ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Mobile device use leads to few interactions between mother and child during mealtime
• Computer system more effective than doctors at producing comprehensive patient reports
• Commonalities in how different glassy materials fail
• Germanium: Semiconductor milestone
• The gold standard: Affordable catalyst for energy and environmental applications
• Cancer therapy shows promise for nuclear medicine treatment
• Online students give instructors higher marks if they think instructors are men
• Increased use of hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation for patients with early-stage breast cancer
• New technique could harvest more of the sun's energy
• Storing hydrogen underground could boost transportation, energy security
• NASA-funded FOXSI to observe X-rays from Sun
• Nanoscale resistors for quantum devices
• Composite materials can be designed in a supercomputer 'virtual lab'
• A mobile app for conducting opinion polls
• Staining every nerve: New approach offers scientists best image resolution
• Astronomers identify gas spirals as a nursery of twin stars through ALMA
• Nanotechnology against malaria parasites
• Using robots to get more food from raw materials
• Major milestone in development of interband cascade lasers
• High level engagement in comment sections can curb internet trolling
• Revolutionizing genomic sequencing of drug-resistant bacteria
• Study 'makes the case' for RFID forensic evidence management

Mobile device use leads to few interactions between mother and child during mealtime Posted: 09 Dec 2014 10:37 AM PST Moms who use mobile devices while eating with their young children are less likely to have verbal, nonverbal and encouraging interactions with them. The findings may have important implications about how parents balance attention between their devices with their children during daily life. Parent-child interactions during meal time in particular show a protective effect on child health outcomes such as obesity, asthma and adolescent risk behaviors.

Computer system more effective than doctors at producing comprehensive patient reports Posted: 09 Dec 2014 10:33 AM PST A computer system was more effective than doctors at collecting information about patient symptoms, producing reports that were more complete, organized and useful than narratives generated by physicians during office visits, according to a study.

Commonalities in how different glassy materials fail Posted: 09 Dec 2014 09:03 AM PST Researchers have now shown an important commonality that seems to extend through the range of glassy materials. They have demonstrated that the scaling between a glassy material's stiffness and strength remains unchanged, implying a constant critical strain that these materials can withstand before catastrophic failure, despite the extreme variation found among this class of material's physical properties.

Germanium: Semiconductor milestone Posted: 09 Dec 2014 09:03 AM PST A laboratory at Purdue University provided a critical part of the world's first transistor in 1947 -- the purified germanium semiconductor -- and now researchers there are on the forefront of a new germanium milestone. The team has created the first modern germanium circuit -- a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) device -- using germanium as the semiconductor instead of silicon.

The gold standard: Affordable catalyst for energy and environmental applications Posted: 09 Dec 2014 09:03 AM PST New nanoscale computational modeling predicts gold could be an effective and affordable catalyst for energy and environmental applications.

Cancer therapy shows promise for nuclear medicine treatment Posted: 09 Dec 2014 09:01 AM PST Cancer therapy can be much more effective using a new way to customize nuclear medicine treatment, researchers say. The process could also be useful for other diseases that could benefit from targeted radiation.

Online students give instructors higher marks if they think instructors are men Posted: 09 Dec 2014 09:01 AM PST College students in online courses give better evaluations to instructors they think are men -- even when the instructor is actually a woman. "The ratings that students give instructors are really important, because they're used to guide higher education decisions related to hiring, promotions and tenure," says the lead author of a paper. "And if the results of these evaluations are inherently biased against women, we need to find ways to address that problem."

Increased use of hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation for patients with early-stage breast cancer Posted: 09 Dec 2014 08:58 AM PST The use of hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation (HF-WBI) for patients with early-stage breast cancer increased 17.4 percent from 2004 to 2011, and patients are more likely to receive HF-WBI compared to conventionally fractionated whole-breast irradiation (CF-WBI) when they are treated at an academic center or live ≥50 miles away from a cancer center, according to a study.

