Mainstream financial service providers should help their rejected borrowers improve credit ratings and avoid sinking deeper into debt, by collaborating with high-interest lenders, many of which they own, argues a new report sponsored by the ESRC.
Better liaison and advice might prevent shocking cases such as that of the Meadows family of Southport, who hit the headlines last October after a loan of £5,750 shot up to a staggering debt of £380,000, says a study at Keele University l
Using nitrous oxide – or “laughing gas” – to put the bubbles in chocolate produces a more intense, melt-in-the-mouth flavour, according to Chemistry & Industry magazine.
Gases like carbon dioxide or nitrogen are commonly used to produce the air bubbles in aerated chocolates like Aero.
Researchers at the University of Reading, UK, tested the effects of aeration with four gases – nitrous oxide, nitrogen, argon and carbon dioxide – on the sensory properties of chocolate p
Researchers from Korea, Italy, France and the ESRF have just observed how a molecule changes structure after being hit with a short flash of laser light. Thanks to very intense pulses of X-rays from the synchrotron and novel data analysis, they were able to confirm a long standing hypothesis regarding the evolution of this molecule. The results are published in the 14 July Science Express, the online counterpart of the journal Science.
The experiment was started by dissolving t
What will climate change do to biodiversity, forestry and agriculture? What will its impact be on patterns of disease, water resources and air quality? Leading climate change experts from the UK and China meet in Beijing to look at the latest predictions to emerge from computer modelling studies.
“Climate change is a global problem that cannot be tackled by any one country acting alone. British and Chinese scientists need to draw from each other’s research to understand
Researchers at the Kentucky Geological Survey are studying options to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is produced by the burning of coal, gasoline, and natural gas and has been linked to global warming. Sequestration involves the injection of carbon dioxide gas captured from the burning of fossil fuels into underground geologic structures to store it rather than allow it to be released into the atmosphere. Potential geologic sites include deep sal
1 million tonnes of waste cuttings (external leaves, stems, etc.) from vegetables prior to processing are generated every year in Europe and 3.4 million of barley husks as a result of beer brewing processes. These sub-products are currently thrown away or managed by means of techniques that are not very environment-friendly, despite the fact that they contain considerable quantities of high-value components.
It is within this context that the REPRO (Reducing Food Processing Waste) has arise
Covering ship hulls with artificial shark skin could help ships sailing smoothly. The growth of marine organisms such as barnacles on ship hulls is a major cause of increased energy costs in the naval industry. Shark skin offers a structural design that prevents this so called ’bio-fouling’.
Ralph Liedert from the University of Applied Sciences, Bremen, Germany, is presenting his work on the application of artificial shark skin in a new anti-fouling strategy at the Society
A product produced by lung cancer tumors fuels the cells that suppress immune function in patients and may be a target for Celebrex therapy, giving oncologists another weapon to fight cancer, according to a study by researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center.
Researchers found that PGE2, which is produced normally by epithelial cells but at very high levels in lung cancer and other malignancies, up-regulates the activity of lymphocytes called T-regulatory cells, which s
In the first study of its kind to focus on college-trained IT professional women working in positions from systems analysts to IT project leaders, a team of Penn State researchers have found new evidence that organizations need better policies and programs to foster women in the IT workplace.
The researchers recommend that employers address ways to retain women in those critical moments when they are bearing and caring for young children. These ways could range from supporting p
New model challenges textbook definition
Researchers have constructed a new detailed map of the three-dimensional terrain of a synapse — the junction between neurons which are critical for communication in the brain and nervous system. The “nano-map,” which shows the tiny spines and valleys resolved at nanometer scale, or one-billionth of a meter, has already proven its worth in changing scientists’ views of the synaptic landscape.
Using the map as a guide, the r
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has expressed deep concern about a congressional demand for detailed documentation on the scientific work and professional history of three researchers whose studies suggest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are warmer than they have been for a thousand years.
In a July 13 letter to U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner said the committee’s requests to
For makers of computers, disk drives and other sophisticated technologies, a guiding principle is the smoother the surfaces of chips and other components, the better these devices and the products, themselves, will function.
So, some manufacturers might be surprised to learn that a fast and increasingly popular method for measuring surface texture can yield misleading results. As reported at recent conferences and in an upcoming issue of Applied Optics,* a team of National Instit
Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) may be the next-generation patterning technique used to produce smaller and faster microchips with feature sizes of 32 nanometers and below. However, durable projection optics must be developed before this laboratory technique can become commercially viable. As part of its long-standing effort to develop EUVL metrology and calibration services (summarized in a recent paper*), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is creating a measurement s
In the last few years, semiconductor circuit features have shrunk to sub-100 nanometer (nm) dimensions, while the size of the thin silicon wafers that these circuits are constructed on has grown from 200 millimeters (mm) to 300 mm (about 12 inches). The payoff is a higher yield of finished devices from fewer wafers.
The tough part, however, is to make wafers substantially larger while simultaneously meeting higher quality control specifications. The optics and materials for “print
Eggs of female hamsters are significantly less likely to be transported by the oviduct when the eggs or the oviduct have been exposed to cigarette smoke, and this could result in disruption of fertilization and pregnancy, according to reproductive scientists at the University of California, Riverside.
In a paper to be published in Biology of Reproduction, Christine Gieseke and Prue Talbot report that various types of cigarette smoke cause freshly ovulated hamster eggs, envelop
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed an improved experimental X-ray detector that could pave the way to a new generation of wide-range, high-resolution trace chemical analysis instruments. In a recently published technical paper*, the researchers described how they used improved temperature-sensing and control systems to detect X-rays across a very broad range of energies (6 keV or more), with pinpoint energy resolution (an uncertainty of only
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