Penn State engineers have developed a low- cost, high-torque rotary motor, based on “smart” materials, that can be configured in a wide range of formats, including one as flat and thin as a CD case.
The inventors say that, in the flat format, the motor could be used to drive changes in the camber of airplane wings or fins, essentially shape-shifting the curvature of the wing or fin surface.
In other formats, the motor could work in tightly integrated spaces where other motors can
Research by Oxford University and collaborators has shed new light on the last 100,000 years of human migration from Africa into Asia. The new genetic study confirms that some of the earliest migrants travelled into Asia by a southern route, possibly along the coasts of what are now Pakistan and India. The researchers identified a genetic marker in museum samples of inaccessible populations from the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. This allowed them to re-interpret previous genetic studies from
Since the end of the 1960s West Africa has continuously been suffering hard drought. The rainfall deficit for the 1970s and 1980s, calculated to compare with the 1950s and 1960s, thus reached as high as 50% over the northern part of the Sahel. The hydrological cycle as a whole is affected by this drought, which results in serious consequences for agriculture and food security.
IRD researchers, aiming to understand the mechanisms behind this situation, examined rainfall data from 1950 to 1990
While about 80 percent of people with epilepsy gain significant relief from drug therapy, the remaining 20 percent have seizures that cannot be controlled by medications. Many of these people have a particular type of epilepsy called partial epilepsy. A new study shows that people with partial epilepsy often have seizures controlled by medications for years before their seizures become drug-resistant. The study also found that periods when seizures stopped for a year or more are common in these patie
By solving a long-standing puzzle about how the influenza virus assembles its genetic contents into infectious particles that enable the virus to spread from cell to cell, scientists have opened a new gateway to a better understanding of one of the world’s most virulent diseases.
This insight into the genetic workings that underpin infection by flu, reported today (January 27, 2003) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provides not only a better basic understa
A joint research project by scientists in Cardiff, UK, has developed a new protein, which could end the suffering of thousands.
The research, by scientists at Cardiff University and the University of Wales College of Medicine (UWCM), and funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, is designed to tackle the problem of chronic inflammation – which can lead to serious disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and bacterial peritonitis.
Now a two-year development programme is getting un
Like a well-trained soldier with honed survival skills, the common bacterium, Group A Streptococcus (GAS), sometimes can endure battle with our inborn (innate) immune system and cause widespread disease. By investigating the ability of combat-ready white blood cells (WBCs) to ingest and kill GAS, researchers have discovered new insights into how this disease-causing bacteria can evade destruction by the immune system. The research is being published this week in the Online Early Edition of the Procee
Salmonella, E. coli, shigellosis, hepatitis A, and Norwalk — these food-borne diseases can produce symptoms that run from the mild to life-threatening. The young and old are particularly vulnerable and while consumption of beef and poultry have been the most common sources of such infections, fresh fruits and vegetables are being increasingly implicated in such outbreaks. So much so, that plant disease scientists are now taking a closer look at this issue.
“Historically, human pathogens l
Researchers can now pinpoint direction of elusive subatomic particles key to understanding black holes, other cosmic events
A unique telescope buried in Antarctic ice promises unparalleled insight into such extraordinary phenomena as colliding black holes, gamma-ray bursts, the violent cores of distant galaxies and the wreckage of exploded stars.
An international team of physicists and astronomers, which includes UC Irvine researchers, report that the AMANDA telescope is cap
Jefferson Lab’s Free-Electron Laser used to explore the fundamental science of how and why nanotubes form, paying close attention to the atomic and molecular details
Scientists and technologists of all stripes are working intensively to explore the possibilities of an extremely strong and versatile cylinder so tiny that millions — which in bunches look like an ebony snowflake — could fit easily on the tip of a pin. The objects in question are known as carbon nanotubes, first discov
An experiment conducted by the Department of Energy’s Jefferson Lab generates THz radiation 20,000 times brighter than anyone else; breakthrough lights way for application development
Experiment generates THz radiation 20,000 times brighter than anyone else; breakthrough lights way for application development
An experiment conducted with Jefferson Lab’s Free-Electron Laser has shown how to make a highly useful form of light — called terahertz radiation — 20,000 times brigh
Jefferson Lab is once again taking center stage, as Lab scientists, engineers and technicians mobilize to provide 81 niobium cavities for 23 cryomodules for the Spallation Neutron Source under construction in Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Thermos bottles usually don’t weigh nearly five tons or measure almost 26 feet end-to-end. But these aren’t run-of-the-mill containers for soup or coffee. Rather, they’re the complex, state-of-the-art supercooled components in which particle beams are
Using the same technology that creates tiny, precisely organized computer chips, a Johns Hopkins research team has developed beds of thousands of independently moveable silicone “microneedles” to reveal the force exerted by smooth muscle cells.
Each needle tip in the gadget, whose development and testing is reported this week in the advance online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, can be painted with proteins cells tend to grab onto. By measuring how far a contr
A study led by a Duke University scientist suggests that the current emphasis on controlling upstream nitrogen pollution fails to adequately address the impacts on water quality of another potential contaminant, phosphorus. Thus, according to the scientists, current strategies used by environmental managers to control excessive nutrients in coastal wetlands may not achieve their intended goals.
The finding was published in a report in the Friday, Jan. 24, 2003, issue of the journal Science b
Treatment appropriate for some patients who are not good surgical candidates
A minimally invasive, experimental treatment is proving successful in removing small kidney tumors from appropriate patients, report researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In a study in the February 2003 issue of Radiology, the MGH team describes how a technique called radiofrequency ablation (RFA) destroyed all renal cell carcinoma (RCC) tumors less than 3 cm in size and some larger tumors, d
A new study suggests that brief exposures to pure oxygen not only help chronic and other hard-to-heal wounds heal completely, such exposures also help wounds heal faster.
Ohio State University surgical scientists used topical oxygen therapy to treat 30 patients with a total of 56 wounds. The therapy required placing a bag containing pure oxygen over the wound for 90 minutes a day. More than two-thirds of the difficult wounds healed with the oxygen treatment alone.
Wounds in this cl
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