Action-packed science-fiction movies often feature colourful laser bolts. But what would a real laser missile look like during flight, if we could only make it out? How would it illuminate its surroundings? The answers lie in a film made at the Laser Centre of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw. Tests of a new compact high-power laser have given researchers at the Laser Centre of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Faculty ...

"We're using less expensive raw materials in smaller amounts, we have fewer production steps, and have potentially lower total energy consumption," PhD candidate Fredrik Martinsen and Professor Ursula Gibson of the Department of Physics at NTNU explain. They recently published their technique in Scientific Reports. Their processing technique allows them to make solar cells from silicon that is 1000 times less pure, and thus less expensive, than the current industry standard. Glass fibers with a silicon core The researchers' solar cells are composed of silicon fibers ...

Bright colours appear on a fruit fly's transparent wings against a dark background as a result of light refraction. Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have now demonstrated that females choose a mate based on the males' hidden wing colours. "Our experiment shows that this newly-discovered trait is important in female choice in fruit flies, and is the first evidence that wing interference patterns have a biological signalling function between the sexes during sexual selection", said Jessica Abbott, a biologist at Lund University. The extremely thin wings of the ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Doctors at Duke University Hospital have developed a new collaborative model in cancer care that reduced the rates at which patients were sent to intensive care or readmitted to the hospital after discharge. The Duke researchers shared their findings today at the Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. In the new treatment model, medical oncologists and palliative care physicians partnered in a "co-rounding" format to deliver cancer care for patients admitted to Duke University Hospital's solid tumor ...

Predicting which people will commit murder is extremely difficult, according to a new study by criminologists at The University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Alex Piquero, Ashbel Smith Professor of criminology and co-author of the paper, said he and his fellow researchers were motivated by the lack of scientific literature on distinguishing people who will commit homicide from those who will not. According to the study, the similarities outweigh the differences between the two groups. "Based on a whole slew of characteristics that we know predict and differentiate criminal ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – For the first time, a team of interdisciplinary researchers have made recordings of neurons associated with visual perception inside the poppy seed-sized brain of a jumping spider (Phidippus audax). Video: http://www.cornell.edu/video/vision-in-jumping-spiders/s252/e552 Though neurobiologists have tried for half a century to better understand the brains of jumping spiders, no one has succeeded. The liquid in spiders' bodies is pressurized, as they move with hydraulic pressure and muscles, so they don't tolerate previous research techniques. As ...

Patients diagnosed with high blood pressure are given better control of their condition from a physician-pharmacist collaborative intervention than physician management alone, according to new research. Pharmacists can play a key role in communicating with physicians to address suboptimal therapy, helping physicians to provide counselling on lifestyle change and performing patient follow-up. The research was carried out to evaluate the individual care processes of the physician-pharmacist collaborative intervention in treating hypertension, a major cause of heart disease, ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC – UNC School of Medicine researchers have pinpointed a set of intriguing characteristics in a previously unknown subpopulation of melanoma cancer cells in blood vessels of tumors. These cells, which mimic non-cancerous endothelial cells that normally populate blood vessels in tumors, could provide researchers with another target for cancer therapies. The research, published today in the journal Nature Communications, provides evidence for how these particular melanoma cells help tumors resist drugs designed to block blood vessel formation. "For ...

Those who self-harm as teenagers are more at risk of developing mental health and substance misuse problems as adults, new research from the biggest study of its kind in the UK has revealed. Researchers at the University of Bristol, working together with colleagues from the University of Oxford and University College London, collected data from 4,799 adolescents as part of Children of the 90s - one of the world's largest population studies - to examine the outcomes of self-harm for the first time. The research paper, funded by the Medical Research Council and published ...

When a toddler takes their first steps we observe an uncertain sway in their walking. Being unsteady on our feet is something we can experience throughout life – and a new study has shown how even the lightest fingertip touch can help people to maintain their balance. The research, led by the University of Birmingham, explains how neural and mechanical mechanisms synchronize our sway with another person. Dr Raymond Reynolds explained, "There's something very human, very instinctive, that makes us reach out and grab something or someone when we're unsure of our ...

The search for blood-borne biomarkers that could be used to screen for colorectal cancer (CRC) has uncovered two promising candidates that may one day lead to the development of a simple blood test. Scientists have been piecing together the molecular events involved in the development of CRC and have identified abnormal DNA methylation patterns and the presence of microRNAs as major players in the carcinogenic process. Speaking to journalists today at the 22nd United European Gastroenterology Week (UEG Week 2014) in Vienna, Austria, Dr Antoni Castells from the Institute ...

Rates of type 1 diabetes—the autoimmune form of the condition that often begins in childhood and eventually results in lifelong dependency on insulin—are increasing in almost all nations worldwide. However, while it appears possible from research in other forms of diabetes that physical exercise could slow the progression of this disease, there have been no studies to date that explore this in patients with type 1 diabetes. In a paper published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) researchers argue that such trials ...

Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have identified a protein released by neurons while the brain is recovering from a stroke. The results are scheduled for publication Oct. 21 in Journal of Neuroscience. The protein, called urokinase-type plasminogen activator or uPA, has been approved by the FDA to dissolve blood clots in the lungs. It has been tested in clinical trials in some countries as a treatment for acute stroke. The Emory team's findings suggest that in stroke, uPA's benefits may extend beyond the time when doctors' principal goal is dissolving ...

