Tech

GAITHERSBURG, Md.—Future buildings—especially tall structures—should be increasingly resistant to fire, more easily evacuated in emergencies, and safer overall thanks to 23 major and far-reaching building and fire code changes approved recently by the International Code Council (ICC) based on recommendations from the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The recommendations were part of NIST's investigation of the collapses of New York City's World Trade Center (WTC) towers on Sept. 11, 2001. The changes, adopted at the ICC hearings held Sept.

Engineers long have known that great ideas can be lifted from Mother Nature, but a new paper* by researchers at Yale University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) takes it to a cellular level. Applying modern engineering design tools to one of the basic units of life, they argue that artificial cells could be built that not only replicate the electrical behavior of electric eel cells but in fact improve on them.

(Kingston, ON) – Researchers at Queen's University are developing a new robotic system to service more than 8,000 satellites now orbiting the Earth, beyond the flight range of ground-based repair operations. Currently, when the high-flying celestial objects malfunction – or simply run out of fuel – they become "space junk" cluttering the cosmos.

In a high-temperature blaze, how well does a fireproofing material shield a building’s important steel structures from heat? Answering this question has been surprisingly difficult, but it is important information for builders selecting high-performance fire-resistive materials and for scientists conducting computer simulations that investigate fires. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have developed a technique for measuring a key thermal property of fire-resistive materials at high temperatures.

Rigid television screens, bulky laptops and still image posters are to be a thing of the past as new research, published today, Thursday, 2 October, in the New Journal of Physics, heralds the beginning of a technological revolution for screen displays.

Screen display technology is taking a significant step forward as researchers from Sony and the Max Planck Institute demonstrate the possibility of bendable optically assessed organic light emitting displays for the first time, based on red or IR-A light upconversion.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Providing a glimpse into the infinitesimal, physicists have found a novel way of spying on some of the universe's tiniest buildingblocks.

Their "camera," described this week in the journal Nature, consists of a special "flaw" in diamonds that can be manipulated into sensitively monitoring magnetic signals from individual electrons and atomic nuclei placed nearby.

If you've balanced a laptop computer on your lap lately, you probably noticed a burning sensation. That's because ever-increasing processing speeds are creating more and more heat, which has to go somewhere — in this case, into your lap.

Two researchers at the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science aim to lay the scientific groundwork that will solve the problem using nanoelectronics, considered the essential science for powering the next generation of computers.

AUSTIN, Texas – A new "graphene-based" material that helps solve the structure of graphite oxide and could lead to other potential discoveries of the one-atom thick substance called graphene, which has applications in nanoelectronics, energy storage and production, and transportation such as airplanes and cars has been created by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

Driven by high prices for fossil fuels and concern about climate change, many nations are planning to build their first nuclear power plants, and they will need enriched uranium for fuel. How can the international community help meet this need while limiting the spread of technologies that could also be used to produce uranium for weapons?

HOUSTON, Sept. 25, 2008 -- Rooting out Wi-Fi "dead zones" in large wireless networks that cover whole neighborhoods or cities is an expensive proposition. Pre-deployment testing is so costly that most WiFi providers simply build their networks first and fill in the gaps later. But even that isn't easy, due to the paucity of inexpensive techniques for mapping out precisely which areas lack coverage.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Metal alloys can fail unexpectedly in a wide range of applications---from jet engines to satellites to cell phones---and new research from the University of Michigan helps to explain why.

Metal alloys are solids made from at least two different metallic elements. The elements are often mixed together as liquid, and when they "freeze," into solids, tiny grains of crystal form to create a polycrystalline material. A polycrystalline material is made of multiple crystals.

Astronomers have discovered a most bizarre celestial object that emitted 40 visible-light flashes before disappearing again. It is most likely to be a missing link in the family of neutron stars, the first case of an object with an amazingly powerful magnetic field that showed some brief, strong visible-light activity.

The weather. It's the one topic of conversation that unites Britain – umbrella or sun cream? Now scientists at the Science and Technology Facilities Council have developed a system that measures the individual layers of cloud above us which will make answering the all-important weather questions much easier in future.

Just like flat-screen televisions, cell phones and computers, global positioning system (GPS) technology is becoming something people can't imagine living without. So if such a ubiquitous system were to come under attack, would we be ready?

It's an uncomfortable question, but one that a group of Cornell researchers have considered with their research into "spoofing" GPS receivers.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--MIT researchers and colleagues are working to find out whether energy from trees can power a network of sensors to prevent spreading forest fires.

What they learn also could raise the possibility of using trees as silent sentinels along the nation's borders to detect potential threats such as smuggled radioactive materials.