VIDEO: This movie shows laser beams being directed to a 5x5 array. The current paper uses only a 1x5 array, but with real atoms and quantum measurements of the internal rotations. Click here for more information. Washington, D.C. (December 7, 2010) -- A new laser-beam steering system that aims and focuses bursts of light onto single atoms for use in quantum computers has been demonstrated by collaborating researchers from Duke University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Described ...

CANCUN, MEXICO (7 December 2010)--An exclusive focus on forests—as opposed to the entire landscape—could lead to inequitable and destructive outcomes for the poor in developing countries, said a Nairobi-based agroforestry research organization today. Most deforestation and forest degradation is driven by forces outside forests, so capturing emissions and managing carbon stocks from land uses that involve the whole landscape, not just forests, must be included for the successful implementation of REDD+, according to World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). A recently published ...

For Immediate Release – December 7, 2010 (Toronto) – A new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has found that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy--using meditation—provides equivalent protection against depressive relapse as traditional antidepressant medication. The study published in the current issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry compared the effectiveness of pharmacotherapy with mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) by studying people who were initially treated with an antidepressant and then, either stopped taking the medication ...

A new study conducted by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital examined exertional heat-related injuries that were treated in emergency departments between 1997 and 2006. Exertional heat-related injuries are injuries that occur as a result of exercise or physical activity during warm or hot temperatures. The study found that an estimated 54,983 exertional heat-related injuries, an average of 5,500 cases each year, were treated in emergency departments during the 10-year study period. Overall, ...

A new survey of court cases against battered women living abroad shows that when the women left their abusive partners and returned with their children to the United States, half of the time, U.S. courts sent the children back, usually to their fathers. The survey, co-authored by a University of Washington researcher, also shows that almost a third of these estranged husbands filed criminal kidnapping charges against their wives. Released in time for Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, the survey is intended to help to establish domestic violence as a factor in whether courts ...

In a world first, a new 'state of the art' climate change experimental facility has been completed at the University of Queensland's Heron Island Research Station. The Climate Change Mesocosm (CCM) project led by Associate Professor Sophie Dove and Dr. David Kline from the Global Change Institute's Coral Reef Ecosystems Laboratory is one of the largest and most accurately controlled ocean acidification and warming experimental systems in the world and simulates ocean temperatures and acidification levels predicted to occur on coral reefs in the next 50 to 100 years. Able ...

The UK has the capacity to develop new green industries for capturing harmful carbon dioxide emissions from industry and storing them deep underground, but more investment is needed to further develop the relevant technologies and infrastructure, say scientists in new research published today. The authors, from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, have published two briefing papers that highlight the potential opportunities associated with adopting Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS) technologies and the challenges involved. The researchers ...

Photosynthesis, the formation of energy-rich chemical compounds with the aid of sunlight, is fundamental to life on Earth. In plants, sunlight is collected by so-called antennal complexes, consisting of proteins bound to the green pigment chlorophyll. The chlorophyll captures the light energy and relays it, virtually without loss, via several intermediate molecules, to the reaction centers, where it is converted into stable forms of chemical energy. The intermolecular transfer process is described by Förster theory. This postulates that pigments act as oscillating dipoles ...

Sophia Antipolis, 7 December 2010: 'Some progress, but the big challenges remain'. This was the verdict after the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) hosted the 2010 European Summit on CVD Prevention on 30 November. The summit was attended by a broad cross-section of medical experts, healthcare organisations, national societies, regulators and representatives from the European Union (EU). The aim of this bi-annual event is to encourage concerted action towards a harmonised strategy for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Europe. Much of the debate centred ...

Apros is already widely used for dependable analysis of combustion and nuclear power plants in particular but also of other industrial processes. Even the most difficult process failures can be simulated by using this software. Apros simulation software is the result of a quarter century's development work by VTT experts in co-operation with Fortum, and it is already used in 26 countries. Apros version 5.09 brings several new features for its end users. The separate phase thermal hydraulics calculation (6-equation model) of Apros has now been extended to cover all parts ...

Researchers at Umeå Plant Science Center in Sweden discovered, in collaboration with the Syngenta company, a previously unknown gene in sugar beets that blocks flowering. Only with the cold of winter is the gene shut off, allowing the sugar beet to blossom in its second year. The discovery of this new gene function makes it possible to control when sugar beets bloom. The new findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Science. Scientists at Umeå Plant Science Center and the international company Syngenta, in a joint study of genetic regulation in the ...

Washington, DC, 7 December 2010 – The enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 expands Medicare benefits to scores of previously uninsured individuals including many of our nation's children. While access to treatment is laudable, the quality of such treatment is the subject of an article in the December issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. In the article titled "Quality of Care for Childhood Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in a Managed Care Medicaid Program," Dr. Bonnie Zima and ...

Television's favourite Time Lord could not exist without his trusty sonic screwdriver, as it's proved priceless in defeating Daleks and keeping the Tardis in check. Now Doctor Who's famous cure-all gadget could become a reality for DIY-ers across the world, say engineers. Ultrasonic engineers at Bristol University and The Big Bang: UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair are uncovering how a real life version of the fictional screwdriver - which uses sonic technology to open locks and undo screws - could be created. Professor of Ultrasonics, Bruce Drinkwater, who is ...

