Curated News: Scientific Meetings

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Cranberries are often touted as a way to protect against urinary tract infections, but that may be just the beginning. Cranberry extracts reduced the size and number of colon tumors in mice, say researchers. Identifying the therapeutic molecules in the fruit could lead to a better understanding of its anti-cancer potential, they say. The team will describe their approach at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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Human consumption of bacterially contaminated water causes millions of deaths each year throughout the world—primarily among children. A researcher at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society today will discuss an inexpensive, simple and easily transportable nanotechnology-based method to purify drinking water. She calls it The Drinkable BookTM, and each page is impregnated with bacteria-killing metal nanoparticles.

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Hand-written letters and old photos seem quaint in today’s digital age. But there’s one thing traditional media have over hard drives: longevity. Scientists are turning to nature’s master of information storage to save data. One team demonstrated that synthetic DNA can last 2,000 years, and they’re now working to index the system to make it easier to navigate. They present their work today at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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Cross contamination in commercial processing facilities that prepare spinach and other leafy greens for the market can make people sick. But researchers are reporting a new, easy-to-implement method that could eliminate or reduce such incidences. The scientists will present their work at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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Tomato lovers rejoice: Adding or rearranging a few simple steps in commercial processing could dramatically improve the flavor of this popular fruit sold in the grocery store, according to researchers. They will present their new work on the topic in Boston at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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When a fever strikes in a developing area, the immediate concern may be: Is it the common flu or something much worse? To facilitate diagnosis in remote, low-resource settings, researchers have developed a paper-based device that changes color, depending on whether the patient has Ebola, yellow fever or dengue. It takes minutes and does not need electricity. The team will describe their approach at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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Researchers at the University of Montreal have developed techniques that enable computer cursors to interact in 3D in single or multiuser, local or remote collaboration scenarios.

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Presenters from Virginia Tech, the University of Central Florida, the University of Maryland, and Clemson will discuss conserving campus spaces. University of California at Irvine and the University of Wisconsin presenters will address campus planning.

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Scientists will offer an inside look at moving new drugs and materials from the lab to the marketplace in three plenary talks at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, August 16-20 in Boston. The presentations directly relate to the meeting’s theme, “Innovation from Discovery to Application.”

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PNNL has developed a new tool to forecast for future energy needs that is up to 50 percent more accurate than several commonly used industry tools, showing potential to save millions in wasted electricity. The advancement was selected a 'best paper' at the IEEE Power & Energy general meeting.

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American Chemical Society (ACS) President Diane Grob Schmidt, Ph.D., will sponsor several events related to the theme of the ACS 250th National Meeting & Exposition, “Innovation from Discovery to Application.” The meeting runs from Aug. 16 to 20 in Boston. The presidential events will be held at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center and area hotels.

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Carbon nanotube speakers play music using heat and two Michigan Tech graduate students received an award recently for their work improving the technology.

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Human hair structure has been studied extensively for more than 70 years, but a complete picture of its local structure has proven elusive. But now, by combining a submicron X-ray beam with cross-section geometry, a team of researchers in Brazil and New York has detected new structural features of human hair, which they’ll discuss during the American Crystallographic Association 2015 Meeting, which will be held in Philadelphia from July 25-29.

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A group of researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada has reached deep into the human gut, plucked out a couple enzymes produced by bacteria residing there and determined their biological activities and molecular structures -- details that should shed new light on how we digest many of the foods we eat.

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Clinical laboratory tests play a crucial role in making sure patients get appropriate care, yet many small labs and clinics in low resource settings cannot afford the instruments needed to provide these tests. Research on a novel fingerprick test that can perform all common clinical diagnostics could help to expand access to basic medical testing in the developing world, and will be featured at the 2015 AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo.

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At the 2015 AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo, researchers will present findings that a first-of-its-kind smartphone test for chlamydia can detect the disease with high accuracy, which could reduce the prevalence of this sexually transmitted disease (STD) by making chlamydia screening easier and cheaper.

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Hair samples can be used to measure the effects of asthma on the cortisol levels of women during pregnancy, according to research presented today at the 2015 AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in Atlanta. This research also shows that levels of cortisol, a stress-related hormone, tend to be lower among pregnant women with asthma than among pregnant women without the chronic, inflammatory lung disease.

