Penn engineers have developed a model that shows while metals tend to be stronger at nanoscale volumes, their strengths saturate at around 10-50 nanometers diameter, at which point they also become more sensitive to temperature and strain rate.

Using this model, they have found that, while metals tend to be stronger at nanoscale volumes, their strengths saturate at around 10-50 nanometers diameter, at which point they also become more sensitive to temperature and strain rate.

REDMOND, Washington, March 4 /PRNewswire/ --

- Customers get immediate access to the new service that extends Microsoft Office, provides anywhere access to documents and enables sharing functionality.

Microsoft Corp today announced the public availability of Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta (http://workspace.officelive.com), the new web-based extension of Microsoft Office that lets people access their documents online and share their work with others. Office Live Workspace was among the first entries in the new wave of online services in Microsoft's software plus services vision previewed last fall.

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In the west, we call valuable ceramic place settings 'china' because high-quality ceramic wares were imported from the east. They were the best and had the highest value.

Not really so, at least in Israel, according to research at the University of Haifa.

According to Dr. Edna Stern, in contrast to the notion that ceramic wares were imported to Acre and surrounding ports as luxury items, the findings of her study revealed exactly the opposite.

Researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory have developed a powerful sensor that can detect airborne pathogens such as anthrax and smallpox in less than three minutes.

The new device, called PANTHER (for PAthogen Notification for THreatening Environmental Releases), represents a "significant advance" over any other sensor, said James Harper of Lincoln Lab's Biosensor and Molecular Technologies Group. Current sensors take at least 20 minutes to detect harmful bacteria or viruses in the air, but the PANTHER sensors can do detection and identification in less than 3 minutes.

Testosterone appears to protect people against eating disorders, providing further evidence that biological factors – and not just social influences – are linked to anorexia and bulimia, according to new research findings at Michigan State University.

An ongoing, six-year study of 538 sets of twins in Michigan indicates that females who were in the womb with male twins have lower risk for eating disorder symptoms than females who were in the womb with female twins. Previous animal research has shown that females in the womb with males are exposed to higher levels of testosterone.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota studying bacteria capable of generating electricity have discovered that riboflavin (commonly known as vitamin B-2) is responsible for much of the energy produced by these organisms.

The bacteria, Shewanella, are commonly found in water and soil and are of interest because they can convert simple organic compounds (such as lactic acid) into electricity, according to Daniel Bond and Jeffrey Gralnick, of the University of Minnesota's BioTechnology Institute and department of microbiology, who led the research effort.

"This is very exciting because it solves a fundamental biological puzzle," Bond said. "Scientists have known for years that Shewanella produce electricity. Now we know how they do it."

SAN RAMON, California, March 3 /PRNewswire/ --

Prodiance Corporation, the leading provider of enterprise spreadsheet management solutions, today announced that it will host an online seminar with Microsoft and Ventana Research for senior executives entitled: "21st Century Spreadsheets: Business Value Driver or Clear &: Present Risk?".

The seminar will last approximately 60 minutes, and will be held on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 1:00 pm EDT. It will feature industry experts from Microsoft's Financial Services industry group along with leading industry analysts to discuss the key issues every organization faces in managing mission critical spreadsheets.

Two research teams led by Dr. Michael Verkhovsky and Prof. Mårten Wikström of the Institute of Biotechnology of the University of Helsinki have for the first time succeeded in monitoring electron transfer by Complex I in real time. In the future, this work might, for example, have medical relevance, because most of the maternally inherited so-called mitochondrial diseases are caused by dysfunction of Complex I.

This achievement required developing and building of a special device by which the enzyme-catalysed electron transfer could be captured at different time points by stopping the reaction at liquid nitrogen temperatures, on a microsecond (one millionth of a second) time scale. The electrons are very small elementary particles, which is why their transfer is very fast. This work is published this week in the prestigious journal of the American National Academy of Sciences (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.). The results give certain hints of the function of Complex I at the molecular level.

Researchers writing in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry have discovered evidence linking variation in a particular gene with anxiety-related traits.

The team describes finding that particular versions of the RGS2 protein, which affects the activity of important neurotransmitter receptors, were more common in both children and adults assessed as being inhibited or introverted and also were associated with increased activity of brain regions involved in emotional processing.

“We found that variations in this gene were associated with shy, inhibited behavior in children, introverted personality in adults and the reactivity of brain regions involved in processing fear and anxiety,” says Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD, of the MGH Department of Psychiatry, the report’s lead author. “Each of these traits appears to be a risk factor for social anxiety disorder, the most common type of anxiety disorder in the U.S.”

Older men with lower free testosterone levels in their blood appear to have higher prevalence of depression, according to a new report.

Depression affects between 2 percent and 5 percent of the population at any given time, according to background information in the article. Women are more likely to be depressed than men until age 65, when sex differences almost disappear. Several studies have suggested that sex hormones might be responsible for this phenomenon.