Girls can 'rewire' brains to ward off depression

Controlling Parents More Likely to Have Delinquent Children

Authoritarian parents whose child-rearing style can be summed up as “it’s my way or the highway” are more likely to raise disrespectful, delinquent children who do not see them as legitimate authority figures than authoritative parents who listen to their children and gain their respect and trust, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire. “When children consider their parents to be legitimate authority figures, they trust the parent and feel they have an obligation to do what their parents tell them to do. This is an important attribute for any authority figure to possess, as the parent does not have to rely on a system of rewards and punishments to control behavior, and the child is more likely to follow the rules when the parent is not physically present,” said Rick Trinkner, a doctoral candidate at UNH and the lead researcher. This is the first study to look at whether parenting styles influence adolescents’ beliefs about the legitimacy of parent authority and if those perceptions affect delinquent behavior. The results are presented in the February issue of the Journal of Adolescence in the article “Don’t trust anyone

New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission

Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. They’re a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel — such as an optical fiber or a wireless connection — with perfect fidelity, even in the presence of the corrupting influences known as “noise.” An encoded message is called a codeword; the noisier the channel, the longer the codeword has to be to ensure perfect communication. But the longer the codeword, the longer it takes to transmit the message. So the ideal of maximally efficient, perfectly faithful communication requires precisely matching codeword length to the level of noise in the channel. Wireless devices, such as cellphones or Wi-Fi transmitters, regularly send out test messages to gauge noise levels, so they can adjust their codes accordingly. But as anyone who’s used a cellphone knows, reception quality can vary at locations just a few feet apart — or even at a single location. Noise measurements can rapidly become outdated, and wireless devices routinely end up using codewords that are too long, squandering bandwidth, or too short, making accurate decoding impossible. In the next issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on

Origami Robots Run Only on Air

Powered by nothing more than puffs of air, robots molded from paper and silicone rubber can bend, twist, grip and even lift more than 100 times their weight.The pneumatic prototypes aren’t as advanced as their metallic brothers, and the “soft” robots contain no electronics yet. But their creators, funded by Darpa, imagine applications where a soft-bot might be the best tool.“If you want to go through a winding tube or rubble or some other tough environment that’s difficult to reach, you need to be flexible,” said chemist Xin Chen of Boston University, member of a team who describes their work in a Feb. 9 Advanced Functional Materials paper.  “Soft robots can go a lot of places where hard robots cannot go.”Robots crafted from metal or other hard materials, filled with electronics and powered by electricity are the mainstays of robotics. They can build cars, carry heavy equipment and even defuse bombs. Yet in some environments, flexibility is crucial.As a result, engineers have looked to nature for ideas, with models inspired by insects, birds, snakes, fish and even dogs. Whitesides and his team have already developed

Anyone Can Learn to Be More Inventive

There will always be a wild and unpredictable quality to creativity and invention, says Anthony McCaffrey, a cognitive psychology researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, because an "Aha moment" is rare and reaching it means overcoming formidable mental obstacles. But after studying common roadblocks to problem-solving, he has developed a toolkit for enhancing anyone’s skills. McCaffrey believes his Obscure Features Hypothesis(OFH) has led to the first systematic, step-by-step approach to devising innovation-enhancing techniques to overcome a wide range of cognitive obstacles to invention. His findings appear now in an early online issue of Psychological Science. McCaffrey, a post doctoral research fellow at the Center for e-Design at UMass Amherst and Virginia Tech, recently won a two-year, $170,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to turn his technique into software with a user-friendly graphical interface. Initial users will likely be engineers. Looking at more than 100 significant modern and 1,000 historical inventions, McCaffrey analyzed how successful inventors overcame various cognitive obstacles to uncover the key obscure information needed to solve problems. He found that almost all innovative solutions follow two steps, as articulated by the OFH: Noticing an infrequently-seen, obscure feature and

Focus on self-improvement, rather than winning

Underserved youth athletes report more life skill and character development when their coaches place greater emphasis on creating caring climates instead of focusing on competition, according to research from Michigan State University's Institute for the Study of Youth Sports. Playing in an atmosphere that focuses on player self-improvement versus player competition creates a sense of teamwork and develops initiative, social skills and a sense of identity, report the authors of the study from the Department of Kinesiology institute. The study, led by Daniel Gould and Larry Lauer, was published recently in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise. Ryan Flett, a former doctoral student at MSU now with West Virginia University, also took part in the research. "The research adds to the growing body of knowledge that shows coaching actions and the team climates they create have important influences on the personal development of youth," Gould said. "Our data suggests if coaches want to develop life skills and character in youth, it is important to focus on player self-improvement more so than winning." The study surveyed 239 young urban athletes who completed the Youth Experiences Scale-2, which measures both positive and negative youth

