Tech

University of Alaska Fairbanks mathematicians and glaciologists have taken a first step toward understanding how glacier ice flowing off Greenland affects sea levels.

Andy Aschwanden, Martin Truffer and Mark Fahnestock used mathematical computer models and field tests to reproduce the flow of 29 inlet glaciers fed by the Greenland ice sheet. They compared their data with data from NASA's Operation IceBridge North aerial campaign.

The comparisons showed that the computer models accurately depicted current flow conditions in topographically complex Greenland.

They're making fuel from thin air at the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute.

For the first time, researchers there have directly converted carbon dioxide from the air into methanol at relatively low temperatures.

Computer science has become a new basic skill, essential in order to excel in an increasingly computational and data-intensive world.

However, access to computer science (CS) at the K-12 levels remains limited. CS is taught in less than 25 percent of U.S. high schools. Rural and high-need schools are even less likely to offer it. Moreover, in schools that do offer CS, students of color and girls often participate in very low numbers.

But this is changing through a groundswell of interest in CS education at the state, city and local levels.

CLEVELAND--Fake or low-quality medicines and food supplements are an ongoing global problem in underdeveloped nations, although technology-savvy places, such as the United States, are also not immune.

A researcher at Case Western Reserve University is developing a low-cost, portable prototype designed to detect tainted medicines and food supplements that otherwise can make their way to consumers. The technology can authenticate good medicines and supplements.

The risk of a child breaking a bone can depend upon their ethnicity and where they live in the UK, according to a new study.

An analysis of the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink database by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, found that rates of broken bones were higher in white children (150 per 10,000 children per year) compared to those amongst South Asian children (81 fractures per 10,000 children per year) and black children (64 fractures per 10,000 children per year).

KIT scientists now present the smallest lattice structure made by man in the Nature Materials journal. Its struts and braces are made of glassy carbon and are less than 1 µm long and 200 nm in diameter. They are smaller than comparable metamaterials by a factor of 5. The small dimension results in so far unreached ratios of strength to density. Applications as electrodes, filters or optical components might be possible. (DOI: 10.1038/nmat4561)

Scientists at the University of Birmingham are calling on drought researchers and managers around the world to consider both human activity and natural phenomena in their battle to preserve increasingly scarce global water supplies.

The experts say that severe droughts experienced recently in countries such as China, Brazil and the United States can no longer be seen as purely natural hazards. Changes to the way people use the water and the landscape contribute to extreme water shortages.

Inventory inaccuracy is common for many businesses. While cash registers track incoming orders and outgoing sales, inaccuracy arises because of unrecorded issues including spoilage, damage and theft.

Three professors in the Naveen Jindal School of Management have researched inventory management for more than 10 years, and, in their latest study, published in the January issue of Production and Operations Management, they developed a new mathematical model to apply to inventory problems.

Laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) got the nickname "tabletop" because, as shown by the unique BELLA accelerator at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), they can boost electron beams to multibillion electron-volt energies (GeVs) in a few centimeters--a distance thousands of times shorter than conventional accelerators.

Scientists at Aalto University, Finland, have made a breakthrough in physics. They succeeded in transporting heat maximally effectively ten thousand times further than ever before. The discovery may lead to a giant leap in the development of quantum computers.

Renewable, energy efficient and flexible electricity sources are being adopted by policy makers and investors across the globe and this is sign of optimism in the battle against climate change, a University of Exeter energy policy expert is suggesting.

Turn on a skillet and let it heat up until it is well above the boiling point of water. Then sprinkle a teaspoon of water on the skillet and watch. Water droplets will bounce up, form spheres and scurry across the surface.

What you have just observed is an example of the Leidenfrost effect, named for Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost, an 18th-century German physician and scientist. The phenomenon occurs when a liquid, upon approaching an object that is much hotter than the liquid's boiling point, produces a vapor which insulates the liquid from the surface of the object.

Senior citizens would likely accept robots as helpers and entertainment providers, but are leery of giving up too much control to the machines, according to researchers.

Based on a study of senior citizens, the researchers said that mental models formed by seniors -- specifically, negative and positive notions about robots -- shape their comfort level with the machines.

The catalysts speed up heavy oil extraction under the conditions of in-situ combustion.

Projected heavy oil and viscous oil reserves in Russia are up to 40 - 50 billion barrels and a significant portion of that volume lies within Tatarstan. Heavy oil extraction warrants special technological processes, and research in that direction is currently becoming the center of attention in heavy oil-rich countries (USA, Canada, Venezuela, Russia).

COLUMBUS, Ohio--New tools for harvesting wind energy may soon look less like giant windmills and more like tiny leafless trees.

A project at The Ohio State University is testing whether high-tech objects that look a bit like artificial trees can generate renewable power when they are shaken by the wind--or by the sway of a tall building, traffic on a bridge or even seismic activity.