While electronic circuits and nanomachines grow ever smaller, batteries to power them remain huge by comparison, as well as short-lived. But now Cornell University researchers have built a microscopic device that could supply power for decades to remote sensors or implantable medical devices by drawing energy from a radioactive isotope.
The device converts the energy stored in the radioactive material directly into motion. It could directly move the parts of a tiny machine or could generat
Astronomers have identified the vivid scar of a cosmic catastrophe: a blue arc thousands of light years long produced when a galaxy pulled in a smaller satellite galaxy and tore it apart.
The streak is composed of clusters of young blue stars that formed as the larger galaxy, Centaurus A, absorbed the smaller galaxy about 200 million to 400 million years ago. Researchers will report in the December Astronomical Journal that their discovery suggests absorption of smaller galaxies may be a sig
People who live, work or travel within 165 feet downwind of a major freeway or busy intersection are exposed to potentially hazardous particle concentrations up to 30 times greater than normal background concentrations found at a greater distance, according to two recently published UCLA studies.
The studies — published in the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association and in Atmospheric Environment — show that proximity to a major freeway or highway dramatically increases exposu
Two parts of the body’s immune system are critical for its normal functioning. One of these, the innate immune component, must defend the body against onslaughts from foreign substances it has never before seen. Failure of the immune system can result in cancer, autoimmune disease, or life threatening viral infections. Scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have identified a gene called MEF that is essential to the development of Natural Killer cells and Natural Killer T-cells, whi
Canadians will eat better and will enjoy a healthier environment thanks to a new canning process for jars and cans. This innovative research is taking place at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Food Research and Development Centre in Saint-Hyacinthe.
The research project uses a technology that reduces energy consumption in the canning of products containing fruit, vegetable and/or meat pieces, such as sauces and soups.
The advantages include a 30-per-cent reduction in energy consu
Scientists from the McKusick-Nathans Institute for Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins may have discovered why a rare genetic disease is more common in children born to older fathers. The disease, Apert syndrome, leads to webbed fingers and early fusion of the skull bones and must be corrected by surgery.
While Apert syndrome itself affects only 1 in 160,000 births, the scientists believe their findings could extend to many of the 20 or so other genetic conditions similarly linked to older fa
Two population studies in this week’s issue of THE LANCET highlight how poor air quality is directly related to increased risk of death from respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
Luke Clancy from St James Hospital, Dublin, and colleagues from Trinity College and Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland, and Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA, examined the effect of the 1990 coal ban in Dublin on population death-rates in the six years before and after the ban was i
Work stress is associated with a doubling of the risk of death from heart disease, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.
Researchers followed 812 healthy employees (545 men, 267 women) of a company in Finland for an average of 25 years. They gathered data on stress, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and body mass index by questionnaire, interviews, and clinical examinations. Cardiovascular deaths were calculated using the national mortality register.
They found that job strain (high w
Baseball fans might want to add a little more sauerkraut to their hot dogs: Researchers have identified compounds in the tangy topping, made from fermented cabbage, that may fight cancer. Their study will appear in the Oct. 23 print issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.
The researchers found that the process of fermenting cabbage produces isothiocyanates, a class of comp
In the high Canadian Arctic, researchers at the University of Rochester have stripped away some of the mystery surrounding the powerhouse that drives the Earth’s magnetic field. The research strongly suggests that several of the characteristics of the field that were long thought to operate independently of one another, such as the field’s polarity and strength, may be linked. If so, then the strength of the field, which has been waning for several thousand years, may herald a pole reversal
Our bodies contain proteins that are made of smaller molecules that can be either left- or right-handed, depending upon their structure. Regardless of which hand we use to write, however, all human beings are `left-handed` at the molecular level. Life on Earth uses the left-handed variety and no one knows how this preference crept into living systems. In 2012, ESA`s Rosetta lander will land on a comet to investigate, among other things, if the origin of this preference lies in the stars.
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A Londoner who is greenhouse gas (GHG) aware could save up to £80,000 over a lifetime by making basic lifestyle changes. Significant reductions in GHG emissions are possible at no net cost to the US economy. These are two of the conclusions made by Dr David Reay of the Institute of Ecology and Resource Management at the University of Edinburgh, in his paper `Costing Climate Change`, to be published in the special, triennial Christmas issue of Philosophical Transactions A*, a learned journal published
Researchers have found that a primitive type of ion channel similar to those found in mammalian nerve cells helps bacteria resist the blast of acid they encounter in the stomach of their hosts.
The discovery suggests a plausible mechanism whereby bacteria can fend off stomach acidity long enough to establish themselves in the intestine. More broadly, said the scientists, the finding represents the first insight into why bacteria have forms of the same ion channels — proteins that control t
Supermassive black holes – the name given to black holes whose mass is more than 1,000,000 times the mass of the sun – can be found at the center of many galaxies. Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and several institutions in France have succeeded in tracking a star racing around a dark mass at the center of our galaxy. This achievement offers more support for the widely held view that the dark mass is a supermassive black hole.
Heat-denatured p24 Antigen Tests Can Cut Cost of HIV Progression Monitoring
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Zurich, Switzerland, have identified a test for monitoring the progression of HIV in the early stages of the disease that is less expensive than current tests used to monitor the progression of HIV. The test, called HIV-1 protein 24 (p24) antigen, predicts disease progression as well as CD4 lymphocyte count and HIV-1 RNA v
Witnessing violence between parents has the same detrimental effect on teen-age girls as being a victim of abuse themselves, according to a new study by Brown University sociologists: The teen-agers are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior.
A study of 710 girls ages 14 to 17 who were living in two-parent families found that teen-agers who witnessed domestic violence or were the subject of violence from a parent were at least three times more likely to engage in risky sexual activi
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