Increases in population size may lead to a breakdown in social trust, according to Jordan Smith from North Carolina State University in the US. As local populations grow, local elected officials and national news media become less trusted, compared with friends and family, local churches and civic institutions. This 'trust deficit' has implications for long-term environmental and community planning. Smith's study is published online in Springer's journal Human Ecology. Smith studied three southern Appalachian mining communities during a period of change, amid growing ...

Physicists have, for the first time, now built a theoretical construct of beams made of twisted atoms. These findings by Armen Hayrapetyan and colleagues at Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg in Germany are about to be published in EPJ D. These so-called atomic Bessel beams can, in principle, have potential applications in quantum communication as well as in atomic and nuclear processes. The concept for twisted atom beams stems from a similar approach with twisted photon beams, which are currently used as optical tweezers, for instance. It was later extended to twisted ...

Scientists have developed a new understanding of how turbulence works, which could help to optimise vehicle performance and save billions in global energy costs. Dr Ati Sharma, a senior lecturer in aerodynamics and flight mechanics at the University of Southampton, has been working in collaboration with Beverley McKeon, professor of aeronautics and associate director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to build models of turbulent flow. Recently, they developed a new and improved way of predicting the composition ...

Quasars are active black holes -- primarily from the early universe. Using a special method where you observe light that has been bent by gravity on its way through the universe, a group of physics students from the Niels Bohr Institute have observed a quasar whose light has been deflected and reflected in six separate images. This is the first time a quasar has been observed with so many light reflections. The results are published in the scientific journal, Astrophysical Journal. INFORMATION: Article in Astrophysical Journal: http://stacks.iop.org/0004-637X/773/146 For ...

To understand how solar cells heal themselves, look no further than the nearest tree leaf or the back of your hand. The "branching" vascular channels that circulate life-sustaining nutrients throughout leaves and hands serve as the inspiration for solar cells that can restore themselves efficiently and inexpensively. In a new paper, North Carolina State University researchers Orlin Velev and Hyung-Jun Koo show that creating solar cell devices with channels that mimic organic vascular systems can effectively reinvigorate solar cells whose performance ...

One of the rare scientific reports on the rarest form of lightning -- ball lightning -- describes better ways of producing this mysterious phenomenon under the modern laboratory conditions needed to explain it. The new study on a phenomenon that puzzled and perplexed the likes of Aristotle 2,300 years ago and Nikola Tesla a century ago appears in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry A. C. Michael Lindsay and colleagues explain that ball lightning consists of a floating, glowing ball that may drift eerily through the sky and then explode violently, sometimes injuring ...

A new process can convert a wide variety of vegetable and animal fats and oils -- ranging from lard to waste cooking oil -- into a key ingredient for making plastics that currently comes from petroleum, scientists say. Their report on the first-of-its-kind process appears in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. Douglas Neckers and Maria Muro-Small explain that many of the plastics found in hundreds of everyday products begin with a group of chemical raw materials termed olefins that come from petroleum. They include ethylene, propylene and butadiene, ...

Researchers at the University of Southampton, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Cambridge, have developed a technique to help treat fatal diseases more effectively. Dr Sumeet Mahajan and his group at the Institute for Life Sciences at Southampton are using gold nanoprobes to identify different types of cells, so that they can use the right ones in stem cell therapies. Stem cell therapy is in its infancy, but has the potential to change the way we treat cancer and other life-threatening diseases, by replacing damaged or diseased cells with healthy ones. ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7—The applications of gene therapy and genetic engineering are broad: everything from pet fish that glow red to increased crop yields worldwide to cures for many of the diseases that plague humankind. But realizing them always starts with solving the same basic scientific question—how to "transfect" a cell by inserting foreign DNA into it. Many methods already exist for doing this, but they tend to be clumsy and destructive, not allowing researchers to precisely control how and when they insert the DNA or requiring them to burn through large numbers of ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have discovered a novel mechanism responsible for the loss of a critical tumor-suppressor gene in rhabdomyosarcoma and other soft-tissue sarcomas, rare cancers that strike mainly children and often respond poorly to treatment. Their cause is largely unknown. Knowledge of the mechanism could guide the development of more effective therapies for these malignancies, say researchers who led the study at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). The ...

The Institute of Food Research (IFR) has been undertaking research for the Food Standards Agency to establish if the cooking technique sous vide is safe. Sous vide uses lower temperatures to improve food quality and could be a step closer to being more widely adopted after Institute of Food Research scientists assessed the steps needed to ensure the process is safe. Sous vide cooking involves vacuum packing food in a plastic pouch and then heating in a water bath. Chefs are attracted to the precise nature of the temperature control, allowing innovative use of the technology ...

The nation's 28 National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERR) are experiencing the negative effects of human and climate-related stressors according to a new NOAA research report from the National Ocean Service. The national study, Climate Sensitivity of the National Estuarine Research Reserve System, points to three East Coast reserves, Sapelo Island NERR in Georgia, ACE Basin NERR in South Carolina and Waquoit Bay NERR in Massachusetts, and the Tijuana River NERR on the California-Mexico border, as the most sensitive to climate change. "The National Estuarine Research ...

