Tech

Annual to decadal changes in the earth's magnetic field in a region that stretches from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean have a close relationship with variations of gravity in this area. From this it can be concluded that outer core processes are reflected in gravity data. This is the result presented by a German-French group of geophysicists in the latest issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States).

Focusing in on beam focus

The rapidly evolving technology of laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) – called "table-top accelerators" because their length can be measured in centimeters instead of kilometers – promises a new breed of machines, far less expensive and with far less impact on the land and the environment than today's conventional accelerators.

(Edmonton) Children who bask in the nighttime glow of a TV or computer don't get enough rest and suffer from poor lifestyle habits, new research from the University of Alberta has shown.

A provincewide survey of Grade 5 students in Alberta showed that as little as one hour of additional sleep decreased the odds of being overweight or obese by 28 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively. Children with one or more electronic devices in the bedroom—TVs, computers, video games and cellphones—were also far more likely to be overweight or obese.

Some African dung beetles roll their feasts of dung away to avoid the hordes of other hungry bugs at the pile. But now researchers who report their findings in the October 23 issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have discovered that the beetles also use the balls in another, rather clever way: The moist balls keep the bugs cool even as they push a weight up to 50 times heavier than their own bodies across the scorching sand.

The number of leisure boats along the Swedish West Coast has risen dramatically over the last 20 years, resulting in a risk that the inner archipelago might be destroyed. These are the findings of new research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Condensers are a crucial part of today's power generation systems: About 80 percent of all the world's powerplants use them to turn steam back to water after it comes out of the turbines that turn generators. They are also a key element in desalination plants, a fast-growing contributor to the world's supply of fresh water.

Patterns fascinate. Particularly stripes. Found in nature in zebras, they are also found in the most unlikely places, such as powdered drugs' mixing vessel walls. In an article about to be published in EPJ E, Nirmal Thyagu and his colleagues from Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, propose a traffic model to predict the formation of different patterns, ranging from stripes to spots.

SANTA BARBARA – Collaborators at Cottage Health System and University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) have identified biomarkers that may yield a revolutionary diagnostic test for pre-eclampsia, a complex and potentially life-threatening hypertensive condition affecting 5% of pregnancies worldwide.

That snake heading towards you may be further away than it appears. Fear can skew our perception of approaching objects, causing us to underestimate the distance of a threatening one, finds a study published in Current Biology.

"Our results show that emotion and perception are not fully dissociable in the mind," says Emory University psychologist Stella Lourenco, co-author of the study. "Fear can alter even basic aspects of how we perceive the world around us. This has clear implications for understanding clinical phobias."

In a key step toward creating a working quantum computer, Princeton researchers have developed a method that may allow the quick and reliable transfer of quantum information throughout a computing device

The finding, by a team led by Princeton physicist Jason Petta, could eventually allow engineers to build quantum computers consisting of millions of quantum bits, or qubits. So far, quantum researchers have only been able to manipulate small numbers of qubits, not enough for a practical machine.

A team of elephant researchers from Stanford University has transformed a remote corner of southern Africa into a high-tech field camp run entirely on sunlight. The seasonal solar-powered research camp gives scientists a rare opportunity to quietly observe, videotape and photograph wild elephants at Mushara waterhole, an isolated oasis in Etosha National Park in Namibia.

Australian scientists have unveiled a new theory which explains the mysterious phenomenon known as ball lightning.ightings of ball lightning have been made for centuries around the world – usually the size of a grapefruit and lasting up to twenty seconds – but no explanation of how it occurs has been universally accepted by science.

Miss hitting the "sweet spot" on a baseball bat and the resulting vibrations can zing your hands. Bat companies have tried for decades to reduce these painful shocks with limited success. But Daniel Russell, a professor in the graduate program in acoustics at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, has figured out that bat vibrations between 600 and 700 hertz (Hz) cause the most pain and that specifically tuned vibration absorbers are the best at combatting the sting.

Bethesda, MD, October 18, 2012 The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) published thereport of the Whole Genome Analysis (WGA) Working Group of the AMP Clinical Practice Committeein the November 2012 issue of The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics (JMD). Titled "Opportunities andChallenges Associated with Clinical Diagnostic Genome Sequencing," the timely report provides adetailed and compelling overview of the landscape of next generation sequencing (NGS) technologyand its clinical relevance and impact on improving patient care.

People are more likely to install a solar panel on their home if their neighbors have one, according to a Yale and New York University study in the journal Marketing Science.

The researchers studied clusters of solar installations throughout California from January 2001 to December 2011 and found that residents of a particular zip code are more likely to install solar panels if they already exist in that zip code and on their street.