Philadelphia, PA, November 7, 2013 – More people are cooking at home, and more people are finding their recipes online via food blogs. The photos of dishes posted on the blogs, however, may attract potential cooks more than the nutritional value of the recipes. In addition, many food companies sponsor these sites, so the recipes become advertisements for their products. This has the potential to change the healthfulness of the recipes.
Tech
Floods didn't make floodplains fertile during the dawn of human agriculture in the Earth's far north because the waters were virtually devoid of nitrogen, unlike other areas of the globe scientists have studied.
Instead, the hardy Norsemen and early inhabitants of Russia and Canada have microorganisms called cyanobacteria to mostly thank for abundant grasses that attracted game to hunt and then provided fodder once cattle were domesticated. The process is still underway in the region's pristine floodplains.
This news release is available in German.
Researchers from Georgia Tech, the University of Tokyo and Microsoft Research have developed a novel method to rapidly and cheaply make electrical circuits by printing them with commodity inkjet printers and off-the-shelf materials. For about $300 in equipment costs, anyone can produce working electrical circuits in the 60 seconds it takes to print them.
The technique, called instant inkjet circuits, allows the printing of arbitrary-shaped conductors onto rigid or flexible materials and could advance the prototyping skills of non-technical enthusiasts and novice hackers.
LIVERMORE, Calif. – Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich have developed a new method of using nanotubes to detect molecules at extremely low concentrations enabling trace detection of biological threats, explosives and drugs.
The joint research team, led by LLNL Engineer Tiziana Bond and ETH Scientist Hyung Gyu Park, are using spaghetti-like, gold-hafnium-coated carbon nanotubes (CNT) to amplify the detection capabilities in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS).
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- An MIT mathematician and a celebrity chef have combined talents to create two culinary novelties inspired by nature.
John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics, and renowned Spanish chef José Andrés have designed a cocktail accessory and a palate cleanser based on the mechanics of water bugs and water lilies, respectively.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — With some fierce pitching on display, this year's World Series featured its share of shattered wood bats. That's a problem many youth baseball players avoid by using metal or composite carbon fiber bats. But ever since those bats entered the game, people have debated whether and when non-wood bats make the ball fly faster. That's because non-wood bats transfer energy to the ball better, a phenomenon called the "trampoline effect."
Playing pop and rock music improves the performance of solar cells, according to new research from scientists at Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London.
The high frequencies and pitch found in pop and rock music cause vibrations that enhanced energy generation in solar cells containing a cluster of 'nanorods', leading to a 40 per cent increase in efficiency of the solar cells.
The study has implications for improving energy generation from sunlight, particularly for the development of new, lower cost, printed solar cells.
The remarkable mechanism by which the tiny ears of locusts can hear and distinguish between different tones has been discovered by researchers from the University of Bristol.
Understanding how the nanoscale features of the insect eardrum mechanically process sound could open up practical possibilities for the fabrication of embedded signal processing in extremely small microphones.
Autoantibodies are present many years before symptom onset in patients with primary Sjögren syndrome, an autoimmune disease, according to a Research Letter published in the November 6 issue of JAMA.
Primary Sjögren syndrome is a disease in which immune cells attack and destroy glands that produce tears and saliva. Autoantibodies are characteristic of this syndrome and may be involved in its development. Roland Jonsson, D.M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Bergen, Norway, and colleagues measured autoantibodies before symptom onset in these patients.
Improving efficiency and performance of tiny engines like those used in remote-controlled planes is the focus of a report that may thrust the technology into this century.
These single-cylinder engines, which have potential for unmanned aerial systems and portable power, can be improved by using stronger, more heat-resistant materials and tighter tolerances between the piston wall gap, according to a study led by Mike Kass of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Energy consumption continues to grow. The costs of generation and transmission of energy must come down for the increased consumption to be sustainable. Energy must be generated without depleting resources, without causing pollution, and without incurring waste. Transmission of energy too must be efficient. These ideal goals, when realized, would enrich lives, regardless of economic distinction.
For many years scientists and engineers have been trying to provide low-cost solar energy by developing a cheap solar cell that is both highly efficient and at the same time simple to build, enabling it to be mass produced. Now, the team led by Empa researcher Ayodhya N. Tiwari has made a major leap forward: the researchers are presenting a new manufacturing technique for CIGS solar cells, in which tiny quantities of sodium and potassium are incorporated into the CIGS layer.
Leipzig. In order to assess the global impacts of land use on the environment and help provide appropriate countermeasures, a group of researchers under the leadership of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) has created a new world map of land use systems. Based on various indicators of land-use intensity, climate, environmental and socio-economic conditions, they identified twelve global patterns called land system archetypes.
ANU Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ian Young AO, has just published research that will help you every morning with the surf report.
Research led by the Vice-Chancellor will allow oceanographers and meteorologists to better predict the rate at which ocean swells decay, or deteriorate, as they travel across the globe.
"Ocean cargo shipping, offshore oil and gas production, and even recreational activities such as surfing, are all dependent on wave action," says Professor Young.
"It is therefore critical that we are able to predict swell."