Tech

NORMAN, Okla. – A new discovery by University of Oklahoma and North Carolina State University researchers shows a breakthrough in speeding up the process for synthesizing transition metal oxide nanostructures. What had once taken days can now be accomplished instantaneously.

HOUSTON – (Nov. 1, 2012) – Researchers at Rice University have refined silicon-based lithium-ion technology by literally crushing their previous work to make a high-capacity, long-lived and low-cost anode material with serious commercial potential for rechargeable lithium batteries.

Using cutting-edge virtual reality technology, researchers have 'beamed' a person into a rat facility allowing the rat and human to interact with each other on the same scale.

The 1000 Genomes Project today presents a map of normal human genetic variation – everything from tiny changes in the genetic code to major alterations in our chromosomes. In a DNA version of 'spot-the-difference', EMBL scientists and their colleagues studied the genomes of 1092 healthy people from Europe, the Americas and East Asia, systematically tracking what makes us different from each other. Their results, published in Nature, open new approaches for research on the genetic causes of disease.

In an advance toward analyzing blood and urine instantly at a patient's bedside instead of waiting for results from a central laboratory, scientists are reporting development of a new micropump capable of producing pressures almost 500 times higher than the pressure in a car tire. Described in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry, the pumps are for futuristic "labs-on-a-chip," which reduce entire laboratories to the size of a postage stamp.

Stanford University scientists have built the first solar cell made entirely of carbon, a promising alternative to the expensive materials used in photovoltaic devices today.

The results are published in the Oct. 31 online edition of the journal ACS Nano.

This press release is available in Spanish.

URBANA – Along with the growing interest in biomass energy crops as renewable alternatives to fossil fuels comes a growing list of questions from corn and soybean farmers about what it will cost them to switch. University of Illinois agricultural economist Madhu Khanna developed a customizable online calculator to eliminate some of the guesswork and help farmers make the decision.

Hematite, the mineral form of iron oxide (or trivially, rust), is a promising anode material for photoelectro-chemical cells (PEC) because of its affordability, availability, high stability and good spectral match to the solar spectrum. Although it has the potential of a 15% solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency, its actual efficiency is lower than that of other metal oxides. This is due to hematite's electronic structure, which only allows for ultrashort electron-hole excited-state lifetimes.

Helpful holes in hematite

The biomass stored in forests is thought to play a critical role in mitigating the catastrophic effects of global climate change. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Carbon Balance and Management has used Lidar data collected by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) aboard the Ice Cloud and Elevation Satellite (ICESat) to accurately measure the biomass of California. When the ICESat2 is launched in 2016 this method will be able to monitor biomass and other global data changes.

New research reports that women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have a two-fold increase in risk of preeclampsia—a dangerous condition in which pregnant women develop high blood pressure (hypertension) and protein in their urine (proteinuria) after 20 weeks of gestation.

Using a new method for precisely controlling the deposition of carbon, researchers have demonstrated a technique for connecting multi-walled carbon nanotubes to the metallic pads of integrated circuits without the high interface resistance produced by traditional fabrication techniques.

The dream of regaining the ability to stand up and walk has come closer to reality for people paralyzed below the waist who thought they would never take another step.

A team of engineers at Vanderbilt University's Center for Intelligent Mechatronics has developed a powered exoskeleton that enables people with severe spinal cord injuries to stand, walk, sit and climb stairs. Its light weight, compact size and modular design promise to provide users with an unprecedented degree of independence.

Computer scientists from the University of Bonn have developed a new robot whose source code and design plan is publicly accessible. It is intended to facilitate the entry into research on humanoids, in particular, the TeenSize Class of the RoboCup. The scientists recently introduced the new robot at the IROS Conference (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) in Portugal.

Researchers from North Carolina State University and IBM Research have developed a new natural language processing tool that businesses or other customers can use to ensure that software developers have a clear idea of the security policies to be incorporated into new software products.