New technique could harvest more of the sun's energy Posted: 09 Dec 2014 07:18 AM PST As solar panels become less expensive and capable of generating more power, solar energy is becoming a more commercially viable alternative source of electricity. However, the photovoltaic cells now used to turn sunlight into electricity can only absorb and use a small fraction of that light, and that means a significant amount of solar energy goes untapped. A new technology represents a first step toward harnessing that lost energy.

Storing hydrogen underground could boost transportation, energy security Posted: 09 Dec 2014 06:18 AM PST Large-scale storage of low-pressure, gaseous hydrogen in salt caverns and other underground sites for transportation fuel and grid-scale energy applications offers several advantages over above-ground storage, says a recent study.

NASA-funded FOXSI to observe X-rays from Sun Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:23 AM PST NASA regularly watches the Sun in numerous wavelengths because different wavelengths provide information about different temperatures and processes in space. Looking at all the wavelengths together helps to provide a complete picture of what's occurring on the sun over 92 million miles away -- but no one has been able to focus on high energy X-rays from the Sun until recently.

Nanoscale resistors for quantum devices Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:19 AM PST The electrical characteristics of new thin-film chromium oxide resistors can be tuned by controlling the oxygen content. Researchers have made new compact, high-value resistors for nanoscale quantum circuits. The resistors could speed the development of quantum devices for computing and fundamental physics research.

Composite materials can be designed in a supercomputer 'virtual lab' Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:18 AM PST Scientists have shown how advanced computer simulations can be used to design new composite materials. Nanocomposites, which are widely used in industry, are revolutionary materials in which microscopic particles are dispersed through plastics. But their development until now has been largely by trial and error.

A mobile app for conducting opinion polls Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:18 AM PST Soon anyone can conduct public opinion polls to drive issues that are important to them, using a new open source tool.

Staining every nerve: New approach offers scientists best image resolution Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:16 AM PST Scientists can now explore nerves in mice in much greater detail than ever before, thanks to an approach that enables researchers to easily use artificial tags, broadening the range of what they can study and vastly increasing image resolution.

Astronomers identify gas spirals as a nursery of twin stars through ALMA Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:16 AM PST Astronomers have found spiral arms of molecular gas and dust around the "baby twin" stars, binary protostars. Gas motions to supply materials to the twin were also identified. These observational results unveil, for the first time, the mechanism of the birth and growth of binary stars, which are ubiquitous throughout the universe.

Nanotechnology against malaria parasites Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:16 AM PST Malaria parasites invade human red blood cells, they then disrupt them and infect others. Researchers have now developed so-called nanomimics of host cell membranes that trick the parasites. This could lead to novel treatment and vaccination strategies in the fight against malaria and other infectious diseases.

Using robots to get more food from raw materials Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:16 AM PST Can an industrial robot succeed both at removing the breast fillet from a chicken, and at the same time get more out of the raw materials? Researchers have now built a fully-functional robot in the lab to automate the process of extracting breast fillets from chickens. This is a task normally performed by skilled human hands.

Major milestone in development of interband cascade lasers Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:10 AM PST Scientists have reached a major milestone in the development of interband cascade lasers by creating a robust technology that operates at room temperature and works continuously -- an important component for building practical systems.

High level engagement in comment sections can curb internet trolling Posted: 08 Dec 2014 11:57 AM PST Having a journalist engage with commenters can affect the deliberative tone of the comments, effectively reducing trolling.

Revolutionizing genomic sequencing of drug-resistant bacteria Posted: 08 Dec 2014 11:51 AM PST New nanopore DNA sequencing technology on a device the size of a USB stick could be used to diagnose infection - according to new research. Researchers tested the new technology with a complex problem – determining the cause of antibiotic resistance in a new multi-drug resistant strain of the bacterium that causes Typhoid. The results reveal that the small, accessible and cost effective technology could revolutionize genomic sequencing.

Study 'makes the case' for RFID forensic evidence management Posted: 05 Dec 2014 07:03 AM PST Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags -- devices that can transmit data over short distances to identify objects, animals or people -- have become increasingly popular for tracking everything from automobiles being manufactured on an assembly line to zoo animals in transit to their new homes. Now, thanks to a new report, the next beneficiaries of RFID technology may soon be law enforcement agencies responsible for the management of forensic evidence.

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