This press release is available in German. Deep below the silicon surface, the SPRIE method produces regular structures in the micrometer range that refract light. (Photo: KIT/CFN) In modern telecommunications, light carries digital information over kilometers within seconds. Adapted optical materials control the light signals. In the AFM journal, researchers from Berlin, Louvain, and from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology present a method to produce photonic crystals. Their optical properties are adjusted by structures of micrometer size. The method is rapid, cheap, ...

CHICAGO (October 5, 2012) – Vaccinations for flu, tetanus and other common vaccines are increasingly taking place in non-medical settings such as supermarkets and drug stores. This added responsibility for pharmacists increases the risk of needlestick injuries (NSIs), puncture wounds often suffered while preparing or after use of a needle. NSIs can transmit bloodborne pathogens, including hepatitis C and HIV, from an infected patient to the person administering the vaccine. A new report published in the November issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the ...

CHICAGO (October 5, 2012) – Researchers from East Carolina University used a new technique of genotyping to identify the source of a hematology clinic outbreak of Mycobacterium mucogenicum, a gram-positive, acid-fast bacteria found in tap water. This is the first outbreak of M. mucogenicum in an ambulatory care setting; five other outbreaks have been reported in hospital settings since 1995. The study was published in the November issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. Using repetitive ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Ask adults from the industrialized world what number is halfway between 1 and 9, and most will say 5. But pose the same question to small children, or people living in some traditional societies, and they're likely to answer 3. Cognitive scientists theorize that that's because it's actually more natural for humans to think logarithmically than linearly: 30 is 1, and 32 is 9, so logarithmically, the number halfway between them is 31, or 3. Neural circuits seem to bear out that theory. For instance, psychological experiments suggest that multiplying the ...

California, Nevada, and Florida have already made driverless cars street-legal, and continuing advances in the technology have led many to predict that the commercialization of automated vehicles is a real possibility in the not-so-distant future. As driverless vehicles become more commonplace, it is important to understand how humans interact with this new technology. The Human Factors special issue on automation, featuring the latest articles on designing automated vehicles with the driver in mind, is now available online. The October 2012 issue may be found at http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/current. ...

Nausea is a common and distressing side effect of many drugs and treatments. Unlike vomiting, nausea is not well understood, but new research by University of Guelph scientists may soon change that. Guelph PhD student Katharine Tuerke, neuroscience researcher Cheryl Limebeer and Prof. Linda Parker in the Department of Psychology believe they've found the mechanism in the brain that is responsible for the sensation of nausea – with the help of some "disgusted" rats. Their study was published this week in Journal of Neuroscience. "Although everyone has experienced ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Prescription drugs that today help patients fight severe fungal infections might tomorrow be even more effective, thanks to unexpected findings from agriculture-based, food-safety-focused studies by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their colleagues. Petri-dish experiments conducted by now-retired USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) research leader Bruce C. Campbell, ARS molecular biologist Jong H. Kim, and their co-investigators suggest that pairing conventional antifungal medicines with natural, edible ...

Twenty-three days after Nadine was born, the tropical cyclone's life came to an end in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean. NASA's TRMM satellite caught a look at the fading Nadine one final time on Oct. 3 before it dissipated. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed above long-lasting Nadine for the last time before the tropical storm's dissipation on October 4, 2012 at 0249 UTC (10:49 p.m. EDT October 3, 2012). TRMM measures rainfall from space and there was very little remaining in Nadine when it passed overhead. Rainfall data from TRMM's Microwave ...

Satellite data is showing that northwesterly wind shear is taking a toll on Tropical Storm Oscar in the central Atlantic and it is expected to dissipate the storm late on Oct. 5, 2012. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Oscar on Oct. 4 at 1335 UTC (9:35 a.m. EDT) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured a true-color image of the storm. The imagery showed bulk of Oscar's clouds and showers were southeast of the center of circulation as a result of wind shear. On Oct. 5 at 5 a.m. EDT, Oscar's maximum sustained winds ...

Reinhold Dauskardt, PhD, of Stanford's Department of Materials Science and Engineering has been studying skin for years. But when he sent his students to look for data on the mechanical properties of skin, they came back empty-handed. A lot was known about skin structure and disease, but few papers actually talked about its mechanical function – its ability to stretch and resist tension without tearing. "That motivated us to get more interested in the skin itself," said Dauskardt. He and his team, including Ph.D. student Krysta Biniek and postdoctoral researcher Kemal ...

An engine without oil will not survive for very long. Pistons need plenty of lubricant in order to be able to move within the cylindrical sleeves in the engine block. Two things are known to raise the resultant level of friction. The first is attributed to distortion of the cylindrical bore hole when the cylinder head is attached, which is known as static distortion. The second occurs when the engine is running and temperatures warp the bore hole. The extent of this thermal distortion depends on prevailing engine temperatures and the specific engine model. In reality, the ...

An international team of researchers has found at the free electron laser FLASH a surprising effect that leads in ferromagnetic materials to a spatially varying magnetization manipulation on an ultrafast timescale. This effect could be the key to further miniaturization and performance increase of magnetic data storage devices. From Mainz, the group of Professor Dr. Mathias Kläui from the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and in particular Felix Büttner, a member of the Graduate School of Excellence "Materials Science in Mainz", were involved. ...

