Are you allergic to peanuts and worried there might be some in that cookie? Now you can find out using a rather unlikely source: your cell phone.
A team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a lightweight device called the iTube, which attaches to a common cell phone to detect allergens in food samples. The iTube attachment uses the cell phone’s built-in camera, along with an accompanying smart-phone application that runs a test with the same high level of sensitivity a laboratory would.(more…)
A device designed by engineers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is part of the Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD), an experimental airborne system developed by the Earth Science Office at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
Known as an analog beam-former, the GTRI device is part of the radiometer, which is being tested by NASA on a Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. The radiometer measures microwave radiation emitted by the sea foam that is produced when high winds blow across ocean waves. By measuring the electromagnetic radiation, scientists can remotely assess surface wind speeds at multiple locations within the hurricanes. (more…)
Berkeley Lab scientists develop a new nanotech tool to probe solar-energy conversion
If nanoscience were television, we’d be in the 1950s. Although scientists can make and manipulate nanoscale objects with increasingly awesome control, they are limited to black-and-white imagery for examining those objects. Information about nanoscale chemistry and interactions with light—the atomic-microscopy equivalent to color—is tantalizingly out of reach to all but the most persistent researchers.
But that may all change with the introduction of a new microscopy tool from researchers at the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) that delivers exquisite chemical details with a resolution once thought impossible. The team developed their tool to investigate solar-to-electric energy conversion at its most fundamental level, but their invention promises to reveal new worlds of data to researchers in all walks of nanoscience. (more…)
More Than Half of Physicians Show Interest in Using Mobile Devices and Tablets at Work
RESTON, VA, December 3, 2012 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released new findings from a study based on data generated by the comScore/Symphony Health Care Professional (HCP) Measurement Solutions offering, which provides insight into the actual online behavior of physicians with regard to health-related categories, and the Physician Mobile Survey, a survey of physicians’ attitudes toward mobile devices and tablets in the workplace. Based on a longitudinal study of a permission-based panel of 1,000 U.S. physicians, the study showed that HCP Content websites such as Medscape.com, which provide content or services catering specifically to physicians, reached the highest percentage of physicians (81 percent) in comparison to other types of health sites. However, Electronic Medical Records sites such as Allscripts.com showed higher engagement as physicians have begun to use these sites to replace paper record-keeping. The study also revealed that although computers are still the most often used device to go online at work by physicians, more than half of physicians expressed interest in using mobile phones and tablets in the workplace. (more…)
Light pollution is often associated with negative effects on wildlife. Now, ecologists have found that by mimicking a perpetual full moon, the gas flares and electrical lighting along Scotland’s Forth estuary are helping shorebirds stock up on more food during the winter to fuel their spring migration.
The research is the first to use night-time light data from US military satellites to study animal behaviour.
Coasts and estuaries are among the most rapidly developing areas on Earth. Night-time satellite images of the planet show that except Antarctica, continents are ringed with halos of brightly-lit human development. But coasts are also key wildlife sites. Every year, millions of waterbirds arrive from the Arctic to overwinter on UK coasts, yet scientists remain largely in the dark about how these birds respond to the bright lights of coastal cities and industry. (more…)
People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows.
The study is the first to explain how the brain is hard-wired to recognize when another person is being intentionally harmed. It also provides new insights into how such recognition is connected with emotion and morality, said lead author Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. (more…)
TORONTO, ON – Elderly people taking anti-hypertensive drugs are at a 43 per cent increased risk of having a hip fracture in the first 45 days of treatment, according to research conducted by family medicine Assistant Professor Dr. Debra Butt. A member of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and a family physician affiliated with The Scarborough Hospital, Dr. Butt’s study was published on November 19, 2012 in Archives of Internal Medicine. The study examined data from health care administrative databases in Ontario, looking at records from 2000 to 2009 for community-dwelling hypertensive patients with a mean age of 80.8 years.
There are serious consequences to a hip fracture for the elderly. In the first year of a hip fracture there is a higher mortality rate than is seen for many chronic diseases. Those who recover often lose their independence due to reduced mobility, which can result in depression and overall decreased quality of life. (more…)
UD researchers studying ‘fingerprint’ left on seafloor by Hurricane Sandy
Beneath the 20-foot waves that crested off Delaware’s coast during Hurricane Sandy, thrashing waters reshaped the floor of the ocean, churning up fine sand and digging deep ripples into the seabed. Fish, crustaceans and other marine life were blasted with sand as the storm sculpted new surfaces underwater.
UD scientists cued up their instruments to document the offshore conditions before, during and after Sandy’s arrival to scrutinize the differences and better predict the environmental impact of future storms. (more…)
