Science and Enterprise

Tag: university

  • Researchers Develop Low-Energy Cardiac Defibrillation

    Scientists from Germany, France, and the U.S. have developed a new process to regulate dangerous fluctuations in heart rhythms with far less energy and pain than current methods. The team’s findings appear in the current issue of the journal Nature (paid subscription required). The regular human heartbeat is controlled by the heart’s electrical system. An…

  • Grant Awarded for Mind-Machine Engineering Research Center

    National Science Foundation announced an $18.5 million grant to establish an Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering based at University of Washington in Seattle. The grant is for five years of funding, with an option for another five years. The new center is expected to research robotic devices that interact with, assist, and understand…

  • Rice Bolstered for Climate Impacts by Fungus Spores

    Rice can become adapted to climate change by colonizing its seeds or plants with the spores of tiny naturally occurring fungi, according to new research led by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The study is published online in the journal PLoS One. Rice, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, feeds half of the…

  • Chemical Particles in Diesel Fumes Pose Cardiac Risk

    Researchers at University of Edinburgh in the U.K. and colleagues in the Netherlands and Sweden have found that ultrafine particles from the burning of diesel fuel can increase the chances of blood clots forming in arteries, leading to a heart attack or stroke. Their findings appear in the current issue of the European Heart Journal.…

  • Engineers Develop Nanotech Solar Thermal Fuel Cell

    Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a process for storing solar energy in the form of heat with a material based on carbon nanotubes. A description of the process by engineering professor Jeffrey Grossman and postdoc Alexie Kolpak appears online in the journal Nano Letters (paid subscription required). Grossman and Kolpak’s methods involve…

  • Individualized Medical Cost-Effectiveness Metric Proposed

    A physician and health economist at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto have devised a way to tailor a common measure of medical cost effectiveness for individual decision-making. Their findings appear in the current issue of the journal PLoS Medicine. John Ioannidis, chief of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and health economist Alan…

  • Quick Color-Change Lens Technology Leads to New Company

    A professor of chemistry and colleagues at University of Connecticut in Storrs have devised a process for quick-changing, variable colors in films and displays, such as sunglasses. Greg Sotzing and one of his colleagues started a company called Alphachromics Inc. to commercialize the technology for consumer sunglasses lenses and military goggles. Transition lenses normally use…

  • Company-Institute Teams to Tackle Residual HIV Infection

    The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of National Institutes of Health awarded three research teams more than $14 million a year, for up to five years, to develop strategies to help rid the body of HIV infections. The grants to project teams composed of private companies and universities or research institutes are…

  • International Team Completes Draft Sequence of Potato Genome

    The Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC), a global group of universities and research institutes, has published a draft sequence of the potato genome. Their work appears in the current issue of the journal Nature. PGSC began in 2006 at Wageningen University & Research Centre in the Netherlands, and has grown to include 29 research groups…

  • Solar Panels Resembling Ivy to be Installed at University

    Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology (SMIT), a company in Brooklyn, New York, has developed solar panels that resemble ivy leaves and assembles them in arrays to cover a building’s walls. The first U.S. installation of SMIT’s solar array is, of course, a college campus: University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Solar Ivy, as SMIT calls…