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Energy 2010-12-21

Syracuse University researchers contribute new ideas to enhance efficiency of wind turbines

One issue confronting the efficiency of wind as a promising renewable energy source is the wind itself—specifically, its changeability. While the aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine is best under steady wind flow, the efficiency of the blades degrades when exposed to conditions such as wind gusts, turbulent flow, upstream turbine wakes and wind shear. Now, a new type of air-flow technology may soon increase the efficiency of large wind turbines under many different wind conditions. Researchers from Syracuse University's L.C. Smith College of Engineering and ...
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Medicine 2010-12-21

Scientists and physicians use genetic sequencing to identify and treat unknown disease

A collaborative team of scientists and physicians at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin uses genetic sequencing to identify and treat an unknown disease. For the one of the first times in medical history, researchers and physicians at The Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin sequenced all the genes in a boy's DNA to identify a previously-unknown mutation. The team was able not only to identify the mutation, but to develop a treatment plan using a cord blood transplant, and stop the course of the disease. This ...
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Medicine 2010-12-21

Massachusetts physician groups improving patient experience, study finds

Most Massachusetts physician groups are using results from a statewide patient survey to help improve patient experiences, but a significant number are not making use of the information or are making relatively limited efforts, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Although physician communication skills are thought to be crucial to patient-centered care, the physician groups studied rarely pursued strategies that focused on improving physicians' ability to communicate with patients, according to the study published online by the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Instead, ...
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Science 2010-12-21

Motion sickness reality in virtual world, too

CLEMSON — Clemson University psychologist Eric Muth sees motion sickness as potential fallout from high-end technology that once was limited to the commercial marketplace moving to consumer use in gaming devices. Microsoft's Kinect is the latest example of technology with the potential to use a helmet-mounted display to immerse the gamer in a 3D virtual world. It uses sensors and software to detect body movement and positioning to control responses in a game environment, although he said the risk of motion sickness from Kinect itself likely is low. "What was once limited ...
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Space 2010-12-21

Nasal congestion can mean severe asthma

Nasal congestion can be a sign of severe asthma, which means that healthcare professionals should be extra vigilant when it comes to nasal complaints. Furthermore, more severe asthma appears to be more common than previously thought, reveals a study from the Sahlgrenska Academy's Krefting Research Centre. Published in the online scientific journal Respiratory Research, the population study included 30,000 randomly selected participants from the west of Sweden and asked questions about different aspects of health. "This is the first time that the prevalence of severe ...
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Medicine 2010-12-21

Electronic nose detects cancer

György Horvath from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and researchers from the University of Gävle and KTH Royal Institute of Technology have been able to confirm in tests that ovarian cancer tissue and healthy tissue smell different. The results were published recently in the journal Future Oncology. In a previous project György Horvath used specially trained dogs to demonstrate that ovarian cancers emit a specific scent. The dogs were able to use this scent to distinguish between ovarian cancer tissue and both normal healthy abdominal tissue and other gynaecological ...
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Medicine 2010-12-21

Your genome in minutes: New technology could slash sequencing time

Scientists from Imperial College London are developing technology that could ultimately sequence a person's genome in mere minutes, at a fraction of the cost of current commercial techniques. The researchers have patented an early prototype technology that they believe could lead to an ultrafast commercial DNA sequencing tool within ten years. Their work is described in a study published this month in the journal 'Nano Letters' and it is supported by the Wellcome Trust Translational Award and the Corrigan Foundation. The research suggests that scientists could eventually ...
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Medicine 2010-12-21

Blacks with liver cancer more likely to die, study finds

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Black people with early stage liver cancer were more likely than white patients to die from their disease, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. Five years after diagnosis, 18 percent of white liver cancer patients were alive but only 15 percent of Hispanic patients and 12 percent of black patients were. Median survival times ranged from 10 months for whites and Hispanics to 8 months for blacks. The researchers also found racial and ethnic disparities in how often patients received treatment, with black ...
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Science 2010-12-21

Study: Natural supplement may reduce common-cold duration by only half a day

MADISON — An over-the-counter herbal treatment believed to have medicinal benefits has minimal impact in relieving the common cold, according to research by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. The study, published in this month's Annals of Internal Medicine, involved echinacea, a wild flower (also known as the purple coneflower) found in meadows and prairies of the Midwestern plains. The supplement is sold in capsule form in drug and retail stores. Dried echinacea root has been used in homemade remedies such as teas, dried herb and ...
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Science 2010-12-21

