Poverty statistics have never told the complete story, but new research from Georgia Tech economist Shatakshee Dhongde is pioneering a new approach for measuring deprivation among the elderly
Mud crabs hide for their lives if blue crabs, which prey upon them, pee anywhere near them. Pinpointing urine compounds for the first time that warn the mud crabs of predatory peril initiates a new level of understanding of how chemicals invisibly regulate undersea wildlife and ecosystems.
Antibiotics could become nearly useless by mid-century against intense infections due to bacteria evolving antibiotic resistance. And alternatives haven't been able to replace them. It's time for a rethink: Try reducing antibiotic use for small infections and find alternate treatments for them. Save antibiotics for the big infections.
Researchers have published the first part of what they expect to be a database showing the kinetics involved in producing colloidal metal nanocrystals – which are suitable for catalytic, biomedical, photonic and electronic applications – through an autocatalytic mechanism.
While human-made devices inspired by gecko feet have emerged in recent years, enabling their wearers to slowly scale a glass wall, the possible applications of gecko-adhesion technology go far beyond Spiderman-esque antics.
By using an electrochemical etching process on a common stainless steel alloy, researchers have created a nanotextured surface that kills bacteria while not harming mammalian cells. If additional research supports early test results, the process might be used to attack microbial contamination on implantable medical devices and on food processing equipment made with the metal.
A molecular-sized brush that looks like a shoe brush has properties with great potential for the materials industry and medicine, but polyelectrolyte brushes can be sensitive, and getting them to work right tricky. New research shows what can make them break down, but also what can get them to systematically recover.
Luke Skywalker’s bionic hand is a step closer to reality for amputees in this galaxy. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created an ultrasonic sensor that allows amputees to control each of their prosthetic fingers individually. It provides fine motor hand gestures that aren’t possible with current commercially available devices.
Three billion years ago, the sun shone weaker, but Earth stayed surprisingly warm. Carl Sagan thought a greenhouse effect must have been to thank. A model built on 359 chemical processes has finally arrived at scenarios with a reasonable chance of producing enough methane to do the trick.
With the whirl of a thumb, Georgia Tech researchers have created technology that allows people to trace letters and numbers on their fingers and see the figures appear on a nearby computer screen. The system is triggered by a thumb ring outfitted with a gyroscope and tiny microphone. As wearers strum their thumb across the fingers, the hardware detects the movement.
With no biological program to drive it, nascent multicellular clusters adopt a lifecycle thanks to the physics of their stresses. The accidental reproduction drives them to evolve as multicellular life.
The secrets of 17th century artists can now be revealed, thanks to 21st century signal processing. Using modern high-speed scanners and the advanced signal processing techniques, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are peering through layers of pigment to see how painters prepared their canvasses, applied undercoats, and built up layer upon layer of paint to produce their masterpieces.
If someone cries "Eureka!" because it looks like oxygen appeared in Earth's ancient atmosphere long before the body of evidence indicated, consider this: If it was a chromium isotope system reading that caused the enthusiasm, it might need to be curbed.
Although many scientific journals try to provide more details about author contributions by requiring explicit statements, such contribution statements get much less attention than authorship order, according to new findings from a Georgia Tech-University of Passau team.
A transfer technique based on thin sacrificial layers of boron nitride could allow high-performance gallium nitride gas sensors to be grown on sapphire substrates and then transferred to metallic or flexible polymer support materials. The technique could facilitate the production of low-cost wearable, mobile and disposable sensing devices for a wide range of environmental applications.
Sharing is caring in the fight against cancer with this open source software project to predict cancer drug effectiveness. Georgia Tech researchers have kicked it off with a program they tested to be about 85% effective in making predictions in individual patient treatments.
Until now, assessing the extent and impact of network or computer system attacks has been largely a time-consuming manual process. A new software system being developed by cybersecurity researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology will largely automate that process, allowing investigators to quickly and accurately pinpoint how intruders entered the network, what data they took and which computer systems were compromised.
To guard against unknowingly visiting malicious websites, computer users have been taught to double-check website URLs before they click on a link. But attackers are now taking advantage of that practice to trick users into visiting website domains that contain familiar trademarks — but with additional words that change the destination to an attack site.
By combining engineered polymeric materials known as hydrogels with complex intestinal tissue known as organoids – made from human pluripotent stem cells – researchers have taken an important step toward creating a new technology for controlling the growth of these organoids and using them for treating wounds in the gut that can be caused by disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Imagine a tiny donut-shaped droplet, covered with wriggling worms. The worms are packed so tightly together that they locally line up, forming a nematic liquid crystal similar to those found in flat panel displays. In the journal Nature Physics, scientists are reporting on an examination of such an active nematic – but with flexible filaments and microscopic engines rather than worms.
A protein shaped like a "Y" makes scientists do a double-take and may change the way they think about a protein sometimes implicated in glaucoma. The Y is a centerpiece in myocilin, binding four other components nicknamed propellers together like balloons on strings.
Imagine Google Earth with only the street view and a far-away satellite view but not much of a map view. Brain imaging, for the most part, has been missing just that, and a lot of research on how the brain computes happens on that level. New imaging tackles this special view of the brain with the highest-energy X-rays in the country, generated at a synchrotron, that illuminate thick sections of a mouse brain.
A ceramic-based mechanical pump able to operate at record temperatures of more than 1,400 degrees Celsius (1,673 Kelvin) can transfer high temperature liquids such as molten tin, enabling a new generation of energy conversion and storage systems.
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new computer-aided approach that streamlines the design process for origami-based structures, making it easier for engineers and scientists to conceptualize new ideas graphically while simultaneously generating the underlying mathematical data needed to build the structure in the real world.
