The use of organic photovoltaics for the production of electricity from sunlight offers an attractive and promising basis for an innovative and environmentally friendly means of energy supply. They can be manufactured quite economically and, because they are as bendable as plastic wrap, they can be processed flexibly. The problem is that they are yet markedly less efficient than conventional inorganic semiconductor cells. The most crucial process in the conversion of light into electric current is the generation of free charge carriers. In the first step of photoconversion, ...

A new study demonstrates that mechanical forces affect the growth and remodeling of blood vessels during tissue regeneration and wound healing. The forces diminish or enhance the vascularization process and tissue regeneration depending on when they are applied during the healing process. The study found that applying mechanical forces to an injury site immediately after healing began disrupted vascular growth into the site and prevented bone healing. However, applying mechanical forces later in the healing process enhanced functional bone regeneration. The study's findings ...

Oceanic Dental, a Huntington Beach Dentist practice, expands and adds two Dentists to the team. The new Dentists bring a wealth of experience to complement the current team, making Oceanic Dental a truly world-class Dentist office in Huntington Beach. Consistently reviewed on sites like Yelp! and Google with five-star ratings for offering affordable, quality general and cosmetic Dentistry in Huntington Beach, Oceanic Dental continually strives to improve the quality of care for their patients. The office began searching for additional Dentists to enhance their commitment ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Every state in America legislates its own gun laws, but not without significant spillover effects on nearby states, according to a new study by Brown University economist Brian Knight. In a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, Knight presents the first state-by-state gun flow analysis. The results indicate that illegal firearms flow from states with weak gun laws to states with strong gun laws, suggesting that traffickers are responding to differences in gun laws across the states. Using gun tracing data from ...

RakeTheRake, the world's largest rakeback provider, constantly strives to provide its online poker players with the very best rakeback deals and the best overall return on their game. Today, and until Tuesday 15 November, they are offering exclusive free training content to all those who are fans of the RakeTheRake Facebook page of followers of RakeTheRake on Twitter. This special Facebook and Twitter offer will give away four different training videos on Tuesdays until 15 November when visitors visit the social media sites. The videos are exclusive to fans and followers ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- If you've ever eaten from silverware or worn copper jewelry, you've been in a perfect storm in which nanoparticles were dropped into the environment, say scientists at the University of Oregon. Since the emergence of nanotechnology, researchers, regulators and the public have been concerned that the potential toxicity of nano-sized products might threaten human health by way of environmental exposure. Now, with the help of high-powered transmission electron microscopes, chemists captured never-before-seen views of miniscule metal nanoparticles naturally ...

Rockville, MD -- Physical activity may be what the doctor orders to help patients reduce their risk of developing glaucoma. According to a recently published scientific paper, higher levels of physical exercise appear to have a long-term beneficial impact on low ocular perfusion pressure (OPP), an important risk factor for glaucoma. Published in the Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science journal (Physical Activity and Ocular Perfusion Pressure: The EPIC-Norfolk Eye Study), this study examined the relationship between physical activity and current OPP in 5,650 men ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University researchers have taken a promising step toward creating an animal model for decoding the specific brain circuits involved in depression. By electrically stimulating a brain region central to an animal's primary emotions, graduate student Jason Wright and his advisor Jaak Panksepp saw rats exhibit a variety of behaviors associated with a depressed, negative mood, or affect. "We might now have a model that allows us to actually know where to look in the brain for changes relevant to depression," says Wright, "and we can monitor ...

Young children exposed to a harshly punitive school environment are more inclined to lie to conceal their misbehaviour than are children from non-punitive schools, a study of three- and four-year-old West African children suggests. The study, published in the journal Child Development, also indicates that children in a punitive environment are able to tell more convincing lies than those in a non-punitive environment. The research, by Professor Victoria Talwar of McGill University and Professor Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, examined deceptive behaviours in ...

(CHICAGO) -- A 40-year search for a gene that causes some one-celled sea creatures to flash at night and is also found in others that produce deadly red tides, has been successfully culminated by a group of scientists led by Thomas E. DeCoursey, PhD, professor of biophysics and physiology at Rush University Medical Center. The gene, discovered in a tiny marine organism called a dinoflagellate (Karlodinium veneficum), controls voltage-gated proton channels, which, in addition to triggering luminescence in certain single-cell sea creatures, activate many important biological ...

WASHINGTON, -- The combination of optical, electronic and mechanical effects occurring in devices and materials that have structure on the nanometer scale are being investigated by researchers around the world. These "collective phenomena" have applications as diverse as the generation of light, optical sensing, and information processing. To highlight the recent progress and trends in physics and applications in this area, the editors of the Optical Society's (OSA) (http://www.osa.org) open-access journal Optics Express (http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe) today published ...

Rockville, MD – Results from a recent scientific study in the U.K. may change the way that healthcare professionals measure eye pressure and allow them to assess the risk of glaucoma with greater accuracy. Glaucoma is the second most common cause of irreversible loss of vision worldwide. The study, published in the Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science journal (Intraocular Pressure and Corneal Biomechanics in an Adult British Population -- The EPIC-Norfolk Eye Study), reports the distribution and causes of eye pressure -- medically termed intraocular pressure ...

