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Science31 May 2013

Texting proves beneficial in auditory overload situations

During command and control operations, military personnel are frequently exposed to extreme auditory overload – essentially bombarded by multiple messages coming from radio networks, loudspeakers, and live voices in an environment also filled with high-level noise from weapons and vehicles. Adding a visual cue, such as texting, was explored by a team of researchers in Canada as a way to overcome this problem. Sharon Abel, defense scientist at Defence Research and Development Canada, will present her team's findings at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA ...

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Space31 May 2013

Native Ohioans' speaking patterns help scientists decipher famous moon landing

When Neil Armstrong took his first step on the Moon, he claimed he said, "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" – but many listeners think he left out the "a." A team of speech scientists and psychologists from Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing and The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus is taking a novel approach to deciphering Armstrong's quote by studying how speakers from his native central Ohio pronounce "for" and "for a." Their results suggest that it is entirely possible that Armstrong said what he claimed, though evidence indicates ...

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Science31 May 2013

New speaker system for cars creates separate 'audio zones' for front and rear

Ever wish that your car's interior cabin could have separate audio zones for the front and rear seats? It soon may. A new approach achieves independent listening zones within a car by using small, modified speakers to produce directional sound fields and a signal processing strategy that optimizes the audio signals used to drive each of the speakers. The new design will be presented at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013), held June 2-7 in Montreal. Today, car cabins often reverberate with the sounds of music, video soundtracks, navigation system ...

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Energy31 May 2013

Ultrasound 'making waves' for enhancing biofuel production

All chefs know that "you have to break some eggs to make an omelet," and that includes engineers at Iowa State University who are using high-frequency sound waves to break down plant materials in order to cook up a better batch of biofuel. Research by David Grewell, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, and his colleagues Melissa Montalbo-Lomboy and Priyanka Chand, has shown that "pretreating" a wide variety of feedstocks (including switch grass, corn stover, and soft wood) with ultrasound consistently enhances the chemical reactions necessary ...

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Social Science31 May 2013

A survey of GPs reveals that many identify nicotine as a harmful cigarette-smoke component

A survey of GPs (general practitioners) in the UK and Sweden revealed that some hold the view that one of the greatest health risks from smoking is nicotine. This belief likely influences health advice to smokers when considering whether to recommend the use of alternative nicotine products. Nicotine is the addictive component of tobacco smoke, but unlike some other constituents of tobacco smoke, it is not carcinogenic and according to the UK Royal College of Physicians, 'medicinal nicotine is a very safe drug.' Switching to alternative nicotine products such as ...

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Science31 May 2013

Secrets of the cicada's sound

Of all the bugs that achieve the mantle of summer pest, cicadas are perhaps the most curious. They don't sting, they don't bite, they don't buzz around your head, they taste good in chocolate, but as the drowning din of the 17-year brood this summer will remind: we would love them less if they emerged more often. Cicadas are unique among insects in their ability to emit loud and annoying sounds. So why would anyone actually want to replicate theses sounds? A team of U.S. Naval researchers have been working on that very problem for several years now, because it turns ...

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Science31 May 2013

How flames change the sound of a firefighters' personal safety alarm

The PASS, short for "Personal Alert Safety System," has been used by firefighters for thirty years to help track members of their team who might be injured and need assistance to escape a fire. Though the alarm has saved many lives, there are cases in which the device is working correctly but is not heard or not recognized. In one recent incident report from 2010, firefighters inside a burning building either did not hear or heard and then stopped hearing an alarm that was easily audible from outside the building. Working with the National Fire Protection Association ...

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Science31 May 2013

Researchers design sensitive new microphone modeled on fly ear

Using the sensitive ears of a parasitic fly for inspiration, a group of researchers has created a new type of microphone that achieves better acoustical performance than what is currently available in hearing aids. The scientists will present their results at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics, held June 2-7 in Montreal. Ronald Miles, Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Binghamton University, studies the hearing of Ormia ochracea, a house fly-sized insect that is native to the southeast United States and Central America. Unlike most other ...

