LIVERMORE, Calif. – The use of plasmonic black metals could someday provide a pathway to more efficient photovoltaics (PV) --- the use of solar panels containing photovoltaic solar cells --- to improve solar energy harvesting, according to researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The LLNL Materials Engineering Division (MED) research team has made breakthroughs experimenting with black metals. These nanostructured metals are designed to have low reflectivity and high absorption of visible and infrared light. The MED research team recently published ...

Long isolated by economic and political sanctions, Myanmar returns to the international community amid high expectations and challenges associated with protecting the country's great natural wealth from the impacts of economic growth and climate change. In a new study, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society have examined the implications of economic development and climatic changes on conserving Myanmar's biodiversity and provide recommendations for conservation planning within a context of a changing climate by strengthening the protected area system and ...

Troy, N.Y. – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers have identified the mechanism behind a plague of LED light bulbs: a flaw called "efficiency droop" that causes LEDs to lose up to 20 percent of their efficiency as they are subjected to greater electrical currents. Efficiency droop, first reported in 1999, has been a key obstacle in the development of LED lighting for situations, like household lighting, that call for economical sources of versatile and bright light. In a paper recently published in Applied Physics Letters, the researchers identify a phenomena ...

First produced only in the past decade, human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are capable of developing into many or even all human cell types. In new research, scientists reprogrammed skin cells from patients with rare blood disorders into iPSCs, highlighting the great promise of these cells in advancing understanding of those challenging diseases—and eventually in treating them. "The technology for generating these cells has been moving very quickly," said hematologist Mitchell J. Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., corresponding author of two recent studies led by The Children's ...

The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes a report demonstrating that unprocessed, raw cotton has an amazing ability to sop up oil while also being eco-friendly. Based on a report by Seshadri Ramkumar, Ph.D., in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from http://www.acs.org/globalchallenges. In light of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, Ramkumar notes that a particular need exists for oil-spill ...

Does life exist elsewhere or is our planet unique, making us truly alone in the universe? Much of the work carried out by NASA, together with other research institutions, is aimed at trying to come to grips with this question. A novel and potentially testable theory of how life arose on earth, first advanced more than 25 years ago by Michael Russell, a research scientist in Planetary Chemistry and Astrobiology at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was further developed in a recent paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (PTRSL-B)—the world's ...

About half of a small group of patients with fibromyalgia – a common syndrome that causes chronic pain and other symptoms – was found to have damage to nerve fibers in their skin and other evidence of a disease called small-fiber polyneuropathy (SFPN). Unlike fibromyalgia, which has had no known causes and few effective treatments, SFPN has a clear pathology and is known to be caused by specific medical conditions, some of which can be treated and sometimes cured. The study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers will appear in the journal Pain and has been ...

A technique for trapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide deep underground could at the same be used to release the last fraction of natural gas liquids from ailing reservoirs, thus offsetting some of the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels. So says a paper to be published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology. While so-called "fracking" as a method for extracting previously untapped fossil fuel reserves has been in the headlines recently, there are alternatives to obtaining the remaining quantities of hydrocarbons from gas/condensate ...

Santa's workshop at the North Pole is not under water, despite recent reports. A dramatic image captured by a University of Washington monitoring buoy reportedly shows a lake at the North Pole. But Santa doesn't yet need to buy a snorkel. "Every summer when the sun melts the surface the water has to go someplace, so it accumulates in these ponds," said Jamie Morison, a polar scientist at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and principal investigator since 2000 of the North Pole Environmental Observatory. "This doesn't look particularly extreme." After media coverage in ...

Writer: Emil Venere, (765) 494-4709, venere@purdue.edu Sources: Shirley Dyke, 765-494-7434, sdyke@purdue.edu Related Web sites: NEES: http://www.nees.org PHOTO CAPTION: Earthquake-engineering researches at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China work to set up a structure on a shake table for experiments to study the effects of earthquakes. Purdue University civil engineering students are working with counterparts at the institute to study the reliability of models for testing a type of powerful damping system that might be installed in buildings and bridges ...

It might be easier than previously thought for a planet to overheat into the scorchingly uninhabitable "runaway greenhouse" stage, according to new research by astronomers at the University of Washington and the University of Victoria published July 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience. In the runaway greenhouse stage, a planet absorbs more solar energy than it can give off to retain equilibrium. As a result, the world overheats, boiling its oceans and filling its atmosphere with steam, which leaves the planet glowing-hot and forever uninhabitable, as Venus is now. One ...

An international collaboration of researchers including Felicia Goodrum of the University of Arizona's immunobiology department has studied how a human herpes virus carried by the majority of the population packages its genetic information during infection. The discoveries improve the chances of developing more targeted therapies in place of existing drugs, which do not always work or come with side effects. Experts estimate that 60 to 90 percent of the world's population carry the human cytomegalovirus, or CMV, which is one of the eight herpes viruses that infect humans. In ...

