Futurity.org » University of Pennsylvania

Cosmic effect pinpoints velocity in space

Morgan Kelly-Princeton — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:47:01 +0000

PRINCETON (US) — A cosmic effect could help measure the velocity of objects in the distant universe, and clarify the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

A large research team from two major astronomy surveys reports in a paper submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters that scientists detected the movement of distant galaxy clusters via the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (kSZ) effect, which has never before been seen.

Thanks to copper, sulfur’s stink repels us

Karl Bates-Duke — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:11:14 +0000

DUKE (US) — Copper ions may be the cause of our sensitivity to sulfurous odors, like skunks, volcanic gases, and armpits.

When Hiroaki Matsunami, associate professor at Duke University, set out to study a chemical in male mouse urine called MTMT that attracts female mice, he didn’t think he would stumble into a new field of study.

Support helps sleep apnea sufferers get zzzs

A'ndrea Elyse Messer-Penn State — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:15:23 +0000

PENN STATE (US) — People with obstructive sleep apnea are more likely to stick to prescribed treatment if they have the involved support of a parent or partner, a new study shows.

Obstructive sleep apnea—the most common type of sleep-disordered breathing—occurs when the upper airway collapses during sleep. Chances of it occurring become more elevated in obese people.

Sensor brings epileptic brain into focus

James Devitt-NYU — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:39:21 +0000

NYU / U. ILLINOIS / U. PENN (US) — A flexible sensor is expected to offer unprecedented views of brain activity during epileptic seizures—as much as 400 times current levels—with minimal wiring.

Prior to the new technology, tapping into the human brain to understand its functions in daily life—as well as its malfunctions in illness—was challenging because of unwieldy, invasive arrays of electrodes and sensors that can damage tissue while only reading activity in a limited area. The need to wire each individual sensor at the electrode-tissue interface resulted in a mass of cumbersome leads rendering a high-resolution map of large areas logistically impossible.

Sleep paralysis more common in students

A'ndrea Elyse Messer-Penn State — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:11:21 +0000

PENN STATE (US) — Students and psychiatric patients are more likely than others to experience sleep paralysis, a rare condition that can include hallucinations about alien abductions and demons.

Sleep paralysis, a condition that affects less the 8 percent of the general population, is defined as “a discrete period of time during which voluntary muscle movement is inhibited, yet ocular and respiratory movements are intact,” according to a new study in the current issue of Sleep Medicine Reviews.

Physicists undo the ‘coffee ring effect’

Evan Lerner-Pennsylvania — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:36:11 +0000

U. PENN (US) — By changing the shape of particles, physicists are able to disrupt a common phenomenon known as the “coffee ring effect“— the ring-shaped stain left after coffee drops evaporate.

Understanding the impact of particle shape on drop drying could have applications in printing and painting. The principles could also be relevant in biological and medical contexts. The journal Nature published the findings last week.

“There are a lot of situations where you want uniform coatings,” says Peter Yunker, a doctoral candidate in physics at the University of Pennsylvania. “This work will stimulate people to think about new ways of doing it.”

Gargantuan, farthest water mass found

Deborah Williams-Hedges-Caltech — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 20:12:42 +0000

CALTECH/U. COLORADO (US) — A mass of water vapor in a quasar that is 30 billion trillion miles away is at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world’s oceans combined, and 100,000 times more massive than the sun.

The discovery, detailed in two studies in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, is the largest and farthest reservoir ever detected. The quasar’s light has taken 12 billion years to reach Earth, a time when the universe was only 1.6 billion years old.

120 million-year-old bird gets an X-ray

Evan Lerner-Pennsylvania — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:25:06 +0000

U. PENNSYLVANIA (US) — Trace metals in fossils are offering clues about the pigmentations of creatures dead for more than a hundred million years.

Researchers have long studied fossils of the earliest birds, including Confuciusornis sanctus, which lived 120 million years ago and was one of many evolutionary links between dinosaurs and birds, and Gansus yumenensis, which is considered the oldest modern bird and lived more than 100 million years ago.

Superthin graphene transforms optics

Evan Lerner-Pennsylvania — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:53:16 +0000

U. PENNSYLVANIA (US) — By controlling the conductivity of sheets of graphene, engineers say they can create two-dimensional, one-atom thick metamaterials.

The study of metamaterials is based on the idea that materials can be designed so that their overall wave qualities rely not only upon the material they are made of but also on the pattern, shape, and size of irregularities, known as “inclusions,” or “meta-molecules” that are embedded within host media.

Nano pickle: Pick the perfect proteins

Evan Lerner-Pennsylvania — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:17:56 +0000

U. PENN (US) — A new algorithm helps engineers tackle the seemingly impossible task of selecting the right raw materials for nanoscale construction.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania set out to design proteins that could wrap around single-walled carbon nanotubes. Consisting of a cylindrical pattern of carbon atoms tens of thousands of times thinner than a human hair, nanotubes are enticing to nanoengineers as they are extraordinarily strong and could be useful as platform for other nanostructures.

“We wanted to achieve a specific geometric pattern of the atoms that these proteins are composed of on the surface of the nanotube,” says lead researcher Gevorg Grigoryan, a postdoctoral fellow. “If you know the underlying atomic lattice, it means that you know how to further build around it, how to attach things to it. It’s like scaffolding for future building.”