Toronto’s CN Tower acts as a lightning laboratory, teaching scientists how to protect delicate electronic equipment against high-voltage surges, says a new study. Lightning data captured by measurement stations at the CN Tower point to the most effective procedures for protecting sensitive technology in tall buildings or on power lines routed through mountainous terrain. “More and more electronic equipment has very sensitive components,” says study co-author Wasyl Janischewskyj, a profe
Member of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Public University of Navarre, Jesús Mª Corres Sanz, has suggested a new method which enables, amongst other applications, response enhancement to perturbations in electrical machines such as those experienced by an electric vehicle. These techniques, moreover, can be applied to any type of industrial robot.
In this thesis the design of velocity observers and perturbation par is studied for their application to mechatro
Imagine your mobile phone telling you of hotels, restaurants and other services in your immediate vicinity no matter whether you’re in an underground shopping mall or on a remote hilltop in the Alpujarras. Such abilities are the aims of EMILY.
Positioning based on both GSM and satellite
The problem in the past has been that cellular positioning systems can be highly accurate in urban locations and indoors where special GSM antennae have been installed. However they los
A new research study reveals that formation of the cells that build bone tissue, called osteoblasts, is suppressed by a complicated inhibitory signal and that formation of the skeleton proceeds only after relief of the inhibition. This inhibitory signal is part of normal development, and without it, bone formation proceeds prematurely and abnormally.
A gene called Runx2 is the earliest and most specific indicator of osteoblast formation. However, Runx2 expression precedes the actual appeara
A strong antigen-specific T-cell response to HIV infection is important for controlling virus replication; however, because HIV selectively infects and replicates in CD4 T cells, increased number of these cells in response to viral infection may also be detrimental as these cells provide fuel for the infection to grow.
In the March 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Mark Feinberg and colleagues, of Emory University Vaccine Center, analyze the specific parameters of T-cell ac
Blood cell formation depends on gene previously linked to leukemia
Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have pinpointed a crucial gene on which the normal development of the body’s entire blood system depends. If the gene is absent, even the most basic blood stem cells cannot be generated. In a mutated form, this gene can cause a rare and devastating form of leukemia.
Called MLL, the gene makes a protein that regulates the activity of a number of other genes invol
A computer-aided approach — based on software-that-learns — promises to provide a new tool that helps doctors tailor the dosage of abciximab, a medicine frequently used before angioplasty to lessen the chance of heart attack.
Dr. Mirna Urquidi-Macdonald, professor of engineering science and mechanics, says, “While we tried our approach first with abciximab, it may be applicable to other medicines that have a narrow therapeutical range between under dosing and overdosing.”
The appr
New model may help researchers understand and treat human digestive problems
Every animal — including humans — is home to “friendly” gut bacteria that help digest food and perform other important functions. Now, a tiny, transparent fish is literally offering biologists a new window into these mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis have shown for the first time that zebrafish can be raised in a germ-free env
Researchers in North Carolina State University’s Department of Computer Science have developed a new data transfer protocol for the Internet that makes today’s high-speed Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections seem lethargic.
The protocol is named BIC-TCP, which stands for Binary Increase Congestion Transmission Control Protocol. In a recent comparative study run by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), BIC consistently topped the rankings in a set of experiments that determined
Scientists have known for some time that some social insects undergo dramatic behavioral changes as they mature, and now a research team has found that the brains of a wasp species correspondingly enlarge as the creatures engage in more complex tasks.
“The amount of change is striking,” said Sean O’Donnell, a University of Washington associate professor of psychology and lead author of a new study published in the February issue of Neuroscience Letters. “It is easily apparent with magni
While it might not seem so the next time you go searching for your car keys, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that memories are not as fluid as current research suggests. Their findings challenge the prevailing notion on how memories are stored and remembered – or that a recalled memory could be altered or lost as it is “re-remembered.”
“Current theories of memory state that the act of remembering turns a stored memory into something malleable that then needs to be re
The esophagus isn’t merely a tube for food traveling from the mouth to the stomach, it also provides an environment for bacteria to live, according to a new study by NYU School of Medicine scientists that overturns the general belief that the esophagus is free of bacteria.
“People thought that the esophagus wasn’t hospitable to bacteria,” says Martin J. Blaser, M.D., Frederick King Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine, and Professor of Microbiology, an author of th
The emotion control center of the brain, the amygdala, shows significantly higher levels of activation in males viewing sexual visual stimuli than females viewing the same images, according to a Center for Behavioral Neuroscience study led by Emory University psychologists Stephan Hamann and Kim Wallen. The finding, which appears in the April edition of “Nature Neuroscience,” demonstrates how men and women process visual sexual stimuli differently, and it may explain gender variations in reproductiv
Alexander Pines and his colleagues have discovered a remarkable new way to improve the versatility and sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the technology upon which it is based, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).
Pines, a pioneering NMR researcher, is Faculty Senior Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Glenn T. Seaborg Professor of Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. The latest details of the new techniqu
Physicists in New Zealand have shown that last November’s record-breaking solar explosion was much larger than previously estimated, thanks to innovative research using the upper atmosphere as a gigantic x-ray detector. Their findings have been accepted for 17 March publication in Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union.
On 4 November 2003, the largest solar flare ever recorded exploded from the Sun’s surface, sending an intense burst of radiation
A group of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute has proposed a new theory about the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, the progressive neurodegenerative disorder that currently afflicts some 4.5 million Americans.
According to the hypothesis, the disease arises as a consequence of inflammation, which creates abnormal metabolites out of normal brain molecules.
These abnormal metabolites then modify “amyloid beta” proteins in the brain and cause them to misfold. Misfolded amyloid
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