PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- If decades of effort to bring more underrepresented minority students into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields were considered a grand chemistry experiment, then the modest results would suggest that while the formula may not be wrong, it may well be incomplete, according to a new article in the journal CBE-Life Sciences Education.
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ANN ARBOR--As much as two-thirds of Earth's carbon may be hidden in the inner core, making it the planet's largest carbon reservoir, according to a new model that even its backers acknowledge is "provocative and speculative."
In a paper scheduled for online publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues suggest that iron carbide, Fe7C3, provides a good match for the density and sound velocities of Earth's inner core under the relevant conditions.
Any science textbook will tell you we can't see infrared light. Like X-rays and radio waves, infrared light waves are outside the visual spectrum.
But an international team of researchers co-led by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that under certain conditions, the retina can sense infrared light after all.
Two years ago, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) engineered Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to convert glucose into significant quantities of methyl ketones, a class of chemical compounds primarily used for fragrances and flavors, but highly promising as clean, green and renewable blending agents for diesel fuel. Now, after further genetic modifications, they have managed to dramatically boost the E.coli's methyl ketone production 160-fold.
Diagnosing HIV and other infectious diseases presents unique challenges in remote locations that lack electric power, refrigeration, and appropriately trained health care staff. To address these issues, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a low-cost, electricity-free device capable of detecting the DNA of infectious pathogens, including HIV-1.
This phenomenon is critical to the design principles behind digital metamaterials bytes. For a certain set of metamaterial bits, when the material with positive permittivity (typically a dielectric) is on the inside, the permittivity of the byte ranges between the values of two the materials. When the material with negative permittivity (typically a metal) is on the inside, however, the overall value varies widely outside that range. Fine-tuning the ultimate permittivity of a byte then entails altering the thickness of each of the materials.
Ideally, diamonds consist of pure carbon. But natural diamonds always contain defects. The most researched defects are nitrogen-vacancy centers comprising a nitrogen atom and a vacancy. These might serve as highly sensitive sensors or as register components for quantum computers. However, until now it has not been possible to extract the optically stored information electronically.
WASHINGTON, DC - December 1, 2014 -- Microbial succession in a sterilized restroom begins with bacteria from the gut and the vagina, and is followed shortly by microbes from the skin. Restrooms are dominated by a stable community structure of skin and outdoor associated bacteria, with few pathogenic bacteria making them similar to other built environments such as your home. The research is published ahead of print in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
In the wake of recent airline crashes, major news networks have aired concerns about pilots' ability to accurately fly "by hand" when the airplane's cockpit automation systems fail. Although many of these concerns have centered on manual skills such as operating the airplane's controls, new human factors/ergonomics research suggests that pilots' thinking skills, such as navigating, remaining aware of the status of the flight, and diagnosing troublesome situations, are most vulnerable in today's automated cockpits.
Teenage boys are perhaps more known for playing computer games but girls are better at making them, a University of Sussex study has found.
Researchers in the University's Informatics department asked pupils at a secondary school to design and program their own computer game using a new visual programming language that shows pupils the computer programs they have written in plain English.
Dr Kate Howland and Dr Judith Good found that the girls in the classroom wrote more complex programs in their games than the boys and also learnt more about coding compared to the boys.
This news release is available in German.
"A quantum computer may be thought of as a 'simulator of overall Nature," explains Fabio Franchini, a researcher at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste, "in other words, it's a machine capable of simulating Nature as a quantum system, something that classical computers cannot do". Quantum computers are machines that carry out operations by exploiting the phenomena of quantum mechanics, and they are capable of performing different functions from those of current computers. This science is still very young and the systems produced to date are still very limited.
Nearly 55 percent of U.S. infants are placed to sleep with bedding that increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, despite recommendations against the practice, report researchers at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other institutions.
ANN ARBOR--The spaghetti-like internal structure of most plastics makes it hard for them to cast away heat, but a University of Michigan research team has made a plastic blend that does so 10 times better than its conventional counterparts.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - The use of renewable energy in the United States could take a significant leap forward with improved storage technologies or more efforts to "match" different forms of alternative energy systems that provide an overall more steady flow of electricity, researchers say in a new report.