If you want to measure something very precisely, such as slight variations of a length, then you are very likely to use light waves. However, many effects, such as variations of gravity, or surface forces, can only be measured using particles that have a mass. Since, according to the rules of quantum mechanics, massive particles also behave like waves, interferometers can be built in which single atoms or even entire atomic clouds are used instead of light. A team from the Vienna University of Technology has now been able to develop a Mach-Zehnder interferometer for Bose-Einstein ...

A new study reveals that all children with Crohn's disease that were examined had a commonly occurring virus – an enterovirus – in their intestines. This link has previously not been shown for this chronic inflammatory intestinal disorder. The findings are being published today in the latest issue of the international journal Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology. These findings need to be confirmed in larger studies, but they are important, as this connection has never been pointed out before. This paves the way for a better understanding of what might be involved ...

South Australia's forest industry is being significantly challenged as production levels fall due to declining export competitiveness and accordingly means for improving the industry's competitiveness are being sought. The South Australian State Government's Department for Manufacturing, Innovation, Trade, Resources and Energy (DMITRE) has invited VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland experts to undertake a study that identifies potential routes by which the increased competitiveness can be achieved. Achieving world class productivity in existing business combined ...

Research from North Carolina State University shows that software which tracks facial expressions can accurately assess the emotions of students engaged in interactive online learning and predict the effectiveness of online tutoring sessions. "This work is part of a larger effort to develop artificial intelligence software to teach students computer science," says Dr. Kristy Boyer, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper on the work. "The program, JavaTutor, will not only respond to what a student knows, but to each student's feelings ...

Engineers from Queen Mary, University of London have developed the world's most precise computer simulation of how red blood cells might travel around the body to help doctors treat people with serious circulatory problems. Red blood cells have the important task of carrying oxygen around the body but make up less than half of the total blood volume – 45 per cent in men and 40 per cent in women. Understanding how damaged red blood cells might interact with each other or their neighbouring cells could be useful in realising blood flow in patients who are diabetic or ...

With the help of phylogenetic analysis, scientists describe three new fungus species from New Zealand. The new species belong to the widespread genus Gymnopus, part of the Omphalotaceae family, the most famous representative of which, the Shiitake mushroom, is the favorite of many. The study was published in the open access journal Mycokeys. Gymnopus imbricatus, G. ceraceicola and G. hakaroa can be recognized by their strong, unpleasant odor when crushed. The smell produced by these species is most commonly described as rotting cabbage or garlic. The species grow in colonies ...

'Is it hot in here or is it just you?' Clichéd chat-up lines may serve some humans well, but other animals prefer more imaginative ways to captivate and attract potential suitors. Take, for example, the male sea lamprey, which will coax ovulating females into its nest by releasing enticing pheromones. Once comfortably in the nest, the male will then perform an interesting dance routine, rubbing the female's belly with a small bump of tissue on his back. Should the female be happy with what she sees and feels, the two will then spawn their gametes simultaneously. This unusual ...

The Internet has a major impact on the consumers' media habits. The market situation for magazines is changing in line with the continuing increase of online media content. Success will require a completely new business approach. A recent study conducted by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland highlighted value and experientiality perceived by the consumer as the starting point and prerequisite for service development of future magazines. The digitalisation of the media has led to fragmented audiences and the rise of social media to adopt the role of an information ...

People have differing abilities to release and react to insulin depending on ethnicity, according to a new study from researchers at Lund University in Sweden, Stanford University and Kitasato University. The results show that healthy subjects of all ethnicities were able to maintain a normal glucose level, but did so in different ways. "Africans tend to have lower insulin sensitivity. However, they appear to compensate for this by releasing larger quantities of insulin. Among those of East Asian origin, the reverse appears to be the case. They have very good insulin ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — For protein-based drugs such as insulin to be taken orally rather than injected, bioengineers need to find a way to shuttle them safely through the stomach to the small intestine where they can be absorbed and distributed by the bloodstream. Progress has been slow, but in a new study, researchers report an important technological advance: They show that a "bioadhesive" coating significantly increased the intestinal uptake of polymer nanoparticles in rats and that the nanoparticles were delivered to tissues around the body in a way that ...

A new species of the peculiarly shaped spoon worms has been recently discovered in Japan, and described in the open access journal Zookeys. These animals derive their name from their elongated and spoon-like projection (the proboscis), issuing from the barrel- or sweet potato-like roundish body proper (the trunk). The new species Arhynchite hayaoi was discovered on a sandy tidal flat named Hachi-no-higata of the Seto Inland Sea, Japan. Like most spoon worms, the new species has the typical peculiar spoon shaped proboscis. The animal is of a pinkish-yellow colour, and ...

This news release is available in German. Their results show during which process stages the growth can be accelerated and when additional time is required to reduce defects. Their work has now been published online in Advanced Energy Materials. Today's chalcopyrite thin film cells based on copper indium gallium selenide are already reaching efficiencies of more than 20 percent. For the fabrication of the extremely thin polycrystalline layers, the process of coevaporation has lead to the best results so far: During coevaporation, two separate elements are evaporated ...

Two symposia focusing on the ecological dynamics of infectious diseases such as avian influenza, Yellow Fever, and Lyme will take place during the Ecological Society of America's 98th Annual Meeting, held this year in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One will look at human influences on viral and bacterial diseases through our alteration of landscapes and ecological processes, while the other will focus on the emerging field of eco-epidemiology that seeks to integrate biomedical and ecological research approaches to address human health threats. The symposium on Monday, August ...

