and quantum simulation to ultracold chemistry and tests of the standard model of particle physics. e can start studying chemical reactions that are happening at very near to absolute zerosays Dave Demille a Yale university physics professor
and magnetic fields. ntil now the complicated vibrations and rotations of molecules proved too difficult for such trapping.
Demille and his colleagues built their own apparatus in a basement lab. It is an elaborate multilevel tangle of wires computers electrical components tabletop mirrors and a cryogenic refrigeration unit.
and do it a lot of times. he slowed molecules enter a specially shaped magnetic field where opposing laser beams pass through the center of the field along three perpendicular axes.
and apply force that leaves the molecules levitating in an almost perfect vacuumdemille says. The researchers chose Srf for its structural simplicity it has effectively just one electron that orbits around the entire molecule. e thought it would be best to start applying this technique with a simple diatomic moleculedemille says.
The lead author of the paper is John Barry a former Yale graduate student now at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
isolationsays Christian Rabeling assistant professor of biology at the University of Rochester. e now have evidence that speciation can take place within a single colony. n discovering the parasitic Mycocepurus castrator researchers uncovered an example of sympatric speciation
which geographic barriers such as mountains separate members of a group causing them to evolve independently. ince Darwin s Origin of Species evolutionary biologists have debated long
and coauthor of the study that is published in the journal Current Biology ith this study we offer a compelling case for sympatric evolution that will open new conversations in the debate about speciation in these ants social insects and evolutionary biology
and indirectly for its parasite that doesn t do any of the work. That led the researchers to study the genetic relationships of all fungus-growing ants in South america including all five known and six newly-discovered species of the genus Mycocepurus to determine
whether the parasite did evolve from its presumed host. They found that the parasitic ants were indeed genetically very close to M. goeldii
and nuclear genomes of these parasitic ants and their host in an effort to confirm speciation
and the underlying genetic mechanism. he parasitic ants need to exercise discretion because taking advantage of the host species is considered taboo in ant society.
Offending ants have been known to be killed by worker mobs. As a result the parasitic queen of the new species has evolved into a smaller size making them difficult to distinguish from a host worker.
Host queens and males reproduce in an aerial ceremony in the wet tropics only during a particular season
#Scan baby s fingerprints to track immunizations Michigan State university rightoriginal Studyposted by Kim Ward-Michigan State on August 20 2014more than 2 million childrenâ die each year
because they don t receive their vaccinations on time. Researchers are developing a new system that scans a child sâ fingerprints to track
when vaccinations are due which means parents will need no longer to keep paper documents. In developing countries keeping track of a baby s vaccine schedule on paper is largely ineffective says Anil Jain professor of computer science
and engineering at Michigan State university. aper documents are lost easily or destroyedhe says. ur initial study has shown that fingerprints of infants
and toddlers have great potential to accurately record immunizations. You can lose a paper document
They used an optical fingerprint reader to scan the thumbs and index fingers of babies and toddlers.
From this scanned data a schedule will be created and become a part of the vaccine registry system.
Once the electronic registry is in place health care workers simply re-scan the child s fingers to view the vaccination schedule.
They know who has been vaccinated for what diseases and when additional booster shots are needed. The new electronic registry system will help overcome the lack and loss of information
which is the primary problem in the vaccine delivery system in developing countries Jain says.
Collecting fingerprints from fidgety infants isn t easy. Another challenge is their small fingerprint patterns have low contrast between ridges
and valleys. he process can still be improved but we have shown its feasibilityjain says. e will continue to work on refining the fingerprint matching software
and finding the best reader to capture fingerprints of young children which will be of immense global value.
in addition to tracking vaccinations says Mark Thomas executive director of Vaxtrac a nonprofit organization supporting Jain s research. olving the puzzle of fingerprinting young children will have far-reaching implications beyond health care
and education recordkeeping. ai Cao postdoctoral researcher and Sunpreet Arora doctoral student are coauthors of the study.
The findings will be presented at the International Joint Conference on Biometrics on Oct 2. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded the project.
