Tech

Long ago, in a field far away...

Impressions of cockroach egg cases from 4,300 year old Japanese potsherds (broken pottery fragments) have been found in southern Japan. X-ray, computed tomography (CT) and scanning electron microscopy were used to image the impressions and reveal aspects about ancient Japanese life in this latest archeological survey from Kumamoto University.

These are impressions you are looking for

Everyday materials found in the kitchen, such as aluminum foil, sticky note paper, sponges and tape, have been used by a team of electrical engineers from KAUST to develop a low-cost sensor that can detect external stimuli, including touch, pressure, temperature, acidity and humidity. Their work was published on Feb. 19, 2016 in the inaugural issue of Advanced Materials Technologies by Wiley-VCH (Germany).

HOUSTON -- (Feb. 22, 2016) -- Rice University bioengineering researchers have modified a commercial-grade CO2 laser cutter to create OpenSLS, an open-source, selective laser sintering platform that can print intricate 3-D objects from powdered plastics and biomaterials. The system costs at least 40 times less than its commercial counterparts and allows researchers to work with their own specialized powdered materials.

Short-term exposure to engineered nanoparticles used in semiconductor manufacturing poses little risk to people or the environment, according to a widely read research paper from a University of Arizona-led research team.

When remote regions with limited health facilities experience an epidemic, they need portable diagnostic equipment that functions outside the hospital. As demand for such equipment grows, EPFL researchers have developed a low-cost and portable microfluidic diagnostic device. It has been tested on Ebola and can be used to detect many other diseases.

MALIBU, Calif., February 19, 2016 -- HRL Laboratories, LLC, today announced that researchers in its Sensors and Materials Laboratory have developed an active variable stiffness vibration isolator capable of 100x stiffness changes and millisecond actuation times, independent of the static load. According to Principal Investigator Christopher Churchill, "This performance surpasses existing mechanisms by at least 20 times in either speed or useful stiffness change."

New research demonstrates that particles at the quantum level can in fact be seen as behaving something like billiard balls rolling along a table, and not merely as the probabilistic smears that the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests. But there's a catch - the tracks the particles follow do not always behave as one would expect from "realistic" trajectories, but often in a fashion that has been termed "surrealistic."

HANOVER, N.H. - Dartmouth College researchers have developed a digital "magic wand" to improve home healthcare and to prevent hackers from stealing your personal data.

The system, called "Wanda," will be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications in April.

An exciting new scientific frontier--synthetic biology--took center stage as a celebrated scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently spoke at the headquarters of the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

As part of a Distinguished Lecture Series celebrating ONR's 70th anniversary, world-class scientists, researchers and experts from diverse fields will be speaking at ONR in 2016. Dr. Christopher Voigt, an MIT professor of biological engineering, inaugurated the lecture series with a look at the revolutionary potential of synthetic biology.

Topological insulators appeared to be rather well-understood from theory until now. The electrons that can only occupy "allowed" quantum states in the crystal lattice are free to move in only two dimensions, namely along the surface, behaving like massless particles. Topological insulators are therefore highly conductive at their surfaces and electrically insulating within. Only magnetic fields should destroy this mobility, according to theory.

A colony of feral rhesus macaques calls the banks of the Silver River in Silver Springs State Park in central Florida its home. The monkeys are part of a larger feral population living throughout the Cross Florida Greenway. Many locals enjoy having the monkeys in the park, but wildlife officials are concerned about overpopulation caused by human feeding, the nonnative animals' ecological impact and the potential for interspecies disease transmission.

Smart skin that can respond to external stimuli could have important applications in medicine and robotics. Using only items found in a typical household, researchers have created multi-sensor artificial skin that's capable of sensing pressure, temperature, humidity, proximity, pH, and air flow.

Emulsions, the stabilized mixtures of oil and water are the basis of many food and personal care products such as spreads, creams, and pastes. Each product has different requirements and there is a need for emulsifiers that can be tuned, or tailored but are also biocompatible and biodegradable.

Lebanon, New Hampshire - February 18, 2016 - Adimab, LLC, a global leader in the discovery of human antibodies, today reported the isolation of a broad panel of neutralizing anti-Ebola virus antibodies from a survivor of the recent Zaire outbreak. The work, published online today in the journal Science, highlights the remarkable speed of Adimab's recently launched single B cell isolation platform, and constitutes the largest panel of functional anti-Ebola antibodies reported in the scientific literature to date.

Researchers have created a library of fungi-secreted enzymes that breakdown plant biomass, which is no easy feat for man, and mapped out how these enzymes function together. The results could help simplify and lower the costs of biofuel production. Lignocellulose, or plant dry matter, is the most abundant material available on Earth for the production of biofuels, including ethanol. Yet current methods to convert such biomass into fuel require costly pretreatment processes. Fungi within the guts of herbivores are highly efficient at breaking down lignocellulose.