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| Posted: 20 Feb 2008 02:38 PM CST  Cardiff University researchers are exploring how waste heat from car exhausts could provide a new greener power supply for vehicles. Professor Mike Rowe’s long term research interest at the Cardiff School of Engineering has been in thermoelectric generation — employing thermocouples to convert heat into electricity. The conversion technology is used in everyday applications such as controlling the central heating system or refrigerator temperature. Now Professor Rowe aims to use this technology to generate electricity from the waste heat in vehicles. Professor Mike Rowe, OBE School of Engineering said: “The main interest in cars is to decrease the petrol consumption and reduce CO2 emissions. If you can utilise the exhaust heat you could replace the alternator. This would provide a 5 percent saving in fuel straightaway.” Vehicle manufacturers in the United States are already investing in exploring this technology, however Professor Rowe has found the UK’s interest in the technology to be slower. He said: “Thermoelectric generation is a green solution. It can in many instances cost less than solar energy. It has huge future potential yet it has been neglected to date in the UK.” Sports Cars - Fast Cars - Exotic Cars Molested Cars How Hybrid Cars Work Do Hybrid Cars Pose Added Rescue Risks? The Ugliest Cars In Britain 10 Cars You Can't Buy in the U.S. GM IDs Cars In Your Blind Spot With GPS What Cars Do Famous Geeks Drive? Phones Not To Buy Tech Notebook: iPods users hit snags with hookup to cars |
| AMD Discovery: New Hope For Treatment Of Vision Loss Posted: 20 Feb 2008 11:25 AM CST Scientists have won a major battle in the fight against age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, a blinding eye disease that affects millions of people. An international team, led by researchers at Sainte-Justine Hospital and the Universite de Montreal, has identified the deficient receptor that causes the dry form of AMD. In the February edition of the medical journal PLoS Medicine, the researchers explain how a deficiency of the CD36 receptor prevents the evacuation of oxidized lipids in the eye. Those oxidized lipids in turn accumulate and attack the layers beneath and over the retina — thereby causing vision loss. “Our discovery has important implications for the development of new therapies,” explains lead researcher, Dr. Sylvain Chemtob, who co-authored the paper with Universite de Montreal collaborator Dr. Huy Ong, a professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, as well as Florian Sennlaub of the Institut national de la sante et de la recherche medicale (INSERM) in France. Chemtob, a neonatal researcher at Sainte-Justine Hospital and a professor at the Universite de Montreal’s Department of Pediatrics and School of Optometry, used mice and rat models to pinpoint the scavenger receptor responsible for retinal degeneration typical of dry AMD. “We found that a deficiency in CD36 receptors leads to significant and progressive age-related macular degeneration,” he says. “CD36 deficiency leads to central vision loss — a key feature of dry AMD.” “This discovery brings us one step closer to treating dry AMD, which could significantly improve the quality of life of seniors who are most affected by this eye disease,” added co-author Dr. Huy Ong. “Now that we have also developed the molecules that activate CD 36 receptor, we are working on the validation of the efficacy of these molecules as potential therapeutic agents for dry AMD treatment with prospect at the horizon of 2015.” Wet and dry AMD remain an alarming cause of vision loss in the western world, which according to the AMD Alliance International, affect 30 million people aged 50 and over. Dry AMD is the most pervasive of the disorders and affects 90 percent of AMD cases. New Treatment For Age-Related Macular Degeneration Within Sight Natural Gut Hormone Offers Hope For New Obesity Drug Fish Eyes Could Hold Clue To Repairing Damaged Retinas In Humans Soft Contacts Designed For Cone-Shaped Cornea X-ray Vision Becomes A Reality! Flash, Debt Drag AMD Into The Red I Thought AMD Had Died? AMD posts Q1 net loss Microsoft to use heaps of AMD Opteron processors Security Updates As Of September 2, 2007 |
| Posted: 20 Feb 2008 03:24 AM CST Working alone may be the key to better productivity, new research suggests. You may not be aware of it — they might not be aware of it, but the people in your work environment might be slowing you down. New research by University of Calgary Faculty of Kinesiology researcher Dr. Tim Welsh says that regardless of their intentions, having an individual working on a different task — within your field of vision — could be enough to slow down your performance. “Imagine a situation like a complex assembly line,” said Welsh If you are doing a particular task and the person across from you is doing a different task, you’ll be slowed down regardless of their performance.” The reason for this is a built-in response-interpretation mechanism that is hard-wired into our central nervous systems. If we see someone performing a task we automatically imagine ourselves performing that task. This behaviour is part of our mirror neuron system. The findings from Welsh’s latest work on the topic are founding a paper titled “Seeing vs. believing: Is believing sufficient to activate the processes of response co-representation?” published in the December, 2007 issue of the Journal of Human Movement Science. His set-up involved an individual performing a simple computer task alone, then with a partner performing a different but related task, and alone again after being told that the partner was going to continue to perform the task in another room. “When an individual could see their partner actually performing the task, the partner’s performance interfered with their own performance, causing them to perform more slowly,” Welsh explained. “When the partner left the room and the individual could only see the results of the partner’s action — not the action itself — the interference effect was no longer observed and performance improved. We believe it’s because the individual no longer represented — or modeled - their partners’ actions, even though they could see the results of these actions.” Welsh says his research could have implications for some industrial work settings. “In a situation where speed and accuracy in performing a certain task are important, I think an argument could be made for a work setting in which people work in isolation - or at least with people who doing very similar tasks,” he said. “That will remove the involuntary modeling of another’s behaviour, potentially improving speed and likely accuracy.” How Valuable Is E*Trade's Crown? Fewer US dotcom bankruptcies this year Swarming Wi-Fi ISPs Up the Ante in Spam Fight Record Labels Seek OK for Online Music Sabotage Is It True? Spam Is Slowing Down? Dear Chuck... A Comment Desktop PC sales to stagnate in 2006 20 Tools To Get The Junk Off Your PC Control that Cron |
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