Hand-held tasting device displays highly discriminating palate.
A new hand-held electronic tongue promises to give accurate and reliable taste measurements for companies currently relying on human tasters for their quality control of wine, tea, coffee, mineral water and other foods.
Human tasters are still irreplaceable for subtile products such as fine wines and whiskies. But their sense of taste saturates after a while, losing its discriminating edge. The device made by An
The astronomy textbooks will have to be rewritten, say astrophysicists at the University of Sussex who have re-examined standard calculations about solar evolution and the distant future of the Earth.
The textbooks tell us that one day the Sun will burn up its nuclear fuel and expand to an enormous size, finally engulfing its inner planets including Earth. However, using the latest data based on real stars, the University of Sussex researchers suggest a (slightly) less catastrophic future f
A DEVICE that records and recognises what people are discussing at meetings – and alerts them if decisions are being re-made – is being developed with the help of information systems experts at Staffordshire University.
Staffordshire and Lancaster Universities have been jointly awarded £714,000 by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to carry out the cutting-edge research project which will be partly based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Profes
A crystal that holds light could facilitate quantum computing.
Researchers in the United States and Korea have brought light to a complete standstill in a crystal. The pulse is effectively held within the solid, ready to be released at a later stage.
This trick could be used to store information in a quantum computer 1 .
Normal computers store information in simple binary form (1’s and 0’s) in electronic and magnetic devices. Stationary light pu
Researchers at the University of Bristol have found that pregnant women who frequently use cannabis during their pregnancy may affect the growth of their unborn child. With the recent change in status of cannabis from a class A to class B drug, it is important to assess whether it is entirely safe for use during pregnancy. A marker which often indicates an effect on the unborn child is the baby`s weight at birth.
The findings were announced by Kate Northstone, from the Children of the 90s p
The discovery of small spikes lining the mouths of primitive fossil fish reveal surprising new details about how early animals fed. New research published today in a Royal Society paper sheds light on how teeth evolved.
Primitive fish did not have jaws or fins but were covered in rigid bony scales and resembled small armour-plated submarines. Dr Mark Purnell, a palaeontologist at the University of Leicester, has discovered that heterostracans, one of the most important groups of these early
Results for New Oxazolidinone Demonstrate Potency Against Gram-Positive Pathogens, including Superbugs
Unique compound AZD2563 shows promise for once-daily dosing
Chicago, IL World-wide data presented at the 41st Interscience Congress on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) show that AstraZeneca`s new oxazolidinone (AZD2563) is active against Gram-positive bacteria, including multi-drug resistant strains, and may have the added convenience of potential once-daily administra
A virus that causes a fatal brain disease in horses and sheep may be linked to certain mental disorders in man, medical experts heard today (Wednesday 09 January 2002) during a joint meeting of the European Societies of Clinical and Veterinary Virology and the Society for General Microbiology at the Royal College of Physicians, London.
“Recent investigations have again stimulated highly controversial discussions as to whether Borna disease virus can infect humans and lead to psychiatric diso
The discovery by French scientists that cotton plants produce a kind of ‘plant aspirin’ in response to bacterial infection could lead to new ways of fighting crop diseases.
Researchers led by the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) found that salicylic acid — which has a chemical structure very similar to that of aspirin — and jasmonate acid are both released by cotton plants in response to infection by the bacterium Xanthomonas .
The two plant hormones play
Philips and DIMES found the Philips Associated Centre (PACD) at DIMES
Towards highly integrated telecommunication function
Philips has chosen TU Delft`s Institute for Micro-electronics en Submicron-technology (DIMES) to host a large research programme. The goal of this Philips Associated Centre at Dimes (PACD) is research on the integration of complete telecommunication systems into silicon technology, leading to drastic miniaturisation and reduced production costs. The six year
In the 1990s, we dubbed the Internet the `information superhighway`. So why is it still so hard to find what we are looking for online? According to Prof. Wendy Hall of the University of Southampton, it is because the web is mostly linkless. What`s more, if we want the Web to be useful in our daily lives, web links will have to become much more personal.
Prof. Hall is head of Southampton`s Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia (IAM) Research Group. She says that hand-crafted websites generally c
Scientists have recognized for some time that people suffering from depression often experience a substantial reduction in symptoms when given a placebo. In fact, this observation has led some researchers to propose that up to 75 percent of the apparent efficacy of antidepressant medicine may actually be attributable to the placebo effect. Determining the cause of a patient’s improvement under such circumstances is no easy task. But the results of a new study may shed light on the matter. According
In yet another small step toward building nanoscale devices, scientists have determined that nanotube peapods — minute straws of carbon filled with spherical carbon molecules known as buckyballs — have tunable electronic properties. Published online by the journal Science,the findings suggest that stuffing the straws provides greater control over the electronic states of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT).
Using a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope, Ali Yazdani of the Univers
Harmful bugs may lurk within leaves.
Healthy salad greens could be contaminated with bacteria that cause food poisoning, despite thorough rinsing. New research shows that harmful bugs can enter lettuce plants through its roots and end up in the edible leaves 1 .
Although uncommon, food poisoning caused by eating plants can occur. Vegetables that are fertilized with animal manure, which can contain pathogens, pose the biggest threat. Raw salad vegetables are n
Enzymatic films for bioactive surfaces
We encounter them every day in laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, or shower gel: surfactants – surface-active substances. Surfactants belong to a category of molecules called amphiphiles, molecular hermaphrodites consisting of a water-loving (hydrophilic) “head” and a water-hating (hydrophobic) “tail”. Most surfacants are small amphiphilic molecules. However, an international research team working with Roeland J. M. Nolte, University of Nijme
A spectacular phenomenon
This theme issue of Philosophical Transactions A (a Royal Society journal) deals with the phenomenon of ball lightning, a rarely seen and slow-moving luminous phenomenon usually associated with thunderstorms. A collection of previously unpublished sightings is presented, including close-up encounters describing the detailed internal structure of the balls. Many of these observations are from scientifically or technically trained people, probably doubling the n
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