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New Protocol Enables Wireless and Secure Biometric Acquisition with Web Services
Light Touch Keeps a Grip on Delicate Nanoparticles
Fabrication Method Can Affect the Use of Block Copolymer Thin Films
First Light: NIST Researchers Develop New Way to Generate Superluminal Pulses
Researchers Find Reducing Fishmeal Hinders Growth of Farmed Fish
Retirement plans after the Great Recession: U-M study tracks the changes
At Smallest Scale, Liquid Crystal Behavior Portends New Materials
Black Hole Caught Red-Handed in a Stellar Homicide
Streams are not necessarily warming at the same rate as the air temperature
Studying Cancer-Causing Food Additive Nitrites in Bacon and Other Meats
‘Thin Red Line’ Around Breast Cancer: Visualization Shows Why Immune System Fails to Kill Tumors in Mice

New Protocol Enables Wireless and Secure Biometric Acquisition with Web Services

Posted: 02 May 2012 12:06 PM PDT

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed and published a new protocol for communicating with biometric sensors over wired and wireless networks—using some of the same technologies that underpin the web.

Light Touch Keeps a Grip on Delicate Nanoparticles

Posted: 02 May 2012 11:59 AM PDT

Using a refined technique for trapping and manipulating nanoparticles, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have extended the trapped particles' useful life more than tenfold. This new approach, which one researcher likens to "attracting moths," promises to give experimenters the trapping time they need to build nanoscale structures and may open the way to working with nanoparticles inside biological cells without damaging the cells with intense laser light.

Fabrication Method Can Affect the Use of Block Copolymer Thin Films

Posted: 02 May 2012 11:47 AM PDT

A new study by a team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) indicates that thin polymer films can have different properties depending on the method by which they are made. The results suggest that deeper work is necessary to explore the best way of creating these films, which are used in applications ranging from high-tech mirrors to computer memory devices.

First Light: NIST Researchers Develop New Way to Generate Superluminal Pulses

Posted: 02 May 2012 11:40 AM PDT

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a novel way of producing light pulses that are "superluminal"—in some sense they travel faster than the speed of light. The technique, called four-wave mixing, reshapes parts of light pulses and advances them ahead of where they would have been had they been left to travel unaltered through a vacuum. The new method could be used to improve the timing of communications signals and to investigate the propagation of quantum correlations.

Researchers Find Reducing Fishmeal Hinders Growth of Farmed Fish

Posted: 02 May 2012 11:31 AM PDT

When it comes to the food used to raise fish in aquaculture "farms," it seems that you may get what you pay for. In a new study,* researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) looked at the health effects of raising farmed fish on a diet incorporating less than the usual amount of fishmeal—a key but expensive component of current commercial fish food products. They learned that reduced fishmeal diets may be cheaper, but the fish were less healthy.

Retirement plans after the Great Recession: U-M study tracks the changes

Posted: 02 May 2012 10:41 AM PDT

New research shows that 40 percent of older Americans postponed retirement in the wake of the Great Recession. The research, presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, is the first to link actual data on household wealth just before and after the downturn to the retirement plans of a nationally representative sample of Americans age 50 and older.

At Smallest Scale, Liquid Crystal Behavior Portends New Materials

Posted: 02 May 2012 10:30 AM PDT

Liquid crystals, the state of matter that makes possible the flat screen technology now commonly used in televisions and computers, may have some new technological tricks in store.

Black Hole Caught Red-Handed in a Stellar Homicide

Posted: 02 May 2012 10:16 AM PDT

Astronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a space-based observatory, and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala in Hawaii were among the first to the scene, helping to identify the stellar remains.

Streams are not necessarily warming at the same rate as the air temperature

Posted: 02 May 2012 09:22 AM PDT

A new analysis of streams in the western United States with long-term monitoring programs has found that despite a general increase in air temperatures over the past several decades, streams are not necessarily warming at the same rate.

Several factors may influence the discrepancy, researchers say, including snowmelt, interaction with groundwater, flow and discharge rates, solar radiation, wind and humidity. But even after factoring out those elements, the scientists were surprised by the cooler-than-expected maximum, mean and minimum temperatures of the streams.

Studying Cancer-Causing Food Additive Nitrites in Bacon and Other Meats

Posted: 02 May 2012 09:07 AM PDT

As with many concerned consumers, a team of University of Oklahoma researchers wondered if the green color sometimes seen in bacon is, in fact, harmful to human health. Recently, these OU scientists took an important first step in answering this question by determining the structure of the green pigment responsible for this ‘nitrite burn.’

‘Thin Red Line’ Around Breast Cancer: Visualization Shows Why Immune System Fails to Kill Tumors in Mice

Posted: 02 May 2012 09:01 AM PDT

A pioneering approach to imaging breast cancer in mice has revealed new clues about why the human immune system often fails to attack tumors and keep cancer in check. This observation, by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), may help to reveal new approaches to cancer immunotherapy.