In recent years, topological insulators have become one of the hottest topics in physics. These new materials act as both insulators and conductors, with their interior preventing the flow of electrical currents while their edges or surfaces allow the movement of a charge. Perhaps most importantly, the surfaces of topological insulators enable the transport of spin-polarized electrons while preventing the "scattering" typically associated with power consumption, in which electrons deviate from their trajectory, resulting in dissipation. Because of such characteristics, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Illinois researchers have documented the first observations of some unusual physics when two prominent electric materials are connected: superconductors and graphene. Led by University of Illinois physics professor Nadya Mason, the group published its findings in the journal Nature Physics. When a current is applied to a normal conductor, such as metal or graphene, it flows through the material as a stream of single electrons. By contrast, electrons travel in pairs in superconductors. Yet when a normal material is sandwiched between superconductors, ...

A group of University of Cincinnati seniors in the psychology program will nationally present their comparison of educational technology alternatives to purchasing college textbooks that can run into hundreds of dollars per academic quarter. Their research as part of the statewide Ohio Digital Bookshelf Project will be presented on Monday, Feb. 14, at the national EDUCAUSE Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The Digital Bookshelf Project is an initiative under the University System of Ohio (USO) Strategic Plan for Higher Education to develop a high-quality, affordable, ...

Researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered that the placentas of women who suffer preeclampsia during pregnancy have an overabundance of a gene associated with the regulation of the body's immune system. Their discovery may lead to improved screening and prenatal care for these patients and their babies. Preeclampsia occurs in up to 10 percent of all pregnancies, and is responsible for about 15 percent of pre-term births. The disorder is usually marked by a rapid rise in blood pressure that can lead to stroke, seizures or organ failures in the mother. ...

WORCESTER, Mass. – Year-end test scores of Massachusetts middle school students whose teachers used a Web-based tutoring platform called ASSISTments as a central part of their mathematics instruction were significantly better than those of students whose teachers did not use the platform, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Educational Computing Research. Conducted by Neil T. Heffernan, PhD, of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and Kenneth R. Koedinger, PhD, and Elizabeth A. McLaughlin, both of Carnegie Mellon University, the study examined data ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- A new analysis of sulfur emissions appearing in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics shows that after declining for a decade, worldwide emissions rose again in 2000 due largely to international shipping and a growing Chinese economy. An accurate read on sulfur emissions will help researchers predict future changes in climate and determine present day effects on the atmosphere, health and the environment. "Sulfur dioxide is an important component of the atmosphere. It changes the radiative balance of the earth by influencing the amount of ...

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients with diabetes. Patients with type 1diabetes have a 200 percent to 400 percent greater chance of developing cardiovascular disease than those without diabetes. Medical College of Wisconsin researchers at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin discovered the early signs of cardiovascular disease are likely to manifest before the onset of puberty in many children with diabetes. Those findings are published in the February 2, 2011 online version of Diabetes Care and will be in the March 2011 issue of Diabetes Care. Led ...

VIDEO: A new technology that allows wireless signals to be sent and received simultaneously on a single channel has been developed by Stanford researchers. Their research could help build faster, more... Click here for more information. "Wireless communication is a one-way street. Over." Radio traffic can flow in only one direction at a time on a specific frequency, hence the frequent use of "over" by pilots and air traffic controllers, walkie-talkie users and emergency ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Feb. 14, 2011 -- Bioethanol from new lines of native perennial prairie grass could become less costly because of plant engineering by The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation and fermentation research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe their transgenic version of switchgrass as one that produces about one-third more ethanol by fermentation than conventional switchgrass. This improved plant feedstock will be able to generate more biofuel per acre, benefiting not ...

Although many human factors/ergonomics studies conducted over the past few years indicate that drivers who talk on the phone fail to attend to the road and increase the likelihood of an accident, the monotony of driving may also pose an accident risk. New research by HF/E researchers at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, published in Human Factors, suggests that drivers who lose focus on the road because of boredom may actually increase their attention by engaging in a secondary task, particularly during the last leg of their journey. In a driving simulator, 45 ...

Budding guitarists seek the magical powers of rock hero instruments, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Like people from the Middle Ages who sought saints' relics, modern consumers like the budding rock guitarist desire fetishes (objects perceived as magical and possessing extraordinary power)" write authors Karen V. Fernandez (University of Aukland, New Zealand) and John L. Lastovicka (Arizona State University). "We live in a world where anybody with a modest amount of money can buy a close copy or a replica of a desired object," the authors ...

MADISON — With one arm raised and a determined scowl, the figure looks ready to march right off his carved tablet and into the history books. If only we knew who he was - corn god? Tribal chief? Sacred priest? "It's beautiful and was obviously very important," says University of Wisconsin-Madison archaeologist John Hodgson of the newly discovered stone monument. "But we will probably never know who he was or what the sculpture means in its entirety." The man is the central figure on a stone monument discovered in 2009 at a site called Ojo de Agua in far southern Mexico ...

Women prefer female service providers in situations where they might fall prey to stereotypes about their math and science abilities, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "One of the most widely held stereotypes in North America is that women's competence and aptitude in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) domains is less than men's," write authors Kyoungmi Lee (Yonsei University, Korea), Hakkyun Kim (Concordia University, Canada), and Kathleen Vohs (University of Minnesota). In their study, the authors demonstrate that stereotypes ...

