Tech

Mobile phones using text messaging and monitoring have been shown to be useful additions to health programs. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a weight-loss intervention delivered by a smartphone app that supported individuals embarking on a diet and that was evidenced-based. Researchers developed and tested a mobile phone application (app) to support individuals embarking on a partial meal replacement program (MRP).

New York, NY, April 26, 2013—Eighty-four million people―nearly half of all working-age U.S. adults―went without health insurance for a time last year or had out-of-pocket costs that were so high relative to their income they were considered underinsured, according to the Commonwealth Fund 2012 Biennial Health Insurance Survey. The survey also found that the proportion of young adults ages 19–25 who were uninsured during the year fell from 48 percent to 41 percent between 2010 and 2012, reversing a nearly decade-long trend of rising uninsured rates in that age group.

A group of researchers from Sweden have provided further evidence that illegal drugs can be detected in the breath, opening up the possibility of a roadside breathalyzer test to detect substances such as cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis.

Using a simple, commercially available breath sampler, the researchers have successfully identified a range of 12 substances in the breath of 40 patients recruited from a drug emergency clinic in Stockholm.

Their findings have been published today, 26 April, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Breath Research.

Using bundles of vertical zinc oxide nanowires, researchers have fabricated arrays of piezotronic transistors capable of converting mechanical motion directly into electronic controlling signals. The arrays could help give robots a more adaptive sense of touch, provide better security in handwritten signatures and offer new ways for humans to interact with electronic devices.

Grenoble, 26 April 2013: Scientists have determined the temperature near the Earth's centre to be 6000 degrees Celsius, 1000 degrees hotter than in a previous experiment run 20 years ago. These measurements confirm geophysical models that the temperature difference between the solid core and the mantle above, must be at least 1500 degrees to explain why the Earth has a magnetic field. The scientists were even able to establish why the earlier experiment had produced a lower temperature figure. The results are published on 26 April 2013 in Science.

Blocking certain enzymes in the cell may prevent cancer cell division and growth, according to new findings from researchers at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The discovery is published in the April 25, 2013 issue of the journal Molecular Cell.

Precision agriculture promises to make farming more efficient and should have an important impact on the serious issue of food security, according to a new study published in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association. In an article about the study in the magazine's May issue, University of Reading Professor Margaret A. Oliver, BSc, PhD, assesses how there is potential to manage land more effectively to improve the farming economy and crop quality, and to ensure food security.

Scientists at the Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center, a U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service Human Nutrition Research Center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, led by Dr. Martin Ronis have determined that dietary substitution of saturated fats enriched in medium chain triglycerides (MCT) for polyunsaturated fat prevents the development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). NAFLD occurs in patients with obesity and type II diabetes and is being seen at younger ages in association with the obesity epidemic.

Because solar and wind power are not 'always on' they need a better storage solution than exists today. Researchers from Stanford Linear Accelerator have designed a low-cost, long-life battery that could enable solar and wind energy to become major suppliers to the electrical grid.

WOODS HOLE, Mass.—The often damaging impacts of intensive agriculture on nearby streams, rivers, and their wildlife has been well documented in temperate zones, such as North America and Europe.

Yet a new study in an important tropical zone—the fast-changing southern Amazon, a region marked by widespread replacement of native forest by cattle ranches and more recently croplands—suggests that at least some of those damaging impacts may be buffered by the very deep and highly permeable soils that characterize large areas of the expanding cropland.

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2013—Streetlights illuminate the night, shining upon roadways and sidewalks across the world, but these ubiquitous elements of the urban environment are notoriously inefficient and major contributors to light pollution that washes out the night sky. Recent innovations in light emitting diodes (LEDs) have improved the energy efficiency of streetlights, but, until now, their glow still wastefully radiated beyond the intended area.

New research from the University of Southampton has found that working or travelling on an underground railway for a sustained period of time could have health implications.

Resistive memory cells (ReRAM) are regarded as a promising solution for future generations of computer memories. They will dramatically reduce the energy consumption of modern IT systems while significantly increasing their performance. Unlike the building blocks of conventional hard disk drives and memories, these novel memory cells are not purely passive components but must be regarded as tiny batteries. This has been demonstrated by researchers of Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), whose findings have now been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

For sea turtle hatchlings struggling to reach the ocean, success may depend on having flexible wrists that allow them to move without disturbing too much sand. A similar wrist also helps a robot known as "FlipperBot" move through a test bed, demonstrating how animals and bio-inspired robots can together provide new information on the principles governing locomotion on granular surfaces.

A sea turtle-inspired robot has been created by a group of researchers in the US to help understand the mechanics of walking and crawling on complex surfaces.

Dubbed "Flipperbot", the robot has been presented today, 24 April, in IOP Publishing's journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, and was designed to test how real-life organisms, such as seals, sea turtles and mudskippers use flippers and fins to move on surfaces such as sand.