Cardiologists from the Mayo Clinic performed sheathless transradial percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) to remedy complex lesions, achieving a 90% success rate with no radial complications. Standard guiding catheters were used during the procedure. Details of this novel approach—overcoming the last hurdle to greater adoption of transradial PCI in the U.S.—are published in the December issue of Catheterization and Cardiovascular Intervention, the official journal of The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions. PCI, commonly known as angioplasty, ...

On Tuesday 7 December 2010, maternal health professionals from Africa and Asia will be attending a workshop in Liverpool to discuss the effects of 'Making It Happen', a programme with a life-saving training package for health care providers at its heart. Participants will share successes and lessons learned from this maternal and newborn health intervention, to better determine how the programme can be scaled-up. Supported by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), UNICEF and other bodies and in partnership with the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In an era when social networking sites and blogs are visited by three quarters of online users, it's only natural that the medical profession would also tap into the power of social media tools. Caroline Richardson, M.D., associate professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, and her colleagues found that adding an interactive online community to an Internet-based walking program significantly decreased the number of participants who dropped out. Seventy-nine percent of participants who used online forums to motivate ...

When an antibiotic is consumed, researchers have learned that up to 90 percent passes through a body without metabolizing. This means the drugs can leave the body almost intact through normal bodily functions. In the case of agricultural areas, excreted antibiotics can then enter stream and river environments through a variety of ways, including discharges from animal feeding operations, fish hatcheries, and nonpoint sources such as the flow from fields where manure or biosolids have been applied. Water filtered through wastewater treatment plants may also contain used ...

Brussels, 7 December 2010 – Polar research must become an integral part of the European Union's research activities if Europe is to benefit from the dramatically changing face of the Polar Regions, the European Polar Board (EPB) said today at the launch of its strategic position paper on European polar research: "Relevance, Strategic Context and Setting Future Directions." European research activities in the Polar Regions are significant, amounting to over 300 million euro per year in recognition of the regions' key role as driver of the Earth's climate and the functioning ...

People who live in walkable communities are more civically involved and have greater levels of trust than those who live in less walkable neighborhoods. And this increase in so-called 'social capital' is associated with higher quality of life, according to Shannon Rogers and her team from the University of New Hampshire in the US. Their research, looking at the social benefits of walkability in communities, is published online in Springer's journal Applied Research in Quality of Life. A walkable community provides residents with easy access to post offices, town parks ...

Tel Aviv ― Career women who put babies on hold until after 40, or even 45, will be reassured by new research from Tel Aviv University. Even though there are associated risks for babies when postponing child-bearing, the neonates can overcome them, says Prof. Yariv Yogev of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine and the Hospital for Women at Rabin Medical Center. Working as a clinician in Israel, a country that supports in vitro fertilization (IVF) in older women, Prof. Yogev and his colleagues investigated the outcomes for mothers of 45 or more and their ...

7 December 2010 – We commonly think of sleep as a healing process that melts away the stresses of the day, preparing us to deal with new challenges. Research has also shown that sleep plays a crucial role in the development of memories. An important component of anxiety disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is the formulation of memories associated with fear. Therefore, researchers decided to evaluate whether sleep deprivation after exposure to an aversive event might eliminate the associated fear, due to the lack of memory consolidation that would ...

BOSTON (December 7, 2010) —Newly-created bioactive peptides promote wound healing through the growth of new blood vessels and epithelial tissue, such as skin. These wound-healing peptides, synthesized by researchers at the Tufts Center for Innovations in Wound Healing Research, increased angiogenesis in vitro by 200 percent. The discovery, reported online in advance of print this week in Wound Repair and Regeneration, provides a better understanding of the mechanisms regulating wound healing and may lead to new therapies for acute and chronic wound healing. "We identified ...

AUSTIN, Texas—The role a key molecule plays in a plant's ability to remember winter, and therefore bloom in the spring, has been identified by University of Texas at Austin scientists. Many flowering plants bloom in bursts of color in spring after long periods of cold in the winter. The timing of blooming is critical to ensure pollination, and is important for crop production and for droves of people peeping at wildflowers. One way for the plants to recognize the spring—and not just a warm spell during winter—is that they "remember" they've gone through a long enough ...

When two individuals face off in conflict, the classic problem in evolutionary biology known as the prisoner's dilemma says that the individuals are not likely to cooperate even if it is in their best interests to do so. But a new study suggests that with incentives to cooperate, natural selection can minimize conflict, changing the game from one of pure conflict to one of partial cooperation. The findings, published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that the prisoner's dilemma game, which has reigned as the dominant theoretical paradigm used to ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A new technique that jumpstarts the growth of nerve fibers could reverse much of the damage caused by strokes, researchers report in the Jan. 7, 2011 issue of the journal Stroke. "This therapy may be used to restore function even when it's given long after ischemic brain damage has occurred," senior author Gwendolyn Kartje, MD, PhD and colleagues write. The article has been published online in advance of the print edition of Stroke. Kartje is director of the Neuroscience Institute of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine and chief of ...