ANN ARBOR – Because the strong currents in the Straits of Mackinac reverse direction every few days, a rupture of the oil pipeline beneath the channel would quickly contaminate shorelines miles away in both lakes Michigan and Huron, according to a new University of Michigan study commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation.
Tech
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To keep data safe in the cloud, a group of computer scientists suggests doing the Melbourne Shuffle.
That may sound like a dance move (and it is), but it's also a computer algorithm developed by researchers at Brown University.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provides new insights on the physical mechanisms governing the interplay of spin and heat at the nanoscale, and addresses the fundamental limits of ultrafast spintronic devices for data storage and information processing.
A hard drive stores bits in the form of tiny magnetic domains. The directions of the magnetic north and south poles of these domains, which are referred to as the magnetization, determine whether they are a 0 or a 1. Data is stored by changing the direction of the magnetization of the associated bits. At present this is done using a write head to create a local magnetic field, which makes a bit change direction.
Limit reached
Polar bear population estimates based on satellite images are similar to aerial estimates, according to a study published July 9, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Seth Stapleton from United States Geological Survey and colleagues.
Tampa, Fla. (July 9, 2014) – Emerging fungal pathogens pose a greater threat to biodiversity than any other parasitic group, causing population declines of amphibians, bats, corals, bees and snakes. New research from the University of South Florida published in the prestigious journal Nature reveals that amphibians can acquire behavioral or immunological resistance to a deadly chytrid fungus implicated in global amphibian population declines.
URBANA, Ill. – With over 100 diseases that can attack soybean crops, why would charcoal rot rise to the top of the most wanted list? University of Illinois scientists cite the earth's changing climate as one reason that more research is needed on the fungus that causes charcoal rot.
Fungi may often be associated with cool, damp growing conditions but Macrophomina phaseolina, the fungus that causes charcoal rot, prefers hot and dry drought conditions.
The U.S. may be on the verge of an economy driven by methane, the primary component of natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal and is undergoing a production boom. It has poised the country as a top fuel producer globally, but recent research is casting serious doubts over just how climate-friendly it is, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society.
Chemists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have made a decisive step towards more cost-efficient regenerative fuel cells and rechargeable metal-air batteries. They developed a new type of catalyst on the basis of carbon, which can facilitate two opposite reactions: electrolysis of water and combustion of hydrogen with oxygen. A catalyst of this kind might make the storage of wind and solar energy and the manufacture of cost-efficient batteries, for example for electric cars, possible. The team published their report in the "International Edition" of the magazine "Angewandte Chemie".
University of Southampton researchers, with assistance from the Ministry of Defence, have conducted the first study to identify the hearing requirements of British soldiers fighting on the frontline.
The study, which provides an important and novel insight into the frontline experiences of British infantry personnel, identified 17 'auditory tasks', such as 'hearing grid references' and 'locating enemy movement in maize fields', carried out on operational duties abroad.
Solar power and other sources of renewable energy can help combat global warming but they have a drawback: they don't produce energy as predictably as plants powered by oil, coal or natural gas. Solar panels only produce electricity when the sun is shining, and wind turbines are only productive when the wind is brisk.
Ideally, alternative energy sources would be complemented with massive systems to store and dispense power – think batteries on steroids. Reversible fuel cells have been envisioned as one such storage solution.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) — Researchers at the University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering have created a lithium ion battery that outperforms the current industry standard by three times. The key material: sand. Yes, sand.
"This is the holy grail – a low cost, non-toxic, environmentally friendly way to produce high performance lithium ion battery anodes," said Zachary Favors, a graduate student working with Cengiz and Mihri Ozkan, both engineering professors at UC Riverside.
University of Iowa researchers have discovered a biomarker that could give expecting mothers and their doctors the first simple blood test to reliably predict that a pregnant woman may develop preeclampsia, at least as early as 6 weeks into the pregnancy.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A perspective article published last month by University of California, Riverside chemists in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters was selected as an Editors Choice—an honor only a handful of research papers receive. The perspective reviews the chemists' work on "singlet fission," a process in which a single photon generates a pair of excited states. This 1->2 conversion process, as it is known, has the potential to boost solar cell efficiency by as much as 30 percent.