(Phys.org)—In organic semiconductor materials, there has always been a tradeoff between the ability to emit light and the ability to conduct a charge, as measured by the charge carrier mobility. Now for the first time, ...
(Phys.org)—A small team of researchers with the University of California has found a way to pick out a single short radio signal burst among a barrage of background noise. In their paper published in the journal Science, ...
A team of researchers from the University of California, Davis and the University of Washington have demonstrated that the conductance of DNA can be modulated by controlling its structure, thus opening up the possibility ...
(Phys.org)—Two separate teams of researchers (one from Mexico, the other Sweden), have incited skepticism among the astronomy community by posting papers on the preprint server arXiv each describing a different large object ...
(Phys.org)—Mars, which has constantly observed by space probes for over 40 years, still holds unresolved mysteries like its dynamic surface processes. The multitude of high-resolution images of the Red Planet at our disposal ...
(ScienceX)—In this new series, we're offering summary articles featuring links to some of the most interesting, intriguing or popular stories that appeared on ScienceX throughout 2015. This is the February 2015 edition.
Three astronauts from the United States, Russia and Japan on Friday successfully completed a rare nighttime landing on Earth in the wintry Kazakh steppe after returning from the International Space Station.
ETH researchers led by Raffaele Mezzenga have developed a new diagnostic method. It is based on Birefringence, the ability of substances to change the polarization state of light. With this method, doctors around the world ...
A decrease in storm activity over large parts of the US, Europe, Russia, and China is found to influence weather extremes—cold ones in winter, hot or dry ones in summer. This is now shown in a study by scientists from the ...
Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a tiny star with a giant, cloudy storm, using data from NASA's Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes. The dark storm is akin to Jupiter's Great Red Spot: a persistent, raging storm ...
Best of class thermal-imaging technology is available for aerial applications, with news that drone company DJI has entered into a collaboration with thermal imaging systems company FLIR.
(Tech Xplore)—Researchers have built a locust-inspired robot that is just 5 inches (13 cm) long and weighs 23 grams, but despite its small size can jump 11 feet (3.35 m) high and cover a horizontal distance of 4.5 feet ...
Scientists in Germany said Thursday they had reached a milestone in a quest to derive energy from nuclear fusion, billed as a potentially limitless, safe and cheap source.
University of Maryland (UMD) researchers have made a breakthrough discovery in graphene research that could provide a testbed for understanding how electrons move in extremely high magnetic fields. Since its discovery in ...
Some film directors are famous for demanding that scenes be shot and re-shot repeatedly until actors express just the right emotion at the right time, but directors will be able to fine-tune performances in post-production, ...
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has begun an up-close investigation of dark sand dunes up to two stories tall. The dunes are on the rover's trek up the lower portion of a layered Martian mountain.
A team of scientists has developed an algorithm that captures our learning abilities, enabling computers to recognize and draw simple visual concepts that are mostly indistinguishable from those created by humans. The work, ...
An enzyme crucial to the process of DNA repair in our cells has been mapped in atomic detail by researchers at the University of Dundee, the UK's top-rated University for Biological Sciences.
Building a $400-million hydroelectric power plant in the world's most arid desert may seem like an engineering debacle, but Chile sees it as a revolutionary way to generate green energy.
The dinosaur extinction 66m years ago was most likely caused by a comet or big asteroid hitting the Earth. But given that asteroids don't actually hit our planet very often, could this really be the whole story? Many scientists ...
When Jeff Bezos unveiled his vision of drones delivering packages to Amazon customers during a 60 Minutes segment in late 2013, it caught many people as science fiction. Scarcely two years later, drones are poised to become ...
Earth's mantle, the large zone of slow-flowing rock that lies between the crust and the planet's core, powers every earthquake and volcanic eruption on the planet's surface. Evidence suggests that the mantle behaves differently ...
For the first time, MIT chemists have measured the energy of the transition state of a chemical reaction—a fleeting, unstable state that is a reaction's point of no return.
Lawrence Livermore researchers and collaborators have found that most climate models overestimate the increase in global precipitation due to climate change.
