Tech

Researchers at the University of Southampton have developed a new way to generate music and control computers.

"Grab a block and add a base beat, turn a block to speed up the high hat and we have a new way to generate music through controlling the computer," said Dr Enrico Costanza at the University's ECS - Electronics and Computer Science, who is launching Audio d-touch (Thursday 25 August).

The new discovery by Aalto University can have major impact on future nanoscale device design, such as ultraviolet photo detectors and drug delivery.

In bulk size, many materials like silicon are as brittle as glass. In nanoparticle size, the same material can be compressed into half their size without breaking them. The new discovery was made by an international research group led by Professor Roman Nowak.

Coral Gables, FL (August 23, 2011) – As firms begin the 2011 annual report process, which many do at this time of year, they may want to pay closer attention to the way those reports look. A recent study out of the University of Miami School of Business Administration found that investors, regardless of their experience, place a higher value on firms with attractive annual reports than they do on those that produce less attractive reports.

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, August 23, 2011—Researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory's Pulsed Field Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory have set a new world record for the strongest magnetic field produced by a nondestructive magnet.

If the vision of Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor comes to fruition, one day soon your cellphone (or just about any other portable electronic device) could be powered by simply taking a walk.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, Krupenkin and Taylor, engineering researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, describe a new energy-harvesting technology that promises to dramatically reduce our dependence on batteries and instead capture the energy of human motion to power portable electronics.

MADISON, WI, AUGUST 19, 2011 -- In the Mid-South, twin-row soybean production is becoming a popular growing technique for soybean producers. An estimated 80% of the total hectares grown in the Mississippi Delta are planted in this configuration. While growers report this method increases seed yields, especially when used with specific cultivars planted in April or early May, there is no research data to support their claims.

Rice University researchers have created a solid-state, nanotube-based supercapacitor that promises to combine the best qualities of high-energy batteries and fast-charging capacitors in a device suitable for extreme environments.

A paper from the Rice lab of chemist Robert Hauge, to be published in the journal Carbon, reported the creation of robust, versatile energy storage that can be deeply integrated into the manufacture of devices. Potential uses span on-chip nanocircuitry to entire power plants.

Laser plasma accelerators offer the potential to create powerful electron beams within a fraction of the space required by conventional accelerators – and at a fraction of the cost. Their promise for the future includes not only compact high-energy colliders for fundamental physics but diminutive sources of intensely bright beams of light, spanning the spectrum from microwaves to gamma rays – a new kind of ultrafast light source for investigating new materials, biological structures, and green chemistry.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In early August, at the Def Con conference, a major annual gathering of computer hackers, someone apparently hacked into many of the attendees' cell phones, in what may have been the first successful breach of a 4G cellular network. If early reports are correct, the incident was a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, so called because the attacker interposes himself between two other wireless devices.

Surprisingly, transmitting information-rich photons thousands of miles through fiber-optic cable is far easier than reliably sending them just a few nanometers through a computer circuit. However, it may soon be possible to steer these particles of light accurately through microchips because of research performed at the Joint Quantum Institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland, together with Harvard University.

Researchers at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) in close collaboration with colleagues in France and UK, have engineered a material that exhibits a rare and versatile trait in magnetism at room temperature. It's called a "multiferroic," and it means that the material has properties allowing it to be both electrically charged (ferroelectric) and also the ability to be magnetic (ferromagnetic), with its magnetisation controlled by electricity.

The Naval Research Laboratory's Tactical Satellite IV (TacSat-4) is scheduled to launch from the Alaska Aerospace Corporation's Kodiak Launch Complex, Tuesday, September 27, 2011, aboard an Orbital Sciences Corporation Minotaur-IV+ launch vehicle. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored the development of the payload and the first year of operations. The Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office funded the launch which is managed by the Space Development and Test Directorate (SD), a directorate of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC).

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The next generation of communications systems could be built with a sewing machine.

To make communications devices more reliable, Ohio State University researchers are finding ways to incorporate radio antennas directly into clothing, using plastic film and metallic thread.

In the current issue of the journal IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, they report a new antenna design with a range four times larger than that of a conventional antenna worn on the body – one that is used by American soldiers today.

Growing up is not easy, especially for tiny nanowires: With no support or guidance, nanowires become unruly, making it difficult to harness their full potential as effective semiconductors. Prof. Ernesto Joselevich of the Weizmann Institute's Chemistry Faculty has found a way to grow semiconductor nanowires out, not up, on a surface, providing, for the first time, the much-needed guidance to produce relatively long, orderly, aligned structures.

One year after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and two decades after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound, the scientific lesson is clear -- microbes matter! Despite vast differences in the ecosystems and circumstances of these two worst oil spills in US history, oil-degrading microorganisms played a significant role in reducing the overall environmental impact of both spills, a Berkley Lab scientist reports.