Tropical Storm Flossie weakened as it interacted with the Hawaiian Islands and became a depression. NASA's TRMM satellite saw mostly light rain and one isolated area of heavy rainfall within the storm after it weakened. All watches and warnings were dropped for the Hawaiian Islands on July 30. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM, satellite flew over Flossie on July 30 at 07:17 UTC (3:17 a.m. EDT) and saw a small area of heavy rain west of the center of circulation. TRMM data showed that the rest of Flossie's rainfall was light to moderate. TRMM is managed ...

Former Tropical Storm Dorian has been hanging around the Caribbean Sea for a couple of days, and appears stretched out on satellite imagery. NOAA's GOES-13 satellite has been capturing images of the movement of Dorian since it was born. NASA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. created an image of the storm using GOES-13 satellite data on July 30 at 1415 UTC/10:15 a.m. EDT. Dorian's remnants appear elongated from north to south on the GOES-13 image. The showers and thunderstorms are disorganized and extend a few hundred miles east ...

A new technique for depositing silver onto clothing fibres could open up huge opportunities in wearable electronics. Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK's National Measurement Institute, have developed a way to print silver directly onto fibres. This new technique could make integrating electronics into all types of clothing simple and practical. This has many potential applications in sports, health, medicine, consumer electronics and fashion. Most current plans for wearable electronics require weaving conductive materials into fabrics, which ...

Tropical Depression 7E formed in the Eastern Pacific Ocean during the morning of July 30, and a NASA satellite was overhead to get an infrared baby picture. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the depression and saw strong, but fragmented thunderstorms around the center. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. AIRS creates infrared data that helps determine temperature, such as cloud top and sea surface temperatures. AIRS captured an infrared image of Tropical Depression 7E on July 30 at 08:08 UTC/4:07 a.m. EDT. AIRS infrared ...

The latest issue of the Journal of Integrated Pest Management -- an open-access, peer-reviewed, extension journal covering the field of integrated pest management (IPM) -- contains articles on using IPM to control corn earworms, beetles, and other insect pests, plus an article highlighting the accomplishments of the Research Program for Deployed Warfighter Protection against disease-carrying insects. In "Corn Earworms (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) as Pests of Soybean," the authors discuss the life history, ecology, plant damage, and management of Helicoverpa zea as it relates ...

Boston - As many as 20 percent of infertile couples in the United States have unexplained reasons for their infertility. Now, new research led by Catherine Racowsky, PhD, director of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), shows that exposure to BPA (Bisphenol-A) could be a contributing factor as to why some infertile couples are having difficulty conceiving. The study will be published online on July 31, 2013 in the journal Human Reproduction. "To our knowledge, this is the first study that has shown that BPA has a ...

Autism is marked by several core features — impairments in social functioning, difficulty communicating, and a restriction of interests. Though researchers have attempted to pinpoint factors that might account for all three of these characteristics, the underlying causes are still unclear. Now, a new study suggests that two key attentional abilities — moving attention fluidly and orienting to social information — can be checked off the list, as neither seems to account for the diversity of symptoms we find in people with autism. "This is not to say that every aspect ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (July 30, 2013)—Exercise has proven health benefits, but easing hot flashes isn't one of them. After participating in a 12-week aerobic exercise program, sedentary women with frequent hot flashes had no fewer or less bothersome hot flashes than a control group. This randomized, controlled study from the MsFLASH Research Network was published today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society. The 248 women in the trial were either approaching menopause or were postmenopausal; 142 of them continued to go about their usual activities, ...

Southerners are generally not as trusting as people who live in other parts of the country, but trusting people are more likely to cooperate in recycling, buying green products and conserving water, a new Baylor University study shows. "A lot of researchers have reported trust as kind of a cure-all for protecting the environment through cooperation. Southerners are just as willing, but less trusting," said lead author Kyle Irwin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. "The question our study raised was that if trust isn't a catalyst for ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – July 31, 2013 – Could harvesting stem cells for therapy one day be as simple as asking patients for a urine sample? Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine and colleagues have identified stem cells in urine that can be directed to become multiple cell types. "These cells can be obtained through a simple, non-invasive low-cost approach that avoids surgical procedures," said Yuanyuan Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of regenerative medicine and senior researcher on the project. Reporting online ...

Homeless young women may be at greater risk for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) than homeless young men because of the structure of their social groups and friendships, according to new research from UC San Francisco. The findings underscore how the social networks of homeless youth can be highly influential, affecting their participation in risky and protective behaviors. The study examined the relationship between STI rates and the characteristics of the social networks of 258 homeless young people ages 15 to 24 in San Francisco. The youth were surveyed ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that exposure to stress in the first few days of life increases stress responses, anxiety and the consumption of palatable "comfort" foods in adulthood. "Comfort foods" have been defined as the foods eaten in response to emotional stress, and are suggested to contribute to the obesity epidemic. Hormonal responses to chronic stress in adulthood seem ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, found that aging elicits changes in taste preferences and that such changes appear to be independent of taste nerve activity. In humans and animals aging decreases dietary and energy requirements and it is generally believed that reduced consumption is related to alterations in taste preference. However, the mechanisms underlying an age-induced shift in taste ...