspeed rather than cleanliness, and images of gas-guzzling, pollution-belching environmental menaces burning leaded gasoline or nitro may spring to mind. But experts at a major scientific meeting today described how ethanol blends used as fuel in the race cars of the Indianapolis 500 actually make those emissions cleaner than cars on the street.

A team of University of Montreal and McGill University researchers have devised a method to identify how signaling molecules orchestrate the sequential steps in cell division. In an article published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists explain how they could track the relationship between signaling molecules and their target molecules to establish where, when and how the targets are deployed to perform the many steps necessary to replicate an individual cell's genome and surrounding structures.

HOUSTON -- (Sept. 9, 2013) -- The next experiment from Rice University's Multi-Robot Systems Laboratory (MRSL) could happen on your desktop. The lab's researchers are refining their control algorithms for robotic swarms based upon data from five free online games that anyone can play.

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Commercial uses for ultraviolet (UV) light are growing, and now a new kind of LED under development at The Ohio State University could lead to more portable and low-cost uses of the technology.

The patent-pending LED creates a more precise wavelength of UV light than today's commercially available UV LEDs, and runs at much lower voltages and is more compact than other experimental methods for creating precise wavelength UV light.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A University of California, Riverside assistant professor of electrical engineering and several colleagues have created a new measurement tool that could help avoid an energy crisis like the one California endured during the early 2000s and better prepare the electricity market for the era of the smart grid.

For many of us, it's the fuel that wakes us up and gets us started on our day.

Now, University of Cincinnati researchers are discovering that an ingredient in our old coffee grounds might someday serve as a cheaper, cleaner fuel for our cars, furnaces and other energy sources.