Male sea lampreys may not be the best-looking creatures swimming in our lakes and streams, but they apparently have something going for them that the ladies may find irresistible. Research by a team of Michigan State University scientists found that the males have a secondary sex characteristic that creates heat when they get near a female lamprey, something the females find hard to say no to. The work of the team focused on a small bump located near the male's anterior dorsal fin. Close examination of this bump determined that it was full of fat cells, cells that are ...

A new method, which analyzes the sounds in a child's cough, could soon be used in poor, remote regions to diagnose childhood pneumonia reliably. According to Udantha Abeyratne from the University of Queensland in Australia and colleagues, this simple technique of recording coughs with a microphone on the patient's bedside table, has the potential to revolutionize the management of childhood pneumonia in remote regions around the world. Their work¹ is published online in Springer's journal Annals of Biomedical Engineering². Pneumonia is the leading killer of young children ...

WASHINGTON, June 27, 2013—Contact lenses correct many people's eyesight but do nothing to improve the blurry vision of those suffering from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness among older adults in the western world. That's because simply correcting the eye's focus cannot restore the central vision lost from a retina damaged by AMD. Now a team of researchers from the United States and Switzerland led by University of California San Diego Professor Joseph Ford has created a slim, telescopic contact lens that can switch between normal and ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Our daily routines can become so ingrained that we perform them automatically, such as taking the same route to work every day. Some behaviors, such as smoking or biting your fingernails, become so habitual that we can't stop even if we want to. Although breaking habits can be hard, MIT neuroscientists have now shown that they can prevent them from taking root in the first place, in rats learning to run a maze to earn a reward. The researchers first demonstrated that activity in two distinct brain regions is necessary in order for habits to crystallize. ...

Bethesda, Md. -- The American Physiological Society (APS) issued the following statement today in response to the announcement on the use of chimpanzees in medical research: "The American Physiological Society looks forward to a careful review of Dr. Collins' decision regarding NIH's implementation of the IOM principles and criteria. The APS previously offered comments on the Working Group report. We are hopeful that Dr. Collins has taken into account our concerns, which include implementing flexible, outcome-oriented guidelines for chimpanzee housing and social groups; ...

AUSTIN, Texas – By creating a small electrical field that removes salts from seawater, chemists at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Marburg in Germany have introduced a new method for the desalination of seawater that consumes less energy and is dramatically simpler than conventional techniques. The new method requires so little energy that it can run on a store-bought battery. The process evades the problems confronting current desalination methods by eliminating the need for a membrane and by separating salt from water at a microscale. The technique, ...

In order to get a better understanding of these effects, researchers from the Inserm cardiovascular, metabolism, diabetology and nutrition unit (U1060 « Laboratoire de recherche en cardiovasculaire, métabolisme, diabétologie et nutrition » Inserm/Inra/Université Lyon 1) introduced a "cocktail" of contaminants mixed with low doses of dioxin, PCB, bisphenol A and phtalates into the feeding of mice that had already been rendered obese by a high-fat diet. The results show that metabolic changes occur in these mice, but that the effects differ depending on the gender. Females ...

WASHINGTON — Emergency patients over the age of 74 have significantly different and more complex health and social needs than their younger counterparts, even after controlling for illness severity, which has important implications about aging populations and emergency departments of the future. The results of the most extensive international study of the characteristics and outcomes of older emergency patients to be reported to date were published online Tuesday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Profiles of Older Patients in the Emergency Department: Findings from the ...

Researchers from McGill University, RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, Wako, Japan) and the Institute for Molecular Science (Okazaki, Japan) have discovered a way to make the widely used chemical process of hydrogenation more environmentally friendly – and less expensive. Hydrogenation is a chemical process used in a wide range of industrial applications, from food products, such as margarine, to petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. The process typically involves the use of heavy metals, such as palladium or platinum, to catalyze the chemical reaction. ...

Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have developed a new method for visualizing material defects in thin-film solar cells. An LMU research team led by Bert Nickel has, for the first time, succeeded in functionally characterizing the active layer in organic thin-film solar cells using laser light for localized excitation of the material. The findings are reported in the scientific journal "Advanced Materials". "We have developed a method in which the material is raster-scanned with a laser, while the focused beam is modulated in different ways, ...

New observations of a star known as Gliese 667C have revealed a system with at least six planets, including a record-breaking three super-Earths orbiting in the star's "habitable zone" where liquid water could exist on the planets. This is the first planetary system found to have a fully packed habitable zone. "The three planets in the habitable zone are roughly Earth-sized, and only about three to four times the mass of the Earth," said Steven Vogt, University of California, Santa Cruz astronomy and astrophysics professor who is on a team with Paul Butler of the Carnegie ...

Humans are amazing throwers. We are unique among all animals, including our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, in our ability to throw projectiles at high speeds and with incredible accuracy. This trait was critical to the survival and success of our ancestors, aiding their hunting and protective skills, according to National Science Foundation- (NSF) funded research featured on the cover of this week's journal Nature. Harvard University researchers supported by NSF's Biological Anthropology Program discovered that humans are able to throw projectiles at incredible ...