As network carriers debate the next Ethernet standard, and whether transmission speeds of 400 gigabit per second or 1 terabit per second should be the norm, engineers are working on new ways to squeeze next-generation performance out of current-generation systems. 

A team from AT&T has devised a new technique that enables tuning of the modulation spectral efficiency and allows 400 Gb/s signals to be sent over today's 100 gigahertz-grid optical networks over ultra-long distances.

Spectral efficiency is the information rate that can be transmitted over a given bandwidth, and measures how efficiently the available frequency spectrum is utilized.

The bacterial foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes is the causative agent of listeriosis, a debilitating disease linked with about 2,500 illnesses and more than 500 deaths in the U.S.A. each year. A characteristic feature of L. monocytogenes is its ability to grow at cold temperatures and even in the presence of high concentrations of salt - traditional food preservation techniques which arrest the growth of most other pathogens.

The bacterium protects itself from such stresses by twisting into a protective corkscrew type shape in an effort to reduce its exposure to the stress—in the same way a human might wrap up tight—hugging the core to reduce the effects of the cold. 

It had been shown that the origin of pumpkins and cucumbers can be traced back to India and a new genetic analysis has updated that data. 

Compared to grains and pulses, vegetables are under-investigated taxonomically, and information on their genome is scarce. The cucumber family, Cucurbitaceae, includes many of our favorite foods: pumpkins, melon, cucumber, watermelon, bottle gourds, and bitter gourd. Molecular data have recently revealed that both cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) and melon (Cucumis melo L.) are indigenous to India and likely to have originated from the foothills of the Himalayas.

A protein known as mini-chromosome maintenance (MCM) has been found to change DNA topology and make DNA twist up into a so-called "supercoil".

Supercoiling can be thought of as similar to twisting one end of a rubber band while holding the other end still. After a few turns, it forms a neatly twisted rope. But if you keep on turning, the twisted band will twist back upon itself into an increasingly coiled-up knot. Similarly, a DNA molecule can be twisted and coiled to varying extents to form different "supercoiled" structures.

People with more money may live longer, if not better, than poor people but attempts to link high socioeconomic status to better health and lower mortality have been ineffective because it's unclear whether the association has more to do with access to resources or the glow of high social status relative to others. Scholars call the latter "relative deprivation."

Researchers have developed a cloud-computing platform,  the RoboEarth Cloud Engine, that allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers for tasks and learning.

This continues their work towards creating an Internet for robots. The new platform extends earlier work on allowing robots to share knowledge with other robots via a WWW-style database, greatly speeding up robot learning and adaptation in complex tasks.