Times Fiber Communications, a business unit of Amphenol, today announced PowerOptX hybrid cables that combine optical and power connectivity in a single cable. Available in standard and custom configurations with high performance to support 4G wireless protocols, PowerOptX cables are significantly lighter than designs using corrugated metal shielding, allowing easier installation and less tower loading. PowerOptX cables enable cell tower operators to lower costs while ensuring the performance needed for next-generation wireless. While standard configurations offer three ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Researchers at Florida State University have developed a new metric to measure seasonal Atlantic tropical cyclone activity that focuses on the size of storms in addition to the duration and intensity, a measure that may prove important when considering a hurricane's potential for death and destruction. Just ask the survivors of Hurricane Sandy. The 2012 hurricane was only a Category 2 storm on the often referenced Saffir-Simpson scale when it became the largest hurricane on record, killing 285 people in its path in seven different countries and becoming ...

In recent years, metal nanoparticles have showed great application prospect in the field of biological imaging, cancer diagnosis and treatment due to its unique optical scattering and optical absorption properties. In many metal materials, gold nanoparticles have caused concerns in the field because of its simple preparation, easy to modify advantages. However, the poor stability in physiological fluids environment and the potential toxicity of gold nanoparticles always restricts its application in the biological field. TANG Fangqiong and her group from Laboratory of ...

Counselling and treatment with naturopathic care as well as enhanced usual care reduced the prevalence of metabolic syndrome, a risk factor for heart disease, by 17% over a year for participants in a randomized controlled trial published in CMAJ. Researchers enrolled 246 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers at 3 study sites (Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton) for a year-long clinical trial to determine whether naturopathic lifestyle counselling helped to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Of the total sample, 207 people completed the study. The control ...

Video game and augmented-reality game players can spontaneously build virtual teams and leadership structures without special tools or guidance, according to researchers. Players in a game that mixed real and online worlds organized and operated in teams that resembled a military organization with only rudimentary online tools available and almost no military background, said Tamara Peyton, doctoral student in information sciences and technology, Penn State. "The fact that they formed teams and interacted as well as they did may mean that game designers should resist ...

New Haven, Conn. – Scientific collaborators from Yale School of Medicine and University College London (UCL) have uncovered the molecular pathway by which new arteries may form after heart attacks, strokes and other acute illnesses bypassing arteries that are blocked. Their study appears in the April 29 issue of Developmental Cell. Arteries form in utero and during development, but can also form in adults when organs become deprived of oxygen — for example, after a heart attack. The organs release a molecular signal called VEGF. Working with mice, the Yale-UCL team ...

Fertilizing with inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus definitely improves crop yields, but does it also improve the soil? The latest study to tackle this question has yielded mixed results. While 50 years of inorganic fertilization did increase soil organic carbon stocks in a long-term experiment in western Kansas, the practice seemingly failed to enhance soil aggregate stability—a key indicator of soil structural quality that helps dictate how water moves through soil and soil's resistance to erosion. The results of the research, which was carried out in continuous corn ...

2013 — A research report released today from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) provides specific recommendations for optimizing the rear seat of passenger vehicles to better protect its most common occupants — children and adolescents. By bringing technologies already protecting front seat passengers to the rear seat and modifying the geometry of the rear seat to better fit this age group, the US could achieve important reductions in serious injury and death. Motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of death for children older than 4 years and resulted ...

An ultimate goal in the field of carbon nanotube research is to synthesise single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with controlled chiralities. Twenty years after the discovery of SWNTs, scientists from Aalto University in Finland, A.M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute RAS in Russia and the Center for Electron Nanoscopy of Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have managed to control chirality in carbon nanotubes during their chemical vapor deposition synthesis. Carbon nanotube structure is defined by a pair of integers known as chiral indices (n,m), in other words, ...

Hundreds of women with breast cancer living in England's most deprived areas would have better survival rates if they were diagnosed at the same stage as those who lived in affluent areas. A new study led by the University of Leicester, working with colleagues from Public Health England and the University of Cambridge, investigated how much of a difference late-stage diagnosis had on women from deprived areas. The team calculated how many deaths would be postponed beyond 5 years from diagnosis if as many women in the more deprived areas were diagnosed at an earlier ...

University of Leicester-led research has shown that university students behave very differently when using social media as part of their academic learning. Some students happily use social networking to share information about their course with their peers, in a similar way to how they might talk to friends on Facebook. Others are much more targeted in their use of online tools – and will only log on to get the information they need, when they need it. Visitors and Residents: mapping student attitudes to academic use of social networks, published in the journal Learning, ...

ST. LOUIS – A recent Saint Louis University study revealed that Medicaid-insured children with eczema, an inflammatory skin condition that affects 20 percent children in the United States, do not have easy access to dermatologists. "This is a complex problem and a major health disparity in our country," said Elaine Siegfried, M.D., professor of pediatrics at SLU and the principal investigator of the study. "Thirty percent of all children seen in primary care offices have a skin problem. It's an everyday issue." SLU researchers found that only 19 percent of all dermatologists ...