Young female chimpanzees appear to treat sticks as dolls

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The must-have gift for young female chimpanzees this holiday season might be in the Christmas tree, not under it. That's the finding of scientists at Harvard University and Bates College, who say female chimpanzees appear to treat sticks as dolls, carrying them around until they have offspring of their own. Young males engage in such behavior much less frequently. The new work by Sonya M. Kahlenberg and Richard W. Wrangham, described this week in the journal Current Biology, provides the first suggestive evidence of a wild non-human species playing ...
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Outsmarting the wind
Science 2010-12-21

Outsmarting the wind

RICHLAND, Wash. – Meteorological equipment typically used to monitor storms could help power grid operators know when to expect winds that will send turbine blades spinning, as well as help them avoid the sudden stress that spinning turbines could put on the electrical grid. "We know that the wind will blow, but the real challenge is to know when and how much," said atmospheric scientist Larry Berg. "This project takes an interesting approach –adapting an established technology for a new use – to find a reliable way to measure winds and improve wind power forecasts." Berg ...
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Science 2010-12-21

CCNY-led interdisciplinary team recreates colonial hydrology

Hydrologists may have a new way to study historical water conditions. By synthesizing present-day data with historical records they may be able to recreate broad hydrologic trends on a regional basis for periods from which scant data is available. Lack of reliable historical data can impede hydrologists' understanding of the current state of waterways and their ability to make predictions about the future. That was the case for the rivers of the northeastern United States between 1600 and 1800, a period that runs from just before the first European settlers arrived ...
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Science 2010-12-21

What makes a face look alive? Study says it's in the eyes

The face of a doll is clearly not human; the face of a human clearly is. Telling the difference allows us to pay attention to faces that belong to living things, which are capable of interacting with us. But where is the line at which a face appears to be alive? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that a face has to be quite similar to a human face in order to appear alive, and that the cues are mainly in the eyes. Several movies have tried and failed to generate lifelike animations of humans. ...
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Globalization burdens future generations with biological invasions
Science 2010-12-21

Globalization burdens future generations with biological invasions

A new study on biological invasions based on extensive data of alien species from 10 taxonomic groups and 28 European countries has shown that patterns of established alien species richness are more related to historical levels of socio-economic drivers than to contemporary ones. An international group of 16 researchers reported the new finding this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). The publication resulted from the three-year project DAISIE (Delivering Alien Invasive Inventory for Europe, www.europe-aliens.org), ...
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Science 2010-12-21

New report finds Cambodia's HIV/AIDS fight at critical crossroads in funding, prevention

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (21 December, 2010) – Despite Cambodia's remarkable history in driving down HIV infections, a report released today on the future of AIDS in the country argues that future success is not guaranteed and the government needs to focus increasingly on wise prevention tactics and assume more of the financing of its AIDS program. The report, called The Long-Run Costs and Financing of HIV/AIDS in Cambodia, written by Cambodian experts working closely with staff of the Results for Development Institute (R4D), based in Washington, D.C., finds that Cambodia, ...
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How often do giant black holes become hyperactive?
Space 2010-12-21

How often do giant black holes become hyperactive?

A new study from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory tells scientists how often the biggest black holes have been active over the last few billion years. This discovery clarifies how supermassive black holes grow and could have implications for how the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way will behave in the future. Most galaxies, including our own, are thought to contain supermassive black holes at their centers, with masses ranging from millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. For reasons not entirely understood, astronomers have found that these ...
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New study upends thinking about how liver disease develops
Medicine 2010-12-21

New study upends thinking about how liver disease develops

In the latest of a series of related papers, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in Austria and elsewhere, present a new and more definitive explanation of how fibrotic cells form, multiply and eventually destroy the human liver, resulting in cirrhosis. In doing so, the findings upend the standing of a long-presumed marker for multiple fibrotic diseases and reveal the existence of a previously unknown kind of inflammatory white blood cell. The results are published in this week's early online edition of the Proceedings ...
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UCSB scientists demonstrate biomagnification of nanomaterials in simple food chain
Engineering 2010-12-21