AROA’s Second Solar Tulip Power Plant Springs Up in Spain

Clean tech company AROA recently installed their second energy-generating Solar Tulip power tower in Spain, and the soaring flower-shaped power plant just went online this week. The beauty of the system stems beyond the elegant solar energy capturing tower the system is designed to be modular, unlike any other concentrated solar power (CSP) electrical generator out there. The system also uses much less water than steam solar generators, enabling it to conserve precious resources on its hot desert site. AROA‘s Solar Tulip is firstly a unique, if not elegant looking concentrated solar power tower which was very much designed to look less jarring in the landscape. The Israel-based company’s lead design architect Haim Dotan stated: “the Solar Tulip’s beauty doesn’t mean that it’s more expensive. It’s down to fun and hard work.” The relationship between aesthetics and industrial solar energy plants is a new frontier. The system works in a unique fashion as well. Each installation can produce a peak output of 100 kWh, and individual plants are capable of being networked together. Thus creates scalable systems which grow over time and can be implemented quickly with simple financing. 50 mirrors track the sun and

World's largest offshore wind farm opens for business

Walney wind farm off the coast of Cumbria in the UK yesterday became the world's largest offshore wind facility. One hundred and two turbines over 73 sq km (28 sq miles) provide a maximum output of 367.2 MW. It's claimed the facility will provide enough power for about 320,000 homes half as many again as the total number in Cumbria. The project's first phase, Walney 1, has been providing power since January 2011 from 51 137-meter-high (450-ft) turbines, each with a 107-m (350-ft) rotor diameter. The completed second phase, Walney 2, adds another 51 turbines of even greater size to the installation. These 150-m (492-ft) tall turbines have three 18-tonne (19.8-short ton) blades with a total diameter of 120 m (394 ft). Despite the differing dimensions, all turbines are Siemens-made 3.6 MW turbines. All told a single wind turbine weighs a hefty 550 tonnes (606 short tons). The Walney 2 installation was completed in an impressively tight six-month window. The turbine specs appear well-suited to the UK's considerable wind assets, functioning at wind speeds between 4 and 25 m/s (9 and 56 mph), operating at a peak in winds of 14 m/s (31 mph),

London Designer Creates a Super Futuristic Solar-Powered Concept Car

London designer Omer Sagiv created this solar-powered concept car that looks like it’s straight out of the latest sci-fi movie. The concept car is referred to as the SPV (Solar Power Vehicle) and Sagiv states that it’s made of aluminum with flexible thin modules fixed to it and that the shaft in the center of the SPV functions as an in-built cooling system. The aerodynamic shape of the concept allows it to collect energy in any sunny environment. Even better, the concept can also use the extra energy that it collects from its solar panels to power its owner’s house!Obviously this concept wouldn’t work in today’s world – one wrong turn or missed stop light and you can say bye bye to your beloved solar car. However, the car’s futuristic design is definitely noteworthy. We can only dream of cars like this being available in the future! InHabitat (http://inhabitat.com/london-designer-creates-a-super-futuristic-solar-powered-concept-car/)

Pilot plant converts fruit and veggie waste into natural gas for cars

Some readers might remember the Mr. Fusion unit in Back to the Future that Doc Brown fills with household garbage, including a banana peel and some beer, to power the iconic time-traveling DeLorean. While we're still some way from such direct means of running our cars on table scraps, researchers at Fraunhofer have developed a pilot plant that ferments the waste from wholesale fruit and veg markets, cafeterias and canteens to make methane, which can be used to power vehicles.Given the rising oil prices in recent years, many drivers have been converting their cars to run on natural gas. But like oil, natural gas is a fossil fuel with limited reserves whose price has also risen in recent years and is likely to continue to do so. Fraunhofer's development provides an alternative way to obtain natural gas, not from Earth's reserves, but from fruit and vegetable waste.The pilot plant is part of the ETAMAX project and has been constructed adjacent to Stuttgart's wholesale market. Due to begin operation in the next few months, the plant generates methane by using various microorganisms that act on the food waste in a

