Tech

Scientists at CRANN, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded nanoscience institute based at Trinity College Dublin, have partnered with world-leading brewing company SABMiller on a project to increase the shelf life of bottled beer in plastic bottles. The new deal will see SABMiller invest in the project over a two year period.

Volcanic activity on and around La Réunion is driven by a localized upwelling of hot buoyant magma. Unlike most magma sources, this is not located on the boundary between two tectonic plates, and rises from much greater depths. It is a so-called hotspot, and has left behind on the overlying mobile crust a track of volcanic activity that stretches 5500 km northwards to the Deccan Plateau in India. Some 65 million years ago, in a process that had a massive impact on world climate, the Deccan area was covered with enormous amounts of lava as the Indian Plate passed over the hotspot.

Fabricating precise biomolecular structures at extremely small scales is critical to the progress of nanotechnology and related fields.

Global climate change means that recently discovered ancient forests in Canada's extreme north could one day return, according to Alexandre Guertin-Pasquier of the University of Montreal's Department of Geography, who is presenting his findings at the Canadian Paleontology Conference in Toronto today. "According to the data model, climate conditions on Bylot Island will be able to support the kinds of trees we find in the fossilized forest that currently exist there, such as willow, pine and spruce.

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Tried-and-true techniques could help optimize oilseed yield for biodiesel production, according to studies conducted by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.

If two birds meet deep in the forest, does anybody hear? Until now, nobody did, unless an intrepid biologist was hiding underneath a bush and watching their behavior, or the birds happened to meet near a research monitoring station. But an electronic tag designed at the University of Washington can for the first time see when birds meet in the wild.

Proposals designed to prevent non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as "fat taxes" will have wide-ranging effects on the economy and health but wider research is needed to avoid wasting resources on ineffective measures, according to an economist from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Risk increases with comfort: "Single Sign-On" permits users to access all their protected Web resources, replacing repeated sign-ins with passwords. However, attackers also know about the advantages such a single point of attack offers to them. Andreas Mayer, who is writing his PhD thesis as an external doctoral candidate at the Chair for Network and Data Security (Prof. Dr. Jörg Schwenk) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, has now been able to significantly increase the security of this central interface for the simpleSAMLphp framework.

WASHINGTON—Prescription painkillers are responsible for more fatal overdoses in the United States than heroin and cocaine combined. And while most states have programs to curb abuse and addiction, a new report from Brandeis University shows that many states do not fully analyze the data they collect.

A team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Ho Nyung Lee has discovered a strain relaxation phenomenon in cobaltites that has eluded researchers for decades and may lead to advances in fuel cells, magnetic sensors and a host of energy-related materials.

UT Dallas computer scientists have developed a technique to automatically allow one computer in a virtual network to monitor another for intrusions, viruses or anything else that could cause a computer to malfunction.

The technique has been dubbed "space travel" because it sends computer data to a world outside its home, and bridges the gap between computer hardware and software systems.

A team of KIT researchers directed by Professor Christian Koos has succeeded in developing a novel optical connection between semiconductor chips. "Photonic wire bonding" reaches data transmission rates in the range of several terabits per second and is suited perfectly for production on the industrial scale. In the future, this technology may be used in high-performance emitter-receiver systems for optical data transmission and, thus, contribute to reducing energy consumption of the internet. The scientists published their results in the journal "Optics Express".

Anyone who wants to lose weight has a wide variety of diets to choose from, but knowledge of what works is often poor. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University have now evaluated a Swedish commercial weight loss programme called Itrim, and found it to be effective. After one year, participants had lost 11 kg on average.

A research team led by Australian engineers has created the first working quantum bit based on a single atom in silicon, opening the way to ultra-powerful quantum computers of the future.

In a landmark paper published today in the journal Nature, the team describes how it was able to both read and write information using the spin, or magnetic orientation, of an electron bound to a single phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon chip.

PULLMAN, Wash.—A Washington State University researcher and colleagues make a case in the journal Nature for a new type of agriculture that could restore the beleaguered soils of Africa and help the continent feed itself in the coming decades.