UCSB scientists demonstrate biomagnification of nanomaterials in simple food chain

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– An interdisciplinary team of researchers at UC Santa Barbara has produced a groundbreaking study of how nanoparticles are able to biomagnify in a simple microbial food chain. "This was a simple scientific curiosity," said Patricia Holden, professor in UCSB's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the corresponding author of the study, published in an early online edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology. "But it is also of great importance to this new field of looking at the interface of nanotechnology and the environment." Holden's ...
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Medicine 2010-12-21

New imaging advance illuminates immune response in breathing lung

Fast-moving objects create blurry images in photography, and the same challenge exists when scientists observe cellular interactions within tissues constantly in motion, such as the breathing lung. In a recent UCSF-led study in mice, researchers developed a method to stabilize living lung tissue for imaging without disrupting the normal function of the organ. The method allowed the team to observe, for the first time, both the live interaction of living cells in the context of their environment and the unfolding of events in the immune response to lung injury. The finding ...
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Strange new twist: Berkeley researchers discover Möbius symmetry in metamaterials
Engineering 2010-12-21

Strange new twist: Berkeley researchers discover Möbius symmetry in metamaterials

Möbius symmetry, the topological phenomenon that yields a half-twisted strip with two surfaces but only one side, has been a source of fascination since its discovery in 1858 by German mathematician August Möbius. As artist M.C. Escher so vividly demonstrated in his "parade of ants," it is possible to traverse the "inside" and "outside" surfaces of a Möbius strip without crossing over an edge. For years, scientists have been searching for an example of Möbius symmetry in natural materials without any success. Now a team of scientists has discovered Möbius symmetry in ...
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Environment 2010-12-21

New study examines immunity in emerging species of a major mosquito carrer of malaria

In notable back-to-back papers appearing in the prestigioous journal Science in October, teams of researchers, one led by Nora Besansky, a professor of biological sciences and a member of the Eck Institute for Global Health at the University of Notre Dame, provided evidence that Anopheles gambiae, which is one of the major mosquito carriers of the malaria parasite in Sub-Saharan Africa, is evolving into two separate species with different traits. Another significant study appearing in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and ...
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Science 2010-12-21

New study focuses on nitrogen in waterways as cause of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere

Jake Beaulieu, a postdoctoral researcher the Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, Ohio, who earned his doctorate at the University of Notre Dame, and Jennifer Tank, Galla Professor of Biological Sciences at the University, are lead authors of new paper demonstrating that streams and rivers receiving nitrogen inputs from urban and agricultural land uses are a significant source of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and the loss of the protective ozone layer. Nitrogen loading to river networks ...
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The orange in your stocking: researchers squeezing out maximum health benefits
Medicine 2010-12-21

The orange in your stocking: researchers squeezing out maximum health benefits

VIDEO: BYU nutritionist Tory Parker talks about his study into why oranges are so good for you. Click here for more information. Provo, Utah - In time for Christmas, BYU nutritionists are squeezing all the healthy compounds out of oranges to find just the right mixture responsible for their age-old health benefits. The popular stocking stuffer is known for its vitamin C and blood-protecting antioxidants, but researchers wanted to learn why a whole orange is better for ...
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Science 2010-12-21

Link between depression and inflammatory response found in mice

Vanderbilt University researchers may have found a clue to the blues that can come with the flu – depression may be triggered by the same mechanisms that enable the immune system to respond to infection. In a study in the December issue of Neuropsychopharmacology, Chong-Bin Zhu, M.D., Ph.D., Randy Blakely, Ph.D., William Hewlett, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues activated the immune system in mice to produce "despair-like" behavior that has similarities to depression in humans. "Many people exhibit signs of lethargy and depressed mood during flu-like illnesses," said Blakely, ...
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Medicine 2010-12-21

Boosting supply of key brain chemical reduces fatigue in mice

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have "engineered" a mouse that can run on a treadmill twice as long as a normal mouse by increasing its supply of acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter essential for muscle contraction. The finding, reported this month in the journal Neuroscience, could lead to new treatments for neuromuscular disorders such as myasthenia gravis, which occurs when cholinergic nerve signals fail to reach the muscles, said Randy Blakely, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Center for Molecular Neuroscience. Blakely and his colleagues inserted a gene into ...
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