Upward lightning strikes initiate on the ground and head skyward. These discharges, which usually begin at the top of tall and slender structures, pose a real risk for wind turbines. An EPFL study analyzes the mechanisms ...
A new diagnostic imaging technique developed by a University of Maryland -led team of researchers promises to boost efficiencies of solar cells by making it possible to find and correct previously undetected ways that solar ...
A pair of socks embedded with miniaturised microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and fuelled with urine pumped by the wearer's footsteps has powered a wireless transmitter to send a signal to a PC. This is the first self-sufficient ...
Purifying water and greening nanotechnology could be as simple as shaking a vial of water and oil. At least that's the case for a new method to clean contaminated water full of unwanted nanomaterials.
Tropical groundwater may prove to be a climate-resilient source of freshwater in the tropics as intense rainfall favours the replenishment of these resources, according to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters.
A New York judge on Friday ordered two fantasy sports websites to suspend operations in the state, pending a final decision on whether they are illegal gambling operations or games of skill.
There have been at least 241 reports of close encounters between drones and manned aircraft that meet the U.S. government's definition of a near midair collision, including 28 in which pilots maneuvered to get out of the ...
During the winter season, northern-latitude herbivores must cope with a food supply that is both restricted and of poorer quality. The ability of red deer to handle these extreme situations was the focus of a study conducted ...
Many of the previous studies on global species diversity are inaccurate. These are the conclusions of an international research group, led by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) in collaboration with the German ...
Wikipedia is to put artificial intelligence to the enormous task of keeping the free, editable online encyclopedia up-to-date, spam-free and legal. The Objective Revision Evaluation Service uses text-processing AI algorithms ...
When it comes to the environment, the chemical industry doesn't have the best reputation. Yet it has a vital role to play in developing technological solutions to help save us from climate catastrophe, and could create significant ...
A research team has established how a virus exploits one of its host's proteins when the virus is about to replicate its genetic material during an infection. The discovery may potentially form the basis for the development ...
I led the team of researchers that discovered that Stonehenge was most likely to have been originally built in Pembrokeshire, Wales, before it was taken apart and transported some 180 miles to Wiltshire, England. It may sound ...
The world's food system is beginning to strain under a global population expected to reach nine billion by 2050, by which time the planet's arable land is projected to be half of what it was in the 1970s. And as climate change ...
In her PhD dissertation, Anaïs Le Rhun, working in the laboratory of Emmanuelle Charpentier describes that the bacterial immune defense system CRISPR-Cas9 is diverse and widespread among bacteria. She shows that the present ...
A team of researchers from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), in collaboration with the Nobel Laureate Carlos Rubbia from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS, Potsdam, Germany) and the King ...
New geophysical data show that fault slip during the March 2005 magnitude 8.7 (Mw) earthquake off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia (also referred to as the Simeulue-Nias earthquake), was stopped by the topography ...
Scientists at UC Davis have for the first time sequenced the genome of a commercial walnut variety. The information should accelerate the rate of breeding and variety improvement in walnuts and help breeders select for desired ...
Young children who are underweight experienced greater weight recovery the earlier an intervention was started, and the recovery was more significant in children with multiple household risk factors, according to a study ...
CRISPR/Cas9 is hot. News of the revolutionary gene editing technique that is already shaking up bioscience has finally reached the news media and the public. Now comes a first rate example of how CRISPR is changing the pace ...
In the Age of Personalized Medicine, we've learned that one size doesn't fit all, least of all in cancer. Cancer is a disease of your cells, and sorting out your cancer from all others is a daunting challenge but one that ...
In rural Malawi, roughly 10 percent of the adult population has HIV. At the peak of the epidemic, in the 1990s and early 2000s, nearly everyone knew someone infected with or affected by the virus, what demographer Hans-Peter ...
A new way of growing fallopian tube cells in culture is expected to give a boost to our understanding and prevention of female gynecological diseases, such as infertility, inflammatory disease, and ovarian cancer. The tubes, ...
A collaborative study has found high rates of adulteration, substitution and mislabelling of traditional Chinese medicines (TCM), with the undeclared ingredients rendering many of the tested samples either illegal or potentially ...
