Tech

Jena (Germany) Sun and wind are important sources of renewable energy, but they suffer from natural fluctuations: In stormy weather or bright sunshine electricity produced exceeds demand, whereas clouds or a lull in the wind inevitably cause a power shortage. For continuity in electricity supply and stable power grids, energy storage devices will become essential. So-called redox-flow batteries are the most promising technology to solve this problem. However, they still have one crucial disadvantage: They require expensive materials and aggressive acids.

In 1939, a Russian engineer proposed a "flying submarine" -- a vehicle that can seamlessly transition from air to water and back again. While it may sound like something out of a James Bond film, engineers have been trying to design functional aerial-aquatic vehicles for decades with little success. Now, engineers may be one step closer to the elusive flying submarine.

The biggest challenge is conflicting design requirements: aerial vehicles require large airfoils like wings or sails to generate lift while underwater vehicles need to minimize surface area to reduce drag.

WASHINGTON -- Diamonds are renowned for their exquisite beauty and unrivaled durability, but they also are highly prized by scientists and engineers for their exceptional optical and physical properties.

Wide-gap semiconductors such as gallium nitride (GaN) are widely used for optical devices such as blue LED and are also anticipated as materials for next-generation energy saving power devices and solar cells.

However, the quality of GaN crystals does not come up to that of conventional semiconductor materials such as silicon (Si) and this prevents GaN from being used for power devices.

Typhoon Champi was near Iwo To island, Japan when NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites gathered data on the weakening typhoon.

Typhoon Champi still maintained an eye on visible imagery taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on Oct. 19 at 01:25 UTC. At that time, the storm also appeared symmetric as powerful bands of thunderstorms spiraled into the low-level center, but the storm was weakening.

An important step towards next-generation ultra-compact photonic and optoelectronic devices has been taken with the realization of a two-dimensional excitonic laser. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) embedded a monolayer of tungsten disulfide into a special microdisk resonator to achieve bright excitonic lasing at visible light wavelengths.

An analysis of more than 1.9 million mother and infant pairs finds that preeclampsia was significantly associated with noncritical heart defects in offspring, and preeclampsia with onset before 34 weeks was associated with critical heart defects; however, the absolute risk of congenital heart defects was low, according to a study in the October 20 issue of JAMA.

The colour of Vincent van Gogh's famous Sunflowers is changing over time, because of the mixture of pigments used by the Dutch master in his painting. Evidence for the process now comes from a detailed spectroscopic investigation of the Sunflowers version at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. A group of scientists headed by Letizia Monico from the Institute of Molecular Science and Technology (CNR-ISTM) of Perugia, the University of Perugia and the University of Antwerp, shone X-rays from DESY's lightsource PETRA III through tiny particles of paint taken from the painting.

Renaissance Ingredients Inc., an applied life sciences company that develops and commercializes AR yeast for the global food manufacturing industry, has released an overview of their results of an in-house, laboratory-scale trial of the efficacy of its acrylamide-reducing (AR) baker's yeast for applications in the global bread and baked goods market. They found that AR baker's yeast instead of conventional baker's yeast reduced the acrylamide in white and whole wheat bread and toast by an average of 80%.

As debate roils over EPA regulations proposed this month limiting the release of the potent greenhouse gas methane during fracking operations, a new University of Vermont study funded by the National Science Foundation shows that abandoned oil and gas wells near fracking sites can be conduits for methane escape not currently being measured.

Typhoon Champi has been generating heavy rainfall since Oct. 16, 2015, when NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement, or GPM, mission analyzed the storm. The storm intensified from a tropical storm to a typhoon after GPM passed overhead. GPM is a joint mission between NASA and JAXA.

The RapidScat instrument aboard the International Space Station also showed what side of the storm had the strongest winds.

The tiny transistor is the heart of the electronics revolution, and Penn State materials scientists have just discovered a way to give this workhorse a big boost, using a new technique to incorporate vanadium oxide -- a functional oxide -- into the electronic devices.

"It's tough to replace current transistor technology because semiconductors do such a fantastic job," said Roman Engel-Herbert, assistant professor of materials science and engineering. "But there are some materials, like vanadium oxide, that you can add to existing devices to make them perform even better."

In polluted environments, diesel fumes may be reducing the availability of almost half the most common flower odours that bees use to find their food, research has found.

The new findings suggest that toxic nitrous oxide (NOx) in diesel exhausts could be having an even greater effect on bees' ability to smell out flowers than was previously thought.

NOx is a poisonous pollutant produced by diesel engines which is harmful to humans, and has also previously been shown to confuse bees' sense of smell, which they rely on to sniff out their food.

Academics from the University of Bristol will present new breakthroughs on two fundamental problems in Computer Science. These results will be presented at the world's leading international conference in computer science this week.

The 56th annual IEEE symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2015) will take place in California from Oct. 18-20 .

HANOVER, N.H. - A new Dartmouth study confirms the authenticity of the famous backyard photo of Lee Harvey Oswald holding the same type of rifle used to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

The findings refute continued claims that the photo was faked because Oswald's pose is physically implausible. The study, which uses a new digital image forensics technique and a 3-D model of Oswald developed by the Dartmouth researchers, appears in the Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law. A PDF and photos are available on request.