Applied Physics

A recent study by University of Virginia researchers demonstrates that the use of an acute, localized static magnetic field of moderate strength can result in significant reduction of swelling when applied immediately after an inflammatory injury. Thomas Skalak, professor and chair of biomedical engineering, and Cassandra Morris, a former Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering at U.Va., reported their findings in the November 2007 edition of the American Journal of Physiology. In the study, the hind paws of anesthetized rats were treated with inflammatory agents in order to simulate tissue…

Researchers at the Biodesign Institute are using bacteria as a viable option to make electricity. The next step could be commercialization of a promising microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology. "We can use any kind of waste, such as sewage or pig manure, and the microbial fuel cell will generate electrical energy," said Marcus, a Civil and Environmental Engineering graduate student and a member of the institute's Center for Environmental Biotechnology. Unlike conventional fuel cells that rely on hydrogen gas as a fuel source, the microbial fuel cell can handle a variety of water-based organic…

BOSTON and CAMBRIDGE, England, January 3 /PRNewswire/ -- - ZigBee technology connects people with their homes via the Internet and mobile phones AlertMe.com, provider of people-friendly home security, has teamed up with Ember to make it easy for people, wherever they may be, to keep a close eye on their homes by combining ZigBee wireless technology, the Internet and mobile phone networks. U.K.-based AlertMe.com is launching an intelligent home security service based on Ember's ZigBee technology that lets people protect, control and monitor their homes from around the world via the Internet…

Motorists who talk on cell phones drive slower on the freeway, pass sluggish vehicles less often and take longer to complete their trips, according to a University of Utah study. “At the end of the day, the average person’s commute is longer because of that person who is on the cell phone right in front of them,” says University of Utah psychology Professor Dave Strayer, leader of the research team. “That SOB on the cell phone is slowing you down and making you late.” “If you talk on the phone while you’re driving, it’s going to take you longer to get from point A to point B, and it’s going…

2007 was a big year for science, though it may be that we just noticed it more because it was our first year too. If you're reading this article, you're probably already a fan of our "just science" concept and it seems to be catching on everywhere. We wanted to create a site where the best science writers, regardless of popularly or politics or ideology, could get together in one place and write about science, whenever they want on whatever topics they want. We went to top people in their fields; well-known authors, post-docs and professors in our various categories, and explained what we…

A team of biologists have developed a model mapping the control circuit governing a whole free living organism. This is an important milestone for the new field of systems biology and will allow the researchers to model how the organism adapts over time in response to its environment. This study marks the first time researchers have accurately predicted a cell’s dynamics at the genome scale (for most of the thousands of components in the cell). The findings, which are based on a study of Halobacterium salinarum, a free-living microbe that lives in hyper-extreme environments, appear in the…

A unique electron microscope that can help create four-dimensional “movies” of molecules may hold the answers to research questions in a number of fields including chemistry, biology, and physics, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News. In the article, C&EN Associate Editor Rachel Petkewich notes that the microscope, located at the California Institute of Technology, is a modified transmission electron microscope interfaced with an ultrafast laser. The ultrafast microscope is the only one capable of capturing four-dimensional pictures of molecules — 3-D structural…

Scientists have genetically engineered a mosquito to release a sea-cucumber protein into its gut which impairs the development of malaria parasites, according to research in PLoS Pathogens. Researchers say this development is a step towards developing future methods of preventing the transmission of malaria. Malaria is caused by parasites whose lives begin in the bodies of mosquitoes. When mosquitoes feed on the blood of an infected human, the malaria parasites undergo complex development in the insect’s gut. The new study has focused on disrupting this growth and development with a lethal…

Over the past 50 years, humans have changed the world’s ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any other comparable period in human history. What researchers in a new Ambio paper are calling 'The Great Acceleration', stage 2 of the Anthropocene epoch, leads to questions how humankind will react in stage 3 - defined as the recognition that human activities are indeed affecting the structure and functioning of the Earth System as a whole. Increased research and understanding, the Internet, and more free and open societies have influenced humanity to become a self-conscious, active…

Every advance in memory storage devices presents a new marvel of just how much memory can be squeezed into very small spaces. Considering the potential of nanolasers being developed in Sakhrat Khizroev’s lab at the University of California, Riverside, things are about to get a lot smaller. As reported in the latest issue of Technology Review, Khizroev is leading a team exploring lasers so tiny that they point to a future where a 10-terabit hard drive is only one-inch square. That is 50 times the data density of today’s magnetic storage technology, a technology that has nearly reached its…