Tech

In collaboration with the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Associate Professor Hiroyuki Ito and Professor Kazuya Masu, et al., of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, developed a new algorithm and circuit technology allowing high-frequency piezoelectric resonators to be used for phase locked loops (PLL). It was confirmed that these operate with low noise and have an excellent Figure of Merit (FoM) compared to conventional PLLs.

The development of photodetectors has been a matter of considerable interest in the past decades since their applications are essential to many different fields including cameras, medical devices, safety equipment, optical communication devices or even surveying instruments, among others.

New research from Northeastern University shows that what T-Mobile promises regarding its Binge On service is not what subscribers, or con­tent providers, may actu­ally get. In many cases, subscribers were left with lower quality videos and unexpected charges.

"At the time of our study, impor­tant details about the Binge On policy were not in public doc­u­ments," says researcher David Choffnes. "They are avail­able now, but much remains largely hidden to the average con­tent provider and sub­scriber. Both can be misled."

These days, it may seem as if 3-D printers can spit out just about anything, from a full-sized sports car, to edible food, to human skin. But some things have defied the technology, including hair, fur, and other dense arrays of extremely fine features, which require a huge amount of computational time and power to first design, then print.

A microchip containing 1,000 independent programmable processors has been designed by a team at the University of California, Davis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The energy-efficient "KiloCore" chip has a maximum computation rate of 1.78 trillion instructions per second and contains 621 million transistors. The KiloCore was presented at the 2016 Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits in Honolulu on June 16.

A tiny mirror could make a huge difference for scientists trying to understand what's happening in the micron-scale structures of living cells.

By growing cells on the mirrors and imaging them using super-resolution microscopy, a group of scientists from universities in the United States, China and Australia have addressed a problem that has long challenged scientists: Seeing the structures of three dimensional cells with comparable resolution in each dimension. Cells are normally grown on transparent glass slides for microscopy examination.

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan have shown that torrefied biomass can improve the quality of poor soil found in arid regions. Published in Scientific Reports, the study showed that adding torrefied biomass to poor soil from Botswana increased water retention in the soil as well as --the amount of plant growth.

TORONTO, June 17, 2016 - Women born in the Caribbean or Africa are two times more likely to be admitted to an intensive care unit at the time of their delivery than Canadian-born women, a new study has found.

The risk for both mom and newborn being admitted to an intensive care unit, or ICU, at the same time was also 2.75 times higher for Caribbean-born women and two times higher for African-born women. Mothers from Jamaica and Ghana each had the highest overall risk of ICU admission at the time of delivery, approximately 2.7 times higher than Canadian-born women.

Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a new, open-source computer programming framework that could make the web significantly more energy efficient, allowing people to save more battery power while browsing on mobile devices.

A farming technique practised for centuries by villagers in West Africa, which converts nutrient-poor rainforest soil into fertile farmland, could be the answer to mitigating climate change and revolutionising farming across Africa.

A global study, led by the University of Sussex, which included anthropologists and soil scientists from Cornell, Accra, and Aarhus Universities and the Institute of Development Studies, has for the first-time identified and analysed rich fertile soils found in Liberia and Ghana.

Researchers at the Texas Analog Center of Excellence (TxACE) at UT Dallas are working to develop an affordable electronic nose that can be used in breath analysis for a wide range of health diagnosis.

While devices that can conduct breath analysis using compound semiconductors exist, they are bulky and too costly for commercial use, said Dr. Kenneth O, one of the principal investigators of the effort and director of TxACE. The researchers determined that using CMOS integrated circuits technology will make the electronic nose more affordable.

LAWRENCE -- Replication of scientific findings has been a cornerstone of validating research for generations, yet it happens so infrequently that many have claimed science is in a replication crisis. A University of Kansas special education professor has co-authored a study on replication, its effects on the field and students, and suggests a more dynamic approach to research could help address the paucity of replication.

Web browsers might soon use fuzzy logic to spot redirection spam and save users from being scammed, phished or opening malicious sites unwittingly, according to researchers in India writing in the International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics.

WASHINGTON, DC -- New research shows permafrost below shallow Arctic lakes is thawing as a result of changing winter climate.

Warmer winters combined with an increase in snowfall during the last 30 years have limited the growth of seasonal lake ice. In response, lakebed temperatures of Arctic lakes less than 1 meter (3 feet) deep have warmed by 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) during the past three decades, and during five of the last seven years, the mean annual lakebed temperature has been above freezing.

Two new studies of more than 80 infants together offer a clearer picture of how antibiotics, along with birth mode and diet, can disrupt the development of the gut microbiome. Children repeatedly treated with antibiotics during the first few years of life not only showed lower microbial diversity, but also harbored antibiotic resistance genes, temporarily, after treatment. Further studies are needed to probe the long-term consequences of these gut microbiome disturbances, which have previously been linked to obesity, diabetes, asthma, and to allergies later in life.