Tech

Although it may not be immediately obvious, the mechanical properties of optical components have a significant impact on the performance of lasers employed in precision sensing applications. Currently, the mechanical damping of such components, and the inherent mechanical fluctuations they generate, present a roadblock to further advancement of ever more precise measurements of time and space.

Climate friendly fuel cells for hydrogen cars have come one step closer. Researchers at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, have shown how to build fuel cells that produce as much electricity as current models, but require markedly less of the rare and valuable precious metal platinum. Their discovery was published in the highly reputable periodical Nature Materials.

Cheaper hydrogen cars with new fuel cell design

A large reservoir can provide reliable access to water, control flooding, and be used to generate hydroelectricity.

But environmentalists who once advocated dams have now turned on them, claiming they upset local ecosystems by changing river flow patterns or by affecting nutrient and oxygen concentrations in downstream flows.

Damming a river and constructing a reservoir in a litigious culture armed with well-paid environmental lawyers requires balancing benefits and risks to avoid lawsuits.

Most big data centers, the global backbone of the Internet, could slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 88 percent by switching to efficient, off-the-shelf equipment and improving energy management, according to new research.

Depth cameras and other motion-tracking devices allow people to use natural gestures to play computer games, yet the experience remains unnatural because they can't feel what their eyes can see. Disney Research, Pittsburgh, has developed a solution, however, that could enhance not only games, but a variety of virtual experiences.

Investigators at Disney Research, Zürich have developed a method for using hundreds of photographic images to build 3D computer models of complex, real-life scenes that meet the increasing demands of today's movie, TV and game producers for high-resolution imagery.

For a car to accelerate there has to be friction between the tire and the surface of the road. The amount of friction generated depends on numerous factors, including the minute intermolecular forces acting between the two surfaces in contact – so-called van der Waals forces.

ACCRA, GHANA (19 July, 2013)—A new study released today finds that so much water may be lost in the Volta River Basin due to climate change that planned hydroelectric projects to boost energy and food production may only tread water in keeping up with actual demand. Some 24 million people in Ghana, Burkina Faso and four other neighboring countries depend on the Volta River and its tributaries as their principal source of water.

Americans used more natural gas, solar panels and wind turbines and less coal to generate electricity in 2012, according to the most recent U.S. energy charts released by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Each year, the Laboratory releases energy flow charts that track the nation's consumption of energy resources.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass- TCP, the transmission control protocol, is one of the core protocols governing the Internet: If counted as a computer program, it's the most widely used program in the world.

Neurobiologists from the University of Leicester have shown that insect limbs can move without muscles – a finding that may provide engineers with new ways to improve the control of robotic and prosthetic limbs.

Their work helps to explain how insects control their movements using a close interplay of neuronal control and 'clever biomechanical tricks,' says lead researcher Dr Tom Matheson, a Reader in Neurobiology at the University of Leicester.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., July 18, 2013 -- Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have developed a new way to measure the cumulative effect of impacts to the head incurred by football players.

Stanford University scientists have created the thinnest, most efficient absorber of visible light on record. The nanosize structure, thousands of times thinner than an ordinary sheet of paper, could lower the cost and improve the efficiency of solar cells, according to the scientists. Their results are published in the current online edition of the journal Nano Letters.

Most bacteria are able to communicate with each other by secreting signaling molecules. Once the concentration of signals has reached a critical density («the Quorum), the bacteria are able to coordinate their behavior. Only when this critical population density has been reached certain genes are activated that lead to, for example, the formation of biofilms or the expression of virulence factors. Bacteria utilize this so-called «Quorum Sensing» (QS) to synchronize their behavior to regulate functions that benefit the entire population.

Great white sharks are not exactly known as picky eaters, so it might seem obvious that these voracious predators would dine often and well on their migrations across the Pacific Ocean. But not so, according to new research by scientists at Stanford University and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.