ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Talking with other people in a friendly way can make it easier to solve common problems, a new University of Michigan study shows. But conversations that are competitive in tone, rather than cooperative, have no cognitive be…
VICTORIA — Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released today. This is true even …
UPTON, NY — A brain-scanning study at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, conducted with collaborators from Stony Brook University, reveals that an oral dose of methylphenidate, commonly known as Ritalin, improve…
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A University of Michigan researcher says it’s possible to triple fuel economy in gasoline-powered cars by 2035, but it’ll mean getting our automotive kicks from smart electronic technology and other forms of virtual performance rat…
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recently produced 10,400 Joules or 10.4 kiloJoules (kJ) of ultraviolet laser light in a single laser beamline, setting a world record for laser performance. In recent weeks NIF laser scientists also have used the first four NIF beamlines to set records for infrared and green single beam laser energies with 21 kJ and 11 kJ of energy delivered, respectively. NIF researchers focused this light into a special diagnostic system designed to provide precise measurements of laser beam quality and performance at these different frequencies.
Caltech computer scientists have developed a new data transfer protocol for the Internet fast enough to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds. The protocol is called FAST, standing for Fast Active queue management Scalable Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The researchers have achieved a speed of 8,609 megabits per second (Mbps) by using 10 simultaneous flows of data over routed paths, the largest aggregate throughput ever accomplished in such a configuration. More importantly, the FAST protocol sustained this speed using standard packet size, stably over an extended period on shared networks in the presence of background traffic, making it adaptable for deployment on the world’s high-speed production networks.
Those who believe they can function well on six or fewer hours of sleep every night may be accumulating a “sleep debt” that cuts into their normal cognitive abilities, according to research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. What’s more, the research indicates, those people may be too sleep-deprived to know it. The study, published in the March 15 issue of the journal Sleep, found that chronically sleep-deprived individuals reported feeling “only slightly sleepy” even when their performance was at its worst during standard psychological testing. The results provide scientific insight into the daily challenges that confront military personnel, residents and on-call doctors and surgeons, shift workers, parents of young children, and others who routinely get fewer than six hours of sleep each night.