Tech

New Monash University research has paved the way for drones to revolutionise ecological monitoring.

A team of University and Adobe researchers is outperforming other approaches to creating computer-generated image captions in an international competition. The key to their winning approach? Thinking about words - what they mean and how they fit in a sentence structure - just as much as thinking about the image itself.

The results are based on a survey with nearly 3,000 participating students in south-western Uganda. The students responded to a number of questions, including aspects concerning sexuality, physical and mental health, sexual risk behaviour, and experiences with drugs. The questions about homosexuality pertained to the students' emotions as well as their actions. The results showed that one in three had been in love with a person of the same sex; almost one in five had been sexually attracted to a person of the same sex; and one in ten had been sexually active with someone of the same sex.

Leonardo da Vinci's oil painting "Mona Lisa" looks rather gloomy with its dark green and brown colours. It is a little-known fact that the maestro painted the picture in bright colours - so the subject appears bathed in the light of a sunny day. What caused this difference in colour? Da Vinci covered his oil painting with varnish to protect it. The varnish acts like a filter, causing the picture to become darker than the artist originally painted it.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., March 17, 2016 -Two-dimensional electronic devices could inch closer to their ultimate promise of low power, high efficiency and mechanical flexibility with a processing technique developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Here's a new technology that's potentially disruptive precisely because it's non-disruptive: Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a device that enables NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy, coupled with a powerful molecular sensor, to analyze molecular interactions in viscous solutions and fragile materials such as liquid crystals.

In a first, their method allows the sensor, hyperpolarized xenon gas, to be dissolved into minute samples of substances without disrupting their molecular order.

Heterostructures (referred to as Van der Waals {VdW}) are attracting a great deal of attention due to their diverse physical and chemical properties. A VdW heterostructure is assembled by stacking two or more different 2D semiconducting crystals on top of each other. The structure is grown by repeating the practice, the resulting stack represents an artificial material constructed in a certain sequence, akin to Lego blocks.

Dr. Seungwoo Song with Prof. Hyun Myung Jang and colleagues Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) have clarified why the measured remanent polarization of orthorhombic GaFeO3 (o-GFO), a prominent ferrite owing to its piezoelectricity and ferrimagnetism, is about 50 times smaller than its predicted value. Their research was published in NPG Asia Materials.

Builders of future superconducting quantum computers could learn a thing or two from semiconductors, according to a report in Nature Communications this week. By leveraging the good ideas of the natural world and the semiconductor community, researchers may be able to greatly simplify the operation of quantum devices built from superconductors. They call this a "semiconductor-inspired" approach and suggest that it can provide a useful guide to improving superconducting quantum circuits.

Adults who commute to work via cycling or walking have lower body fat percentage and body mass index (BMI) measures in mid-life compared to adults who commute via car, according to a new study in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal.

Even people who commute via public transport also showed reductions in BMI and percentage body fat compared with those who commuted only by car. This suggests that even the incidental physical activity involved in public transport journeys may be important.

A University of Colorado Boulder study shows that when rounding curves, Paralympic sprinters wearing left-leg prostheses are slowed more than athletes with right-leg amputations -- a disadvantage that could cost them dearly in official competition.

The study showed lower left-leg amputee athletes sprinting in the inside lane of an indoor track ran about 4 percent slower than athletes with right-leg amputations. Based on that, the researchers estimate a 0.2 second difference in an outdoor 200-meter race, said CU-Boulder Research Associate Paolo Taboga, chief study author.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have adapted a technology developed for solar energy in order to selectively remove one of the trickiest and most-difficult-to-remove elements in nuclear waste pools across the country, making the storage of nuclear waste safer and nontoxic -- and solving a decades-old problem.

Through experiments and computer models of gas releases, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have simulated signatures of gases from underground nuclear explosions (UNEs) that may be carried by winds far from the detonation.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., March 16, 2016 -- Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have combined advanced in-situ microscopy and theoretical calculations to uncover important clues to the properties of a promising next-generation energy storage material for supercapacitors and batteries.

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Carrots and apples not only taste different. They make distinct sounds when chewed.

This may seem like trivial knowledge, but it's not in the laboratory of University at Buffalo computer scientist Wenyao Xu, who is creating a library that catalogues the unique sounds that foods make as we bite, grind and swallow them.

The library is part of a software package that supports AutoDietary, a high-tech, food-tracking necklace being developed by Xu and researchers at Northeastern University in China.