Tech

Singapore, 12 December 2013 - A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS), led by Professor Loh Kian Ping, who heads the Department of Chemistry at the NUS Faculty of Science, has successfully developed an innovative one-step method to grow and transfer high-quality graphene on silicon and other stiff substrates, opening up opportunities for graphene to be used in high-value applications that are currently not technologically feasible.

Researchers from the University of Southampton and the Australian National University report that sea-level rise since the industrial revolution has been fast by natural standards and – at current rates – may reach 80cm above the modern level by 2100 and 2.5 metres by 2200.

Pretreating the site of intradermal vaccination – vaccine delivered into the skin rather than to muscles beneath the skin – with a particular wavelength of laser light may substantially improve vaccine effectiveness without the adverse effects of chemical additives currently used to boost vaccine efficacy.

ARGONNE, Ill. – A unique solar panel design made with a new ceramic material points the way to potentially providing sustainable power cheaper, more efficiently, and requiring less manufacturing time. It also reaches a four-decade-old goal of discovering a bulk photovoltaic material that can harness energy from visible and infrared light, not just ultraviolet light.

After testing that their treated hearts were sufficiently softened or stiffened, they fluorescently labeled a small percentage of cells in the heart so they could quantify how hard the hearts were beating while looking at them under a microscope.

"When we treat the hearts with a chemical that breaks down the collagen," Majkut said, "we can directly see that the hearts aren't contracting as much because the labeled cells aren't getting as close to each other as they did before."

Are you a hipster, surfer or biker? What is your urban tribe? Your computer may soon be able to tell. Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, are developing an algorithm that uses group pictures to determine to which of these groups, or urban tribes, you belong. So far, the algorithm is 48 percent accurate on average. That's better than chance--which gets answers right only nine percent of the time--but researchers would like the algorithm perform at least as well as humans would.

This news release is available in German.

Are you a hipster, surfer or biker? What is your urban tribe? Your computer may soon be able to tell. Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, are developing an algorithm that uses group pictures to determine to which of these groups, or urban tribes, you belong. So far, the algorithm is 48 percent accurate on average. That's better than chance--which gets answers right only nine percent of the time--but researchers would like the algorithm perform at least as well as humans would.

The increased global consumption of food means that there is an increasing yield gap between crop production and crop usage. To help tackle this issue, a team of scientists from the University of Southampton has used advanced mathematical modelling techniques to understand the precise role soil structure plays in water uptake.

Current approaches to curbing the global rise of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease, are failing, according to University of Southampton researchers.

Writing in Nature, the group, led by the late Professor David Barker, say more needs to be done to support young girls and women to feel more in control of their lives and so better able to prioritise healthy eating.

They believe this will have significant benefits in improving the health of future generations and reducing mortality rates.

Research led by the University of Southampton has found that early humans were driven by a need for nutrient-rich food to select 'special places' in northern Europe as their main habitat. Evidence of their activity at these sites comes in the form of hundreds of stone tools, including handaxes.

A record of ancient rainfall teased from long-buried sediments in Mongolia is challenging the popular idea that the arid conditions prevalent in Central Asia today were caused by the ancient uplift of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau.

The fast Fourier transform, one of the most important algorithms of the 20th century, revolutionized signal processing. The algorithm allowed computers to quickly perform Fourier transforms — fundamental operations that separate signals into their individual frequencies — leading to developments in audio and video engineering and digital data compression.

But ever since its development in the 1960s, computer scientists have been searching for an algorithm to better it.

The future availability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be pivotal in reaching ambitious climate targets, according to a new comprehensive study of future energy technologies from IIASA, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change, and the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum.

Forensic experts have long used the shape of a person's skull to make positive identifications of human remains. But those findings may now be called into question, since a new study from North Carolina State University shows that there is not enough variation in skull shapes to make a positive ID.