Tech

Reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising and marketing is a missed opportunity for states to improve public health, according to a new review of state alcohol advertising laws from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

PITTSBURGH—The millions of "check-ins" generated by foursquare, the location-based social networking site, can be used to create a dynamic view of a city's workings and character, Carnegie Mellon University researchers say. In contrast to static neighborhood boundaries and dated census figures, these "Livehoods" reflect the ever-changing patterns of city life.

A team of chemical engineers led by Paul J. Dauenhauer of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has discovered a new, high-yield method of producing the key ingredient used to make plastic bottles from biomass. The process is inexpensive and currently creates the chemical p-xylene with an efficient yield of 75-percent, using most of the biomass feedstock, Dauenhauer says. The research is published in the journal ACS Catalysis.

A team of Rice University students accepted a challenge to turn shale gas produced in China into a range of useful, profitable and environmentally friendly products and did so in a cost-effective manner.

In the age of high-speed computing, the photon is king. However, producing the finely tuned particles of light is a complex and time-consuming process, until now.

Thanks to the work by a team of engineers led by Professor Amr Helmy of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, a novel solution has been identified that will make the production of special class of photons faster and easier.

There was no change in concentrations of chloride, dissolved solids, or nitrate in groundwater for more than 50 percent of well networks sampled in a new analysis by the USGS that compared samples from 1988-2000 to samples from 2001-2010. For those networks that did have a change, seven times more networks saw increases as opposed to decreases.

The analysis was done by the USGS National Water Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) to determine if concentrations of these constituents have increased or decreased significantly from the 1990's to the early 2000's nationwide.

Durham, NC — Not all acts of altruism are alike, says a new study. From bees and wasps that die defending their nests, to elephants that cooperate to care for young, a new mathematical model pinpoints the environmental conditions that favor one form of altruism over another.

The model predicts that creatures will help each other in different ways depending on whether key resources such as food and habitat are scarce or abundant, say researchers from Indiana University and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - People aren't very good at media multitasking - like reading a book while watching TV - but do it anyway because it makes them feel good, a new study suggests.

The findings provide clues as to why multitasking is so popular, even though many studies show it is not productive.

Researchers had college students record all of their media use and other activities for 28 days, including why they used various media sources and what they got out of it.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Today's hybrid corn varieties more efficiently use nitrogen to create more grain, according to 72 years of public-sector research data reviewed by Purdue University researchers.

Tony Vyn, a professor of agronomy, and doctoral student Ignacio Ciampitti looked at nitrogen use studies for corn from two periods -- 1940-1990 and 1991-2011. They wanted to see whether increased yields were due to better nitrogen efficiency or whether new plants were simply given additional nitrogen to produce more grain.

WASHINGTON, April 30--Like a coffee enthusiast who struggles to get a buzz from that third cup of morning joe, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) seem to reach a point where more electricity no longer imparts the same kick and productivity levels-off. Now a team of researchers from California and Japan has devised a new design for green and blue LEDs that avoids much of this vexing efficiency droop. The findings will be presented at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO: 2012), taking place May 6-11 in San Jose, Calif.

WASHINGTON, April 30--Physicists have long chased an elusive goal: the ability to "freeze" and then study the motion of electrons in matter. Such experiments could help confirm theories of electron motion and yield insights into how and why chemical reactions take place. Now a collaboration of scientists from France and Canada has developed an elegant new method to study electrons' fleeting antics using isolated, precisely timed, and incredibly fast pulses of light. The team will describe the technique at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics , taking place in San Jose, Calif.

WASHINGTON, April 30--Different types of compact, low-power portable sensors under development by three independent research groups may soon yield unprecedented capabilities to monitor ozone, greenhouse gases, and air pollutants. The three teams will each present their work at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO: 2012 (http://www,cleoconference.org)), to be held May 6-11, in San Jose, Calif.

Great care should be taken when performing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with a cardiac pacemaker. Henning Bovenschulte and his co-authors review recent findings in the latest issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[15]: 270-5).

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that one-third of U.S. adults with arthritis, 45 years and older, report having anxiety or depression. According to findings that appear today in Arthritis Care & Research, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), anxiety is nearly twice as common as depression among people with arthritis, despite more clinical focus on the latter mental health condition.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Red, green, and blue lasers have become small and cheap enough to find their way into products ranging from BluRay DVD players to fancy pens, but each color is made with different semiconductor materials and by elaborate crystal growth processes. A new prototype technology demonstrates all three of those colors coming from one material. That could open the door to making products, such as high-performance digital displays, that employ a variety of laser colors all at once.