VIDEO: After the diffuser, the information content of the object is scrambled so that the light distribution at the pixelated sensor looks like the familiar speckle noise. Click here for more information. Optical imaging methods are rapidly becoming essential tools in biomedical science because they're noninvasive, fast, cost-efficient and pose no health risks since they don't use ionizing radiation. These methods could become even more valuable if researchers could find a way ...

Deliberate practice may not have nearly as much influence in building expertise as we thought, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Scientists have been studying and debating whether experts are "born" or "made" since the mid-1800s. In recent years, deliberate practice has received considerable attention in these debates, while innate ability has been pushed to the side, due in part to the famous "10,000-hour rule" coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers. The new study, from psychological ...

BOSTON – July 1, 2014 – Building upon their earlier research on the biology of fat metabolism, Joslin scientists discovered that microRNAs –small RNA molecules that play important roles in regulation in many types of tissue – play a major role in the distribution and determination of fat cells and whole body metabolism. Also, the study is the first to reveal that microRNAs (miRNAs) influence the development of lipodystrophy (abnormal fat accumulation) which affects many people with HIV receiving anti-retroviral therapy. The findings appear in the August issue of the Journal ...

HOUSTON, July 1, 2014 – There are a handful of naturally occurring materials, known as piezoelectric materials, that generate electricity if you bend, stretch or apply another mechanical force to them, and vice versa – if you apply a voltage across them, they'll deform accordingly. These materials are currently the subject of intense research for their potential applications in energy harvesting, artificial muscles and sensors, among others. These materials are also used in everyday devices, such as loudspeakers, which rely on piezoelectrics to convert electrical signals ...

Braille is a tactile writing system, which is commonly used by the visually impaired and partially sighted. With the recent development of braille printers, written materials in braille has greatly helped the visually impaired and partially sighted individuals but, this is not to say that there are still many remaining problems such as books that are immobile due to their size and volume as well as durability. Moreover, there are other problems such as not enough books, materials, works, and data for such individuals. New technology has been developed to make tactile ...

This news release is available in Spanish. This research studies the presence and visibility of the gay world in Spanish cinema between 1940 and 1975. The report, published in the journal Zer by Alejandro Melero, professor in the UC3M Department of Journalism and Audiovisual Communication, shows that there were genres that homosexuality appeared in more frequently. One such genre is comedy, in which it was very usual to portray gays as funny characters. Beyond our borders—and in sharp contrast to Spanish cinema—directors like Alfred Hitchcock were forerunners in ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University has developed a wireless network on a computer chip that could reduce energy consumption at huge data farms by as much as 20 percent. Researchers led by Partha Pande, a computer engineering professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, have filed two patents on their wireless multicore chip design, which could also speed up data processing. The team, which includes associate professors Deukhyoun Heo and Benjamin Belzer, has a paper on their work in the May issue of ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies ...

Alcohol sponsorship and hazardous drinking in UK athletes are linked, a new study has found. The research, led by Monash University and the University of Manchester, is the first to examine alcohol sponsorship of athletes in the UK, and comes at a time when there are calls in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, and South Africa for greater restriction or bans on alcohol sponsorship and advertising in sport. The research was published today in the scientific journal Addiction. The researchers surveyed more than 2000 sportspeople from universities in the North West, ...

The stigma of buying in a flood-prone suburb after the 2011 Brisbane floods was short-lived for middle and high-value homes with property prices rebounding within 12-months, a QUT study has found. Property economics expert Professor Chris Eves, from QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty, studied the short-term impact of the 2011 flood on the Brisbane residential housing market and found flood fear had a minimal on-going effect on property prices, with low-value suburbs being the exception. "What we found was that because people in the higher-value suburbs (St Lucia, ...

Graphene is gaining heated attention, dubbed a "wonder material" with great conductivity, flexibility and durability. However, graphene is hard to come by due to the fact that its manufacturing process is complicated and mass production not possible. Recently, a domestic research team developed a carbon material without artificial defects commonly found during the production process of graphene while maintaining its original characteristics. The newly developed material can be used as a substitute for graphene in solar cells and semiconductor chips. Further, the developed ...

Consumption was one of the worst known diseases of the 18th century. Thanks to medical advances, the number of deaths from this lung disease – which is today known as tuberculosis – has declined significantly. Efforts to eradicate the disease in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in a wide range of new drugs entering the market. And yet 1.4 million people still continue to die each year from tuberculosis. Multidrug-resistant strains of the disease-causing pathogen are especially dangerous because they can no longer be treated with today's drugs (see box). "In the past 50 years, ...

Foodborne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni, which results in more than 300,000 cases of food poisoning each year in England and Wales, had previously not been considered to cause disease in chickens and the bacteria were thought to be part of the normal microbe environment of the birds. Reader in Foodborne Zoonoses, Dr Paul Wigley, explains: "Our findings change the way we view the biology of this bacterial infection. It can cause problems in the gut, as it does in humans, but when the chickens walk through the wet excrement left in their bedding it can damage their feet ...

Fine-scale climate model projections suggest the possibility that population centers in cool, highland regions of East Africa could be more vulnerable to malaria than previously thought, while population centers in hot, lowland areas could be less vulnerable, according to a team of researchers. The team applied a statistical technique to conventional, coarse-scale climate models to better predict malaria dynamics at local levels. "People might have an interest in predictions for global malaria trends and even more so for regional patterns, but they probably care most ...

