A new cancer vaccine platform works by enhancing the ability of the immune system to recognize cancer by leveraging anti-viral memories it already has - due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst outbreak of the last 70 years.
The UK Government, in its Digital Britain report in June, made a commitment that every home in the UK should have broadband access by 2012. A range of technologies, including wireless, will be used to deliver the basic broadband.But the same government and its laws aimed at tackling illegal use of wireless internet connections are making broadband access impossible, according to research published today.Daithí Mac Síthigh, a lecturer in IT and internet law at the University of East Anglia (UEA), says legislation may not be the most appropriate way to regulate 'wi-fi' sharing, where a network is used by more than one person, and needs clarifying so it does not hold back provision of community wifi schemes.
The knock on drastic global warming mitigation solutions by detractors is that it may end up being expensive and not accomplish much - the classic government scenario.'Cash for Clunkers' is an example of that, according to new UC Davis estimates which say the federal government's 'Cash for Clunkers' program is paying at least 10 times the sticker price to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.And that's in comparison to carbon credits, already unlikely to work. Carbon credits are projected to sell in the U.S. for about $28 per ton (today's price in Europe was $20) so even the best-case calculation of the cost of the clunkers rebate is $237 per ton, said UC Davis transportation economist Christopher Knittel.
Air conditioning technology hasn't changed much in the last 50 years and though different climates have different optimal air conditioning requirements, economies of scale force companies into a one-size-fits-all method.Many western states are hot and dry, for example, but use cooling systems that were designed for warm and humid climates. Launched in June 2008, the UC Davis Western Cooling Challenge is a program of activities designed to help cooling-unit manufacturers deliver better products and get them installed in low-rise, nonresidential buildings, like suburban retail and office buildings. The Cooling Challenge is based on the premise that Western-specific technologies should be able to cool using far less energy.
Small bursts of heat and energy called nanoflares cause temperatures in the sun's atmosphere to reach millions of degrees, according to NASA researchers..The sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is made up of loops of hot gas that arch high above the surface. These loops are comprised of bundles of smaller, individual magnetic tubes or strands that can have temperatures reaching several million degrees Kelvin (K), even though the sun's surface is only 5,700 degrees K.
A Dresden research team using laser tweezers measured the friction between a single motor protein molecule and its track and say that within our cells, motors work against the resistance of friction and are restrained in its operation—usually by far not as much though as their macroscopic counterparts.These first experimental measurements of protein friction could help researchers to better understand key cellular processes such as cell division which is driven by such molecular machines.
A new mathematical model could significantly improve the automatic recognition and processing of spoken language, meaning algorithms which imitate brain mechanisms could help machines to perceive the world around them.Many people will have personal experience at how difficult it is for computers to deal with spoken language - people who "communicate" with automated telephone systems need a great deal of patience because if they speak just a little too quickly or slowly, or pronunciation isn't clear, the system often fails to work properly.
Members of sexual minorities are almost twice as likely as heterosexuals to seek help for mental health issues or substance abuse treatment. 48.5% of lesbian/gay/bisexual individuals reported receiving treatment in the past year as compared to 22.5% of heterosexuals. In addition, gender was shown to play a large role; lesbians and bisexual women were most likely to receive treatment and heterosexual men were the least likely, according to the results in BMC Psychiatry.Susan Cochran worked with a team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles using data they collected from 2074 people first interviewed in the California Health Interview Survey.
Cancer impacts millions of lives for the worse every year. Despite this difficult reality, it appears that we are becoming increasing successful in our efforts to stem the tide of patients who fall victim as time goes on.According to a recently published report in the journal Cancer Research, cancer mortality rates have been steadily dropping over the last three decades.“Our efforts against cancer, including prevention, early detection and better treatment, have resulted in profound gains, but thesegains are often unappreciated by the public due to the way the data are usually reported," said Eric Kort, M.D., one of the study’s authors and former research scientist at Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Diesel and gasoline fuel sources both bring unique assets and liabilities to powering internal combustion engines. But what if an engine could be programmed to harvest the best properties of both fuel sources at once, on the fly, by blending the fuels within the combustion chamber?Such an engine just might be possible thanks to the University of Wisconsin-Madison engine research group headed by Rolf Reitz. The research team is developing a diesel engine that produces significantly lower pollutant emissions than conventional engines, with an average of 20 percent greater fuel efficiency as well.
Researchers who want to include surgeries in studies have to make first contact through non-medical administration staff who act as roadblocks, says a group of researchers whose planned leg ulceration study was hamstrung by a physician recruitment rate of 2% and who have published the reasons why so many surgeons did not participate. The qualitative information, featured in the open access journal BMC Medical Research Methodology, may be of use to those designing trials of their own. Given the current health care debate in America, another layer of bureaucracy and the impact on research studies is one facet of the discussion that has been least considered.
Early modern humans living on the southern Africa coast employed pyrotechnology, the controlled use of fire, 72,000 years ago, to increase the quality and efficiency of their stone tool manufacturing process, according to a report in Science.The international team of researchers deduces that "this technology required a novel association between fire, its heat, and a structural change in stone with consequent flaking benefits." Further, they say their findings ignite the notion of complex cognition in early man.If their findings hold up, it could mean humans' ability to solve complex problems may have occurred at the same time their modern genetic lineage appeared, rather than developing later as has been widely speculated.
A real life Alice In Wonderland story is a little closer to reality now that researchers in China have created the first tunable electromagnetic gateway.In a new paper, researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Fudan University in Shanghai have described the concept of a "a gateway that can block electromagnetic waves but that allows the passage of other entities" like a "'hidden portal' as mentioned in fictions."The gateway uses transformation optics and an amplified scattering effect from an arrangement of ferrite materials called single-crystal yttrium-iron-garnet that force light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation in complicated directions to create a hidden portal.
