The cloudy look on cleaned glass is scattered light, not streaks of dirt
A fundamental discovery about the behavior of cooling glass could have a significant impact on the glass- and plastic-making industries, say researchers at Lehigh University.
Himanshu Jain, Diamond chair and professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh, says the breakthrough was made possible by a combination of nanoscopic science and an old-fashioned kitchen recipe.
When molten glass i
A strong link has been confirmed between sea surface temperatures and precipitation in Africa’s semi-arid Sahel, according to a new study published in Science on October 9th. The study was co-authored by Alessandra Giannini, a climate expert with the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (IRI), a unit of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
Previously, it was not known how much land use changes may have led to the region’s recent history of prolonged drought, or whet
Mother Goose tells us that boys are made of “snips and snails and puppy dog tails.” She was clearly misinformed about the snails and tails, but she was on to something with the snips. What you really need to build a boy is a “Y” chromosome, and it turns out that SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), known by the biotech cognoscente as simply “snips,” can be helpful in sorting out who fathered the boy. If DNA can be thought of as an instruction book for building a specific person, then SNPs are sing
Insights gained from extensive studies in mice may someday lead to treatments for comparable neurodegenerative diseases in humans
Scientists at Jefferson Medical College and the University of Michigan have uncovered a gene defect responsible for a muscle-wasting, neurodegenerative disease in mice known as mnd2. Their results may provide insights into the molecular origins of other such diseases in humans, including Parkinson’s disease.
In an online report on October 8 in the
In 1905, American astronomer Percival Lowell predicted the existence of a new planet he called Planet X. Lowell proved that this new planet existed even though no one had been able to see it in the sky. Twenty-five years later, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh stumbled on images of X photographed from the Flagstaff Observatory in Arizona. Today, that planet is known as Pluto.
While it took twenty-five years for astronomers to go from theory to confirmation of Pluto’s existence, it took genome sci
Metal detectors have become so commonplace that you might think we know all we need to about them. However, the law enforcement community must continually update performance standards for metal detectors to ensure that new products purchased in the marketplace operate at specified minimum levels. Further-more, they must know if exposure to the magnetic fields generated by metal detectors affects the functioning of personal medical electronic devices (such as cardiac defibrillators, infusion pumps, sp
House maintenance is a never-ending and costly task. Roofing, siding, windows and even garage doors wear out.
Now researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a software program that takes the guesswork out of replacement decisions. The free program, called NEST (for National Economic Service-life Tools), allows homeowners to select the most cost-effective replacement material for roofing, siding, windows and garage doors. It also provides,
If all goes as planned, two rovers named Spirit and Opportunity will explore the surface of Mars next year, gathering a wealth of geologic information and beaming the results back to Earth. However, the environment is so extreme that the rovers will be equipped with heaters to keep the electronic gear warm enough to operate properly over the Martian winter when temperatures can dip to -120 degrees C. Future space probes will involve even more extreme environments, with temperatures as high as 460 deg
Discovery shows power of mouse genome to identify human genes for rare genetic diseases
In a small town on Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean, people are living with a serious neurological disorder, called Cayman ataxia, found nowhere else in the world.
People born with this rare, inherited condition have poor muscle coordination, some degree of mental retardation, uncontrollable head and eye movements and difficulty speaking or walking.
Now, in a discovery that
Some 200,000 people live with partial or nearly total permanent paralysis in the United States, with spinal cord injuries adding 11,000 new cases each year. Most research aimed at recovering motor function has focused on repairing damaged nerve fibers, which has succeeded in restoring limited movement in animal experiments. But regenerating nerves and restoring complex motor behavior in humans are far more difficult, prompting researchers to explore alternatives to spinal cord rehabilitation.
But moderate consumption of wine may be protective
Stony Brook University (Stony Brook, NY) researchers report that people who drink at least 9 glasses of alcoholic beverages made with distilled spirits per week for more than 10 years are much more likely than nondrinkers to develop colorectal cancer or premalignant polyps. They also note a protective effect for those who drink wine. The results, which will be presented at the 68th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of
Appear to “Assimilate” Arm As If it Were Their Own
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have taught rhesus monkeys to consciously control the movement of a robot arm in real time, using only signals from their brains and visual feedback on a video screen. The scientists said that the animals appeared to operate the robot arm as if it were their own limb.
The scientists and engineers said their achievement represents an important step toward technology that could ena
Engineers have designed a new diode that transmits more electricity than any other device of its kind, and the inspiration for it came from technology that is 40 years old.
Unlike other diodes in its class, called tunnel diodes, the new diode is compatible with silicon, so manufacturers could easily build it into mainstream electronic devices such as cell phones and computers.
Industry has long sought to marry tunnel diodes with conventional electronics as a means to simplify incre
A franco-american quintet of cosmologists conducted by Jean-Pierre Luminet, from Paris Observatory (LUTH), has proposed an original explanation to account for a surprising detail observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) recently mapped by the NASA satellite WMAP. According to the team, who published their study in the 9 october 2003 issue of “Nature”, an intriguing discrepancy in the background luminous texture of the Universe can indeed be explained by a very specific global shape of space
A new, all-natural, pollutant-busting microbe has been discovered by scientists in Germany. Research published in the October 2003 issue of Microbiology, a Society for General Microbiology journal, describes a new strain of bacterium, which could be used in the near future to clean up polluted land.
Over the years, many harsh and highly toxic chemicals have built-up in the environment. Dr Rapp and his colleagues at the National Research Centre for Biotechnology in Braunschweig, Germany, have
Robots, machines that speak, answering machines that understand what we say … will be soon a regular part of our daily life. Concretely the University of the Basque Country (EHU/UPV), together with the universities of Zaragoza and Valencia, is developing a system capable of recognising speech. The aim of the project is to develop a machine which responds automatically to the user who asks for information about trains and timetables.
The machine will be able to recognise the voice of the p
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