Although food allergies are common, sufferers often don't know exactly what in foods cause their allergic reactions. This knowledge could help develop customized therapies, like training the body's immune system to respond to certain proteins found in foods. However, determining which protein in a food causes an allergic response to a patient requires time-consuming tests that often ignore rare or unexpected allergens. Publishing in Analytical Chemistry, EPFL scientists have developed a highly-sensitive method that can quickly and accurately identify the culprit proteins ...

Previous research has established a link between lower socioeconomic status and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. In a new study led by Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), researchers have found that there are also higher rates of peripheral artery disease (PAD) in individuals with low income and lower attained education levels in the United States. These findings are published online ahead of print in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. "Our finding highlights the need to focus on education and advocacy efforts for these at-risk populations," ...

This news release is available in Spanish. In cosmology, cold dark matter is a form of matter the particles of which move slowly in comparison with light, and interact weakly with electromagnetic radiation. It is estimated that only a minute fraction of the matter in the Universe is baryonic matter, which forms stars, planets and living organisms. The rest, comprising over 80%, is dark matter and energy. The theory of cold dark matter helps to explain how the universe evolved from its initial state to the current distribution of galaxies and clusters, the structure ...

Children who undergo simple emergency surgeries, such as hernia repairs or appendix removals, on weekends are more likely to suffer complications and even die than children getting the same kind of treatment during the week, according to results of a Johns Hopkins Children's Center study. The Johns Hopkins team says that although the number of deaths was small, the marked difference in death and risk of other complications points to a worrisome "weekend effect" observed across hospitals nationwide that calls for an in-depth examination of possible after-hours safety lapses ...

WASHINGTON — Of adolescents visiting the emergency department for any reason, one in five girls and one in eight boys reported dating violence in the past year. According to a study published online Monday in Annals of Emergency Medicine, dating violence among adolescents was also strongly associated with alcohol, illicit drug use and depression ("Dating Violence Among Male and Female Youth Seeking Emergency Department Care") http://tinyurl.com/oakk4aq. "An enormous number of youth and adolescents have already experienced violence in their dating lives," said lead ...

This image was taken as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems programme [1] using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. It shows Gum 15, located in the constellation of Vela (The Sails), some 3000 light-years from Earth [2]. This glowing cloud is a striking example of an HII region [3]. Such clouds form some of the most spectacular astronomical objects we can see; for example the Eagle Nebula (which includes the feature nicknamed "The Pillars of Creation"), the great Orion Nebula , and this less famous example, Gum 15. Hydrogen ...

Irvine, Calif. — Fully automated "deep learning" by computers greatly improves the odds of discovering particles such as the Higgs boson, beating even veteran physicists' abilities, according to findings by UC Irvine researchers published today in the journal Nature Communications. "We are thrilled with the publication of our work," said co-author Pierre Baldi, Chancellor's Professor of computer science, "and even more so with the hope that deep learning may help solve fundamental open questions about the nature of matter, gravity and the origin of the universe." Baldi, ...

Theorists propose a way to make superconducting quantum devices such as Josephson junctions and qubits, atom-by-atom, inside a silicon crystal. Such systems could combine the most promising aspects of silicon spin qubits with the flexibility of superconducting circuits. The researcher's results have now been published in Nature Communications (1). High quality silicon is one of the historical foundations of modern computing. But it is also promising for quantum information technology. In particular, electron and nuclear spins in pure silicon crystals have been measured ...

Gland, Switzerland – With only about one-sixth of the original coral cover left, most Caribbean coral reefs may disappear in the next 20 years, primarily due to the loss of grazers in the region, according to the latest report by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report, Status and Trends of Caribbean Coral Reefs: 1970-2012, is the most detailed and comprehensive study of its kind published to date – the result of the work of 90 experts over ...

Systems that automatically read automobile license plates have the potential to save police investigative time and increase safety, but law enforcement officials must address issues related to staffing, compatibility and privacy before the technology can reach its full potential, according to a new RAND Corporation report. As part of efforts to promote innovation in law enforcement, many of the first generation license plate reader systems were purchased with federal and state grants. As these funding streams can be inconsistent, law enforcement agencies are – or will ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- If unwed parents are going to get married, the best window of opportunity for that union seems to be before their child turns 3, says a new study from Duke University. But patterns vary greatly by race, with more African-American mothers marrying much later than mothers of other races or ethnicities. Federal policies have often presumed that unmarried parents will be most receptive to marriage right after a baby's birth, a period that has been dubbed the "magic moment." The new study is the first to test that assumption, said author Christina Gibson-Davis. ...

How do ants manage to move so nimbly whilst coordinating three pairs of legs and a behind that weighs up to 60% of their body mass? German scientists have recently developed a device that may reveal the answer. Measuring the forces generated by single limbs is vital to understanding the energetics of animal locomotion. However, with very small animals such as insects, this becomes problematic. Dr Reinhardt (Friedrich-Schiller University) used an elastic polycarbonate material to produce a miniature force plate. Springs arranged at right angles to each other enabled forces ...