The use of animal manure increases the soil content of antibiotic-resistant genes. However, this is not an irreversible situation.
What does one of the world's longest-running field experiments - under Aarhus University in Denmark - have to do with the appearance of antibiotic resistance? The answer is that it forms the platform for illuminating the interaction between the use of animal manure and the appearance of genes for antibiotic resistance in soil.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Risk of heart disease and diabetes may be lowered by a diet higher in a lipid found in grapeseed and other oils, but not in olive oil, a new study suggests.
Researchers at The Ohio State University found that men and women with higher linoleic acid levels tended to have less heart-threatening fat nestled between their vital organs, more lean body mass and less inflammation.
And higher linoleic acid levels also meant lower likelihood of insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes.
AMES, Iowa - Iowa State University engineers have developed a new flexible, stretchable and tunable "meta-skin" that uses rows of small, liquid-metal devices to cloak an object from the sharp eyes of radar.
The meta-skin takes its name from metamaterials, which are composites that have properties not found in nature and that can manipulate electromagnetic waves. By stretching and flexing the polymer meta-skin, it can be tuned to reduce the reflection of a wide range of radar frequencies.
How will military leaders use (and defend against) laser weapons on future battlefields? How has changing sea ice impacted submarine operations in the Arctic? How do satellite-based infrared sensors help ground-based warfighters?
These are just a few of the topics covered in the Winter 2016 issue of Future Force, which is now available to the public. Published quarterly by the Office of Naval Research, Future Force is a professional magazine of the naval science and technology (S&T) community.
Researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany have prepared a list of ethical concerns that might arise with the use of virtual reality (VR) by researchers and the general public. Along with this list, Dr. Michael Madary and Professor Thomas Metzinger have produced concrete recommendations for minimizing the risks. According to Madary and Metzinger in their article in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, additional focused research is urgently needed.
Electrical signals transmitted at high frequencies lose none of their energy when passed through the 'wonder material' graphene, a study led by Plymouth University has shown.
Discovered in 2004, graphene - which measures just an atom in thickness and is around 100 times stronger than steel - has been identified as having a range of potential uses across the engineering and health sectors.
Use your computer without the need to start it up: a new type of magnetic memory makes it possible. This 'MRAM' is faster, more efficient and robust than other kinds of data storage. However, switching bits still requires too much electrical power to make large-scale application practicable. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) have discovered a smart way of solving this problem by using a 'bending current'. They publish their findings today in the journal Nature Communications.
CORAL GABLES, FLA. (March 3, 2016) - Today's longer campaign cycles, filled with numerous televised debates and constant news reporting and social media coverage, are causing the rise of extremist politicians, according to a new study from the University of Miami School of Business Administration, just published in the American Economic Journal: Economics.
ITHACA, N.Y. - Imagine a health care robot that could display the patient's temperature and pulse, and even reacts to a patient's mood. It sounds futuristic, but a team of Cornell graduate students - led by Rob Shepherd, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering - has developed an electroluminescent "skin" that stretches to more than six times its original size while still emitting light. The discovery could lead to significant advances in health care, transportation, electronic communication and other areas.
Researchers have developed an artificial skin that can stretch, sense pressure, and emit light, demonstrating a level of multi-functionality seen in the skin of cephalopods like octopuses. The artificial skin, which outperforms some previous models in terms of stretchiness, could be used on soft electronics and robots that change their shape and color display. The development that made the skin's creation possible is a hyperelastic, light-emitting capacitor (HLEC), which Chris Larson and colleagues designed using two ionic, hydrogel electrodes embedded in a matrix of silicone.
For cultural, technical, and financial reasons, field sciences such as geology, ecology, and archaeology have lagged behind many of the laboratory sciences in making research data and samples available to the broader research community - but it is time for this to change, Marcia McNutt, Brian Nosek and colleagues emphasize in this Policy Forum. They note that data sharing is key for transparency and reproducibility.
BUFFALO, N.Y. - Graphene is a wonder material saddled with great expectations.
Discovered in 2004, it is 1 million times thinner than a human hair, 300 times stronger than steel and it's the best known conductor of heat and electricity. These qualities could, among other things, make computers faster, batteries more powerful and solar panels more efficient.
But the material is tough to manipulate beyond its two-dimensional form.
A project at The University of Manchester to analyse 15,000 mouse studies - the largest of its kind ever undertaken - has revealed that about half of these studies failed to report the sex and age of the mice involved, despite these being recognised as key variables that can affect the outcome of scientific studies. The project utilised text mining software developed at the University, which can analyse large collections of documents to unearth information which would otherwise have been virtually impossible to discover.
As strategies for energy security, investment opportunities and energy policies prompt ever-growing production and consumption of biofuels like bioethanol and biodiesel, land and water that could otherwise be used for food production increasingly are used to produce crops for fuel.