ROSEMONT, Ill. (September 9, 2016)--Knee pain is common among Americans age 40 and up. Nearly 1 in 17 people visit doctors' offices each year for knee pain or injuries from osteoarthritis--a progressive "wear and tear" disease of the joints. Those odds increase as the U.S. population continues to age and becomes even more overweight. While a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one tool that can help doctors diagnose torn knee ligaments and cartilage and other problems, plain X-rays are the best first line screening tools for knee pain.
Tech
Computer networks may never float like a butterfly, but Penn State information scientists suggest that creating nimble networks that can sense jabs from hackers could help deflect the stinging blows of those attacks.
The research team at DGIST developed ciliary microrobots with high propulsion efficiency in highly-viscous fluid environments in the human body such as blood by mimicking the movement of paramecia's cilia. The ciliary microrobots are for chemical and cell delivery that can be precisely controlled and that move via paramecium-like ciliary motion.
Most basic physics textbooks describe laser light in fairly simple terms: a beam travels directly from one point to another and, unless it strikes a mirror or other reflective surface, will continue traveling along an arrow-straight path, gradually expanding in size due to the wave nature of light. But these basic rules go out the window with high-intensity laser light.
MADISON, Wis. -- Gardeners tend to look at earthworms as good helpers that break down fallen leaves and other organic matter into nutrients plants can use.
But not all earthworms do the same work in the soil. New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that Asian jumping worms, an invasive species first found in Wisconsin in 2013, may do their work too well, speeding up the exit of nutrients from the soil before plants can process them.
Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have developed a new spray-on material with a remarkable ability to repel water.
The new protective coating could eventually be used to waterproof mobile phones, prevent ice from forming on aeroplanes or protect boat hulls from corroding.
"The surface is a layer of nanoparticles, which water slides off as if it's on a hot barbecue," said PhD student William Wong, from the Nanotechnology Research Laboratory at the ANU Research School of Engineering.
WASHINGTON -- Random number generators are crucial to the encryption that protects our privacy and security when engaging in digital transactions such as buying products online or withdrawing cash from an ATM. For the first time, engineers have developed a fast random number generator based on a quantum mechanical process that could deliver the world's most secure encryption keys in a package tiny enough to use in a mobile device.
When members of the BaYaka Pygmies living in the northern Republic of Congo get sick, they don't just go to the doctor for a prescription. Instead, they rely on their shared knowledge of medicinal plants to help them get well. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 8 have examined shared uses of those plants to understand how Pygmies have passed their extensive plant knowledge along from one person to the next.
The expression dog is man's best friend might have more weight in the case of first-year university students suffering from homesickness, according to a new UBC study.
The study shows that animal-assisted therapy can help students combat homesickness and could be a useful tool in lowering post-secondary drop-out rates.
"Transitioning from high school to university can prove to be a challenge for many first-year students," says Assistant Professor John Tyler Binfet of UBC's Okanagan campus.
Sept. 8, 2016 WASHINGTON - A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine urges Congress, federal and state agencies, and regulatory institutions to significantly increase their support for innovation for what the report's study committee calls "increasingly clean" electric power technologies - nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, and renewables such as solar and wind.
ANN ARBOR--College student marijuana use continues its nearly decade-long increase, according to the most recent national Monitoring the Future study.
In 2015, 38 percent of college students said they had used marijuana in the prior 12 months, up from 30 percent in 2006.
Daily or near-daily use of marijuana (having used 20 or more times in the prior 30 days) also has increased in recent years for college students, rising from 3.5 percent in 2007 to 5.9 percent in 2014--the highest level of daily use measured in the last 34 years.
AMHERST, Mass. - For the past 30 years, computer science researchers have been teaching their machines to read, for example, assigning back issues of the Wall Street Journal, so computers can learn the English they need to run search engines like Google or mine platforms like Facebook and Twitter for opinions and marketing data.
BUFFALO, N.Y. - The ubiquity of smartphones and their sophisticated gadgetry make them an ideal tool to steal sensitive data from 3-D printers.
That's according to a new University at Buffalo study that explores security vulnerabilities of 3-D printing, also called additive manufacturing, which analysts say will become a multibillion-dollar industry employed to build everything from rocket engines to heart valves.
When roboticists create behaviors for teams of robots, they first build algorithms that focus on the intended task. Then they wrap safety behaviors around those primary algorithms to keep the machines from running into each other. Each robot is essentially given an invisible bubble that other robots must stay away from. As long as nothing touches the bubble, the robots move around without any issues. But that's where the problems begin.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Fuel cells provide power without pollutants. But, as in the Goldilocks story, membranes in automobile fuel cells work at temperatures either too hot or too cold to be maximally effective. A polyphenyline membrane patented by Sandia National Laboratories, though, seems to work just about right, says Sandia chemist Cy Fujimoto.
The membrane, which operates over a wide temperature range, lasts three times longer than comparable commercial products, Fujimoto and his co-authors say in the Aug. 21 issue of Nature Energy.