As more coal-fired power plants are retired, industry workers are left without many options. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though.

In a new study published in Energy Economics, researchers from Michigan Technological University and Oregon State University offer hope for coal workers for high-quality employment in the rapidly expanding solar photovoltaic industry.

Joshua Pearce, who holds a dual appointment in materials science and engineering as well as electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, helped assess what it would take to retrain workers for a different energy field.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new tool for detecting and measuring the polarization of light based on a single spatial sampling of the light, rather than the multiple samples required by previous technologies. The new device makes use of the unique properties of organic polymers, rather than traditional silicon, for polarization detection and measurement.

Light consists of an electric field. That electric field oscillates, and the direction in which that field oscillates is the light's polarization. If the field oscillates randomly, it's referred to as unpolarized light. The polarization of light can be affected in predictable ways when light bounces off, or is scattered by, physical objects.

Physicians have been mystified by chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition where normal exertion leads to debilitating fatigue that isn't alleviated by rest. There are no known triggers, and diagnosis requires lengthy tests administered by an expert.

Now, for the first time, Cornell University researchers report they have identified biological markers of the disease in gut bacteria and inflammatory microbial agents in the blood.

In a study published June 23 in the journal Microbiome, the team describes how they correctly diagnosed myalgic encephalomyeletis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) in 83 percent of patients through stool samples and blood work, offering a noninvasive diagnosis and a step toward understanding the cause of the disease.

PRINCETON, N.J.--A new laser-based uranium enrichment technology may provide a hard-to-detect pathway to nuclear weapons production, according to a forthcoming paper in the journal Science & Global Security by Ryan Snyder, a physicist with Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security.

One example of this new third-generation laser enrichment technique may be the separation of isotopes by laser excitation (SILEX) process which was originally developed in Australia and licensed in 2012 for commercial-scale deployment in the United States to the Global Laser Enrichment consortium led by General Electric-Hitachi. Research on the relevant laser systems is also currently ongoing in Russia, India and China.

Researchers, led by Carnegie Mellon University President Subra Suresh and MIT Principal Research Scientist Ming Dao, have created a new computer model that shows how tiny slits in the spleen prevent old, diseased or misshapen red blood cells from re-entering the bloodstream. Members of this multidisciplinary team include specialists in mathematics, supercomputing, clinical medicine, engineering and computational biology.

Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), all parts of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), describe how combining engineered anthrax toxin proteins and existing chemotherapy drugs could potentially yield a therapy to reduce or eliminate cancerous tumors. The findings, based on testing in mice, will appear this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.