Black holes and star formation

An optical image of the "Antennae" galaxies. New research on interacting galaxies finds that interactions can stimulate bursts of star formation in the objects and also prompt the nuclear black hole to accrete material and become active. Credit: Hubble Space Telescope It has long been recognized that galaxy mergers or even close interactions can play a vital role in shaping the morphology of galaxies. One way they can do so, it is thought, is by triggering bursts of star formation. But exactly how a collision produces new stars is not clear: sometimes star formation activity is seen all across an interacting galaxy, but in other cases it is localized to a region around the galactic nucleus. Galaxy mergers and close interactions are also thought to drive the growth of central supermassive black holes and their high-energy activity. The collision prompts material to fall into the massive central region, stimulating the black hole to become what is called an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Sorting out these two effects of a merger is a key issue in modern astronomy, and is associated with determining if and how

Distorting the lens

An optical image of the effects of a gravitational lens: the distorted view of a distant galaxy as seen after its light passes through a closer galaxy whose gravity twists the image into a ring. Credit: ESA/NASA and Hubble One of the most bizarre predictions of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity is the existence of back holes, objects that are so dense that not even light can escape from their gravitational grasp. A related prediction of General Relativity is that the path light travels can be bent by the presence of mass, so that matter can sometimes act like a lens a so called "gravitational lens" and produce distortions in images of background objects seen behind it. During the now famous total eclipse of 29 May 1919, scientists confirmed these basic predictions of Einstein's theory by observing starlight bent by the gravity of the Sun. Astronomers since then have seen many cosmological examples of gravitational lensing, as light from a distant galaxy is magnified and distorted as it passes through a closer galaxy (or a cluster) en route to Earth. CfA astronomers Avi

Tiniest Telecommunications Laser Ever Made, 200 Nanometers Wide

Lasers are getting smaller and more powerful — earlier this month, we saw the first-ever atomic scale laser, and now researchers are reporting the smallest telecommunications-frequency laser ever built. The laser is one-fifteenth the size of the light waves it can produce, and it works at room temperature. Small lasers that produce wavelengths of light larger than themselves could be used to explore the fundamentals of quantum electrodynamics, and they could also have practical uses, including chip-based optical communications and ultra-high-resolution imaging. Lasers can transmit information faster than traditional semiconductors, and they might be more practical than quantum computers (if those are even a possibility). These new lasers are an efficient step in that direction because they don’t require a high threshold to start lasing. They could even be designed to remove the threshold entirely. A laser threshold is the energy level beyond which a laser’s power increases rapidly. When the laser cavity — the place where light waves are amplified — is very small, the threshold energy must be very high, but a lot of this input energy is wasted. This makes the tiniest lasers impractical. To get beyond this limitation, Mercedeh Khajavikhan and colleagues at the

FDA outlines path for lower-priced biotech drugs

The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to review the first lower-cost versions of biotech drugs, expensive medications which have never before faced generic competition. The guidelines issued by the FDA on Thursday are the final step in a decades-long effort to lower the price of biotech drugs, high-tech injectable medications that cost the nation billions of dollars each year. "These draft documents are designed to help industry develop biosimilar versions of currently approved biological products, which can enhance competition and may lead to better patient access and lower cost to consumers," FDA's drug division director Dr. Janet Woodcock said in a statement. Since their introduction in the 1980s, biotech drugs have never faced generic competition because the FDA did not have power to approve copies of such medications. For years the biotech industry successfully argued that their drugs, often made from living cells, were too complex to be duplicated by competitors. That finally changed with the Obama administration's 2010 health overhaul, which ordered the FDA to create a system for approving so-called "biosimilar drugs." The industry term arose because biotech scientists insisted it would be impossible to produce exact copies of their biologically engineered drugs. They differ from

"Fracture putty" could speed healing of broken bones

Anyone who has ever broken a bone knows that while receiving the injury itself is quite unpleasant, being laid up for several weeks to even a few months afterwards is also no picnic. Help may be on the way, however. The U.S. Department of Defense is funding a study, to develop fast bone-healing treatments that could be used on soldiers, along with civilians and even animals. Already, scientists have gotten promising results in laboratory tests, using something they call "fracture putty." Researchers from the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center started by obtaining adult rat mesenchymal stem cells, which produce a protein that is part of the bone healing and generation processes. These were incorporated into a gel (the putty) which was subsequently injected into fractures in the bones of those lab rats the fractured bones were held in place with a stabilizing device. Within two weeks of the injections, the rats were running around and standing up, reportedly showing no signs of injury. The putty is now being tested in pigs and sheep already, it has regenerated bone in sheep within less than four weeks. Plans call for subsequent clinical trials at the university's

FDA-approved drug rapidly clears amyloid from the brain, reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice

Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have made a dramatic breakthrough in their efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The researchers' findings, published in the journal Science, show that use of a drug in mice appears to quickly reverse the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits caused by the onset of Alzheimer's. The results point to the significant potential that the medication, bexarotene, has to help the roughly 5.4 million Americans suffering from the progressive brain disease. Bexarotene has been approved for the treatment of cancer by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for more than a decade. These experiments explored whether the medication might also be used to help patients with Alzheimer's disease, and the results were more than promising. Alzheimer's disease arises in large part from the body's inability to clear naturally-occurring amyloid beta from the brain. In 2008 Case Western Reserve researcher Gary Landreth, PhD, professor of neurosciences, discovered that the main cholesterol carrier in the brain, Apolipoprotein E (ApoE), facilitated the clearance of the amyloid beta proteins. Landreth, a professor of neurosciences in the university's medical school, is the senior author of this study as well. Landreth and his colleagues

MIT envisions DIY solar cells made from grass clippings

Research scientist Andreas Mershin has a dream to bring inexpensive solar power to the masses, especially those in developing countries. After years of research, he and his team at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, along with University of Tennessee biochemist Barry Bruce, have worked out a process that extracts functional photosynthetic molecules from common yard and agricultural waste. If all goes well, in a few years it should be possible to gather up a pile of grass clippings, mix it with a blend of cheap chemicals, paint it on your roof and begin producing electricity. Talk about redefining green power plants! "Leaves and plants are nature's solar panels. The first step in photosynthesis is to change sunlight into a little bit of electricity that then gets converted into the processes of life," Mershin explained. "If we manage to somehow hijack the molecules that are responsible for photosynthesis in plants and other photosynthetic organisms, and use them to generate electricity for our own needs, this would represent a fantastic and disruptive new step in the way that we generate solar power or electricity in general." Taking a cue from how light is harvested by densely-packed

Engineers boost computer processor performance by over 20 percent

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that allows graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs) on a single chip to collaborate – boosting processor performance by an average of more than 20 percent. "Chip manufacturers are now creating processors that have a 'fused architecture,' meaning that they include CPUs and GPUs on a single chip," says Dr. Huiyang Zhou, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who co-authored a paper on the research. "This approach decreases manufacturing costs and makes computers more energy efficient. However, the CPU cores and GPU cores still work almost exclusively on separate functions. They rarely collaborate to execute any given program, so they aren't as efficient as they could be. That's the issue we're trying to resolve." GPUs were initially designed to execute graphics programs, and they are capable of executing many individual functions very quickly. CPUs, or the "brains" of a computer, have less computational power – but are better able to perform more complex tasks. "Our approach is to allow the GPU cores to execute computational functions, and have CPU cores pre-fetch the data the GPUs will need from off-chip main

Potentially important new mechanisms found anti-aging effects of resveratrol

A well-conducted experimental study in mice has provided potentially important new insights into the association of the intake of resveratrol and like compounds with health benefits. Resveratrol is a constituent of red wine and other vegetable products, and is being evaluated in high-doses as a pharmaceutical. The biologic mechanisms demonstrated in this study could provide key new approaches for the prevention or treatment of a number of chronic diseases in humans, especially those related to vascular and metabolic diseases and to the risk of mortality. More than two decades ago, particularly through publicity related to the so-called "French Paradox," the public became aware of the potential reduction in the risk of coronary heart disease from the moderate consumption of red wine, and the media focused on a single constituent in red wine, resveratrol, as being the "key" factor. We now know that resveratrol is only one of hundreds of phenolic compounds in wine, many of which have been shown to have beneficial effects on vascular function, and that alcohol itself (present in wine, beer or spirits) also provides considerable protection against heart disease. Still, there has remained considerable attention paid to resveratrol, and extensive scientific research

Many companies fall short of social responsibility promises

Whether eliminating child labor, creating environmentally friendly technology or working against all forms of corruption, many corporations fail to become socially responsible despite promises to change, a new University of Michigan study found. In an article recently published in the American Sociological Review, U-M sociologists Alwyn Lim and Kiyoteru Tsutsui say that corporations in developed countries "are more likely to make shallow commitments without substance" in response to external pressures from government and citizens to take socially responsible actions. They say, however, that some corporations in developing countries make more substantive commitments to corporate social responsibility when they face the same external pressures. In the age of cutthroat economic competition that mandates corporations to maximize profit and shareholder returns, a surprisingly large number of corporations commit to social responsibility that often does not generate immediate or tangible benefits, say Lim, a doctoral student in sociology, and Tsutsui, an assistant professor of sociology. But do companies genuinely care about responsible actions or are they simply paying lip service to evade rising criticisms about corporate excesses? Lim and Tsutsui analyzed data on the levels of commitment to social responsibility among corporations in 99 developed and developing countries. They