There is a perception in some tech circles that older programmers aren't able to keep pace with rapidly changing technology, and that they are discriminated against in the software field. But a new study from North Carolina State University indicates that the knowledge and skills of programmers actually improve over time – and that older programmers know as much (or more) than their younger peers when it comes to recent software platforms. "We wanted to explore these perceptions of veteran programmers as being out of step with emerging technologies and see if we could ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — U.S. residents who believe in the scientific consensus on global warming are more likely to support government action to curb emissions, regardless of whether they are Republican or Democrat, according to a study led by a Michigan State University sociologist. However, a political divide remains on the existence of climate change despite the fact that the vast majority of scientists believe it is real, said Aaron M. McCright, associate professor in Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Sociology. The study, in the journal Climatic Change, ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The tiny thymus teaches the immune system to ignore the teeming, foreign bacteria in the gut that helps you digest and absorb food, researchers say. When immune cells recognize essential gut bacteria as foreign, inflammatory bowel disease such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease can be the painful, debilitating result. In a study published in the journal Nature, researchers show that the regulatory T cells, or Tregs, that keep this from happening in most of us come from the tiny immune organ nestled near the heart, said Dr. Leszek Ignatowicz, immunologist ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – University of North Carolina researchers have discovered that disrupting a gene that acts as a regulatory switch to turn on other genes can keep blood vessels from forming and developing properly. Further study of this gene – a "transcription factor" called CASZ1 – may uncover a regulatory network that influences the development of cardiovascular disease. A number of other studies have already shown a genetic link between mutations in CASZ1 and hypertension. The UNC research, which was carried out in a frog model as well as human cells, will be published ...

Roboticists are currently developing machines that have the potential to help patients with caregiving tasks, such as housework, feeding and walking. But before they reach the care recipients, assistive robots will first have to be accepted by healthcare providers such as nurses and nursing assistants. Based on a Georgia Institute of Technology study, it appears that they may be welcomed with open arms depending on the tasks at hand. More than half of healthcare providers interviewed said that if they were offered an assistant, they preferred it to be a robotic helper ...

Evidence has shown that green tea extract may be an effective herbal remedy useful for weight control and helping to regulate glucose in type 2 diabetes. In order to ascertain whether green tea truly has this potential, Jae-Hyung Park and his colleagues from the Keimyung University School of Medicine in the Republic of Korea conducted a study, now published in the Springer journal Naunyn-Schmedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology. The active constituents of green tea, which have been shown to inhibit intestinal glucose and lipid uptake, are a certain type of flavonoid called ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Alternately praised in the aftermath of horrible tragedies as a heroic service and lamented in policy debates as an expensive safety net for people without primary care, emergency medicine is often a hot topic. Despite that importance, an analysis published online April 26 in the Annals of Emergency Medicine finds that national expenditures on emergency care are likely significantly higher than previously thought. "The ER has become increasingly important as a place where people go for acute unscheduled care, however there has been ...

A gas associated with the smell of rotten eggs has proven to effectively reduce joint swelling, in research which could lead to advances in the treatment of arthritis. Scientists at the University of Exeter Medical School have discovered that a novel drug molecule, which slowly generates the gas hydrogen sulfide (H2S), effectively reduces swelling and inflammation in arthritic joints. For years, H2S has been regarded as a highly poisonous by-product which is corrosive, flammable and explosive. But research is now showing an altogether more benign side to the substance. Professor ...

PITTSBURGH—Online crowds can be an important tool for teaching the ins and outs of innovation, educators at Carnegie Mellon University and Northwestern University say, even when the quality of the feedback provided by online sources doesn't always match the quantity. In a pilot study that invited the crowd into their classrooms, Carnegie Mellon and Northwestern instructors found that input from social media and other crowdsourcing sites helped the students identify human needs for products or services, generate large quantities of ideas, and ease some aspects of testing ...

The fixed combination of the drugs saxagliptin and metformin (Komboglyze®) has been approved in Germany since November 2011 for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the "Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products" (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether this fixed combination product offers an added benefit versus the current standard treatment. Such an added benefit cannot be derived from the dossier, however, as the manufacturer did not submit any relevant ...

Having to explain how a political policy works leads people to express less extreme attitudes toward the policy, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research suggests that people may hold extreme policy positions because they are under an illusion of understanding — attempting to explain the nuts and bolts of how a policy works forces them to acknowledge that they don't know as much about the policy as they initially thought. Psychological scientist Philip Fernbach of the Leeds School ...

A revolutionary X-ray analytical technique that enables researchers at a glance to identify structural similarities and differences between multiple proteins under a variety of conditions has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). As a demonstration, the researchers used this technique to gain valuable new insight into a protein that is a prime target for cancer chemotherapy. "Proteins and other biological macromolecules are moving machines whose power is often derived from how their ...

A debilitating mental illness, schizophrenia can be difficult to diagnose. Because physiological evidence confirming the disease can only be gathered from the brain during an autopsy, mental health professionals have had to rely on a battery of psychological evaluations to diagnose their patients. Now, Dr. Noam Shomron and Prof. Ruth Navon of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, together with PhD student Eyal Mor from Dr. Shomron's lab and Prof. Akira Sawa of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, have discovered a method for physical diagnosis ...