Source: Michigan State Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license r
#Clear material on windows harvests solar energy Michigan State university rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Oswald-Michigan State on August 20 2014a new type of ransparent solar concentrator
can be used on windows or mobile devices to harvest solar energy without obscuring the view. Past efforts to create similar materials have been disappointing with inefficient energy production
or highly colored materials. o one wants to sit behind colored glasssays Richard Lunt an assistant professor of chemical engineering
and materials science at Michigan State university. t makes for a very colorful environment like working in a disco.
We take an approach where we actually make the luminescent active layer itself transparent. he solar harvesting system uses small organic molecules developed by Lunt
and his team to absorb specific nonvisible wavelengths of sunlight. e can tune these materials to pick up just the ultraviolet
The lowinginfrared light is guided to the edge of the plastic where it is converted to electricity by thin strips of photovoltaic solar cells. ecause the materials do not absorb
The technology is featured in the journal Advanced Optical Materials. t opens a lot of area to deploy solar energy in a nonintrusive waylunt says. t can be used on tall buildings with lots of windows or any kind of mobile device that demands high aesthetic quality like a phone or e reader.
Ultimately we want to make solar harvesting surfaces that you do not even know are there. unt says more work is needed
in order to improve its energy-producing efficiency. Currently it is able to produce a solar conversion efficiency close to 1 percent
#X-rays show live changes in cystic fibrosis New X-ray technology is allowing doctors to see almost instantly
if treatments for cystic fibrosis are working. Cystic fibrosis affects many of the body s systems but most severely the lungs and currently it can take several months to measure how effective treatment is for the early-fatal lung disease.
Lead researcher Kaye Morgan from Monash University says the imaging method allows doctors to look at soft tissue structures for example the brain airways
and lungs which are effectively invisible in conventional x-ray images. At the moment we typically need to wait for a cystic fibrosis treatment to have an effect on lung health measured by either a lung CT SCAN
or breath measurement to see how effective that treatment is Morgan says. However the new imaging method allows us for the first time to non-invasively see how the treatment is working live on the airway surface.
Morgan says this x-ray imaging method would enable doctors and researchers to measure how effective treatments are
and progress new treatments to the clinic at a much quicker rate a key goal of co-authors Martin Donnelley and David Parsons of the CF Gene therapy group at the Women s and Children s Hospital and the University
of Adelaide s Robinson Research Institute. Because we will be able to see how effectively treatments are working straight away we ll be able to develop new treatments a lot more quickly
and help better treat people with cystic fibrosis Morgan says. The new imaging method which was developed using a synchrotron x-ray source may also open up possibilities in assessing how effective treatments were for other lung heart and brain diseases.
The research appears in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Source: Monash University You are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license e
#Test keeps graphene pure enough for electronics Rice university rightoriginal Studyposted by Mike Williams-Rice on August 18 2014it s easy to accidentally introduce impurities to graphene
so scientists have developed a way to detect and identify out of place-place molecules on its surface using terahertz spectroscopy.
They expect the finding to be important to manufacturers considering the use of graphene in electronic devices.
The research appears in Scientific Reports. Even a single molecule of a foreign substance can contaminate graphene enough to affect its electrical and optical properties says Junichiro Kono of Rice university.
Laser pulses generated coherent bursts of terahertz radiation through a built-in surface electric field of the indium phosphide substrate that changed due to charge transfer between the graphene and the contaminating molecules.
The experimental results are a warning for electronics manufacturers . or any future device designs using graphene we have to take into account the influence of the surroundingssays Kono.
the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; the Ministry of Education Culture Sports Science and Technology-Japan;
and the Murata Science Foundation supported the research. Nanojapan is funded by the NSF s Partnerships for International Research and Education program.
Source: Rice Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license r
#Algorithms could adjust screens to your vision University of California Berkeley Original Studyposted by Sarah Yang-Berkeley on August 15 2014.
Researchers are developing vision-correcting displays for computer monitors that would let people see text and images clearly without their glasses or contact lenses.
The technology could potentially help hundreds of millions of people who currently need corrective lenses to use their smartphones tablets and computers.
