A new computer simulation has revealed a self-healing behavior in a common ceramic that may lead to development of radiation-resistant materials for nuclear power plants and waste storage.
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that the restless movement of oxygen atoms heals radiation-induced damage in the engineered ceramic yttria-stabilized zirconia.
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University of Utah engineers took an early step toward building superfast computers that run on far-infrared light instead of electricity: They made the equivalent of wires that carried and bent this form of light, also known as terahertz radiation, which is the last unexploited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
| | | | | | | | | access points throughout the world. Skyhook itself provides most of the data in the database, with users contributing via direct entries to the database, and requests for localization. ETH Zurich Professor Srdjan Capkun of the Department of Computer Science and his team of researchers analysed the security of Skyhook’s positioning system. The team’s results demonstrate the vulnerability of Skyhook’s and similar public WLAN positioning systems to location spoofing attacks.
Impersonation and elimination
| | | | | | | | | Researchers at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Harvard Medical School, Atrius Health, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health have created and tested a set of computer programs that use electronic medical records to help clinicians detect contagious illness and automatically report them to public health departments.
| | | | | | | | | Detecting roadside bombs may become easier, thanks to chemical sensors being developed at the University of Michigan.
A team led by chemistry professor Theodore Goodson III has created materials that sniff out TNT and give off signals that can be detected remotely---from a moving Humvee, for example. Their work was recently described in the journal Nanotechnology and also is the subject of a presentation at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans, April 9, 2008
| | | | | | | | | Carbon nanotubes are promising materials for many high-technology applications due to their exceptional mechanical, thermal, chemical, optical and electrical properties.
Now researchers at Northwestern University have used metallic nanotubes to make thin films that are semitransparent, highly conductive, flexible and come in a variety of colors, with an appearance similar to stained glass. These results, published online in the journal Nano Letters, could lead to improved high-tech products such as flat-panel displays and solar cells.
| | | | | | | | | For now, full-fledged quantum computers are the stuff of science fiction — in last summer’s blockbuster movie Transformers, the bad guys use quantum computing to break into the U.S. Army's secure files in just 10 seconds flat.
| | | | | | | | | Carbon dioxide removed from smokestack emissions in order to slow global warming in the future could become a valuable raw material for the production of DVDs, beverage bottles and other products made from polycarbonate plastics, chemists are reporting.
| | | | | | | | | The Texas Petawatt laser reached greater than one petawatt of laser power on Monday morning, March 31, making it the highest powered laser in the world, Todd Ditmire, a physicist at The University of Texas at Austin, said.
The Texas Petawatt is the only operating petawatt laser in the United States.
| | | | | | | | | Rising interest in “sustainable” fabrics is fostering a bamboo boom, in which bamboo-based fabrics are hitting the market as a leading eco-friendly textile.
Chemists in Colorado now are reporting solutions to two major problems with bamboo fabrics that may speed adoption of this amazing plant — which grows like Jack’s beanstalk without special care — in garments and other consumer products.
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