It took Jackie Goordial over 1000 Petri dishes before she was ready to accept what she was seeing. Or not seeing. Goordial, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University has spent the past four years looking for signs of active microbial life in permafrost soil taken from one of the coldest, oldest and driest places on Earth: in University Valley, located in the high elevation McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, where extremely cold and dry conditions have persisted for over 150,000 years.
Tech
Billions of people use the internet, which requires huge data centres and results in an enormous energy consumption. In her doctoral dissertation at Umeå University in Sweden, Mina Sedaghat has developed techniques and algorithms to manage and schedule the resources in these large data centres at a lesser cost, more efficiently, more reliably and with a lower environmental impact.
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - Researchers at Binghamton University have become the first to use an open-source graphics processor unit (GPU) for research.
Scientists at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are studying what may seem paradoxical - certain defects in silicon solar cells may actually improve their performance.
The findings run counter to conventional wisdom, according to Pauls Stradins, the principal scientist and a project leader of the silicon photovoltaics group at NREL.
A Southampton study using high resolution imaging to create a "virtual bone biopsy" has shed new light on why people with type 2 diabetes are at risk of bone fractures.
Researchers from the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, used high resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HRpQCT) to assess bone structure and strength at a microstructural level in living patients.
3D printing techniques have quickly become some of the most widely used tools to rapidly design and build new components. A team of engineers at the University of Bristol has developed a new type of 3D printing that can print composite materials, which are used in many high performance products such as tennis rackets, golf clubs and aeroplanes. This technology will soon enable a much greater range of things to be 3D printed at home and at low-cost.
Researchers from MIPT have found a solution to the problem of overheating of active plasmonic components. These components will be essential for high-speed data transfer within the optoelectronic microprocessors of the future, which will be able to function tens of thousands of times faster than the microprocessors currently in use today. In the paper published in ACS Photonics the researchers have demonstrated how to efficiently cool optoelectronic chips using industry-standard heatsinks in spite of high heat generation in active plasmonic components.
EPFL scientists have developed a solar-panel material that can cut down on photovoltaic costs while achieving competitive power-conversion efficiency of 20.2%.
An international team of researchers has taken a step toward achieving controlled nuclear fusion--a process that powers the Sun and other stars, and has the potential to supply the world with limitless, clean energy.
A new study from the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, shows lesions, which can best be seen on MRI scans, could help identify individuals who are more likely to suffer from more rapidly progressing osteoarthritis.
Osteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis in the UK and can cause the joints to become painful and stiff. Almost any joint can be affected, but it most often causes problems in the knees, hips, and small joints of the hands. It can progress at varying speeds.
"Planes, Trains and Automobiles" is a popular comedy from the 1980s, but there's nothing funny about the amount of energy consumed by our nation's transportation sector.
This sector -- which includes passenger cars, trucks, buses, and rail, marine, and air transport -- accounts for more than 20 percent of America's energy use, mostly in the form of fossil fuels, so the search is on for environmentally friendly alternatives.
LA JOLLA--Mitochondria, the power generators in our cells, are essential for life. When they are under attack--from poisons, environmental stress or genetic mutations--cells wrench these power stations apart, strip out the damaged pieces and reassemble them into usable mitochondria.
Scientists predict a major range contraction of chytrid in Africa's Albertine Rift over the next century.
Climate models predict warmer and wetter conditions in this region may cause changes in habitat suitability that are less favorable for chytrid
Chytrid is wiping out amphibians worldwide but study indicates some resistance in the Albertine Rift
Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have solved a problem in micro- and nanofabrication -- how to quickly, gently and precisely handle tiny particles -- that will allow researchers to more easily build tiny machines, biomedical sensors, optical computers, solar panels and other devices.
A group of researchers from Russia, Australia and the Netherlands have developed a technology that can reduce Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanning times by more than 50%, meaning hospitals can drastically increase the number of scans without changing equipment. This extraordinary leap in efficiency is achieved by placing a layer of metamaterials onto the bed of the scanner, which improves the signal-to-noise ratio. The details of this experimental research are available in the current issue of Advanced Materials.