There may be more kinds of stuff than we thought. A team of researchers has reported possible evidence for a new category of solids, things that are neither pure glasses, crystals, nor even exotic quasicrystals. Something else.* "Very weird. Strangest material I ever saw," says materials physicist Lyle Levine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The research team from NIST, Argonne National Laboratory, France's Centre d'Élaboration de Matériaux et d'Études Structurales (CNRS) and the University of Washington have analyzed a solid alloy that ...

WASHINGTON D.C. August 7, 2013 -- Critical to the recovery efforts following the devastating effects of the 2011 tsunami on Japan's Fukushima reactor is the ability to assess damage within the reactor's core. A study in the journal AIP Advances by a team of scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) shows that muon imaging may offer the best hope of assessing damage to the reactor cores and locating the melted fuel. Muon imaging, which utilizes naturally occurring muons created in the atmosphere by cosmic rays to image dense objects, should solve the problem ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A person's math ability can range from simple arithmetic to calculus and abstract set theory. But there's one math skill we all share: a primitive ability to estimate and compare quantities without counting, like when choosing a checkout line at the grocery store. Previous studies have suggested there's a connection between how well a person does at the approximate number system and how skilled they become at the symbolic math they learn in school. Duke University researchers wanted to know if this ability could be enhanced by giving people more ...

WASHINGTON — Cases involving children ingesting magnets quintupled between 2002 and 2011, with ingestion of multiple magnets generally resulting in more serious outcomes, including emergency surgery. The results of a study documenting a rapid rise in pediatric injuries was published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Rise in Pediatric Magnet-Related Foreign Bodies Requiring Emergency Care"). "It is common for children to put things in their mouth and nose, but the risk of intestinal damage increases dramatically when multiple magnets are swallowed," ...

A plastic material already used in absorbable surgical sutures and other medical devices shows promise for continuous administration of antibiotics to patients with brain infections, scientists are reporting in a new study. Use of the material, placed directly on the brain's surface, could reduce the need for weeks of costly hospital stays now required for such treatment, they say in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience. Shih-Jung Liu and colleagues explain that infections are life-threatening complications that occur in about 5-10 percent of patients who have brain ...

An international team of researchers has described a new physical effect that could be used to develop more efficient magnetic chips for information processing. The quantum mechanical effect makes it easier to produce spin-polarized currents necessary for the switching of magnetically stored information. The research findings were published online on 28 July in the high-impact journal Nature Nanotechnology (DOI:10.1038/NNANO.2013.145). Random-access memory is the short-term memory in computers. It buffers the programs and files currently in use in electronic form, in ...

Tiny sensors and motors are everywhere, telling your smartphone screen to rotate and your camera to focus. Now, a team of researchers at Tel Aviv University has found a way to print biocompatible components for these micro-machines, making them ideal for use in medical devices, like bionic arms. Microelectromechanical systems, better known as MEMS, are usually produced from silicon. The innovation of the TAU researchers — engineering doctoral candidates Leeya Engel and Jenny Shklovsky under the supervision of Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand of the School of Electrical Engineering ...

Moderate exercise could be good for keeping your tendons healthy according to new research from the University of East Anglia funded by Arthritis Research UK. The onset of tendon disease has previously been associated with exercise. However new research published today in the journal Molecular Cell Research shows that doing moderate exercise could help guard against and treat the painful and often debilitating condition. The research team showed that moving around decreases a group of enzymes (metalloproteinases) that degrade tendon tissue and increase tendon protein. Tendon ...

After years of wariness, universities and industry scientists are forging new partnerships that are reinvigorating academic science departments, preparing students for careers and giving corporations better access to fundamental research. That 21st century alliance is the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Rick Mullin, C&EN senior editor, points out that collaborations established during the last several years defy earlier ...

A new cost-effective polymer membrane can decrease the cost of alkaline batteries and fuel cells by allowing the replacement of expensive platinum catalysts without sacrificing important aspects of performance, according to Penn State researchers. "We have tried to break this paradigm of tradeoffs in materials (by improving) both the stability and the conductivity of this membrane at the same time, and that is what we were able to do with this unique polymeric materials design," said Michael Hickner, associate professor of materials science and engineering. In solid-state ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research suggests that treadmill training soon after a spinal cord injury can have long-lasting positive effects on recovery – as long as the training is accompanied by efforts to control inflammation in the lower spinal cord. The study, in animals, also is among the first to show that spinal cord injuries can create impairments in parts of the cord located many spine segments away from the trauma site. Researchers observed signs of inflammation in the lumbar region of the spine, at least 10 segments below the mid-back injury, within 24 hours of ...

Philadelphia, Pa. -- Despite recent discouraging results, endovascular treatment is still a "reasonable" treatment option for selected patients with acute stroke, according to a commentary in the August issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. A special article in the August Neurosurgery suggests that the US supply of neurosurgeons is inadequate to meet the demand, while a new study finds no evidence that obesity causes worse outcomes ...

Scientists have created a powerful micro-supercapacitor, just nanometres thick, that could help electronics companies develop mobile phones and cameras that are smaller, lighter and thinner than ever before. The tiny power supply measures less than half a centimetre across and is made from a flexible material, opening up the possibility for wearable electronics. The research is published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Energy & Environmental Science. A bottleneck in making portable electronic devices like mobile phones even smaller is reducing the size and ...