Consumers often have a distorted view when they compare information that involves numbers, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "As a consumer, would your preference for a dishwasher depend on whether its warranty level is expressed in months rather than years?" write authors Mario Pandelaere (Ghent University, Belgium), Barbara Briers (Tilburg University, the Netherlands), and Christophe Lembregts (Ghent University, Belgium). To most consumers, the answer is "yes." The difference between an 84-month and a 108-month warranty looks bigger than ...

People make purchasing decisions by choosing between alternatives or by rejecting certain options. But a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research finds that focusing on ruling out an option can lead consumers to reverse their preferences. "Consider the decision to purchase an iPhone or a Blackberry," write authors Juliano Laran (University of Miami) and Keith Wilcox (Babson College). "If a consumer prefers a business phone, a choice task would lead her to purchase a Blackberry. In this research we demonstrate that rejecting alternatives makes consumers more likely ...

Many women who survive breast and gynecologic cancers want medical help for their sexual issues, but most do not get it. A survey of hundreds of cancer survivors, published online in the journal Cancer, confirms that more than forty percent want medical attention for their sexual health needs. "Some women have the courage to raise sexual concerns with their doctor, although repeated studies show they prefer the doctor to initiate the discussion," said Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago Medical Center ...

MADISON — Recalculating the global use of phosphorous, a fertilizer linchpin of modern agriculture, a team of researchers warns that the world's stocks may soon be in short supply and that overuse in the industrialized world has become a leading cause of the pollution of lakes, rivers and streams. Writing in the Feb. 14 edition of the journal Environmental Research Letters, Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Elena Bennett of McGill University report that the human use of phosphorous, primarily in the industrialized world, is causing the widespread ...

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research sheds some light into why someone would pay $48,875 for a tape measure that had belonged to Jackie Kennedy or $3,300 for Bernie Madoff's footstool. "Why do people pay money for celebrity possessions?" write authors George E. Newman (Yale University), Gil Diesendruck (Bar-Ilan University), and Paul Bloom (Yale University). "Celebrity items often have little functional value. And because the objects themselves tend to be relatively common artifacts (clothing, furniture, etc.) they are often physically indistinguishable from ...

When your friend is a service provider, things can get complicated. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, a problem can lead to feelings of betrayal or empathy, depending on the circumstances. "Imagine that you are planning to celebrate your birthday at your favorite restaurant. You ask the owner to hold a sea-view table for you and he indicates that he will try to do so. When you arrive at the restaurant, however, he tells you that all of the sea-view tables have been taken. What would your reaction be?" write authors Lisa C. Wan (Lingnan University), ...

Tropical Cyclone Bingiza has made landfall in northeastern Madagascar, and NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites captured visible infrared satellite data of the storm's progression over the weekend, revealing the power behind the storm. The movement and landfall of Tropical Cyclone Bingiza was captured over the weekend of Feb. 12-13 in a series of infrared satellite imagery from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. Aqua and Terra provided companion visible images to the infrared images of Bingiza's track across northern ...

Healthcare practitioners can increase the number of patients with heart disease referred to a cardiac rehabilitation program by 40 per cent, helping them to reduce their risk of dying and improve their quality of life, say researchers at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. Previous studies, including one by Taylor in 2004, indicate that participating in cardiac rehab after a cardiac illness, such as a heart attack, can reduce the risk of death by approximately 25 per cent, a reduction similar to that of other standard therapies such as cholesterol-lowering medications (statins) ...

That human evolution follows a progressive trajectory is one of the most deeply-entrenched assumptions about our species. This assumption is often expressed in popular media by showing cavemen speaking in grunts and monosyllables (the GEICO Cavemen being a notable exception). But is this assumption correct? Were the earliest humans significantly different from us? In a paper published in the latest issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologist John Shea (Stony Brook University) shows they were not. The problem, Shea argues, is that archaeologists have been focusing ...

Rising sea levels could threaten an average of 9 percent of the land within 180 U.S. coastal cities by 2100, according to new research led by University of Arizona scientists. The Gulf and southern Atlantic coasts will be particularly hard hit. Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, Fla., and Virginia Beach, Va. could lose more than 10 percent of their land area by 2100. The research is the first analysis of vulnerability to sea-level rise that includes every U.S. coastal city in the lower 48 with a population of 50,000 or more. The latest scientific projections indicate that ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 15, 2011 – The risk of deadly hantavirus outbreaks in people can be predicted months ahead of time by using satellite images to monitor surges in vegetation that boost mouse populations, a University of Utah study says. The method also might forecast outbreaks of other rodent-borne illnesses worldwide. "It's a way to remotely track a disease without having to go out and trap animals all the time," says Denise Dearing, professor of biology at the University of Utah and co-author of the study published online Wednesday, Feb. 16, in the journal Global ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Breast cancer screening with MRI can detect invasive cancers missed on mammography in women who've undergone chest irradiation for other diseases, according to a new study published online and in the April print edition of Radiology. Women who receive radiation therapy as children and young adults for diseases like Hodgkin's lymphoma face a significantly greater risk of breast cancer later in life. The incidence of breast cancer increases approximately eight years after chest irradiation, and 13 percent to 20 percent of women treated with moderate- to ...