Tag: researchers

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2012) — Probing the largely unexplored question of what characteristics make a leader among schooling fish, researchers have discovered that by mimicking nature, a robotic fish can transform into a leader of live ones.

Through a series of experiments, researchers from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) aimed to increase understanding of collective animal behavior, including learning how robots might someday steer fish away from environmental disasters.

Alzheimer CureThe search for a cure for Alzheimer's disease has taken researchers to a remote region in the Colombian Highlands. Tom Clarke of Independent Television News reports.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2011) A summer research expedition organized by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has led to the identification of gigantic amoebas at one of the deepest locations on Earth.

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2011) Imagine having skin so supple you could stretch it out to more than twice its normal length in any direction -- repeatedly -- yet it would always snap back completely wrinkle-free when you let go of it. You would certainly never need Botox.

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ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2011) Women who use contraceptives like birth control pills experience memory changes, according to new UC Irvine research.
Their ability to remember the gist of an emotional event improves, while women not using the contraceptives better retain details.

"What's most exciting about this study is that it shows the use of hormonal contraception alters memory," UCI graduate researcher Shawn Nielsen said. "There are only a handful of studies examining the cognitive effects of the pill, and more than 100 million women use it worldwide."

ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2011) The demise of the world's forests some 250 million years ago likely was accelerated by aggressive tree-killing fungi triggered by global climate change, according to a new study by a University of California, Berkeley, scientist and her Dutch and British colleagues.

The researchers do not rule out the possibility that today's changing climate could cause a similar increase in pathogenic soil bacteria that could devastate forests already stressed by a warming climate and pollution.

ScienceDaily (June 8, 2011) A team of Virginia Commonwealth University scientists has discovered a new class of 'superatoms' -- a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table -- with unusual magnetic characteristics.

The superatom contains magnetized magnesium atoms, an element traditionally considered as non-magnetic. The metallic character of magnesium along with infused magnetism may one day be used to create molecular electronic devices for the next generation of faster processors, larger memory storage and quantum computers.

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2011) Scientists at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, have further boosted the energy conversion efficiency of flexible solar cells made of copper indium gallium (di)selenide (also known as CIGS) to a new world record of 18.7 percent -- a significant improvement over the previous record of 17.6 percent achieved by the same team in June 2010.

The measurements have been independently certified by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg, Germany.

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2011) Engineers at Brown University and in India have a promising new approach to treating heart-attack victims.
The researchers created a nanopatch with carbon nanofibers and a polymer.
In laboratory tests, natural heart-tissue cell density on the nanoscaffold was six times greater than the control sample, while neuron density had doubled.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2011) Researchers at Rice University and Texas A&M have discovered a way to pattern active proteins into bio-friendly fibers. The "eureka" moment came about because somebody forgot to clean up the lab one night.

The new work from the Rice lab of biochemist Kathleen Matthews, in collaboration with former Rice faculty fellow and current Texas A&M assistant professor Sarah Bondos, simplifies the process of making materials with fully functional proteins. Such materials could find extensive use as chemical catalysts and biosensors and in tissue engineering, for starters.