Tech

This news release is available in French.

Montreal, March 19, 2014 — As spring finally emerges after a ferocious winter,, our battered roads will soon be re-exposed. While potholes and cracks might make news, a bigger concern should be the deterioration to pavement markings, from yellow to white lines, which are a big factor in preventing traffic accidents.

Thermal conduction is a familiar everyday phenomenon. In a hot sauna, for instance, you can sit comfortably on a wooden bench that has a temperature of 100C (212F), but if you touch a metallic nail with the same temperature, you will hurt yourself. The difference of these two experiences is due to the fact that some materials, such as metals, conduct heat well, whereas some other materials, such as wood, do not. It is therefore commonly thought that thermal conductance is simply a materials parameter.

Parents might take a lesson from Goldilocks and find a balanced approach to guide their teens in making moral, safe online decisions, according to Penn State researchers.

In a study on parenting strategies and online adolescent safety, the researchers found evidence that suggests that parents should try to establish a middle ground between keeping their teens completely away from the internet not monitoring their online activities at all.

SALT LAKE CITY, March 20, 2014 – University of Utah electrical engineers fabricated the smallest plasma transistors that can withstand high temperatures and ionizing radiation found in a nuclear reactor. Such transistors someday might enable smartphones that take and collect medical X-rays on a battlefield, and devices to measure air quality in real time.

Berkeley — Academic research sponsored by industry has a strong track record of leading to innovative patents and licenses, challenging assumptions that corporate support skews science toward inventions that are less accessible and less useful to others than those funded by the government or non-profit organizations, according to a new analysis.

The findings, to be published in a Wednesday, March 19, commentary in the journal Nature, are based upon a study of two decades of records from the University of California system.

Radiological damage to microbes near the site of the Chernobyl disaster has slowed the decomposition of fallen leaves and other plant matter in the area, according to a study just published in the journal Oecologia. The resulting buildup of dry, loose detritus is a wildfire hazard that poses the threat of spreading radioactivity from the Chernobyl area.

Globalization has made the world a better and more equal place for many more people than was the case a few decades ago. However, it has also created two well-defined worlds of poor countries and wealthy nations, according to Vanesa Jordá and José María Sarabia of the University of Cantabria in Spain. In an article published in Springer's journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, they studied the distribution of well-being over the last wave of globalization between 1980 and 2011.

ANN ARBOR—Inspired by the space physics behind solar flares and the aurora, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan and Princeton has uncovered a new kind of magnetic behavior that could help make nuclear fusion reactions easier to start.

Fusion is widely considered the ultimate goal of nuclear energy. While fission leaves behind radioactive waste that must be stored safely, fusion generates helium, a harmless element that is becoming scarce. Just 250 kilograms of fusion fuel can match the energy production of 2.7 million tons of coal.

A forest in South Carolina, a supercomputer in Ohio and some glow-in-the-dark yarn have helped a team of field ecologists conclude that woodland corridors connecting patches of endangered plants not only increase dispersal of seeds from one patch to another, but also create wind conditions that can spread the seeds for much longer distances.

Major emitting countries may have to join the EU's effort much earlier to avoid a temporary overshoot of the 2 degree target, but even if they joined only in 2030, the overshoot would be limited to roughly 0.2 to 0.4 degrees Celsius. The initial unilateral leadership could be achieved at little extra costs for the EU. Late-comers would have the benefit of lower costs while they delay action but would face higher transient costs once their turn to decarbonize comes.

The common bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes is responsible not only for scarlet fever, a childhood disease presenting with characteristic skin rash, but also for many suppurative infections of the skin. The infection can be associated with serious consequences such as acute rheumatic fever and inflammation of the kidneys.

The view back in time—way back to the origins of the universe—just got clearer. Much clearer.

A team of U.S. cosmologists using the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole announced this week that they have discovered the first direct evidence of the rapid inflation of the universe at the dawn of time, thanks in part to technology developed and built by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The BICEP2 camera relies, in part, on the extraordinary signal amplification made possible by NIST's superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs).

Dr. Jason Jolliff is an oceanographer with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). "The emphasis here," he says, "is on developing models of the ocean environment to help the naval warfighter." His most recent paper, published in Ocean Modeling (March 2014), shows NRL can also forecast where oil will go following a major spill.

URBANA, Ill. – Even after the agricultural reforms of 2002-03, for wheat, rice, and pearl millet farmers in India, grain markets are still pretty sticky. Two University of Illinois economists analyzed infrastructure of interstate trade for food-grain crops in three Indian states and found that grain farmers are unable to cash in on India's market reforms and take advantage of a price difference between two or more markets.

This news release is available in German.

The hunt is on – for new materials to be used in the next generation of batteries that may one day replace current lithium ion batteries. Today, the latter are commonplace and provide a reliable power source for smartphones, laptops and many other portable electrical devices.