One common problem for example is presbyopia a type of farsightedness in which the ability to focus on nearby objects is diminished gradually as the aging eyes lenses lose elasticity.
More importantly the displays could one day aid people with more complex visual problems known as high order aberrations
which cannot be corrected by eyeglasses says Brian Barsky professor of computer science and vision science and affiliate professor of optometry at University of California Berkeley. e now live in a world where displays are ubiquitous
and being able to interact with displays is taken for grantedsays Barsky who is leading this project. eople with higher order aberrations often have irregularities in the shape of the cornea
and this irregular shape makes it very difficult to have a contact lens that will Fit in some cases this can be a barrier to holding certain jobs
because many workers need to look at a screen as part of their work. he UC Berkeley researchers
and Ramesh Raskar colleagues at the Massachusetts institute of technology to develop their latest prototype of a vision-correcting display.
The setup adds a printed pinhole screen sandwiched between two layers of clear plastic to an ipod display to enhance image sharpness.
A paper on their findings is available in ACM Transaction on Graphics. he significance of this project is that instead of relying on optics to correct your vision we use computationsays lead author Fu-Chung Huang who worked on this project as part of his computer science Phd dissertation at UC
and Austin Roorda professor of vision science and optometry. his is a very different class of correction
and it is non-intrusive. he algorithm which was developed at UC Berkeley works by adjusting the intensity of each direction of light that emanates from a single pixel in an image based upon a user s specific visual impairment.
In a process called deconvolution the light passes through the pinhole array in such a way that the user will perceive a sharp image. ur technique distorts the image such that
when the intended user looks at the screen the image will appear sharp to that particular viewersays Barsky. ut
if someone else were to look at the image it would look bad. n the experiment the researchers displayed images that appeared blurred to a camera which was set to simulate a person who is farsighted.
This latest approach improves upon earlier versions of vision-correcting displays that resulted in low-contrast images.
The new display combines light field display optics with novel algorithms. Huang now a software engineer at Microsoft corp. in Seattle notes that the research prototype could easily be developed into a thin screen protector
and that continued improvements in eye-tracking technology would make it easier for the displays to adapt to the position of the user s head position. n the future we also hope to extend this application to multi-way correction on a shared display
so users with different visual problems can view the same screen and see a sharp imagesays Huang.
The National Science Foundation helped support this work t
#Copper foam could make extra CO2 useful Brown University rightoriginal Studyposted by Kevin Stacey-Brown on August 14 2014a catalyst made from a foamy form of copper has vastly different electrochemical
properties from catalysts made with smooth copper in reactions involving carbon dioxide according to the new study.
As levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continue to rise researchers are looking for ways to make use of it.
One approach is to capture CO2 emitted from power plants and other facilities and use it as a carbon source to make industrial chemicals most
of which are made currently from fossil fuels. The problem is that CO2 is extremely stable and reducing it to a reactive and useful form isn t easy. opper has been studied for a long time as an electrocatalyst for CO2 reduction
and it s the only metal shown to be able to reduce CO2 to useful hydrocarbonssays senior author Tayhas Palmore professor of engineering at Brown University. here was some indication that
if you roughen the surface of planar copper it would create more active sites for reactions with CO2. opper foam
which has been developed only in the last few years provided the surface roughness that Palmore and her colleagues were looking for.
The foams are made by depositing copper on a surface in the presence of hydrogen and a strong electric current.
After depositing copper foams on an electrode the researchers set up experiments to see what kinds of products would be produced in an electrochemical reaction with CO2 in water.
what had been reported with planar electrodes which was a surprisepalmore says. e ve identified another parameter to consider in the electroreduction of CO2.
The cost of commodity chemicals is going nowhere but up as long as production is dependent on fossil fuels. he Center for Capture
#Laser detects distant bombs with 99%accuracy Texas A&m University rightoriginal Studyposted by Ryan Garcia-Texas A&m on August 13 2014new laser technology makes it possible to identify explosives biological
The lasers travel long distances and identify dangerous materials present within powders that commonly act as carriers for explosive nitrates and lethal biological agents such as anthrax and ricin.