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Researchers have successfully tested two new potential methods for diagnosing and monitoring diabetes in its standard and gestational forms. These findings, presented today at the 2015 AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in Atlanta, may lead to easier, timelier, and more affordable ways of identifying and treating this chronic disease.

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This week at the American Crystallographic Association (ACA) 2015 Meeting in Philadelphia, researchers from the National Cancer Institute will present three newly determined crystal structures, which collectively provide a starting point for structure-based drug design efforts to combat MERS. The work will be presented by George Lountos, a scientist in the lab of primary investigator David Waugh.

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Research presented at the 2015 AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo will expand on the studies that led to a fingerprick Ebola test becoming the first and only rapid diagnostic for this disease to receive approval from the World Health Organization (WHO). This test could prove vital to breaking Ebola’s grip on West Africa by identifying suspected Ebola cases within minutes, and enabling healthcare workers to isolate and treat these patients much faster than is currently possible.

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The Genetics Society of America (GSA) and the C. elegans research community are pleased to announce the recipients of the GSA poster awards at the 20th International C. elegans Meeting, which took place at the University of California, Los Angeles, June 24-28, 2015. The awards were made to undergraduate and graduate students in recognition of the research they presented at the conference.

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Despite heightened awareness of surveillance tactics and privacy breaches, existing computer security tools aren't meeting the needs of journalists working with sensitive material, a new UW study finds.

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A team of radio astronomers, including Sam Connolly from the University of Southampton, are watching a previously dormant black hole wake up in a dramatic display as material falls on to it for the first time for perhaps millions of years.

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A Georgia Institute of Technology researcher has created an easier email encryption method – one that sounds familiar to parents who try to outsmart their 8-year-old child. The new technique gets rid of the complicated, mathematically generated messages that are typical of encryption software. Instead, the method transforms specific emails into ones that are vague by leaving out key words.

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University of Iowa researchers studied more than 200 YouTube videos and published their findings in the proceedings of the CHI 2015 conference.

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A UAB computer science researcher's cloud computing project could turn the Internet of Things into the Internet of Cha-ching.

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Researchers funded by the National Institute for Health Research to conduct a multi-center pilot study of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) in refractory chronic angina pectoris will advise NICE that a fully powered nationwide study is feasible, with SCS therapy and trial outcome measures shown to be acceptable and appropriate for future randomized controlled trials.

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Eating less late at night may help curb the concentration and alertness deficits that accompany sleep deprivation, according to results of a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania that will be presented at SLEEP 2015, the 29th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.

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Strategic use of locally produced, renewable energy through smart microgrids can reduce power costs and help prevent outages. Assistant professors Wei Sun and Reinaldo Tonkoski of the South Dakota State University Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department are developing the smart power management technologies that will make it possible for communities and businesses to use locally produced wind and solar energy yet maintain a consistent, reliable power system. The automated system will also facilitate development of a self-healing smart grid that can help prevent power outages.

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New research suggests that methanogens – among the simplest and oldest organisms on Earth – could survive on Mars.

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For years scientists have been aware of the potential problems of antibiotics being present in wastewater, and the research of engineering professor Olya Keen is showing that treatments to clean wastewater may actually be creating new antibiotics and further contributing to the development of antibiotic resistance in the environment.

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Columbia Engineering professor Changxi Zheng has developed a technique that enables hydrographic printing, a widely used industrial method for transferring color inks on a thin film to the surface of 3D objects, to color these surfaces with the most precise alignment ever attained. His new computational method, which simulates the printing process and predicts color film distortion during hydrographic immersion, generates a colored film that guarantees exact alignment of the surface textures to the object.

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Play a flute in Carnegie Hall, and the tone will resonate and fill the space. Play that same flute in the Grand Canyon, and the sound waves will crash against the rock walls, folding back in sonic chaos. The disparity is clear – to the modern listener, the instrument belongs in an auditorium. "Distinct echoes would be totally unforgivable in today's performance spaces," says Steven J. Waller, an archaeo-acoustician. “But, in the past, people sought echoes."

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Psychoacoustics identifies five basic types of emotional speech: angry, fearful, happy, sad and neutral. In order to fully understand what’s happening with speech perception, a research team at the University of Texas at Austin studied how depressed individuals perceive these different kinds of emotional speech in multi-tonal environments. They will present their findings at the 169th ASA meeting, held this week in Pittsburgh.

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Virginia Tech researchers have developed a prototype of a dynamic sonar system inspired by horseshoe bats. The prototype was presented Wednesday (May 20) at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in Pittsburgh.

