Tech

Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation announced the use of Marcellus Shale natural gas to fracture wells via dual fuel technology, the first time "field" gas has been used in northeastern Pennsylvania for this purpose.

The process of using clean-burning natural gas can displace up to 70 percent of the diesel fuel traditionally used to operate fracturing equipment. This successful effort was a partnership with FTS International (FTSI) and Caterpillar Global Petroleum.

Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have discovered a mechanism that triggers chronic inflammation in Alzheimer's, atherosclerosis and type-2 diabetes. The results, published today in Nature Immunology, suggest a common biochemical thread to multiple diseases and point the way to a new class of therapies that could treat chronic inflammation in these non-infectious diseases without crippling the immune system. Alzheimer's, atherosclerosis and type-2 diabetes—diseases associated with aging and inflammation—affect more than 100 million Americans.

Computer science researchers have programmed a computer to play the game Concentration (also known as Memory). The work could help improve computer security – and improve our understanding of how the human mind works.

In recent years, illegal cooking oil incident led to the serious food safety risks and the negative social repercussions. Professor HE Yujian and his group from College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences establish two rapid and convenient colorimetric detections of illegal cooking oils based on phase transfer technology. This work could be helpful for the rapid and on-site detection of illegal cooking oil.

A technique developed several years ago at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for improving optical microscopes now has been applied to monitoring the next generation of computer chip circuit components, potentially providing the semiconductor industry with a crucial tool for improving chips for the next decade or more.

A team of scientists at USC has verified that quantum effects are indeed at play in the first commercial quantum optimization processor.

The team demonstrated that the D-Wave processor housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center behaves in a manner that indicates that quantum mechanics plays a functional role in the way it works. The demonstration involved a small subset of the chip's 128 qubits.

This means that the device appears to be operating as a quantum processor – something that scientists had hoped for but have needed extensive testing to verify.

Sophie Holles, a PhD researcher at the University of Bristol and one of the study's authors, said: "Natural underwater sound is used by many animals to find suitable habitat, and traffic noise is one of the most widespread pollutants. If settlement is disrupted by boat traffic, the resilience of habitats like reefs could be affected."

Cattle grazing and clean water can coexist on national forest lands, according to research by the University of California, Davis.

The study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, is the most comprehensive examination of water quality on National Forest public grazing lands to date.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids in the blood may reduce the risk for hip fractures in postmenopausal women, recent research suggests.

Scientists analyzed red blood cell samples from women with and without a history of having a broken hip. The study showed that higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids from both plant and fish sources in those blood cells were associated with a lower likelihood of having fractured a hip.

As rapidly increasing demand for bandwidth strains the Internet's capacity, a team of engineers has devised a new fiber optic technology that promises to increase bandwidth dramatically. The new technology could enable Internet providers to offer much greater connectivity – from decreased network congestion to on-demand video streaming.

AUSTIN, Texas – By creating a small electrical field that removes salts from seawater, chemists at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Marburg in Germany have introduced a new method for the desalination of seawater that consumes less energy and is dramatically simpler than conventional techniques. The new method requires so little energy that it can run on a store-bought battery.

The process evades the problems confronting current desalination methods by eliminating the need for a membrane and by separating salt from water at a microscale.

Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have developed a new method for visualizing material defects in thin-film solar cells.

Ulsan, South Korea-- A research team at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), S. Korea, found a new physical organogel electrolyte with two unique characteristics: an irreversible thermal gelation and a high value of the Li+ transference number.

A Recent fire on a Boeing 787 on the ground in Boston, US, was caused by a battery failure, it resulted in the release of flammable electrolytes, heat damage and smoke. If they had used a safer electrolyte, the risk would have been reduced.

LIVERMORE, Calif.— Providing auxiliary hydrogen power to docked or anchored ships may soon be added to the list of ways in which hydrogen fuel cells can provide efficient, emissions-free energy.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Imagine downloading a NetFlix app to your phone so that you can watch movies on the go. You would expect the app to request your account's username and password the first time it runs. Most apps do.