Tag: Dec2018

In 2019, as global economies slow and consumer tastes change, more notable brands will be buried in the retail grave yard. From Sears, Campbell’s, Harley Davidson, J.C. Penny, K-Mart, Wheaties, Chef Boyardee, Hamburger Helper – to Ken-L-Ration and a whole line of canned and packaged dog foods that only Rin Tin Tin would eat and...

For more than a decade, biologists have been using microscopic worms to test ways to lengthen life. That work has paid off, this time by finding a combination of drugs that almost doubled worms’ healthy lifespans. A team at Singapore’s Yale-NUS College worked with Caenorhabditis elegans, lifeline researchers’ favorite worm. They reviewed past studies to...

A major obstacle to building efficient robotic devices, especially small ones, is fitting them out with the electronics – and the requisite power source – they need to communicate with other gadgets or to a home base. Now they can go circuit-free. Engineers at the University of Washington have devised a way to let machines...

Bioengineers at the University of Minnesota have 3D-printed a network of light receptors on a hemisphere about the size of the front half of a human eyeball. Using a glass dome as a base, the scientists began by covering the surface with a layer of ink containing silver particles. The ink’s consistency held the silver...

If car bodies are made from the right kind of carbon fibers, they could store electricity and reduce the size and weight of on-board battery packs – or even become the car’s battery itself, say engineers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology. Varieties of carbon fiber made up of large, well-organized crystals are twice as...

Can’t lose the extra weight? Your genes might be the culprit. Specifically, you might lack the gene that produces a protein called Pannexin 1, which regulates the creation of fat cells and fat storage. Researchers at the University of Western Ontario deleted the gene from mice embryos and then watched the newborn mice bulk up,...

Investors in their mid-40s and younger increasingly are putting their money in funds and companies that demonstrate social responsibility, according to a new study from Swell Investing, a project of the Pacific Life Insurance company. The study found that 78 percent of Millennials – born between 1981 and 1997 – look for investments that offer...