Tech

More than a year after the largest oil spill in history, perhaps the dominant lingering question about the Deepwater Horizon spill is, "What happened to the oil?" Now, in the first published study to explain the role of microbes in breaking down the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers have come up with answers that represent both surprisingly good news and a head-scratching mystery.

UC researchers have developed the first lab-on-a-chip sensor to provide fast feedback regarding levels of the heavy metal manganese in humans. The sensor is both environmentally and child friendly, and will first be field tested in Marietta, Ohio, where a UC researcher is leading a long-term health study on the potential health effects of heavy metals.

If you follow the pack are you more likely to co-operate with others in it? Not necessarily according to research into social behaviour by academics at the University of East Anglia.

Computer files that allow us to watch videos, store pictures, and edit all kinds of media formats are nothing else but streams of "0" and "1" digital data, that is, bits and bytes. Modern computing technology is based on our ability to write, store, and retrieve digital information as efficiently as possible. In a computer hard disk, this is achieved in practice by writing information on a thin magnetic layer, where magnetic domains pointing "up" represent a "1" and magnetic domains pointing down represent a "0".

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Researchers in the Pacific Northwest have developed a new catalyst material that could replace chemicals currently derived from petroleum and be the basis for more environmentally friendly products including octane-boosting gas and fuel additives, bio-based rubber for tires and a safer solvent for the chemicals industry.

The percent of contiguous U.S. land area experiencing exceptional drought in July reached the highest levels in the history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, an official at the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said.

Nearly 12 percent of the contiguous United States fell into the "exceptional" classification during the month, peaking at 11.96 percent on July 12. That level of exceptional drought had never before been seen in the monitor's 12-year history, said Brian Fuchs, UNL assistant geoscientist and climatologist at the NDMC.

Replacing gasoline and diesel with plant-based bio fuels is crucial to curb climate change. But there are several ways to transform crops to fuel, and some of the methods result in bio fuels that are harmful to health as well as nature.

Now a study from the University of Copenhagen shows that it is possible to predict just how toxic the fuel will become without producing a single drop. This promises cheaper, faster and above all safer development of alternatives to fossil fuel.

The world at large runs on lithium ion batteries. New research at Rice University shows that tiny worlds may soon do the same.

The Rice lab of Professor Pulickel Ajayan has packed an entire lithium ion energy storage device into a single nanowire, as reported this month in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. The researchers believe their creation is as small as such devices can possibly get, and could be valuable as a rechargeable power source for new generations of nanoelectronics.

A new twist on an old solar cell design sends light ricocheting through layers of microscopic spheres, increasing its electricity-generating potential by 26 percent.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Millions of U.S. drivers cross faulty or obsolete bridges every day, highway statistics show, but it's too costly to fix all these spans or adequately monitor their safety, says a University of Maryland researcher who's developed a new, affordable early warning system.

This wireless technology could avert the kind of bridge collapse that killed 13 and injured 145 along Minneapolis' I-35W on Aug. 1, 2007, he says - and do so at one-one-hundredth the cost of current wired systems.

New, York, NY—July 28, 2011—A new study co-authored by Columbia Engineering professor Kartik Chandran and recently published in the journal, Environmental Science & Technology, shows that reducing nitrogen pollution generated by wastewater treatment plants can come with "sizable" economic benefits, as well as the expected benefits for the environment.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and their colleagues have discovered a new relation among electric and magnetic fields and differences in temperature, which may lead to more efficient thermoelectric devices that convert heat into electricity or electricity into heat.

Iraq's large oil-production potential could put it in a position to vie for leadership with Saudi Arabia in the world oil scene in the coming decades. But a new energy study released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy finds that in the near term, both Baghdad and Riyadh may have difficulty meeting rising demand for oil.

Engineers at the University of Southampton have designed and flown the world's first 'printed' aircraft, which could revolutionise the economics of aircraft design.

The SULSA (Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft) plane is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) whose entire structure has been printed, including wings, integral control surfaces and access hatches. It was printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, which fabricates plastic or metal objects, building up the item layer by layer.

PASADENA, Calif.— While many hotel rooms, recording studios, and even some homes are built with materials to help absorb or reflect sound, mechanisms to truly control the direction of sound waves are still in their infancy. However, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now created the first tunable acoustic diode-a device that allows acoustic information to travel only in one direction, at controllable frequencies.

The mechanism they developed is outlined in a paper published on July 24 in the journal Nature Materials.