When laser light contacts the molecules present within the powder it experiences a scattering effect that can be analyzed to construct a sort of molecular ingerprintthat reveals its exact chemical makeup says Vladislav Yakovlev professor in the biomedical engineering department at Texas A&m University. s
Instead some of the light from the laser scatters and the path length increases because of this multiple scattering#something scientists refer to as the aman effect. his scattered light is emitted then from the powder in a strong diffuse form that is visually similar to a bright LED light.
It#s this extremely bright emission that can be collected from long distances. e get a large amount of energy into the system in a very short amount of time.
It s an achievement that could pave the way for the technology s use in military
and collect the resulting signal with a powerful parabolic antenna so that the signal could then be analyzed
while keeping personnel out of harm s way. arian O. Scully professor physics and astronomy and researchers from Moscow State university contributed to the report.
The National Science Foundation and the US Air force Research Laboratory provided funding. Source: Texas A&m Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license A
#Star collision may explain the lonely supernova University of Warwick rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Frew-Warwick on August 11 2014 A massive collision between white dwarf
and neutron stars may explain the creation of transient supernovae explosions that tend to occur far away from host galaxies. ur paper examines so-called calcium-rich transientssays Joseph Lyman from the University of Warwick. hese are luminous explosions
Furthermore an explanation for core-collapse supernovae which calcium-rich transients resemble although fainter is the collapse of a massive star in a binary system where material is stripped from the massive star undergoing collapse.
or create an event that would look like a supernova. he researchers then compared their data to
Researchers from University of Leicester and the Lund University Observatory contributed to the work. Source:
University of Warwickyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license n
#We judge trustworthy faces in a snap New york University rightoriginal Studyposted by James Devitt-NYU on August 8 2014.
when we cannot consciously see it. he results are consistent with an extensive body of research suggesting that we form spontaneous judgments of other people that can be largely outside awarenessexplains Jonathan Freeman an assistant professor in New york University's psychology department.
The artificially generated faces were synthesized computer based on previous research showing that cues such as higher inner eyebrows
and computer-generated faces and rated how trustworthy or untrustworthy they appeared. As previous studies have shown subjects strongly agreed on the level of trustworthiness conveyed by each given face.
Backward masking works by presenting subjects with an irrelevant askimage that immediately follows an extremely brief exposure to a face
(whether untrustworthy or trustworthy) even though subjects could not consciously see any of the faces. hese findings provide evidence that the amygdala's processing of social cues in the absence of awareness may be more extensive than previously understoodobserves Freeman who as lead author conducted the study as a faculty member at Dartmouth
College. Source: New york Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license
and nanotubes Stanford university rightoriginal Studyposted by Bjorn Carey-Stanford on August 7 2014by injecting carbon nanotubes into the bloodstream scientists can use near-infrared lasers to see blood flow in a living animal s brain.
but could offer insight into human ailments such as strokes migraines and possibly Alzheimer s and Parkinson s diseases.
Some of the most damaging brain diseases can be traced to irregular blood delivery in the brain.
Meanwhile noninvasive techniques such as CT SCANS or MRI visualize function best at the whole-organ level
or NIR-IIA involves injectingâ water-soluble carbon nanotubes into a live mouse s bloodstream. The researchers then shine a near-infrared laser over the rodent s skull.
The light causes the specially designed nanotubes to fluoresce at wavelengths of 1300-1400 nanometers;
The fluorescing nanotubes can then be detected to visualize the blood vessels structure. Amazingly the technique allows scientists to view about three millimeters underneath the scalp
and is fine enough to visualize blood coursing through single capillaries only a few microns across says senior author Hongjie Dai professor of chemistry at Stanford university.
and skull and penetrate millimeters into the brain allowing us to see vasculature in an almost noninvasive waysays first author Guosong Hong who conducted the research as a graduate student in Dai s lab
Second injecting carbon nanotubes needs approval for clinical application; the scientists are currently investigating alternative fluorescent agents.
For now though the technique provides a new technique for studying human cerebral-vascular diseases such as stroke and migraines in animal models.
and Parkinson s diseases might elicit #or be caused in part by#changes in blood flow to certain parts of the brain.
