Tech

Where to live can be a dilemma for many Americans. Do you pay more for housing located near work and other destinations or do you pay less for housing that requires extensive driving? What about families with housing subsidies? Does this tradeoff on housing and transportation expenses hold true for them?

With people wanting to use smaller electronic devices, smaller energy storage systems are needed. Researchers of Aalto University in Finland have demonstrated the fabrication of electrochemically active organic lithium electrode thin films, which help make microbatteries more efficient than before. Researchers used a combined atomic/molecular layer deposition (ALD/MLD) technique, to prepare lithium terephthalate, a recently found anode material for a lithium-ion battery.

Type an email on your computer. Raise a glass to your lips. Feel for the light switch in a dark room. Simple, everyday tasks can demand subtle interactions between our hands and our surroundings, but, surprisingly, much remains unknown about the mechanics of the sense of touch.

It's a well worn media trope. 21st century millennials are leading the way to a green transportation future, moving to cities, riding public transit, biking and walking -and often delaying car purchases indefinitely, to Detroit's growing dismay.

Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai performed an in-depth comparison of basic blood tests run by commercial laboratories to assess comparability of the tests among the different laboratories, finding that testing service and time of collection significantly influenced results. Given that lab tests are used to help decide everything from disease diagnosis to whether a patient needs medicine or whether that medication is working, this study highlights the importance of knowing the accuracy and variability of test results.

Researchers from UCLA and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have made an important step toward a substantially faster and more effective treatment for tuberculosis, which infects some 10 million people and causes 1.5 million deaths each year.

Combination therapy, which utilizes a series of drugs, is a clinical standard for many major diseases. However, the number of potential combinations of different drugs and dose levels can be in the billions, making the prospect of choosing the best one seem daunting.

Metabolites - substances that are created during metabolism -- can provide a wealth of information about individual health, disease, diet, and life-style. Now, they can tell us even more. Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) researchers and collaborators at Kyoto University have recently discovered metabolites that are specifically related to aging and shed light on how the human body ages. The team, led by OIST's Professor Yanagida, published their results in PNAS.

Researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a "piezo-optomechanical circuit" that converts signals among optical, acoustic and radio waves. A system based on this design could move and store information in next-generation computers.

The team's work, published in Nature Photonics, also was presented at the March 2016 meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore, Md.

A team of Korean research team, led by Professor Ju-Young Kim (School of Materials Science and Engineering) of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea has recently announced that they have successfully developed a way to fabricate an ultralight, high-dense nanoporous gold (np-Au).

In a new paper, published in Nano Letters on March 22, the team reported that this newly developed material, which they have dubbed "Black Gold" is twice more solid and 30% lighter than standard gold.

A new study from North Carolina State University researchers finds that novel light-weight composite metal foams (CMFs) are significantly more effective at insulating against high heat than the conventional base metals and alloys that they're made of, such as steel. The finding means the CMF is especially promising for use in storing and transporting nuclear material, hazardous materials, explosives and other heat-sensitive materials, as well as for space exploration.

Researchers have discovered a so far unknown formation mechanism of cavitation bubbles by means of a model calculation. In the Science Advances journal, they describe how oil-repellent and oil-attracting surfaces influence a passing oil flow. Depending on the viscosity of the oil, a steam bubble forms in the transition area. This so-called cavitation may damage material of e.g. ship propellers or pumps. However, it may also have a positive effect, as it may keep components at a certain distance and, thus, prevent damage.

Alkane fuel is a key ingredient in combustible material such as gasoline, airplane fuel, oil -- even a homemade bomb. Yet it's difficult to detect and there are no portable scanners available that can sniff out the odorless and colorless vapor.

But University of Utah engineers have developed a new type of fiber material for a handheld scanner that can detect small traces of alkane fuel vapor, a valuable advancement that could be an early-warning signal for leaks in an oil pipeline, an airliner, or for locating a terrorist's explosive.

Researchers from Griffith University and the University of Queensland have overcome one of the key challenges to quantum computing by simplifying a complex quantum logic operation. They demonstrated this by experimentally realising a challenging circuit -- the quantum Fredkin gate -- for the first time.

"The allure of quantum computers is the unparalleled processing power that they provide compared to current technology," said Dr Raj Patel from Griffith's Centre for Quantum Dynamics.

The Microsoft Kinect was a boon to robotics researchers. The cheap, off-the-shelf depth sensor allowed them to quickly and cost-effectively prototype innovative systems that enable robots to map, interpret, and navigate their environments.

But sensors like the Kinect, which use infrared light to gauge depth, are easily confused by ambient infrared light. Even indoors, they tend to require low-light conditions, and outdoors, they're hopeless.

A Chinese research team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a novel, environmentally friendly low-cost battery that overcomes many of the problems of lithium ion batteries (LIB).The new aluminum-graphite dual-ion battery (AGDIB) offers significantly reduced weight, volume, and fabrication cost, as well as higher energy density, in comparison with conventional LIBs.