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite called "TRMM" and NASA's Aqua satellite captured radar and temperature data that showed Tropical Storm Rina forming in the western Caribbean Sea yesterday. Today, Rina continues strengthening. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) upgraded an area of disturbed weather in the Caribbean to tropical depression eighteen and then to tropical storm Rina on October 23, 2011. The TRMM satellite flew over the forming tropical cyclone on October 23, 2011 at 1728 UTC (1:28 p.m. EDT). Data from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and ...

Sheraton Atlanta Perimeter Hotel North, located in Sandy Springs, GA, announces a new special savings package. Guests can experience all that Atlanta has to offer while escaping the rush of the city in one of the property's 36 executive club level rooms and suites. Enjoy the perks of staying on Club Level with: - Club Level Queen or King room from $99 per night - Club Level King Suite from $119 per night - Full access to the private Club Lounge which offer complimentary continental breakfast in the morning, beverages throughout the day, and evening hors d'oeuvres - ...

Demand for tickets to see veteran American rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers is expected to be high when they play three dates at London's O2 Arena this November as part of their first UK and Ireland tour since 2006. For fans visiting London for The O2 gigs which take place on Monday 7th, Wednesday 9th and Thursday 10th November the advice given by London specialists LondonTown.com is to avoid travel chaos and book in at one of the London hotels close to the 20,000 capacity stadium in Greenwich, South East London. The band who has won 7 Grammy Awards and sold ...

TAHOE NATIONAL FOREST, Calif.—The reclusive American marten is getting even harder to find in the Sierra Nevada, according to a study by a team of researchers from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University. A new study at the Sagehen Experimental Forest found that marten detections have dropped 60 percent since the 1980s—a decrease that may be caused by a degradation of the wooded areas in which they live, researchers say. Their findings appeared in the current issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management. "Previous work had revealed that marten populations ...

Whether it's parents, teachers, coaches, or family friends, there's no question that adults serve as powerful role models for youth as they transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Mentoring programs across the United States have tried to harness the power of positive role models in the hopes that relationships with an adult mentor will help to support kids' socioemotional and cognitive development. But are mentoring programs effective? And do all programs have equally positive effects? A new report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal ...

Psychological scientist Guillermo Campitelli is a good chess player, but not a great one. "I'm not as good as I wanted," he says. He had an international rating but not any of the titles that chess players get, like Grandmaster and International Master. "A lot of people that practiced much less than me achieved much higher levels." Some of the players he coached became some of the best players in Argentina. "I always wondered: What's going on? Why did this happen?" Now a researcher at Edith Cowan University in Joondalup, Australia, Campitelli studies practicing. He's ...

University of Illinois scientists report the first identification of a cellular mechanism linked to the toxicity of a major class of drinking water disinfection byproducts. This study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, suggests a possible connection to adverse health effects, including neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's. "I'm not implying that drinking disinfected water will give you Alzheimer's," said Michael Plewa, lead scientist and professor of genetics in the U of I Department of Crop Sciences. "Certainly, the disinfection of drinking water ...

SoloHealth (www.solohealth.com), a leader in self-service consumer healthcare technology, is pleased to announce the promotion of Stephen Kendig from Senior Vice President of Finance and Operations to Chief Operating Officer, effective immediately. Reporting directly to CEO and Founder Bart Foster, Kendig takes the role during a time of tremendous growth for the company and will lead the day-to-day operations and strategic direction of SoloHealth, including overseeing the nationwide rollout of the highly anticipated SoloHealth Station this fall. During his four years ...

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have identified a number of stem rust-resistant wheat varieties and are retesting them to verify their resistance. Stem rust occurs worldwide wherever wheat is grown. Over a large area, losses from stem rust can be severe, ranging from 50 to 70 percent, and individual fields can be destroyed. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant pathologist Mike Bonman at the agency's Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit in Aberdeen, Idaho, and his colleagues screened more than 3,000 wheat landraces from the U.S. ...

HOUSTON - A research team led by scientists from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered four new "ZIP codes" in their quest to map the vast blood vessel network of the human body. The study, published online the week of Oct. 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, brings science one step closer to the goal of using the vascular system to personalize cancer therapy, as well as fight obesity, heart disease and other disorders. Researchers also found that some addresses are shared in vasculature across the board instead of always ...

A study by researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco shows that rats given a popularly prescribed antidepressant during development exhibit brain abnormalities and behaviors characteristic of autism spectrum disorders. The findings suggest that taking a certain class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – SSRIs – during pregnancy might be one factor contributing to a dramatic rise in these developmental disorders in children. "We saw behaviors in the treated rats and neurological ...

Watching local TV news can lead to déjà vu. During the past decade, a growing number of local television stations have entered into agreements together – to share video footage, reporters, anchors and even full newscasts. A new report by the University of Delaware's Center for Community Research and Service looks at the impact of these possibly monopolistic agreements on local media markets and on the principles the federal government uses to regulate the broadcast industry: diversity, competition and localism. Danilo Yanich, author of the report and associate professor ...

1. Penny stocks cost a penny for a reason. While we all dream about investing in the next Microsoft or the next Home Depot, but the truth is, the odds of you finding that once in a decade success story are slim. These companies are either starting out or purchased a shell company because it was cheaper than an IPO. This doesn't make them a bad investment. 2. Trading volumes. Look for a consistent volume of shares being traded. Looking at the average volume can be misleading. If ABC trades 1 million shares today, and doesn't trade for the rest of the week, the ...