Tech

UT Dallas computer scientists have developed a technique to create 3-D images that finds practical applications of a theory created by a famous mathematician.

A team of Clemson University physicists consisting of nanomaterial scientists Apparao Rao and Ramakrishna Podila and thermoelectricians Terry Tritt, Jian He and Pooja Puneet worked synergistically through the newly established Clemson Nanomaterials Center to develop a novel technique of tailoring thermoelectric properties of n-type bismuth telluride for high thermoelectric performance.

Their findings were published in journal Scientific Reports.

The first hybrid wind-diesel electricity park in Ecuador's famed Galápagos World Heritage Site, built by the private sector in partnership with the national and local governments, has for the past five years successfully reduced costly diesel imports to San Cristóbal Island by a third while mitigating oil spill risks in a priceless, fragile marine ecosystem.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that poor mental health and casual sex feed off each other in teens and young adults, with each one contributing to the other over time.

Researchers found that teens who showed depressive symptoms were more likely than others to engage in casual sex as young adults. In addition, those who engaged in casual sex were more likely to later seriously consider suicide.

A social media–monitoring program led by San Diego State University geography professor Ming-Hsiang Tsou could help physicians and health officials learn when and where severe outbreaks are occurring in real time. In results published last month in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Tsou demonstrated that his technique might allow officials to more quickly and efficiently direct resources to outbreak zones and better contain the spread of the disease.

The first hybrid wind-diesel electricity park in Ecuador's famed Galápagos World Heritage Site, built by the private sector in partnership with the national and local governments, has for the past five years successfully reduced costly diesel imports to San Cristóbal Island by a third while mitigating oil spill risks in a priceless, fragile marine ecosystem.

Farmers may be able to help reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) by incorporating copper into crop fertilisation processes – according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

Global agricultural emissions of the gas have increased by 20 per cent in the last century as a result of widespread use of nitrogen-based synthetic fertilizers.

But new research into the processes of nutrient cycling published today reveals how farmers could mitigate the effects of this harmful gas by boosting copper levels in fields.

The decadeslong effort to create practical superconductors moved a step forward with the discovery at Rice University that two distinctly different iron-based compounds share common mechanisms for moving electrons.

Samples from two classes of iron-based superconductors, pnictides and chalcogenides, employ similar coupling between electrons in their superconducting state, said Rice physicist Qimiao Si. Understanding that mechanism may help researchers find even better superconductors, he said.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) — Batteries that power electric cars have problems. They take a long time to charge. The charge doesn't hold long enough to drive long distances. They don't allow drivers to quickly accelerate. They are big and bulky.

A team led by Disney Research, Zürich has developed a method to more efficiently render animated scenes that involve fog, smoke or other substances that affect the travel of light, significantly reducing the time necessary to produce high-quality images or animations without grain or noise.

DURHAM, N.C. -- If the idea of keeping a food and exercise diary keeps you from joining a weight-loss program, there may be a better way.

Texting.

Research shows that when people keep track of their diet and exercise habits, they do better at losing weight. But sticking with detailed monitoring of what you eat and your exercise habits electronically or via traditional pen and paper can prove cumbersome. If people stop doing it, they may stop losing weight.

Observations show that in large regions of the tropical oceans, the so-called oxygen minimum zones (OMZ), the oxygen content declined during the last decades. In addition the ocean emitted increasingly climate relevant trace gases to the atmosphere. Based on numerical models it was speculated, that small-scale circulation pattern - so-called eddies - influence sustainably the distribution of oxygen and nutrients in the OMZ's.

Classical scholars from the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics" made an unusually large find of seals in an ancient sanctuary in Turkey. They discovered more than 600 stamp seals and cylinder seals at the sacred site of the storm and weather god Jupiter Dolichenus, 100 of which in the current year alone. "Such large amounts of seal consecrations are unheard-of in any comparable sanctuary", said excavation director Prof. Dr. Engelbert Winter and archaeologist Dr. Michael Blömer at the end of the excavation season.

Researchers have made the first battery electrode that heals itself, opening a new and potentially commercially viable path for making the next generation of lithium ion batteries for electric cars, cell phones and other devices. The secret is a stretchy polymer that coats the electrode, binds it together and spontaneously heals tiny cracks that develop during battery operation, said the team from Stanford University and the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

They reported the advance in the Nov. 19 issue of Nature Chemistry.

Solar cells offer the opportunity to harvest abundant, renewable energy. Although the highest energy light occurs in the ultraviolet and visible spectrum, most solar energy is in the infrared. There is a trade-off in harvesting this light, so that solar cells are efficient in the infrared but waste much of the energy available from the more energetic photons in the visible part of the spectrum.