News Articles

Researchers at the PSG College of Technology Peelamedu in Coimbatore, India have devised a dedicated, embedded system that uses the short-range Bluetooth wireless networking protocolto connect patient data to the network in order to make it available to healthcare providers. According to a paper in the forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, a telemedicine system based on a modified version of the Bluetooth wireless protocol can transfer patient data for assessment almost four times as fast as conventional Bluetooth and without the intermittent connectivity problems.

The increase in the number of overweight Americans has led to a so called epidemic of type 2 diabetes that shows no signs of slowing. More than two-thirds of adults are now overweight or obese. About 11 percent of adults ─ 24 million people ─ have diabetes, and up to 95 percent of them have type 2 diabetes, according to the National Institutes of Health. Diabetes is a major cause of heart disease and stroke and the major cause of kidney failure, limb amputations and new-onset blindness.

According to a new report published in the November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, individuals who experience both adversity as children and traumatic events as adults are morelikely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than those individuals who experienceonly one of these kinds of incidents. The report also found that the risk was greater for individuals with a particular genetic mutation that may influence the way the brain processes the neurotransmitter serotonin, affecting an individual's anxiety levels and changing the way neurons react to fearful stimuli.

Thanks to the recent outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus, most people now recognize the need to maintain good hygiene as a means to avoid sickness.  And undoubtedly, frequent updates on death tolls, school closures and airport screenings from health officials and media figures also deserve some credit for the public's hyper vigilance in maintaining good hygiene--frequently washing hands, sneezing into shirt sleeves and so on. While these behaviors can be good ways to prevent the spread of disease, is it possible that the current trend of hygiene awareness is overblown? Even to the point of turning people into germaphobes?

Most people would probably say they love shopping online. With the prices of online stores being so much cheaper than traditional retailers, what's not to love? According to recently released research, the increasing lack of product choices found online may be a good candidate. A new study, published in Marketing Science, found that the traditional system of selling through retailers encourages longer – rather than shorter – product lines, which could dry up as manufacturers turn to direct sales online.The reason is pretty simple. As more manufacturers go online and cut out the middle men and accompanying price increases, they tend to lose their incentive to diversify their products.

Back in 2005, when a massive 35-mile-long rift broke open in the Ethiopia desert some geologists controversially claimed that a new ocean was forming as two parts of the African continent pulled apart. Currently, scientists from several countries have supposedly confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift may likely be the beginning of a new sea.

Charles Darwin described a canid on the Falkland Islands, off the east coast of Argentina, but it has long been extinct.  Darwin called it Canis antarcticus, placing it in the same genus as the domestic dog, wolf and coyoteSince then, biologists have also puzzled over the Falklands wolf's ancestry, with suggestions that they were related to domestic dogs, North American coyotes, or South American foxes. The wolves were the size of a coyote, but much stockier, with fur the color of a red fox. They had short muzzles, just like gray wolves, and thick, wooly fur. 

Researchers using measurements of the cosmic microwave background - a faintly glowing relic of the hot, dense, young universe - say their results provide support for the cosmological model of the universe - a prediction that dark matter and dark energy make up 95% of everything in existence while ordinary matter makes up just 5%. Writing in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers on the QUaD telescope project have released detailed maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB); they focused their measurements on variations in the CMB's temperature and polarization to learn about the distribution of matter in the early universe.

Dust samples collected by high-flying aircraft have found relicts from the ancient cosmos, according to scientists from the Carnegie Institution.This stratospheric dust includes minute grains that likely formed inside stars that lived and died long before the birth of our sun as well as material from molecular clouds in interstellar space. This 'ultra-primitive' material likely drifted into the atmosphere after the Earth passed through the dust trail of comet Grigg-Skjellerup, giving scientists a rare opportunity to study cometary dust in the laboratory.

How to explain modern belief?    A rising number of people report having no formal religious affiliation but the number of Americans who say they pray has increased, according to a new survey from the University of Chicago.'Spiritual but not religious' as a growing category seems to mean very little, since it seeks to straddle two different worlds, but the results are telling;  in addition to an increased number of people who pray, a growing number believe in the afterlife. When asked how they view God, the most common responses were the traditional images of father and judge.So it seems to be formal religion that is on the wane, not an increase in secular or atheist sentiment.

A new species of dinosaur, an ankylosaur, that lived 112 million years ago during the early Cretaceous of central Montana has been described by paleontologists writing in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences and the Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences.Ankylosaurs are the biological version of an army tank; they were protected by a plate-like armor with two sets of sharp spikes on each side of the head, and a skull so thick that even 'raptors' such as Deinonychus could leave barely more than a scratch.

With all of the concern/hype/hysteria over vaccines for H1N1 influenza, a team of Alabama researchers say they may have found a way to protect lungs from all strains of the flu—antioxidants. In an article appearing in the FASEB Journal they say that antioxidants might hold the key in preventing the flu virus from wreaking havoc on our lungs.