NIR-IIA imaging might offer a means of better understanding the role of healthy vasculature in those diseases Hong says. e could also label different neuron types in the brain with biomarkers
Eventually we might be able to use NIR-IIA to learn how each neuron functions inside of the brain. ther coauthors of the study are from Stanford Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical school.
#Wearable vapor sensor can smell diabetes University of Michigan rightoriginal Studyposted by Catharine June-U. Michigan on August 6 2014.
A wearable vapor sensor could monitor diseases such as diabetes and hypertension by picking up airborne biomarkers exhaled
or released through the skin. ach of these diseases has its own biomarkers that the device would be able to sensesays Sherman Fan professor of biomedical engineering at University of Michigan
. or diabetes acetone is a marker for example. ther biomarkers it could detect include nitric oxide and oxygen abnormal levels
of which can point to conditions such as high blood pressure anemia or lung disease. Fan is developing the sensor with Zhaohui Zhong an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Girish Kulkarni a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering.
The device is faster smaller and more reliable than its counterparts which today are too big to wear.
Beyond disease monitoring the sensor has other applications. It would be able to register the presence of hazardous chemical leaks in a lab
or elsewhere or provide data about air quality. ith our platform technology we can measure a variety of chemicals at the same time
or modify the device to target specific chemicals. There are limitless possibilitieszhong says. To create their technology the researchers took a unique approach to detecting molecules. anoelectronic sensors typically depend on detecting charge transfer between the sensor
and a molecule in air or in solutionkulkarni says. However these previous techniques typically led to strong bonds between the molecules being detected and the sensor itself.
That binding leads to slow detection rates. nstead of detecting molecular charge we use a technique called heterodyne mixing in
which we look at the interaction between the dipoles associated with these molecules and the nanosensor at high frequencieskulkarni says.
This technique made possible through the use of graphene results in extremely fast response times of tenths of a second as opposed to the tens or hundreds of seconds typical in existing technology.
The sensor can detect molecules in sample sizes at a ratio of several parts per billion.
These nanoelectronic graphene vapor sensors can be embedded completely in a microgas chromatography system which is the gold standard for vapor analysis the researchers say.
The entire microgas chromatography system can be integrated on a single chip with low power operation and embedded in a badge-sized device that can be worn on the body to provide noninvasive and continuous monitoring of specific health conditions. e believe this device can be extremely beneficial to societyfan says.
University of Michiganyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license e
if drugs are counterfeit University of Michigan rightoriginal Studyposted by Kate Mcalpine-Michigan on August 6 2014counterfeit drugs make up to one-third of the pharmaceutical drug market in some countries.
and at worst are toxic are thought to kill more than 700000 people eachâ year. While less than 1 percent of the US pharmaceuticals market is believed to be counterfeit it is a huge problem in the developing world. ne challenge in fighting counterfeiting is need the to stay ahead of the counterfeiterssays Nicholas Kotov professor of chemical engineering who led the University
of Michigan effort. The method requires access to sophisticated equipment that can create very tiny features roughly 500 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
But once the template is made labels can be printed in large rolls at a cost of roughly one dollar per square inch.
The labels work because an array of tiny pillars on the top of a surface effectively hides images written on the material beneath.
Previously it was impossible to make nanopillars through cheap molding processes because the pillars were made from materials that preferred adhering to the mold rather than whatever surface they were supposed to cover.
To overcome this challenge the team developed a special blend of polyurethane and an adhesive.
The liquid polymer filled the mold but as it cured the material shrunk slightly. This allowed the pillars to release easily.
The usual material for making nanopillars is too brittle to survive handling well. The team demonstrated the nanopillars could stick to plastics fabric paper
and metal and they anticipate that the arrays will also transfer easily to glass and leather.
This work is reported in Advanced Materials. The university is pursuing patent protection for the intellectual property
and is seeking commercialization partners to help bring the technology to market. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency the National Science Foundation the Korea Ministry of Science Information and Communications technology and Future Planning the Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Korea Evaluation
Institute of Industry Technology funded the project. Source: University of Michiganyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license
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