We might think that Christmas is more commercial now than in the past - and the season certainly starts earlier - but when it comes to one key barometer the 1950s were pretty bad.

Though the 1950s had lots of cultural problems compared to today, economically things were much better, with lower taxes, less government interference, and most families having only one parent forced to work outside the home. And that meant spending money, but there were no malls or online retailers so everyone had to come into town to shop.

Windows with transparent photovoltaic modules or façades in which microalgae are being bred to provide the house with its own biofuel are just some of the aspects buildings of the future could feature. 

A new international research effort, coordinated by  Friedrich Schiller University in Jena’s materials scientist Lothar Wondraczek, is aiming to change this. In the project ‘Large-Area Fluidic Windows – LaWin’ the scientists intend to develop functional façades and window modules, together with an integrated production process to achieve an as to yet unmatched readiness to market.

Metamaterials have long held promise for extraordinary properties when it comes to diverting and controlling waves, especially sound and light: for instance, at the right optical frequency, they can make an object invisible, or increase the resolving power of a lens.

A new project has created three-dimensional metamaterials by combining physico-chemical formulation and microfluidics technology, making soft metamaterials that are easier to shape. In their experiment, the researchers got ultrasonic oscillations to move backwards while the energy carried by the wave moved forwards.

Examples of poisonings due to people mistakenly picking and consuming poisonous botanicals in the wild made it clear that, contrary to claims by an alarming number of nutritionists and supplement sales compnies, natural does not mean safe.

Nature has always been just as toxic as any synthetic chemical and people being sold botanicals need public awareness, and they won't get it from the people making money off of their lack of knowledge.

When health problems occur, medical professionals also need better awareness of negative health consequences related to consuming certain botanicals – both acute effects and adverse effects due to prolonged use – to ensure such effects can be reported and factored into risk assessments.

For some Medicare patients, the prognosis was better when cardiologists were away from the hospital attending national cardiology meetings.

Anupam B. Jena, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, Boston, and coauthors analyzed differences in 30-day mortality and treatment such as angioplasty (also known as percutaneous coronary intervention, PCI) among Medicare patients hospitalized for heart attack (acute myocardial infarction, AMI), heart failure or cardiac arrest from 2002 to 2011 during the dates of two national cardiology meetings compared with identical non-meeting dates in the three weeks before and after conferences.  

Scam artists often prey on older people and that has fed the perception that when it comes to important financial decisions, getting old means having less competence.

Not so, according to new work using credit scores and cognitive ability tests, which instead found evidence that "crystallized intelligence" - gained through experience and accumulated knowledge - is more important that "fluid intelligence," the ability to think logically and process new information.

Past research has found that fluid intelligence decreases with old age and so being a senior citizen means being resigned to "cognitive decline."