Pop quiz! Tests are good for: (a) Assessing what you've learned; (b) Learning new information; (c) a & b; (d) None of the above. The correct answer? According to research from psychological science, it's both (a) and (b) – while testing can be useful as an assessment tool, the actual process of taking a test can also help us to learn and retain new information over the long term and apply it across different contexts. New research published in journals of the Association for Psychological Science explores the nuanced interactions between testing, memory, and learning ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- High-pressure systems over oceans, which largely determine the tracks of tropical cyclones and hydrological extremes in much of the northern hemisphere, are likely to intensify this century, according to a Duke University-led study. The study, published online this week in Nature Geoscience, suggests that as summertime near-surface high-pressure systems over the northern Pacific and Atlantic oceans strengthen, they could play an increasingly important role in shaping regional climate, particularly the occurrence of drought and extreme summer rainfall ...

Montreal, October 5, 2012 – From email to Twitter, blogs to word processors, computer programs provide countless communications opportunities. While social applications have dominated the development of the participatory web for users and programmers alike, this era of Web 2.0 is applicable to more than just networking opportunities: it impacts education. The integration of increasingly sophisticated information and communication tools (ICTs) is sweeping university classrooms. Understanding how learners and instructors perceive the effectiveness of these tools in the ...

Highlights Home hemodialysis could allow patients to enjoy increased freedom, quality of life, greater ability to travel, and tangible health improvements. Increased physician and patient education can eliminate barriers to home hemodialysis and increase its use. Approximately 2 million patients in the world receive some sort of dialysis treatment. Washington, DC (October 4, 2012) — Most patients with chronic kidney disease who undergo hemodialysis put up with a grueling treatment regimen that involves going into a clinic several days a week and sitting through a ...

To discover why Neandertals are most closely related to people outside Africa, Harvard and Max Planck Institute scientists have estimated the date when Neandertals and modern Europeans last shared ancestors. The research, published in the journal PLOS Genetics, provides a historical context for the interbreeding. It suggests that it occurred when modern humans carrying Upper Paleolithic technologies encountered Neandertals as they expanded out of Africa. When the Neandertal genome was sequenced in 2010 it revealed that people outside Africa share slightly more genetic ...

Bisphenol A or BPA is a synthetic chemical widely used in the making of plastic products ranging from bottles and food can linings to toys and water supply lines. When these plastics degrade, BPA is released into the environment and routinely ingested. New research, however, from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests it is the metabolic changes that take place once BPA is broken down inside the body that pose the greater health threat. More than 90 percent of all Americans are believed to carry varying levels of BPA exposure. In recent ...

As restaurant patrons' diverse food preferences give rise to varied menu offerings, so plant-eating insects' preferences play an important role in maintaining and shaping the genetic variation of their host plants in a geographic area, reports an international team of researchers that includes a plant scientist at the University of California, Davis. The new study, involving aphids and the broccoli-like research plant Arabidopsis thaliana, provides the first measureable evidence that this selective process is driven, in part, by the pressure that multiple natural enemies ...

Potsdam-Rehbruecke/Berlin – A research team led by Anna Floegel of the German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE) and Tobias Pischon of the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) has identified 14 novel biomarkers for type 2 diabetes. They can serve as basis for developing new methods of treatment and prevention of this metabolic disease. The biomarkers can also be used to determine diabetes risk at a very early point in time. At the same time the markers enable insight into the complex mechanisms of this disease, which still have not been completely elucidated. ...

The tiny pieces of rock – at 50-100 micrometers smaller than a human hair – have been captured from asteroid Itokawa by the Japanese mission Hayabusa. They were carefully unpacked by experts at the University's School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences. It is the first time samples from an asteroid have been returned to Earth. Only about 70 samples have been released for international analysis – seven of these are being studied at the University. The Hayabusa mission is part of a continuing effort to understand how asteroids, which are leftovers from ...

Take a good look around on your next nature hike. Not only are you experiencing the wonders of the outdoors – you're probably also witnessing evolution in action. New research from the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) on the effect of insects on plant populations has shown that evolution can happen more quickly than was previously assumed, even over a single generation. The study is to be published in the Oct. 5 issue of Science. "Scientists have long hypothesized that the interaction between plants and insects has led to much of the diversity we see among plants, ...

Providing birth control to women at no cost substantially reduced unplanned pregnancies and cut abortion rates by 62 percent to 78 percent over the national rate, a new study shows. The research, by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, appears online Oct. 4 in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Among a range of birth control methods offered in the study, most women chose long-acting methods like intrauterine devices (IUDs) or implants, which have lower failure rates than commonly used birth control pills. In the United States, IUDs and implants ...

Many chronically depressed and treatment-resistant patients experience immediate relief from symptoms after taking small amounts of the drug ketamine. For a decade, scientists have been trying to explain the observation first made at Yale University. Today, current evidence suggests that the pediatric anesthetic helps regenerate synaptic connections between brain cells damaged by stress and depression, according to a review of scientific research written by Yale School of Medicine researchers and published in the Oct. 5 issue of the journal Science. Ketamine works on ...

UCLA astronomers report the discovery of a remarkable star that orbits the enormous black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy in a blistering 11-and-a-half years — the shortest known orbit of any star near this black hole. The star, known as S0-102, may help astronomers discover whether Albert Einstein was right in his fundamental prediction of how black holes warp space and time, said research co-author Andrea Ghez, leader of the discovery team and a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy who holds the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics. ...