Tech

Tom Lehrer sang about poisoning them, but those pigeons in the park might be a good way to detect lead and other toxic compounds in cities. A new study of pigeons in New York City shows that levels of lead in the birds track with neighborhoods where children show high levels of lead exposure.

Bending of an elbow or a knee is common in most computer animations of human or animal figures, but current techniques often result in unwanted pinching or bulging near the joints. Disney Research has found a way to eliminate those artifacts even when the animation algorithm is running in real-time.

Widely known as one of the cleanest and most renewable energy sources, solar energy is a fast growing alternative to fossil fuels. Among the various types of solar materials, organometal halide perovskite in particular has attracted researchers' attention thanks to its superior optical and electronic properties.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have combined tissues from a sea slug with flexible 3-D printed components to build "biohybrid" robots that crawl like sea turtles on the beach.

A muscle from the slug's mouth provides the movement, which is currently controlled by an external electrical field. However, future iterations of the device will include ganglia, bundles of neurons and nerves that normally conduct signals to the muscle as the slug feeds, as an organic controller.

PITTSBURGH--A new computational design tool can turn a flat sheet of plastic or metal into a complex 3-D shape, such as a mask, a sculpture or even a lady's high-heel shoe.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL), say the tool enables designers to fully and creatively exploit an unusual quality of certain materials -- the ability to expand uniformly in two dimensions. A rubber band, by contrast, contracts in one dimension while being stretched in another.

Researchers from the University of Houston have reported the first explanation for how a class of materials changes during production to more efficiently absorb light, a critical step toward the large-scale manufacture of better and less-expensive solar panels.

Harvard researchers have identified a whole new class of high-performing organic molecules, inspired by vitamin B2, that can safely store electricity from intermittent energy sources like solar and wind power in large batteries.

PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University researchers have determined a key step in improving solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), a promising clean energy technology that has struggled to gain wide acceptance in the marketplace.

The researchers determined a way to improve one of the primary failure points for the fuel cell, overcoming key issues that have hindered its acceptance. Their work is featured on the cover of the latest issue of Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

AUSTIN, Texas -- With an eye to the next generation of tech gadgetry, a team of physicists at The University of Texas at Austin has had the first-ever glimpse into what happens inside an atomically thin semiconductor device. In doing so, they discovered that an essential function for computing may be possible within a space so small that it's effectively one-dimensional.

In a paper published July 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe seeing the detailed inner workings of a new type of transistor that is two-dimensional.

Water supply contamination has become a global issue, affecting communities in both the United States and around the world. Exposure to environmental toxins - such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and other heavy metals - early in life via contaminated water or other sources can have long-term health consequences as children grow.

A collaboration of researchers from Kumamoto, Yamaguchi, and Osaka Universities in Japan have discovered a new method of drastically changing the color and fluorescence of a particular compound using only oxygen (O2) and hydrogen (H2) gases. The fully reversible reaction is environmentally friendly since it produces only water as a byproduct. Rather than using electrical or photo energy, the discovery uses energy from the gases themselves, which is expected to become a future trend, to switch the color and fluorescence properties.

Japanese researchers centered at Nagoya University reveal a role for orexin neurons of the hypothalamus when mice respond to painful stimuli, and suggest a link between stimulus response and consciousness.

In biomedical research, working with tissue samples is indispensable because it permits insights into the biological reality of patients, for example, in addition to those gained from Petri dishes and computer simulations. The tissue is usually fixed in formalin and embedded in paraffin wax in order to keep the tissue, as far as possible, in its original condition for later analyses.

Just as many of us might be resigned to clogged salt shakers or rush-hour traffic, those working to exploit the special properties of carbon nanotubes have typically shrugged their shoulders when these tiniest of cylinders fill with water during processing.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new Brown University study suggests that in Rhode Island, the nutritional requirements imposed by a federal food subsidy program for daycare centers that serve low-income children have resulted in kids at those centers eating healthier food than kids at centers that do not participate in the program.