DURHAM, N.C. -- While natural gas can reduce greenhouse emissions when it is substituted for higher-emission energy sources, abundant shale gas is not likely to substantially alter total emissions without policies targeted at greenhouse gas reduction, a pair of Duke researchers find. If natural gas is abundant and less expensive, it will encourage greater natural gas consumption and less of fuels such as coal, renewables and nuclear power. The net effect on the climate will depend on whether the greenhouse emissions from natural gas -- including carbon dioxide and methane ...

In the wake of recent off-shore oil spills, and with the growing popularity of "fracking" — in which water is used to release oil and gas from shale — there's a need for easy, quick ways to separate oil and water. Now, scientists have developed coatings that can do just that. Their report on the materials, which also could stop surfaces from getting foggy and dirty, appears in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. J.P.S. Badyal and colleagues point out that oil-spill cleanup crews often use absorbents, like clays, straw and wool to sop up oil, but these materials aren't ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have taken a step toward practical applications for "hyperbolic metamaterials," ultra-thin crystalline films that could bring optical advances including powerful microscopes, quantum computers and high-performance solar cells. New developments are reminiscent of advances that ushered in silicon chip technology, said Alexandra Boltasseva, a Purdue University associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Optical metamaterials harness clouds of electrons called surface plasmons to manipulate and control light. However, some ...

Five years ago, a report on the state of forensic science by the National Academy of Sciences decried the lack of sound science in the analysis of evidence in criminal cases across the country. It spurred a flurry of outrage and promises, but no immediate action. Now, renewed efforts are underway, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society. C&EN editors Andrea Widener and Carmen Drahl note that the 2009 report served as a critical wake-up call to the public, defense attorneys and policymakers. Even ...

WASHINGTON, May 13, 2014 — A new prototype electric car battery could take you a lot farther and last a lot longer. Jeff Pyun, Ph.D., and his team at the University of Arizona are using modified sulfur, a common industrial waste product, to boost the charge capacity and extend the life of these batteries. Their work could also drastically reduce the price of electric car batteries, some of which currently cost more than $10,000 to replace. In the American Chemical Society's (ACS') newest Breakthrough Science video, Pyun and graduate student Jared Griebel explain the technology ...

Washington, DC— Calling for the integration of ethics across the life of neuroscientific research endeavors, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (Bioethics Commission) released volume one of its two-part response to President Obama's request related to the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. The report, Gray Matters: Integrative Approaches for Neuroscience, Ethics, and Society, includes four recommendations for institutions and individuals engaged in neuroscience research including government agencies ...

(NEW YORK – May 14) –– A research team from the Friedman Brain Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published evidence showing that subtle changes of inhibitory signaling in the reward pathway can change how animals respond to drugs such as cocaine. This is the first study to demonstrate the critical links between the levels of the trafficking protein, the potassium channels' effect on neuronal activity and a mouse's response to cocaine. Results from the study are published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuron earlier this month. The authors investigated ...

ATLANTA, GA (May 14, 2014) -- The International Society for Autism Research (INSAR), a scientific and professional organization devoted to advancing knowledge about autism spectrum disorders, convened more than 1700 researchers, delegates, autism specialists and students from 40 countries for the 13th Annual International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR), the world's largest scientific gathering on autism research, from May 15 through May 17 at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, GA. Researchers and clinicians exchanged and disseminated the latest scientific ...

VIDEO: The drift trajectories of virtual hatchling turtles from the breeding beaches to their juvenile development areas using the NEMO ocean model. Click here for more information. New research has found that adult sea-turtle migrations and their selection of feeding sites are directly influenced by their past experiences as little hatchlings adrift in ocean currents. When they breed, adult sea turtles return to the beach where they were born. After breeding, adult sea turtles ...

An international study led by the University of Southampton and the National Vector-borne Diseases Control Programme (NVDCP) in Namibia has used mobile phone data to help combat malaria more effectively. The study used anonymised mobile records to measure population movements within Namibia in Africa over the period of a year (2010-11). By combining this data with information about diagnosed cases of malaria, topography and climate, the researchers have been able to identify geographical 'hotspots' of the disease and design targeted plans for its elimination. Geographer ...

Leading-edge imaging and medical diagnostics, but also magnetic levitation trains: these are examples of technology relying on "superconductors". Superconductors are materials in which electrons flow without dissipation and which have very special properties such as expelling all magnetic fields. The physics underlying the phenomenon has only been explained for low-temperature superconductors, those exhibiting their properties at temperatures close to absolute zero. The so-called high-temperature superconductors remain one of the major mysteries of the physics of matter, ...

A National Institutes of Health-sponsored study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed that lorazepam - a widely used but not yet Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug for children - is no more effective than an approved benzodiazepine, diazepam, for treating pediatric status epilepticus. Status epilepticus is a state in which the brain is in a persistent state of seizure. By the age of 15, 4 to 8 percent of children experience a seizure episode, which can be life threatening if they aren't stopped immediately. Status epilepticus ...

As news reports of lithium-ion battery (LIB) fires in Boeing Dreamliner planes and Tesla electric cars remind us, these batteries — which are in everyday portable devices, like tablets and smartphones — have their downsides. Now, scientists have designed a safer kind of lithium battery component that is far less likely to catch fire and still promises effective performance. They report their approach in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Lynden Archer, Geoffrey Coates and colleagues at Cornell University explain that the danger of LIBs originates with their ...

