Himalayan Viagra fuels caterpillar fungus gold rush
St. Louis MO (SPX) Oct 31, 2014 -
Overwhelmed by speculators trying to cash-in on a prized medicinal fungus known as Himalayan Viagra, two isolated Tibetan communities have managed to do at the local level what world leaders often fail to do on a global scale - implement a successful system for the sustainable harvest of a precious natural resource, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.
"There's th ...
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Hybrid fluid transmission enables light and swift robotic arms
Glendale CA (SPX) Oct 31, 2014 -
Engineers routinely face tradeoffs as they design robotic limbs - weight vs. speed, ease of control vs. fluidity. A new hybrid fluid transmission developed at Disney Research Pittsburgh promises to eliminate some of those tradeoffs, making possible robot arms that are light enough to move swiftly and gracefully, yet with precise control.
The transmission consists of antagonist pairs of rol ...
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2014 Antarctic Ozone Hole Holds Steady
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 31, 2014 -
The Antarctic ozone hole reached its annual peak size on Sept. 11, according to scientists from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The size of this year's hole was 24.1 million square kilometers (9.3 million square miles) - an area roughly the size of North America.
The single-day maximum area was similar to that in 2013, which reached 24.0 million square ...
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Harnessing error-prone chips
Boston MA (SPX) Oct 31, 2014 -
As transistors get smaller, they also grow less reliable. Increasing their operating voltage can help, but that means a corresponding increase in power consumption.
With information technology consuming a steadily growing fraction of the world's energy supplies, some researchers and hardware manufacturers are exploring the possibility of simply letting chips botch the occasional computatio ...
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Restoring wetlands can lessen soil sinkage, greenhouse gas emissions
Hanover NH (SPX) Oct 31, 2014 -
Restoring wetlands can help reduce or reverse soil subsidence and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to research in California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta by Dartmouth College researchers and their colleagues.
The study, which is one of the first to continually measure the fluctuations of both carbon and methane as they cycle through wetlands, appears in the journal by Glo ...
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Nanosafety research - there's room for improvement
Dubendorf, Switzerland (SPX) Oct 31, 2014 -
Empa toxicologist Harald Krug has lambasted his colleagues in the journal Angewandte Chemie. He evaluated several thousand studies on the risks associated with nanoparticles and discovered no end of shortcomings: poorly prepared experiments and results that don't carry any clout.
Instead of merely leveling criticism, however, Empa is also developing new standards for such experiments withi ...
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Clean Smell Doesn't Always Mean Clean Air
Philadelphia PA (SPX) Oct 31, 2014 -
Some of the same chemical reactions that occur in the atmosphere as a result of smog and ozone are actually taking place in your house while you are cleaning. A researcher in Drexel's College of Engineering is taking a closer look at these reactions, which involve an organic compound -called limonene- that provides the pleasant smell of cleaning products and air fresheners.
His research wi ...
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