Using flexible conducting polymers and novel circuitry patterns printed on paper, researchers have demonstrated proof-of-concept wearable thermoelectric generators that can harvest energy from body heat to power simple biosensors for measuring heart rate, respiration or other factors.
Using a simple layer-by-layer coating technique, researchers from the U.S. and Korea have developed a paper-based flexible supercapacitor that could be used to help power wearable devices. The device uses metallic nanoparticles to coat cellulose fibers in the paper, creating supercapacitor electrodes with high energy and power densities – and the best performance so far in a textile-based supercapacitor.
No disorder appears to kill more people than atherosclerosis, and hopeful experimental treatments with "good cholesterols" have failed. New research reapproaches them with carefully designed cholesterols in an organ-on-a-chip in highly reproducible experiments.
As China struggles to find ways to remedy the noxious haze that lingers over Beijing and other cities in the winter, researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology have cast serious doubt on one proposed cause: high levels of ammonia in the air.
A new analysis done to support the investigation into the 2015 sinking of the El Faro cargo ship has calculated the likelihood of a massive rogue wave during Hurricane Joaquin in October of that year – and demonstrated a new technique for evaluating the probability of rogue waves over space and time.
Sand-swimming lizards, slithering robotic snakes, dusk-flying moths and running roaches all have one thing in common: They're increasingly being studied by physicists interested in understanding the shared strategies these creatures have developed to overcome the challenges of moving though their environments.
Large boils, acid-like facial wounds, death by maiming of viscera. Leishmania parasites inflict suffering that is the stuff of parables. They're the second-deadliest parasites after malaria, and global warming is pushing them north. Can this new experimental vaccine someday stop them?
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded nearly $20 million to a consortium of universities to support a new engineering research center (ERC) that will work closely with industry and clinical partners to develop transformative tools and technologies for the consistent, scalable and low-cost production of high-quality living therapeutic cells.
How proteins evolved billions of years ago, when Earth was devoid of life, has stumped many a scientist. A little do-si-do between amino acids and their chemical lookalikes may have done the trick. Evolutionary chemists tried it, and got results by the boatload.
Evolution has weeded out genetic variants associated with diseases for millennia and propagated genetic variants that protect against ailments, a comparative genetics study shows. But that good trend may have recently gone in reverse.
A team of Georgia Institute of Technology researchers has created an original music composition for Monday’s eclipse. The Georgia Tech Sonification Lab uses drums, synthesized tones and other sounds to symbolize the movements of the sun and moon and the gradual darkness they will produce during the August 21 event.
A flick of a switch, and electrochromic films change their colors, making sunglasses, windows, and mirrors tint, or textiles flip their shades. Now they can be applied more safely and more commonly thanks to an innovative chemical process that makes them water soluble.
The aim of targeted gene-based cancer therapies could often be skewed from the start. A widespread concept about how cells produce proteins proved incorrect 62% of the time in a new study in ovarian cancer cells of the relationship between RNA and protein levels.
The human brain's computational might in a machine, the dream of computer engineers, comes a step closer thanks to new nanomaterials. Georgia Tech researchers are creating next-gen neuron-mimmicking "memristors" to underly processing "neuristors."
A new low-temperature solution printing technique allows fabrication of high-efficiency perovskite solar cells with large crystals intended to minimize current-robbing grain boundaries. The meniscus-assisted solution printing (MASP) technique boosts power conversion efficiencies to nearly 20 percent by controlling crystal size and orientation.
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Piedmont Heart Institute are using new 3-D printing technologies to create heart valve models that mimic the look and feel of the real valves. Their aim is to improve the success rate of transcatheter aortic valve replacements (TAVR) by picking the right prosthetic and avoiding a common complication known as paravalvular leakage.
Adding the equivalent of a miniature tornado to the interface between electrospray ionization (ESI) and a mass spectrometer (MS) has allowed researchers to improve the sensitivity and detection capability of the widely-used ESI-MS analytical technique.
Your cancer has metastasized. No one wants to ever hear that. Now researchers have found a way to virtually halt cell migration, a key component in metastasis, in vitro, in human cells. In past in vivo studies in mice, treated cancer did not appear to recur. No significant side effects were observed.
Wildfires are major polluters. Their plumes are three times as dense with aerosol-forming fine particles as previously believed. For the first time, researchers have flown an orchestra of modern instruments through brutishly turbulent wildfire plumes to measure emissions in real time. They have also exposed other never before measured toxins.
A marimba-playing robot with four arms and eight sticks is writing and playing its own compositions in a lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The pieces are generated using artificial intelligence and deep learning.
A new study explores common drive, the ability for your body to overcome the mind's willingness to collectively control muscles, rather than controlling them individually.
A team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a way to use 3-D printers to create objects capable of expanding dramatically that could someday be used in applications ranging from space missions to biomedical devices.
"DNA is a bully." That's how researcher Jeffrey Skolnick sums up the dominant power of DNA motion among the forces acting upon transcription factors as they move through DNA's winding thickets to their target sites. He and Edmond Chow have programmed a very large, unique simulation that tests and corroborates the hypothesis.
Combining a new hydrogel material with a protein that boosts blood vessel growth could improve the success rate for transplanting insulin-producing islet cells into persons with type 1 diabetes.
Using information gleaned from social media, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a mental health index for the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities. Their study looked at five years of data on Reddit, scanning it for comments about issues that included depression, financial and academic anxiety and thoughts of suicide. Schools were given a score based on the frequency of those threads and robustness of the conversations.