Women's sexual satisfaction in long-term heterosexual relationships may be influenced by changes in hormonal contraceptive use, research from the University of Stirling shows. The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, was carried out by researchers from the universities of Stirling, Glasgow, Newcastle, Northumbria and Charles University in Prague. The team looked at a sample of 365 couples, and investigated how satisfaction levels – in both sexual and non-sexual aspects of long-term relationships – were influenced ...

These days, more and more people seem to have food allergies, which can sometimes have life-threatening consequences. In ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists report the development of a new type of flour that someday could be used in food-based therapies to help people better tolerate their allergy triggers, including peanuts. Mary Ann Lila and colleagues note that of the 170 foods that cause allergic reactions, peanuts can be the most dangerous. These reactions can range from mild itching and hives to life-threatening anaphylactic shock, in which ...

The recently extinct Caribbean monk seal (Monachus tropicalis) was one of three species of monk seal in the world. Its relationship to the Mediterranean and Hawaiian monk seals, both living but endangered, has never been fully understood. Through DNA analysis and skull comparisons, however, Smithsonian scientists and colleagues have now clarified the Caribbean species' place on the seal family tree and created a completely new genus. The team's findings are published in the scientific journal ZooKeys. First reported by Columbus in 1494, the Caribbean monk seal ranged ...

The modern New Zealand sea lion is a relative newcomer to our mainland, replacing a now-extinct, unique prehistoric New Zealand sea-lion that once lived here, according to a new study. A team of biologists from New Zealand's University of Otago estimates that this prehistoric mainland sea-lion population became extinct as recently as 600 years ago, and was then replaced by a lineage previously limited to the waters of the cold subantarctic. The Marsden-funded study, carried out by Otago Zoology PhD student Catherine Collins, and led by Professor Jon Waters, set out ...

The final step in the production of a biotech medicine is finishing with the correct sugar structure. This step is essential for the efficacy of the medicine, but it also makes the production process very complex and expensive. Leander Meuris, Francis Santens and Nico Callewaert (VIB/UGent) have developed a technology that shortens the sugar structures whilst retaining the therapeutic efficiency. This technology has the potential to make the production of biotech medicines significantly simpler and cheaper. Sugar structures are essential for the mechanism of biotech ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- A new study indicates young adults have a healthy mistrust of the information they read on Twitter. Nearly anyone can start a Twitter account and post 140 characters of information at a time, bogus or not, a fact the study's participants seemed to grasp, said Kimberly Fenn, assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University. "Our findings suggest young people are somewhat wary of information that comes from Twitter," said Fenn, lead investigator on the study. "It's a good sign." The study, funded by the National Science Foundation, ...

Athens, 14 May 2014. The Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) is calling for global policy change relating to heart failure. An international white paper, Heart failure: preventing disease and death worldwide, will be presented at an endorsement event on 16 May 2014 in Athens, Greece, immediately before the Heart Failure 2014 Congress. Approximately 15 million people are living with heart failure in Europe,1 and 26 million worldwide.2 The outlook is poor: survival rates are worse than those for bowel, breast or prostate cancer, and ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The 1918 Flu Pandemic infected over 500 million people, killing at least 50 million. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has analyzed the pandemic in two remote regions of North America, finding that despite their geographical divide, both regions had environmental, nutritional and economic factors that influenced morbidity during the pandemic. Findings from the research could help improve current health policies. "Epidemics such as the Black Death in the 14th century, cholera in the 19th century and malaria have been documented and recorded ...

COLLEGE STATION – Sometimes we think we know everything about something only to find out we really don't, said a Texas A&M University scientist. Dr. Kevin Conway, assistant professor and curator of fishes with Texas A&M's department of wildlife and fisheries sciences at College Station, has published a paper documenting a new species of clingfish and a startling new discovery in a second well-documented clingfish. Smithsonian Institution The paper, entitled "Cryptic Diversity and Venom Glands in Western Atlantic Clingfishes of the Genus Acyrtus (Teleostei: Gobiesocidae)," ...

ORANGE, Calif. – Chapman University affiliated quantum physicist Yutaka Shikano, Ph.D., has published a milestone paper in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. The title of the article is "Aharonov-Bohm effect with quantum tunneling in linear Paul trap." The Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect was proposed by Yakir Aharonov, who is the co-director of the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman University, and David J. Bohm in 1959. The AB effect showed for the first time that a magnetic field inside a confined region can have a measureable impact on a charged particle ...

This news release is available in French. Going back to the drawing board to find a way to overcome the technical limitations of their laser, a team led by François Légaré, professor at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre, developed a new concept offering a simpler laser design, control over new parameters, and excellent performance potential. Called "frequency domain optical parametric amplification" (FOPA), the concept supersedes traditional time domain amplification schemes that have been the linchpin of ultrafast laser science for 20 years. ...

When a massive star collapses under its own gravity during a supernova explosion it forms either a neutron star or black hole. Magnetars are an unusual and very exotic form of neutron star. Like all of these strange objects they are tiny and extraordinarily dense — a teaspoon of neutron star material would have a mass of about a billion tonnes — but they also have extremely powerful magnetic fields. Magnetar surfaces release vast quantities of gamma rays when they undergo a sudden adjustment known as a starquake as a result of the huge stresses in their crusts. The Westerlund ...