In the Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath wrote: "I am sure there are things that can't be cured by a good bath but I can't think of one." Our research shows that there may even be some things that can be prevented by a good bath – ...
Scientists have developed a device that electronically stimulates tear production, which will offer hope to sufferers of dry eye syndrome, one of the most common eye diseases in the world.
A new study of fat levels in oocytes (immature ova or eggs) has the potential to transform IVF practice, benefiting the dairy industry, and women seeking assisted reproductive treatment too.
After a decade-long $3 billion international effort, scientists heralded the 2001 completion of the human genome as a moon landing achievement for biology and the key to finally solving intractable diseases like cancer.
New research has shown the promising potential of a new glucose-regulating drug to protect the heart from scarring, a common complication of diabetes that can cause heart failure.
Researchers in Japan have discovered that how effectively we clean our teeth and how satisfied we are with the brushing job we do depends a lot on the sound of the bristles scrubbing against the enamel. In trials with volunteer ...
A new report calls attention to cancer in people with mental illness, suggesting that healthcare system and societal factors are just as critical as individual lifestyle factors— linked to smoking and obesity—that lead ...
The drug anastrozole is effective in treating an early form of breast cancer, according to a clinical trial led by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). The results of the IBIS-II DCIS trial show that anastrozole is as ...
In a pioneering trial taking place in London, doctors are harnessing patients' own immune systems in an effort to find a new effective treatment for resistant head and neck cancer.
A new study, led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), shows how different pharmaceutical drugs hit either the "on" or "off" switch of a signaling protein linked to asthma, obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Getting enough sleep is an essential part of any athlete's training programme, but a study in the Journal of Sports Sciences reveals intensive bouts of exercise can make it hard to get 40 winks.Suspecting that intense exercise ...
A study of two leading breast cancer drugs has determined that the breast cancer symptoms women experience while taking those drugs—and the severity of those symptoms—tend to vary based on the patients' ages.
A study by IRB Barcelona and IDIBAPS reveals a therapeutic target to prevent the development of the many abnormal blood vessels that cause gastrointestinal bleeding—the main complication in cirrhosis.
Why is it that some people have richly detailed recollection of past experiences (episodic memory), while others tend to remember just the facts without details (semantic memory)?
Innovative research is underway at the UCSF School of Dentistry to produce a Bluetooth smart retainer for orthodontics patients. The goal of the SmartByte retainer is to increase the amount of time a patient wears the device, ...
Approximately one-quarter of inter-birth intervals in low- and middle-income countries are less than 24 months in length, exposing infants to risks of prematurity, low birthweight, and death. Increased evidence of these health ...
(HealthDay)—Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have lower disease activity when seen at practices with nurse practitioners (NPs) or physician assistants (PAs) versus rheumatologist-only practices, according to a study ...
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A major study linking writing to undergraduate learning and development shows that three features of writing assignments—an interactive writing process, a meaning-making writing task and clear writing expectations—are ...
Switzerland has honest students: The vast majority of the students that were questioned were against pharmacological cognitive enhancement. Yet the topic should be addressed more actively by the universities, asks the study ...
Dead fish floating in fetid waters, swarms of mosquitos and clouds of foam whipped up by pollution: Activists say Mexico's Santiago River, among the dirtiest in Latin America, is making people sick.
Programmed cell death – also known as apoptosis – is universal among higher organisms, and is a tightly regulated process that results in the disposal of damaged or unwanted cells. The latter variant is particularly important ...
Samsung's hopes of ending years of acrimony over whether its computer chip factories caused cancer have hit a hitch: some sickened workers and their families say they'll never accept its highly conditional offer of financial ...
WA wine producers appear to be lagging behind their South Australian counterparts in implementing climate change strategies, although research suggests this isn't going to adversely affect the quality of local wines.
Researchers say there needs to be a better understanding of how conservation and aid projects in developing countries impact the people they are designed to help.
Turkey's communications regulator has imposed an unprecedented fine on Twitter for allowing the publication of content deemed to justify terror, the state-run Anatolia news agency said Friday.
"Right now when a firefighter in New York goes into a subway tunnel, he can go 15 feet in and is out of communication range. Nobody knows whether he's alive, whether he's safe, or whether he has oxygen," says Amna Greaves, ...
