Technology
A technology designed to restore vision in patients suffering from age-related blindness will be demonstrated by a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley today. Developed by NASA Ames in conjunction with the Stanford University School of Medicine, the "Vision Chip" may help improve age-related macular degeneration, the number one cause of blindness in the elderly. "Nanotechnology that could restore vision is an exciting example of how NASA science and engineering, origially intended for outer space, can return enormous dividends for everyday life here on Earth," said Dr. David J. Loftus, a member of both the Life Sciences Division and the Integrated Product Team on Devices and Nanotechnology at NASA Ames.
Scientists have uncovered evidence of what is believed to be the earliest form of writing ever found in the New World. The discovery was based on glyphs carved on a cylindrical seal used to make imprints, and on greenstone plaque fragments found near La Venta in Tabasco, Mexico in the Gulf Coast region. The writings were produced during the Olmec era, a pre-Mayan civilization, and are estimated to date from 650 B.C.
Building upon this summer's groundbreaking finding that carbon nanotubes are fluorescent, chemists at Rice University have precisely identified the optical signatures of 33 "species" of nanotubes, establishing a new methodology for assaying nanotubes that is simpler and faster than existing methods. In research published this week by Science magazine, a spectroscopy research team led by Rice Chemistry Professor R. Bruce Weisman detailed the wavelengths of light that are absorbed and emitted by each type of light-emitting nanotube. The findings hold great promise for chemists, physicists and materials scientists studying nanotubes, because it otherwise takes many hours of tedious testing for researchers to assay a single sample of nanotubes, and optical tests could be much faster and simpler.
Lichens, combinations of fungi and algae, are quietly trodden underfoot by animals and hikers the world over. Now a new study by a Brigham Young University father-son team has demonstrated that lichens could replace expensive environmental monitors since they accumulate some pollutants in concentrations that correctly manifest the amount of the pollutants in the surrounding air. "Previously, we knew that lichens took things up from the air, but no one had any significant results indicating that what is in the lichen accurately reflects what is in the air," said Larry St. Clair, the chair of BYU's department of integrative biology and co-author of the study published in the latest issue of "Atmospheric Environment." "This is the first definitive data that shows not only do lichens take pollution up from the air, but they take it up in patterns that exactly reflect the amount of pollutants in the air."
The culmination of hundreds of research dives, scientific analysis, and high-tech mapping software has led to a fundamentally new approach for designing networks of marine reserves. An effort led by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and reported in the Dec. 6 issue of Science, could become a powerful new method for decision makers charged with developing marine reserves and a forerunner for similar efforts around the world.
A California research team has mapped an entire group of human enzymes, providing important information for the development of a new generation of drugs to treat cancer and other diseases. The findings will be published in the Dec. 6 issue of Science. In the study, the team from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the biotechnology company SUGEN created a detailed catalog of the 518 protein kinase genes encoded by the human genome. Protein kinases are among the most important regulators of cell behavior. By chemically adding phosphate groups to other proteins, they control the activity of up to 30 percent of all cellular proteins, and are involved in almost all cellular functions.
Evacuating heat is one of the great problems facing engineers as they design faster laptops by downsizing circuit sizes and stacking chips one above the other. The heat from more circuits and chips increase the likelihood of circuit failures as well as overly heated laps. "Space, military, and consumer applications, are all bumping up against a thermal barrier," says Sandia researcher Mike Rightley, whose newly patented "smart" heat pipe seems to solve the problem. The simple, self-powered mechanism transfers heat to the side edge of the computer, where air fins or a tiny fan can dissipate the unwanted energy into air.
The prevailing view among scientists is that global climate change may prove beneficial to many farmers and foresters -- at least in the short term. The logic is straightforward: Plants need atmospheric carbon dioxide to produce food, and by emitting more CO2 into the air, our cars and factories create new sources of plant nutrition that will cause some crops and trees to grow bigger and faster. But an unprecedented three-year experiment conducted at Stanford University is raising questions about that long-held assumption. Writing in the journal Science, researchers concluded that elevated atmospheric CO2 actually reduces plant growth when combined with other likely consequences of climate change -- namely, higher temperatures, increased precipitation or increased nitrogen deposits in the soil.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the use of fossil fuels for household cooking and heating may make more environmental sense for the estimated 2 billion rural poor in the world, according to a researcher from the University of California, Berkeley. Because they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuels have been largely dismissed as a viable alternative for the one-third of the world's population who now use coal and local biomass - including wood, crop residues and dung - for cooking and heating, said Kirk R. Smith, professor and chair of environmental health sciences at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. Efforts have been focused on equipping the rural poor with renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power.
A full-body computed tomography (CT) scan may be beneficial to fewer people than previously thought, according to a study presented December 3, 2002 at the 88th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago. The results of a second study pointed out the need to establish guidelines and standardized reporting systems for this hotly debated diagnostic procedure.
Study findings from the Inner City Health Research Unit at St. Michael's Hospital/ University of Toronto and the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center demonstrate that screening and treating new immigrants from developing nations for the latent stage of tuberculosis infection would result in substantial public health and economic benefits. Results are published in tomorrow's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. Tuberculosis is one of the world's most prevalent diseases which infects nearly two billion people worldwide or roughly one-third of the world's total population, most of which live in developing nations.
For several years it has been widely believed that increased ultraviolet-B radiation because of thinning of atmospheric ozone was a major culprit in deforming amphibian offspring and dwindling populations. Now two new studies cast serious doubt on that assumption, and the lead author of one says the belief could have had negative impacts on efforts to save amphibians. "All of the concentration on UV might have misdirected our conservation and research priorities," said Wendy Palen, a University of Washington zoology doctoral student.
Researchers have developed an automated system that can swiftly map capillaries in a live tumor. What used to take days of manually tracing the vessels, now takes two minutes. The diagnostic tool, in use at Harvard Medical School and at Northeastern University, is a boon to oncologists who aim to understand how blood vessels form in tumors.
Most baby-boomers are not aging well, and as they enter their golden years, the burden and cost of their health care will only increase according to a new Emory University study that found only one in five adults has good, comprehensive mental and physical health. Baby-boomers composed the largest demographic portion of the survey, and a majority of them fell within the "incompletely healthy" category, signaling that only a few are aging with their health intact, and many have the potential to develop serious illnesses, says Corey Lee Keyes, lead researcher and assistant professor of sociology at Emory. The study appears in the November/December issue of the "American Journal of Health Promotion."
A unique design for self-organizing robots controlled by "hormonal" software is moving toward space. At the Robosphere 2002 conference held at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley November 14-15, Wei-Min Shen of the USC School of Engineering's Information Sciences Institute (ISI) presented an overview of an audacious project to have pieces of the proposed half-mile-long Space Solar Power System satellite put themselves together--self-assemble--without the help of astronauts.