After 116 days of being subjected to extremely frigid temperatures like that in space, the heart of the James Webb Space Telescope, the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) and its sensitive instruments, emerged unscathed from the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Teams of engineers and technicians have been on heart-monitoring duty around the clock since this complicated assembly was lowered into the chamber for its summer-long test. Engineer Mike Drury, the ISIM Lead Integration and Test Engineer, is one ...

College Park, Md. - The supply chain is ground zero for several recent cyber breaches. Hackers, for example, prey on vendors that have remote access to a larger company's global IT systems, software and networks. In the 2013 Target breach, the attacker infiltrated a vulnerable link: a refrigeration system supplier connected to the retailer's IT system. A counter-measure, via a user-ready online portal, has been developed by researchers in the Supply Chain Management Center at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. The portal is based on ...

Question: When does a Tropical Cyclone drop snowfall? Answer: When it makes landfall in India and the moisture moves over the Himalayas as Cyclone Hudhud has done. When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Himalayan Mountains, the MODIS instrument captured this image of snow on the ground on Oct. 16 at 0705 UTC (3:50 a.m. EDT). Cyclone Hudhud made landfall in eastern India and moved over the Himalayas dropping snowfall in Nepal and southwestern China. INFORMATION: Rob Gutro NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center ...

Substance abuse is the fastest growing health concern for older adults. New findings show that drinking levels are high enough to be concerning and tend to spike around the times older adults receive their social security checks. These results may have prevention implications for social workers working with low-income seniors. Substance abuse is the fastest growing health concern for older adults, a segment of the population that is likewise rapidly increasing. Heavy drinking among older persons is associated with an increased risk of health problems like diabetes, ...

Most women reduce or stop drinking alcohol upon discovery of pregnancy. A new study looks at changes in alcohol use, and factors contributing to these changes, among women with unwanted pregnancies. Findings indicate that most women with unwanted pregnancies quit or reduce alcohol consumption once they discover their pregnancies, and that some may be substituting alcohol for drugs once they discover their pregnancies. Most women reduce or stop drinking alcohol upon discovery of pregnancy. However, little information exists about changes in alcohol use, and factors ...

Mexico is a nearby destination where younger U.S. residents can legally drink heavily. However, high levels of drinking on the U.S. side are not always linked to recent travel to Mexico. New findings show that higher levels of drinking among U.S.-Mexico border youth are closely linked to their patterns of bar attendance, but not to how they think about drinking. Due to a legal drinking age of 18 years, cheaper alcohol, and marketing tactics of local bars that specifically target youth, Mexico is an attractive and geographically nearby destination where younger U.S. ...

Researchers know that alcohol-dependent individuals (ALC) sustain neurocognitive impairment even after detoxification. A new study examines specific domains of cognitive recovery in conjunction with smoking status. Findings show that smoking status influenced the rate and level of neurocognitive recovery during eight months of abstinence in the ALC group. Numerous studies have shown that individuals with an alcohol use disorder perform worse than those without one on multiple neurocognitive domains of function following detoxification from alcohol, although the level ...

Boston, MA — Switching from nonprofit to for-profit status appears to boost hospitals' financial health but does not appear to lower the quality of care they provide or reduce the proportion of poor or minority patients receiving care, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Brigham and Women's Hospital. "Critics of for-profit hospitals have argued that they are worse at providing good care to patients and that therefore we should limit them," said Ashish Jha, professor of health policy and management at HSPH and senior author of ...

Medical practices in less competitive health-care markets charge more for services, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study, based on U.S. health-care data from 2010, provides important new information about the effects of competition on prices for office visits paid by preferred provider organizations, known more commonly as PPOs. PPOs are the most common type of health insurance plan held by privately insured people in the United States. The study will be ...

Searching a health service pricing website before using the service was associated with lower payments for clinical services such as advanced imaging and laboratory tests, according to a study in the October 22/29 issue of JAMA. Recent changes in the health care insurance market have resulted in commercially insured patients bearing a greater proportion of their health care costs. As patients have an increasing responsibility to pay for their care, they will likely demand access to prices charged for that care. Several state-administered initiatives have increased price ...

Hospital conversion from nonprofit to for-profit status in the 2000s was associated with better subsequent financial health but had no relationship to the quality of care delivered, mortality rates, or the proportion of poor or minority patients receiving care, according to a study in the October 22/29 issue of JAMA. During the past decade, there has been increasing attention to the growing number of nonprofit or public hospitals that have become for-profit. These conversions are controversial. Advocates argue that for-profit organizations bring needed resources and experienced ...

An examination of the relationship between physician competition and prices paid by private preferred provider organizations (PPOs) for common office visits finds that more competition is associated with lower prices paid to physicians in 10 large specialties, according to a study in the October 22/29 issue of JAMA. Physicians are increasingly moving away from solo and smaller practices toward larger organizations. These changes may be beneficial if larger practices with more resources are better able to coordinate care, adopt process improvements, increase use of information ...