Thanks in part to highly accurate measurements made by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers, semiconductor manufacturers will be able to pursue a new production method that will enable them to produce new generations of computer chips using existing equipment—saving the industry hundreds of millions of dollars.
Creating ever more powerful computer chips relies on being able to increasingly miniaturize the features on those chips. Industry had thought it might
A nanoscale imaging technique that could improve the reliability of an important diagnostic test for breast cancer, and other biomedical tests, is described by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers in the Feb. 11 online issue of Nucleic Acids Research.
The method involves attaching fluorescent particles just 15 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in diameter to particular sections of DNA, followed by analysis of the intensity of the fluorescence signal and other
A National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientist has demonstrated efficient production of single photons—the smallest pulses of light—at the highest temperatures reported for the photon source used. The advance is a step toward practical, ultrasecure quantum communications, as well as useful for certain types of metrology. The results are reported in the Feb. 23 issue of Applied Physics Letters.
“Single photon turnstiles” are being hotly pursued for quantum communicatio
When a new mom gazes at her baby, it’s not just her mood that lights up – it’s also a brain region associated with emotion processing, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The study, published in the current issue of NeuroImage, explored what happens in the brain when mothers are shown pictures of their babies, as well as images of unfamiliar infants. While all the photos increased the amount of activity in a part of the brain associated with emotion, the imag
A study published in the Vadose Zone Journal examines how different soil types affect Cryptosporidium parvum’s transport.
Groundwater is generally considered a safe source of drinking water because pathogens are presumably filtered out during their transport through unsaturated soils. Nevertheless, pathogen-contaminated groundwater has been the cause of many disease outbreaks in the last 10 years including cryptosporidiosis caused by the protozoan pathogen Cryptosporidium parvum.
Period was previously thought to be ice-free
Arlington, Va.-Scientists using cores drilled from the New Jersey coastal plain have found that ice sheets likely caused massive sea level change during the Late Cretaceous Period -an interval previously thought to be ice-free. The scientists, who will publish their results in the March-April issue of the Geological Society of America (GSA) Bulletin, assert that either ice sheets grew and decayed in that greenhouse world or our understandin
A program in health clinics where physicians offer patients a cough and cold care kit containing over the counter medicines appears to significantly reduce unnecessary antibiotic use. Researchers from the Minnesota Antibiotic Resistance Collaborative (MARC) report their findings today at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“Providing cough and cold care kits does appear to be a useful tool to use with patients who have upper respiratory illness or acute bronchitis t
Children who wore contact lenses overnight as part of their orthokeratology regime developed corneal ulcers, resulting in corneal scarring and vision loss. According to a case study from China, appearing in the March issue of the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s clinical, peer-reviewed journal, Ophthalmology, six children, nine to 14 years of age, were treated for bacterial eye infections after wearing the contact lenses eight to 12 hours each night.
Orthokeratology is a controversi
A new analysis of cancer figures for England[1] shows that the overall incidence among teenagers and young adults is rising, with the biggest increase among 20 to 24-year-olds, particularly in lymphoma, melanoma and germ cell tumours, including testicular germ cell tumours.
A news briefing at Teenage Cancer Trust’s Third International Conference on Adolescent Cancer today (Monday 1 March) was told that although cancer is still rare in this age group – around 1,500 cases a year in England –
More research is urgently needed says cancer surgeon
New treatments and more research are urgently needed in order to increase the numbers of adolescents who survive bone cancer, according to a leading cancer surgeon.
Osteosarcoma is the third most common cancer in young people*, yet during the past 20 years little research has been carried out into developing improved therapies, and survival rates have remained unchanged with only 54 per cent of patients alive after five ye
The knowledge of local fishermen is just as important as that of scientists when it comes to assessing the health of the marine environment, according to a team of researchers from Newcastle University’s Dove Marine Laboratory, who have been studying the future of the North Sea.
The team has spent the past three months carrying out a survey among fishermen, yachtsmen and boat operators based at the Northumberland (UK) ports of Blyth and North Shields, as part of a project entitled: 
As the number of breast cancer patients rises, and hospitals struggle to meet the growing cost of healthcare provision, new research by physicists could help divert funds into frontline treatment such as chemotherapy drugs and better imaging technology.
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in England and Wales and one in nine women will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives. Research published today (Monday 1st March 2004) in the Institute of Physics journal Physics
The paternalistic attitude of Japanese physicians towards their patients is outdated. According to a new study in BMC Family Practice, patients in Japan want to play a more active role in making decisions about their treatment.
The study found that, “the majority of Japanese patients have positive attitudes towards participation in medical decision making if adequate information is provided”. 30% of those questioned went as far as saying that they would like to have the final say on which tr
Assuaging concerns about guaranteeing current and future tunnel safety is IST project SIRTAKI, which is developing a system to provide enhanced security for any road, rail or metro network.
Last year the first prototype of the SIRTAKI advanced tunnel management and decision support system (DSS) was completed, and trials are now beginning in the Paris metro network and in three road tunnels in Italy and Spain. These are expected to validate its potential to drastically improve the safety of
For nanoelectronics, biotechnology
An article to be published in the February 27 issue of the journal Science introduces “nanorings” as the newest member of a growing family of nanometer-scale structures based on single crystals of zinc oxide, a semiconducting and piezoelectric material that has important technological applications.
The rings, complete circles formed by a spontaneous self-coiling process, could serve as nanometer-scale sensors, resonators and transducers – a
Researchers have developed a method for scanning the entire human genome to successfully map the location of key gene regulators, mutated forms of which are known to cause type 2 diabetes. The research marks the first time that human organs, in this case the pancreas and liver, have been analyzed in this way and opens the door to similar studies of other organ systems and diseases.
The work, published in the Feb. 27 issue of the journal Science, could lead to new approaches for developing m
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