Tech

Trying on clothes when a shop is closed could become a reality thanks to new research that uses semi-transparent mirrors in interactive systems and which will be unveiled at an international conference tomorrow [Tuesday 7 October].

The research paper, to be presented at one of the world's most important conferences on human-computer interfaces - ACM UIST 2014 [5-8 October], could change the way people interact and collaborate in public spaces, such as museums and shop windows.

Researchers from UCL, Stanford Engineering, Google, Chalmers and Mozilla Research have built a new system that protects Internet users' privacy whilst increasing the flexibility for web developers to build web applications that combine data from different web sites, dramatically improving the safety of surfing the web.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have created a new model to more accurately describe the greenhouse gases likely to be released from Arctic peatlands as they warm. Their findings, based on modeling how oxygen filters through soil, suggest that previous models probably underestimated methane emissions and overrepresented carbon dioxide emissions from these regions.

A team of researchers, led by the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton, has demonstrated a breakthrough technique that offers the first possibility of silicon detectors for telecommunications.

For decades, silicon has been the foundation of the microelectronics revolution and, owing to its excellent optical properties in the near- and mid-infrared range, is now promising to have a similar impact on photonics.

The world's fiber-optic network spans more than 550,000 miles of undersea cable that transmits e-mail, websites, and other packets of data between continents, all at the speed of light. A rip or tangle in any part of this network can significantly slow telecommunications around the world.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass--When someone crumples a sheet of paper, that usually means it's about to be thrown away. But researchers have now found that crumpling a piece of graphene "paper" — a material formed by bonding together layers of the two-dimensional form of carbon — can actually yield new properties that could be useful for creating extremely stretchable supercapacitors to store energy for flexible electronic devices.

When you take a shower and rinse the soap and shampoo off your body, the foam conveniently disappears between your toes and down the drain. Have you ever thought about what happens to the surfactants afterwards? Whether they seep into the groundwater, lakes and streams, where they could pose a risk to fish and frogs?

Not likely. This is shown in a new and very comprehensive report of the potential impact on the environment of the enormous amounts of common surfactants used day in and day out by consumers all over the world.

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Is it a solar cell? Or a rechargeable battery?

Actually, the patent-pending device invented at The Ohio State University is both: the world's first solar battery.

In the October 3, 2014 issue of the journal Nature Communications, the researchers report that they've succeeded in combining a battery and a solar cell into one hybrid device.

The yeast has not been gene modified by the researchers; rather, they have used adaptive laboratory evolution to produce it. The method allows new characteristics to be produced without knowing which mutations are required to achieve them.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Yeast are commonly used to transform corn and other plant materials into biofuels such as ethanol. However, large concentrations of ethanol can be toxic to yeast, which has limited the production capacity of many yeast strains used in industry.

"Toxicity is probably the single most important problem in cost-effective biofuels production," says Gregory Stephanopoulos, the Willard Henry Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2, 2014—Commercial devices capable of encrypting information in unbreakable codes exist today, thanks to recent quantum optics advances, especially the generation of photon pairs—tiny entangled particles of light. Now, an international team of researchers led by professor Roberto Morandotti of INRS-EMT in Canada, is introducing a new method to achieve a different type of photon pair source that fits into the tiny space of a computer chip.

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- New research suggests dear old Mom and Dad could be the auto industry's secret weapon.

The study, co-authored by Michigan State University economist Soren Anderson, found children are 39 percent more likely to buy a particular brand of automobile if their parents bought that brand.

Teens who received free contraception and were educated about the pros and cons of various birth control methods were dramatically less likely to get pregnant, give birth or get an abortion compared with other sexually active teens, according to a new study.

The research, by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, appears Oct. 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that a region on the front surface of the eye harbours special stem cells that could treat blinding eye conditions.

This part of the eye is called the 'corneal limbus' and is a narrow gap lying between the transparent cornea and white sclera.

The research, published in PLOS ONE, showed that stem cells can be cultured from the corneal limbus in vitro. Under the correct culture conditions, these cells could be directed to behave like the cells needed to see light - photoreceptor cells.

This news release is available in French and Spanish.