Tech

A prototype for an interactive mobile device, called Cubimorph, which can change shape on-demand will be presented this week at one of the leading international forums for robotics researchers, ICRA 2016, in Stockholm, Sweden [May 16-21].

The research led by Dr Anne Roudaut from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol, in collaboration with academics at the Universities of Purdue, Lancaster and Sussex, will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society's biggest conference.

A new solar cell configuration developed by engineers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney has pushed sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency to 34.5% - establishing a new world record for unfocussed sunlight and nudging closer to the theoretical limits for such a device.

The record was set by Dr Mark Keevers and Professor Martin Green, Senior Research Fellow and Director, respectively, of UNSW's Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, using a 28 cm2 four-junction mini-module - embedded in a prism - that extracts the maximum energy from sunlight.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 17, 2016 -- A new study has found both the cause and a solution for the pesky tendency of perovskite solar cells to degrade in sunlight, a research breakthrough potentially removing one roadblock to commercialization for this promising technology. In a key finding, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have found those degraded devices exhibit self-healing powers when given a little time in the dark.

Designing materials that better respond to dynamic loading can help vehicles minimize vibration, better protect military convoys or potentially make buildings safer during an earthquake.

Meal kit delivery services are here and they seem to be flourishing.

Physicists are putting themselves out of a job, using artificial intelligence to run a complex experiment.

The experiment, developed by physicists from The Australian National University (ANU) and UNSW ADFA, created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize.

The oil cleansing method was developed by TSU researchers and it is optimal for lake ecosystems. The experiment proved that the content of oil in water reduced in 35-40 times. Date of the research was published in journals Water Practice & Technology.

PITTSBURGH--Before a robot arm can reach into a tight space or pick up a delicate object, the robot needs to know precisely where its hand is. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute have shown that a camera attached to the robot's hand can rapidly create a 3-D model of its environment and also locate the hand within that 3-D world.

Recognised welfare outcome assessments within farm assurance schemes have shown a reduction in feather loss and improvement in the welfare of UK cage-free laying hens, according to the findings of a study from the AssureWel project by the University of Bristol, RSPCA and the Soil Association.

In the UK, cage-free egg-production systems account for 49 per cent of all eggs produced. Almost all of these farms are farm assured under the RSPCA's Freedom Food Scheme and some are certified to the Soil Association organic standards.

With an advance that one cryptography expert called a "masterpiece," University of Texas at Austin computer scientists have developed a new method for producing truly random numbers, a breakthrough that could be used to encrypt data, make electronic voting more secure, conduct statistically significant polls and more accurately simulate complex systems such as Earth's climate.

A new study looks at how fluids related to hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" can escape into aquifers via nearby leaky abandoned wells.

This could lead to upward leakage of contaminants; however, flows into leaky wells do not conclusively demonstrate that contaminants from a fractured shale reservoir can migrate into the overlying aquifer because hydraulic characteristics of the well may limit migration. Moreover, production of the horizontal well after hydraulic fracturing can play a significant role in reducing or inhibiting potential upward leakage.

There’s a lot of stuff you’d expect to find in baby formula: proteins, carbs, vitamins, essential minerals. But parents probably wouldn’t anticipate finding extremely small, needle-like particles. Yet this is exactly what a team of scientists here at Arizona State University recently discovered.

PULLMAN, Wash. - Researchers at Washington State University are using ideas from animal training to help non-expert users teach robots how to do desired tasks.

The researchers recently presented their work at the international Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems conference, a leading scientific gathering for agents and robotics research.

As robots become more pervasive in society, humans will want them to do chores like cleaning house or cooking. But to get a robot started on a task, people who aren't computer programmers will have to give it instructions.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A new study from MIT finds that two strains of bacteria that are each resistant to one antibiotic can protect each other in an environment containing both drugs.

The findings demonstrate that mutualism, a phenomenon in which different species benefit from their interactions with each other, can help bacteria form drug-resistant communities. This is the first experimental demonstration in microbes of a type of mutualism known as cross-protection, which is more commonly seen in larger animals.

What is known: Vikings sailed to Greenland. They homesteaded there for a few hundred years, and likely experienced multiple famines. Many died. Some returned to European shores. And all of this happened during a time in Europe known to geoscientists as the Medieval Warm Period. The warmer, milder conditions that defined this time eventually ended too.