News Articles

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory say they have devised an inexpensive way to produce plastic sheets containing billions of nanoantennas that collect heat energy generated by the sun and other sources.
They say this technology is the first step toward a solar energy collector that could be mass-produced on flexible materials.
Traditional solar cells rely on a chemical reaction that only works for up to 20 percent of the visible light they collect. Scientists have developed more complex solar cells with higher efficiency, but these models are too expensive for widespread use.

Neither snap judgements nor sleeping on a problem are any better than conscious thinking for making complex decisions, according to new research that the researchers say debunks a controversial 2006 research result asserting that unconscious thought is superior for complex decisions, such as buying a house or car.
If anything, the new study suggests that conscious thought leads to better choices.
Since its publication two years ago by a Dutch research team in the journal Science, the earlier finding had been used to encourage decision-makers to make "snap" decisions (for example, in the best-selling book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell) or to leave complex choices to the powers of unconscious thought ("Sleep on it", Dijksterhuis et al., Science, 2006).

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have for the first time engineered 3-D materials that can reverse the natural direction of visible and near-infrared light, a development that could help form the basis for higher resolution optical imaging, nanocircuits for high-powered computers, and, to the delight of science-fiction and fantasy buffs, cloaking devices that could render objects invisible to the human eye.
Two breakthroughs in the development of metamaterials - composite materials with extraordinary capabilities to bend electromagnetic waves - are reported separately this week in the Aug. 13 advanced online issue of Nature, and in the Aug. 15 issue of Science.

In a study on fetal alcohol syndrome, researchers were able to prevent the damage that alcohol causes to cells in a key area of the fetal brain by blocking acid sensitive potassium channels and preventing the acidic environment that alcohol produces. The cerebellum, the portion of the brain that is responsible for balance and muscle coordination, is particularly vulnerable to injury from alcohol during development.
The researchers also found that although alcohol lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood of the mother, it is not the lack of oxygen that damages the fetal cerebellum, but the drop in pH.

A study of 228 women has revealed genetic variants responsible for body shape, according to research published in BMC Genetics.
Based on work in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the study identifies natural variation in the human LAMA5 gene as a key determinant of weight.
As the prevalence of obesity and related health problems continues to increase worldwide, there is considerable effort being devoted to identify genetic mechanisms that control fat storage. Maria De Luca led a team from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA, who identified candidate genes using different strains of Drosophila.

Scientists have discovered a new species of bacteria in the mouth. The finding could help scientists to understand tooth decay and gum disease and may lead to better treatments, according to research published in the August issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.
"The healthy human mouth is home to a tremendous variety of microbes including viruses, fungi, protozoa and bacteria," said Professor William Wade from King's College London Dental Institute. "The bacteria are the most numerous: there are 100 million in every millilitre of saliva and more than 600 different species in the mouth. Around half of these have yet to be named and we are trying to describe and name the new species."

Sustainable development thinking got environmental issues onto the agenda but it may now be stopping us from taking serious action on climate change and other crucial planetary issues, argues John Foster, a freelance writer and teacher and honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at Lancaster University, UK in his new book "The Sustainability Mirage: Illusion and Reality in the Coming War on Climate Change."
Sustainable development's attempted deal between present and future will always collapse under the pressure of 'now' because the needs of the present always win out, he says. Inevitably, this means movable targets and action that will always fall short of what we need. Ultimately, sustainable development is the pursuit of a mirage, the politics of never getting there.

Unlike many astronomical phenomena, meteors are best seen with the unaided eye rather than through a telescope or binoculars and are perfectly safe to watch, so be prepared to sleep outside on August 12th, the annual maximum of the Perseid meteor shower.
In doing so, you will be joining your ancestors, who have viewed what are also called "The Tears of St. Lawrence"(1) for some 2,000 years.
Meteors are the result of small particles entering the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and in the case of the Perseid shower these come from the tail of the Comet Swift-Tuttle, which was last in the vicinity of the Earth in 1992. To the eye, the meteors appear to originate from a ‘radiant’ in the constellation of Perseus, hence the name Perseid.

As people age, their cells become less efficient at getting rid of damaged protein, resulting in a buildup of toxic material that is especially pronounced in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have prevented this age-related decline in an entire organ — the liver — and shown that, as a result, the livers of older animals functioned as well as they did when the animals were much younger.
These findings suggest that therapies for boosting protein clearance might help stave off some of the declines in function that accompany old age.

Did you find a new bacterium and want recognition for it? For it to be recognized its name must be recorded in IJSEM, which is the single official international forum for the publication of new bacterial species names. The journal publishes research papers describing and naming almost all newly discovered bacteria. The names of newly discovered bacteria published in other journals are not valid until they have been checked and published in IJSEM.
The journal has officially validated the names of 9,263 species and genera since 1980. The list includes some important and ground-breaking discoveries. Earlier this year, scientists announced that they had made the first synthetic genome of a bacterium, dubbed Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0 but this would have been impossible without the work of earlier microbiologists.
Now they've decided to make researching the work of earlier microbiologists a lot easier by putting their archive up - for free. All issues of the journal dating back to volume 1, 1951 totalling over 25,000 pages have been scanned and made available online, providing an important resource for scientists, historians and the public.

Computing pundits claim that we are moving into a world of ubiquitous computing, a brave new world where your refrigerator and cupboards will be connected to your internet shopping accounts so that you never run out of milk or sugar again. Sensors around your home and workplace will respond to workloads, weather and even your mood by adjusting heating, lighting, and sound levels. Diagnostic devices built into door handles or the bathroom might alert your doctor or the emergency services to changes in your health.
But doing that means getting rid of your iPhone and anything else you learned how to use. Instead, this this emerging technology will only be woven into the fabric of society and our everyday living spaces when people, rather than computer screens and keyboards, are projected into the foreground.

In chemistry, just as in life, threesomes do not break up neatly.
Open-minded thinkers may disagree and say that theoretically clean three-way splits can happen, but no one had actually witnessed one – until now.
A paper in the Aug. 8 issue of Science provides the first hard evidence for the simultaneous break-up of a molecule into three equal parts, called "concerted break-ups."