Graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of graphitic carbon, has great potential to make electronic devices such as radios, computers and phones faster and smaller. But its unique properties have also led to difficulties in integrating the material into such devices. In a paper published Sept. 1 in the journal Nature, a group of UCLA researchers demonstrate how they have overcome some of these difficulties to fabricate the fastest graphene transistor to date. With the highest known carrier mobility — the speed at which electronic information is transmitted by a material ...

A new study from the University of Arizona shows that people in the midst of a divorce typically reveal how they are handling things – not so much by what they say but how they say it. In fact, data revealed that even complete strangers were able to figure out how people were coping with their emotions using relatively small amounts of information. The study, "Thin-Slicing Divorce: Thirty Seconds of Information Predict Changes in Psychological Adjustment Over 90 Days," published online in the journal Psychological Science, is one of a number of relatively recent person-perception ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have revealed new details about how cannibalistic bacteria identify peers suitable for consumption. The work, which employed imaging mass spectrometry, is a first step toward a broader effort to map all signaling molecules between organisms. "These are the molecules that control biology," said Pieter C. Dorrestein, PhD, associate professor at UC San Diego's Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and corresponding author of a paper published this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National ...

Global agricultural expansion cut a wide swath through tropical forests during the 1980s and 1990s. Over half a million square miles of new farmland – an area roughly the size of Alaska – was created in the developing world between 1980 and 2000, of which over 80 percent was carved out of tropical forests, according to Stanford researcher Holly Gibbs. "This has huge implications for global warming, if we continue to expand our farmland into tropical forests at that rate," said Gibbs, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Earth System Science, who ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- One of the most severe complications of brain surgery is a life-threatening blood clot in the lungs called a pulmonary embolism. But a Loyola University Health System study published in the Journal of Neurosurgery suggests that screening methods hospitals typically use to access the risk of pulmonary embolisms may fall short. Hospitals typically screen for blood clots in legs, which can break free, travel to the lungs and cause pulmonary embolisms. But in the Loyola study, only seven of the 22 patients who experienced pulmonary embolisms showed evidence ...

Researchers at The University of Western Ontario have provided the first direct evidence using a biological marker, to show chronic stress plays an important role in heart attacks. Stressors such as job, marital and financial problems have been linked to the increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease including heart attack. But there hasn't been a biological marker to measure chronic stress. Drs. Gideon Koren and Stan Van Uum developed a method to measure cortisol levels in hair providing an accurate assessment of stress levels in the months prior to an acute ...

DALLAS – Sept. 3, 2010 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have identified unique metabolic properties that allow a specific type of stem cell in the body to survive and replicate in low-oxygen environments. In a study published in the September issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, investigators found that the low-oxygen microenvironments that ordinarily deprive and starve other kinds of cells are tolerated by a type of stem cell used as the primary material for bone-marrow transplantation. These cells, called hematopoietic stem cells, are found in marrow ...

Researchers from across the U.S., as part of the Infantile Spasms Working Group (ISWG), established guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of infantile spasms (IS). The goal of the ISWG is to improve patient outcomes by creating protocols that educate pediatricians on early diagnosis and treatment options. Full details of this study appear online in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the International League Against Epilepsy. Infantile spasms—known also as West syndrome and named after Dr. William James West who provided the first account ...

A large international study aimed at improving the care of muscular dystrophy patients worldwide is being launched by physicians, physical therapists, and researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Neurologist Robert "Berch" Griggs, M.D., is heading the study of treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common form of the disease that affects children. The condition, which affects boys almost exclusively, progresses rapidly. Boys' symptoms start when they are toddlers; untreated, they end up in a wheelchair before they become teenagers. With ...

In 2005 an outbreak of the H5N1 'bird flu' virus in South East Asia led to widespread fear with predictions that the intercontinental migration of wild birds could lead to global pandemic. Such fears were never realised, and now research published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology reveals why the global spread of bird flu by direct migration of wildfowl is unlikely but also provides a new framework for quantifying the risk of avian-borne diseases. The highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus is primarily a disease of poultry, often resulting ...

The first clinical trials on a new investigational drug being developed to treat infections caused by Hepatitis C virus have been successfully completed. Completion of the initial phase (phase 1a) of trials of INX-189, discovered and first prepared by researchers at Cardiff University's Welsh School of Pharmacy in 2008, means the chances of it becoming an approved medicine have significantly improved. Approximately 170 million people worldwide are affected with Hepatitis C, which can lead to liver cancer, cirrhosis and death. It is the leading cause of liver transplantation ...

ESA's Envisat satellite has been tracking the progression of the giant iceberg that calved from Greenland's Petermann glacier on 4 August 2010. This animation shows that the iceberg, the largest in the northern hemisphere, is now entering Nares Strait – a stretch of water that connects the Lincoln Sea and Arctic Ocean with Baffin Bay. The Petermann glacier in northern Greenland is one of the largest of the country's glaciers – and until August it had a 70 km tongue of floating ice extending out into the sea. The glacier regularly advances towards the sea at about 1 km ...

CAMDEN — One mention of E. coli conjures images of sickness and food poisoning, but the malevolent bacteria may also be the key to the future of renewable energy. Desmond Lun, an associate professor of computer science at Rutgers University–Camden, is researching how to alter the genetic makeup of E. coli to produce biodiesel fuel derived from fatty acids. "If we can engineer biological organisms to produce biodiesel fuels, we'll have a new way of storing and using energy," Lun says. Creating renewable energy by making fuels, like making ethanol out of corn, has been ...