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Science31 May 2013

New maps show how shipping noise spans the globe

The ocean is naturally filled with the sounds of breaking waves, cracking ice, driving rain, and marine animal calls, but more and more, human activity is adding to the noise. Ships' propellers create low-frequency hums that can travel hundreds of kilometers or more in the deep ocean. Scientists have now modeled this shipping noise on a global scale. The world-wide maps will be presented for the first time at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013), held June 2-7 in Montreal. "The most important thing about these maps is that seeing the sound can get ...

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Technology31 May 2013

New technology modifies music hall acoustics

A new technology that relies on a system of inflatable sound absorbers may help make any performance hall instantly convertible into a venue for music ranging from classical to hard rock. The technology will be described at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013), held June 2-7 in Montreal. Getting the right vibe for listeners from a particular kind of music is an acoustic challenge. Music genres differ radically both in the sound energy they generate and in how that sound interacts with the ceiling and walls of a performance space. A hall for classical ...

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Science31 May 2013

A bad biology grade sticks around

Don't let low grades haunt your students. A new study in the Journal of Animal Science shows that performance in foundational biology courses is a strong predictor of performance in high-level animal science courses. In a study of 1,516 students over 7 years, researchers from Kansas State University found that students who did well in biology also performed well in a rigorous genetics course. This result was not surprising, but the researchers were struck by the importance of timing. Undergraduate students did best when they waited at least a year to take the genetics ...

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Medicine31 May 2013

Difference in arterial health seen in highly active college-age people compared to inactive peers

Indiana University researchers found that people in their 20s already began to demonstrate arterial stiffening -- when arteries become less compliant as blood pumps through the body -- but their highly active peers did not. The researchers made a similar discovery with middle-age men and women, finding that highly active study participants did not show the arterial stiffening that typically comes with aging, regardless of their gender or age. A reduction in compliance of the body's arteries is considered a risk factor, predictive of future cardiovascular disease, such ...

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Medicine31 May 2013

TCE exposure linked to increased risk of some cancers

Trichloroethylene (TCE) exposure has possible links to increased liver cancer risk, and the relationship between TCE exposure and risks of cancers of low incidence and those with confounding by lifestyle and other factors need further study, according to a study published May 30 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. TCE is a chlorinated dry-cleaning solvent and degreaser that has been widely used for approximately the last 100 years and has shown carcinogenicity in rodents. Previous epidemiologic studies have shown a reported increase in cancer risk in humans ...

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Space31 May 2013

SwRI-led team calculates the radiation exposure associated with a trip Mars

Boulder, Colo. — May 30, 2013 — On November 26, 2011, the Mars Science Laboratory began a 253-day, 560-million-kilometer journey to deliver the Curiosity rover to the Red Planet. En route, the Southwest Research Institute-led Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) made detailed measurements of the energetic particle radiation environment inside the spacecraft, providing important insights for future human missions to Mars. "In terms of accumulated dose, it's like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days," said Dr. Cary Zeitlin, a principal scientist in SwRI's ...

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Space31 May 2013

Cruise to Mars illuminates radiation risk to future astronauts

Once the stuff of science fiction, a human mission to Mars may be becoming more feasible, and a new report in the 31 May issue of Science provides insight into the relevant radiation hazards. Exposure to radiation has long been known to be a problem for participants in deep space missions. Because these missions can take years, they expose anything or anyone on board to high energy particles called Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs), and also to lower-energy Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs). Characterizing the radiation that spacecraft destined for Mars or other deep space ...

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Science31 May 2013

Human activity echoes through Brazilian rainforest

This news release is available in Portuguese, French, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese. The disappearance of large, fruit-eating birds from tropical forests in Brazil has caused the region's forest palms to produce smaller, less successful seeds over the past century, researchers say. The findings provide evidence that human activity can trigger fast-paced evolutionary changes in natural populations. Mauro Galetti from the Universidade Estadual Paulista in São Paulo, Brazil, along with an international team of colleagues, used patches of rainforest that had been ...