As even casual Star Wars fans will know, lightsabers are probably the coolest weapon ever to make an appearance on the big screen. Lightsaber fights are so elegant that they are almost hypnotic and, even though not all of ...
A smiling and very green Kermit looking down from a wall portrait seems to happily give a thumbs—or flipper—up to one of the University of Wyoming's self-described frog guys trying to unravel the mysteries of what in ...
Some parts of our brain that process sound have a subsequent spot for each pitch, just like the keyboard on a piano. One part – the auditory part of the thalamus – even processes each sound on two 'keyboards' next to ...
Emory researchers have found that patients who do not know they have diabetes when hospitalized in an intensive care unit (ICU) have greater complications during their stay and poorer outcomes than patients without diabetes. ...
Postmenopausal women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) had similar outcomes with disease recurrence whether they took tamoxifen or the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole for five years after surgery, but women in the two ...
Analysis of patient-reported outcomes (PRO), a secondary endpoint of the phase III, NSABP B-35 clinical trial, in which anastrazole and tamoxifen were compared in postmenopausal women with ductal carcinoma in-situ (DCIS) ...
Among patients with HER2-positive, metastatic breast cancer that had progressed despite treatment with two or more forms of HER2-targeted therapy (trastuzumab [Herceptin] and lapatinib [Tykerb]), median overall survival was ...
By sifting through the 20,000 protein-encoding genes in the human genome, Yale researchers discovered new complexities behind drug resistance and identified patterns of mutations that could predict which therapies will benefit ...
The anti-hormone therapy tamoxifen can reduce breast cancer recurrence by about half in women with hormone-sensitive breast cancer. But it works better in some women than others. Researchers are not sure why.
South Asian women in the U.S. are less likely to have high blood pressure when they have a high sense of "neighborhood cohesion"—a feeling they know most of their neighbors and could trust them, a new study says.
As the drug touted as "the female Viagra" comes to market, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are learning more about how the drug, called flibanserin, affects the brain.
With food everywhere you look, difficult relatives and pressure to create perfect memories, the holidays can be a tough time for those who struggle with eating disorders.
A new database along with a handbook and toolkit covering Hospital-Based Health Technology Assessments (HB-HTAs) will help health professionals manage new technological innovations better, increasing operational efficiencies ...
Progeria is a rare genetic disease that mimics the normal aging process at an accelerated rate. Symptoms typically appear within the first year of life, and individuals with the disease develop thin, wrinkled skin, fragile ...
Smallpox virus, which killed millions of humans through the ages, ranks among the world's most feared bioterrorism agents. Human monkeypox continues to occur sporadically in remote African villages.
A new study sheds light on the significance of a potential genetic risk factor for drug addiction and possibly other neuropsychiatric disorders. Both genetic and environmental factors are known to influence susceptibility ...
(HealthDay)—Twenty-one percent of American children and teens have some form of "abnormal" blood cholesterol reading that leaves them at heightened risk for heart disease and stroke as they reach adulthood.
With the help of light-emitting diodes as small as neurons, University of Michigan researchers are unlocking the secrets of neural pathways in the brain.
A group of researchers has shown for the first time in cells and in a mouse model that a drug used to treat cancer can neutralize the toxic RNA that causes the prolonged muscle contractions and other symptoms of myotonic ...
A paper published in The Lancet today calls for a radical transformation in the architecture of India's healthcare delivery system, if the country is to achieve the government's vision of assuring health for all.
A new study has questioned why poorer children are at higher risk of obesity compared to their better-off peers. The findings are published today in The European Journal of Public Health.
Brazilian researchers from D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) have demonstrated in laboratory that apigenin, a substance found ...
Women who used contraceptive implants or injections after an initial termination were among those with an increased likelihood of a repeat abortion in the long term, finds a study published online in the Journal of Family ...
Drinking 2 to 3 units of alcohol every day is linked to a reduced risk of death among people with early stage Alzheimer's disease, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open.
Too many tests at the doctor's office could cost you more than just dollars. In addition to the huge hit to your wallet, there's also the potential harm of false positives, and just because a test has traditionally been done ...