2008 August

Quicker microwave meals that use less energy may soon be possible with new ceramic microwave dishes and, according to the material scientists responsible, this same material could help with organic waste remediation.
"Currently, food heated in a microwave loses heat to the cold dish because the dishes are transparent to microwaves," says Sridhar Komarneni, distinguished professor [...]

They aren’t the lost cities early explorers sought fruitlessly to discover.
But ancient settlements in the Amazon, now almost entirely obscured by tropical forest, were once large and complex enough to be considered "urban" as the term is commonly applied to both medieval European and ancient Greek communities.
So says a paper set to appear Friday in [...]

People who walk on a treadmill even years after stroke damage can significantly improve their health and mobility, changes that reflect actual "rewiring" of their brains, according to research spearheaded at Johns Hopkins.
"This is great news for stroke survivors because results clearly demonstrate that long-term stroke damage is not immutable and that with exercise it’s [...]

Over the past two decades, Michael Dickinson has been interviewed by reporters hundreds of times about his research on the biomechanics of insect flight. One question from the press has always dogged him: Why are flies so hard to swat?
"Now I can finally answer," says Dickinson, the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of [...]

Cane toads weren’t allowed to compete in the Olympics, but scientists have raced cane toads in the laboratory and calculated that they would not be able to invade Melbourne, Adelaide or Hobart and are unlikely to do well in Perth or Sydney, even with climate change.
According to research by Dr Michael Kearney, from the Department [...]

A "basic science" breakthrough by Queen’s researchers into regulating a single enzyme may lead to new drug therapies that will help prevent heart attacks and strokes.
Led by professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology Donald Maurice, the study focuses on the effects of Viagra — the popular erectile dysfunction drug, which is also used to treat pulmonary [...]

The growth of shared Wi-Fi and other wireless computer networks has increased the risk of eavesdropping on Internet communications, but researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and College of Engineering have devised a low-cost system that can thwart these "Man-in-the-Middle" (MitM) attacks.
The system, called Perspectives, also can protect against attacks related to [...]

Amid mounting agreement that future clean, "carbon-neutral", energy will rely on efficient conversion of the sun’s light energy into fuels and electric power, attention is focusing on one of the most ancient groups of organism, the cyanobacteria. Dramatic progress has been made over the last decade understanding the fundamental reaction of photosynthesis that evolved in [...]

A new report from the National Research Council, The Potential Impact Of High-End Computing On Four Fields Of Science And Engineering, looks at scientific advances that could be achieved using high-end computing. The report — which focuses on the fields of astrophysics, atmospheric science, chemical separations, and evolutionary biology — identifies major scientific questions that [...]

Researchers from Monash University have designed a nano-sized “trojan horse” particle to ensure healing antioxidants can be better absorbed by the human body.
Dr Ken Ng and Dr Ian Larson from the University’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences have designed a nanoparticle, one thousandth the thickness of a human hair, that protects antioxidants from being [...]

Households located in poor neighborhoods pay more for the same items than people living in wealthy ones, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Author Debabrata Talukdar (Columbia University) examines the impact of what has been dubbed the "ghetto tax" on low-income individuals. His study found that the critical factor in how [...]

Research by UK and American scientists has struck another blow to the theory that Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) became extinct because they were less intelligent than our ancestors (Homo sapiens). The research team has shown that early stone tool technologies developed by our species, Homo sapiens, were no more efficient than those used by Neanderthals. Published [...]

Stained glass windows that are painted with gold purify the air when they are lit up by sunlight, a team of Queensland University of Technology experts have discovered.
Associate Professor Zhu Huai Yong, from QUT’s School of Physical and Chemical Sciences said that glaziers in medieval forges were the first nanotechnologists who produced colours with gold [...]

As the American Presidential election approaches, pollsters are scrambling to predict who will win. A study by a team of researchers at The University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the University of Padova, Italy, may give pollsters a new way to determine how the undecided will vote, even before the voters know themselves.
"Automatic Mental Associations [...]

A group at the University of Washington has developed software that for the first time enables deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans to use sign language over a mobile phone. UW engineers got the phones working together this spring, and recently received a National Science Foundation grant for a 20-person field project that will begin next year [...]

Just one night without sleep can increase the amount of the chemical dopamine in the human brain, according to new imaging research in the August 20 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Because drugs that increase dopamine, like amphetamines, promote wakefulness, the findings offer a potential mechanism explaining how the brain helps people stay awake [...]

Ever since Bram Cohen invented BitTorrent, Web traffic has never been the same. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, however, is a matter of debate.
Peer-to-peer networking, or P2P, has become the method of choice for sharing music and videos. While initially used to share pirated material, the system is now used by [...]

With oil prices skyrocketing, the search is on for efficient and sustainable biofuels. Research published this month in Agronomy Journal examines one biofuel crop contender: corn stover.
Corn stover is made up of the leaves and stalks of corn plants that are left in the field after harvesting the edible corn grain. Corn stover could supply [...]

Preliminary research, led by Dr. Lawrence Cheskin, MD, Director of John Hopkins Weight Management Center, suggests increasing intake of low-energy density foods, specifically mushrooms, in place of high-energy-density foods, like lean ground beef, is a strategy for preventing or treating obesity. This is good news for the more than one-third of U.S. adults age 20 [...]

Fleets of inexpensive, pint-sized spacecraft are one giant leap closer to lift off. Researchers here at the 236th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society describe a new, razor thin temperature-regulating film that brings this sci-fi vision of "micro-spacecraft" weighing barely 50 pounds and 10-pound "nano-spacecraft" closer to reality.
"We don’t have the processes in space [...]