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Medicine31 May 2013

Quitting smoking: Licensed medications are effective

Nicotine replacement therapy and other licensed drugs can help people quit smoking, according to a new systematic review published in The Cochrane Library. The study, which is an overview of previous Cochrane reviews, supports the use of the smoking cessation medications that are already widely licensed internationally, and shows that another drug licensed in Russia could hold potential as an effective and affordable treatment. In Europe and the US the only medications currently licensed for smoking cessation are nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) such as nicotine ...

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Medicine31 May 2013

Probiotics prevent diarrhoea related to antibiotic use

Probiotic supplements have the potential to prevent diarrhoea caused by antibiotics, according to a new Cochrane systematic review. The authors studied Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections in patients taking antibiotics and found symptoms of diarrhoea were substantially reduced when patients were also treated with probiotics. Antibiotics disturb the beneficial bacteria that live in the gut and allow other harmful bacteria like C. difficile to take hold. Although some people infected with C. difficile show no symptoms, others suffer diarrhoea or colitis. The ...

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Social Science31 May 2013

Multi-national study identifies links between genetic variants and educational attainment

A multi-national team of researchers has identified genetic markers that predict educational attainment by pooling data from more than 125,000 individuals in the United States, Australia, and 13 western European countries. The study, which appears in the journal Science, was conducted by the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC), which includes researchers at NYU, Erasmus University, Cornell University, Harvard University, the University of Bristol, and the University of Queensland, among other institutions. The SSGAC conducted what is called a genome-wide ...

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Physics31 May 2013

Atom by atom, bond by bond, a chemical reaction caught in the act

When Felix Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) set out to develop nanostructures made of graphene using a new, controlled approach to chemical reactions, the first result was a surprise: spectacular images of individual carbon atoms and the bonds between them. "We weren't thinking about making beautiful images; the reactions themselves were the goal," says Fischer, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division (MSD) and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. "But ...

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Medicine31 May 2013

Good kidney health begins before birth

Researchers have found that conditions in the womb can affect kidney development and have serious health implications for the child not only immediately after birth, but decades later. In a paper published today in The Lancet an international team, including Monash University's Professor John Bertram and the University of Queensland's Professor Wendy Hoy, reviewed existing, peer-reviewed research on kidney health and developmental programming - the effects of the in utero environment on adult health. The accumulated evidence linked low birth weight and prematurity ...

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Science31 May 2013

Is enough being done to make drinking water safe?

There is a lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of technologies used to reduce arsenic contamination finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Evidence. More studies assessing the technologies themselves and how they are used in the community are needed to ensure that people have access to safe, clean water. Arsenic is now recognised to be one of the world's greatest environmental hazards, threatening the lives of several hundred million people. Naturally occurring arsenic leaches into water from surrounding rocks and once in the water ...

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Medicine31 May 2013

Getting better without antibiotics

Given the option, many women with symptoms of urinary tract infections are choosing to avoid antibiotics and give their bodies a chance to heal naturally, finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Family Practice. The research shows that 70% of women with symptoms of uncomplicated urinary tract infections who did not use antibiotics for a week were cured or showed improvement. Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are already a big problem and the incidence of 'superbugs', which are resistant to several antibiotics, is on the rise. Over use of antibiotics ...

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Medicine31 May 2013

No benefit of double dose antiviral drug for severe influenza

This is the first study to examine the effectiveness of higher doses of oseltamivir in cases of hospitalized severe human influenza (seasonal, pandemic and bird flu strains). The authors say their findings have implications for global guidelines, clinical management and pandemic preparedness, including for the current H7N9 outbreak. Human influenza is usually a self-limiting illness. Occasionally, however, it can lead to respiratory complications, admission to hospital, and death. Some studies suggest that, if given early, oseltamivir can help reduce mortality. This has ...

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Science31 May 2013

Why animals compare the present with the past

According to standard theory, the best response to current circumstances should be unaffected by what has happened in the past. But the Bristol study, published in the leading journal Science, shows that in a changing, unpredictable world it is important to be sensitive to past conditions. The research team, led by Professor John McNamara in Bristol's School of Mathematics, built a mathematical model to understand how animals should behave when they are uncertain about the pattern of environmental change. They found that when animals are used to rich conditions but ...

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