Tech

ANN ARBOR—The first room-temperature light detector that can sense the full infrared spectrum has the potential to put heat vision technology into a contact lens.

Unlike comparable mid- and far-infrared detectors currently on the market, the detector developed by University of Michigan engineering researchers doesn't need bulky cooling equipment to work.

"We can make the entire design super-thin," said Zhaohui Zhong, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science. "It can be stacked on a contact lens or integrated with a cell phone."

Consider the nearest water surface: a half-full glass on your desk, a puddle outside your window, or a lake across town. All of these surfaces represent liquid-vapor interfaces, where liquid meets air. Molecules of water vapor constantly collide with these liquid surfaces: Some make it through the surface and condense, while others simply bounce off.

DALLAS, March 16, 2014 — Imagine powering your cell phone by simply walking around your office or rubbing it with the palm of your hand. Rather than plugging it into the wall, you become the power source. Researchers at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, presented these commercial possibilities and a unique vision for green energy.

DALLAS, March 16, 2014 — Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) nearly doubled in 2013, but most won't take you farther than 100 miles on one charge. To boost their range toward a tantalizing 300 miles or more, researchers are reporting new progress on a "breathing" battery that has the potential to one day replace the lithium-ion technology of today's EVs. They presented their work at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

PITTSBURGH, March 13, 2014 – A low-cost program reduced falls in the elderly by 17 percent statewide, illustrating the value and effectiveness of using existing aging services, such as senior centers, in preventing falls, a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health study determined.

A revolutionary University of Colorado Boulder toilet fueled by the sun that is being developed to help some of the 2.5 billion people around the world lacking safe and sustainable sanitation will be unveiled in India this month.

America's current energy boom may take a new direction thanks to the discovery of a new way to turn raw natural gas into upgraded liquid alcohol fuel.

In the March 14 issue of Science magazine, chemists from Brigham Young University and The Scripps Research Institute detail a process that could reduce dependence on petroleum.

Numbers and data can be critical tools in bringing complex issues into crisp focus. The understanding of diseases, for example, benefits from algorithms that help monitor their spread. But without context, a number may just be a number, or worse, misleading.

New Rochelle, NY, March 13, 2014—A soft-bodied, self-contained robotic fish with a flexible spine that allows it to mimic the swimming motion of a real fish also has the built-in agility to perform escape maneuvers. The innovative design and capabilities of this complex, autonomous robot is described in Soft Robotics (SoRo), a new peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Soft Robotics website at http://www.liebertpub.com/soro.

Soft robots — which don't just have soft exteriors but are also powered by fluid flowing through flexible channels — have become a sufficiently popular research topic that they now have their own journal, Soft Robotics. In the first issue of that journal, out this month, MIT researchers report the first self-contained autonomous soft robot capable of rapid body motion: a "fish" that can execute an escape maneuver, convulsing its body to change direction in just a fraction of a second, or almost as quickly as a real fish can.

Employees who use treadmill workstations not only receive physical benefits but also are more productive at work, according to a recently published study by researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington, the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota.

Darla Hamann, an assistant professor in the UT Arlington School of Urban and Public Affairs, and four colleagues wrote "Treadmill Workstations: The Effects of Walking while Working on Physical Activity and Work Performance", which was published by the journal PLoS One Feb. 20.

Researchers have developed a new heat-based technique for counting and measuring the size of microscopic particles. The technique is less expensive than light-based techniques and can be used on a wider array of materials than electricity-based techniques. The research was performed by faculty at North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Marquette University.

They're called the Alberta oilsands but most of the sand actually came from the Appalachian region on the eastern side of the North American continent, a new University of Calgary-led study shows.

The oilsands also include sand from the Canadian Shield in northern and east-central Canada and from the Canadian Rockies in western Canada, the study says.

This study is the first to determine the age of individual sediment grains in the oilsands and assess their origin.

A University of Alberta diamond scientist has found the first terrestrial sample of a water-rich gem that yields new evidence about the existence of large volumes of water deep beneath the Earth.

Health providers may experience information and financial loss during the mandated conversion from the current International Classification of Diseases to its new and improved version, report researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The study, appearing in the March issue of the Journal of Oncology Practice, looked at coding ambiguity for hematology-oncology diagnoses to anticipate challenges all providers may face during the transition from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10-CM.