Only about one in every six Americans who have ever been overweight or obese loses weight and maintains that loss, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. While that number is larger than most weight-loss clinical trials report, the majority of Americans are still unable to lose weight and keep it off. Identifying those who lose weight and successfully maintain that loss may aid health professionals in developing approaches to help others maintain weight loss, the researchers say. Two-thirds of the United States adult population is overweight, defined ...

Ten years on, Martin McKee reflects on report placed health system performance rankings firmly on political agenda. Martin McKee, Professor of European Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has contributed one of three commentaries appearing today in the journal Health Policy and Planning, each of which take a different perspective on the World Health Report 2000 on health systems (WHR2000). It is ten years since the publication of WHR2000, a controversial document which many at the time believed had been published prematurely, and which introduced ...

Hurricane Earl lashed the North Carolina coast last night and this morning, September 3, and is now headed for Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This morning's image from the GOES-13 satellite saw Hurricane Earl's clouds covering most of the northeastern U.S. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite known as GOES-13 captured an image of Hurricane Earl at 7:32 a.m. EDT this morning, September 3. The image clearly showed a huge Hurricane Earl northeast of North Carolina with cloud cover stretching over the northeastern U.S. A disorganized Fiona was also seen southeast ...

Hurricane Earl, currently a Category Two storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale with maximum sustained winds of 100 knots (115 miles per hour), continues to push relentlessly toward the U.S. East Coast, and NASA scientists, instruments and spacecraft are busy studying the storm from the air and space. Three NASA aircraft carrying 15 instruments are busy criss-crossing Earl as part of the agency's Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP, which continues through Sept. 30. GRIP is designed to help improve our understanding of how hurricanes such as Earl form ...

VERNON -- Dr. Dariusz Malinowski is seeing blue, and he is very excited. For four years, Malinowski, an AgriLife Research plant physiologist and forage agronomist in Vernon, has been working with collaborators Steve Brown of the Texas Foundation Seed and Dr. William Pinchak and Shane Martin with AgriLife Research on a winter-hardy hibiscus breeding project. The project was first a private hobby of the inventors and became a part of the strategic plan of the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Vernon in 2009. The flower commercialization is a part ...

Researchers at Queen's University have found that people with Parkinson's disease can perform automated tasks better than people without the disease, but have significant difficulty switching from easy to hard tasks. The findings are a step towards understanding the aspects of the illness that affect the brain's ability to function on a cognitive level. "We often think of Parkinson's disease as being a disorder of motor function," says Douglas Munoz, director of the Queen's Centre for Neuroscience Studies and a Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience. "But the issue is ...

While vultures across Asia teeter on the brink of extinction, the vultures of Cambodia are increasing in number, providing a beacon of hope for these threatened scavengers, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other members of the Cambodia Vulture Conservation Project. Researchers report that record numbers of vultures have been counted in Cambodia's annual vulture census, with 296 birds of three species found at multiple sites across the Northern and Eastern Plains of Cambodia by the Cambodia Vulture Conservation Project, a partnership of conservationists ...

Afla-Guard®, a biological control used to thwart the growth of fungi on peanuts, can be used on corn as well, according to a study by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists who helped develop it. After extensive study and research trials in Texas, Afla-Guard® was registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for use on corn, beginning with the 2009 crop. Recently retired Agricultural Research Service (ARS) microbiologist Joe Dorner at the National Peanut Research Laboratory in Dawson, Ga., helped develop Afla-Guard®, a biological control for ...

The modern world -- with its ubiquitous electronic devices and electrical power -- can trace its lineage directly to the discovery, less than two centuries ago, of the link between electricity and magnetism. But while engineers have harnessed electromagnetic forces on a global scale, physicists still struggle to describe the dance between electrons that creates magnetic fields. Two theoretical physicists from Rice University are reporting initial success in that area in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their new conceptual model, which ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Phosphorus, a mineral element found in rocks and bone, is a critical ingredient in fertilizers, pesticides, detergents and other industrial and household chemicals. Once phosphorus is mined from rocks, getting it into these products is hazardous and expensive, and chemists have been trying to streamline the process for decades. MIT chemistry professor Christopher Cummins and one of his graduate students, Daniel Tofan, have developed a new way to attach phosphorus to organic compounds by first splitting the phosphorus with ultraviolet light. Their method, ...

PHILADELPHIA –- An international collaboration led by a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist has shown that environmental factors, like temperature and light, play as much of a role in the activity of traditionally nocturnal monkeys as the circadian rhythm that regulates periods of sleep and wakefulness. The study also indicates that when the senses relay information on these environmental factors, it can influence daily activity and, in the case of a particular monkey species, may have even produced evolutionary change. It is possible, according to the study results, ...

NASA satellite data has noticed that Tropical Storm Fiona is getting "longer." That is, the storm is elongating in almost a north-south direction, indicating that she's weakening and may not make it through the weekend. Meanwhile, forecasters are watching two other areas for development in the eastern Atlantic this weekend. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-13 captured an image of Fiona on Friday, Sept. 3 at 10:32 a.m. EDT and the visible image showed a weak circulation in Fiona's center. It also appeared that Fiona's clouds were "stretched" ...