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Engineers at Virginia Tech have taken the first steps toward building a novel dynamic sonar system inspired by horseshoe bats that could be more efficient and take up less space than current man-made sonar arrays. They are presenting a prototype of their "dynamic biomimetic sonar" at the 169th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America held May 18-22, 2015 in Pittsburgh.

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Recently, scientists from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) have jointly demonstrated cream separation from natural whole milk at liter-scales for the first time using ultrasonic standing waves -- a novel, fast and nondestructive separation technique typically used only in small-scale settings.

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Playing natural sounds such as flowing water in offices could boosts worker moods and improve cognitive abilities in addition to providing speech privacy, according to a new study from researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They will present the results of their experiment at the 169th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held May 18-22, 2015 in Pittsburgh.

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Babytalk, which includes higher-pitched voices and a wider range of pitches, is sometimes known as "motherese," partly because most research on parent-child interactions has traditionally focused on the mother's role. Scientists study this common behavior because they want to understand what role such speech patterns play in children’s language acquisition. But in an era of increased paternal involvement, researchers are investigating whether fathers modify their speech in the same way mothers do.

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WHAT: Press Event Webcasts | Research from the ASA 169th Meeting DATE: Tuesday, May 19 TIME: "Noise and Health" @ 11:00 a.m. EDT; "New Discoveries in Acoustics" @ 2:00 p.m. EDT ONLINE REGISTRATION: http://www.aipwebcasting.com ONSITE LOCATION: Smithfield Room, Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown Hotel

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Wind turbines causing cluckus interruptus in prairie chickens, tranquility at a conservation center, better blood pressure monitors with wearables, and a vibrational analysis of graphite tennis rackets are just some of the highlights from the lay-language versions of papers to be presented at the 169th ASA meeting, held May 18-22 in Pittsburgh. Summaries are posted online in the ASA’s Pressroom; many contain sounds, images, and videos. The entire collection can be found at http://acoustics.org/current-meeting.

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Studies have shown that individuals with hearing loss or who are listening to degraded speech – think of a loud room -- have greater difficulty remembering and processing the spoken information than individuals who heard more clearly. Now researchers are investigating whether listening to accented speech similarly affects the brain's ability to process and store information. Their preliminary results suggest that foreign-accented speech, even when intelligible, may be slightly more difficult to recall than native speech.

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Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: nutrition, fibromyalgia, e-cigarettes, cystic fibrosis, asthma, and gluten

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The same theory that explains individual differences in human speech has recently been applied to other members of the animal kingdom, including dogs and deer. Now researchers from Syracuse University in New York are working to understand whether individually distinctive vocal characteristics of North Atlantic right whales could be used to identify and track individuals -- a potentially useful tool for studying an endangered species that spends much of its life hidden under the water.

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University of Washington researchers easily hacked a next generation teleoperated surgical robot to test how easily a malicious attack could hijack remotely-controlled operations in the future and to offer security solutions.

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The Trace app developed at the University of Washington turns a digital sketch that you draw on your smartphone screen — heart, maple leaf, raindrop — into a walking route that you can send to a friend. The recipient of the "gift" receives step-by-step walking directions that eventually reveal the hidden shape on a map.

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You could call a fusion engine a space travel hot rod. A 2014 paper that reports on developments in pulsed fusion propulsion that could rapidly propel U.S. manned flights to Mars has been named an AIAA Best Paper.

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Two prominent HMS/Mass. Eye and Ear/Schepens faculty members will receive prestigious 2015 achievement awards today at ARVO Annual Meeting. On May 5, the winners of the 2014 António Champalimaud Vision Award will be recognized.

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According to the American Cancer Society, in 2015 about 17,000 new cases of esophageal cancer will be diagnosed, and about 15,600 people will die from the disease. While the 5-year survival rate in the 1960s and 1970s was only about 5%, improvements in diagnosis, treatment, and management have led to improved survival. However, information is lacking about what happens to long-term survivors of esophageal cancer. A presentation at the AATS Annual Meeting shows that while five-year survival is up to 39%, these patients still face many health risks and should be monitored for 10 years or more.

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From noise in buildings and open park spaces to musical instruments, human voices and the vocalizations of animals on the ground, in the air and underwater, the science of sound is all around. The world's largest scientific meeting devoted to this fascinating, many-faceted field of acoustics will take place next month in Pittsburgh.