Tech

A team of researchers at the University of Delaware has found that incorporating rice husk to soil can decrease toxic inorganic arsenic levels in rice grain by 25 to 50 percent without negatively affecting yield.

This research could have important implications for developing countries whose populations rely on rice as a staple of their diets and are in need of cheap, readily available material to improve soil quality and decrease arsenic levels that threaten human health.

A new development from Northwestern University's Manijeh Razeghi could be another tool for protecting our borders.

Supported by the Department of Homeland Security, Razeghi's lab has created a new, broad-band tunable infrared laser that has implications for the detection of drugs and explosives.

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 7, 2016 - Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute's Swiss Light Source in Villigen, Switzerland, have developed a new design for X-ray spectrometers that eschews a commonly utilized component to lowers overall production costs and increase the efficiency of x-ray flux, which may lead to faster acquisition times for sample imaging and increased efficiency for the system. This is essential for biological samples which may be damaged by continued x-ray exposure.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland developed an extremely efficient small-size energy storage, a micro-supercapacitor, which can be integrated directly inside a silicon microcircuit chip. The high energy and power density of the miniaturized energy storage relies on the new hybrid nanomaterial developed recently at VTT. This technology opens new possibilities for integrated mobile devices and paves the way for zero-power autonomous devices required for the future Internet of Things (IoT).

Scientists can now identify the exact location of a single atom in a silicon crystal, a discovery that is key for greater accuracy in tomorrow's silicon based quantum computers.

It's now possible to track and see individual phosphorus atoms in a silicon crystal allowing confirmation of quantum computing capability, but which also has use in nano detection devices.

The unusual electronic properties of some superconducting materials permit lossless and dense electrical currents at very low temperatures, even in high magnetic fields. Conductors made of these materials are thus ideal for winding coils to generate very high magnetic fields, which are essential for a number of applications like magnetic medical imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy for the analysis of complex molecules or even accelerator magnets.

Sagrario Domínguez-Fernández, a Telecommunications engineer, has managed to increase light absorption in silicon by means of nanostructures etched onto photovoltaic cells. This increases the efficiency obtained in these electronic devices which are made of this element and which transform solar energy into electricity.

Sales of drones -- small flying machines equipped with cameras--are soaring. But new research by a Johns Hopkins computer security team has raised concerns about how easily hackers could cause these robotic devices to ignore their human controllers and land or, more drastically, crash.

Five graduate students and their professor discovered three different ways to send rogue commands from a computer laptop to interfere with an airborne hobby drone's normal operation and land it or send it plummeting.

Oxford, June 6, 2016 - Phosphorus is the biggest cause of water quality degradation worldwide, causing 'dead zones', toxic algal blooms, a loss of biodiversity and increased health risks for the plants, animals and humans that come in contact with polluted waters. This threatens the loss of economic and social benefits from freshwaters upon which society relies. In a series of studies published in a special issue of Water Research, leading scientists assess how geo-engineering in lakes can control phosphorus pollution.

Installing a microgrid within a regulated electricity market will sometimes, but not always, provide an economic benefit to customers, investors and utilities involved, according to new research led by Chiara Lo Prete, assistant professor of energy economics, Penn State.

A microgrid is a group of power generators and power consumers operating in a coordinated system, and some members of the energy community believe microgrids could smooth out kinks in existing electricity networks.

Philadelphia, PA, June 6, 2016 - Battling the childhood obesity epidemic is a priority for many researchers, as obesity during adolescence increases the risk of chronic diseases throughout life. Because obese children have lower quality of life and self-esteem, greater levels of depression and anxiety, and also face more teasing and bullying than normal-weight peers, including mental health in any intervention is necessary. To that end, researchers studied the self-perception of children participating in the Fit Families program.

LOGAN, UTAH - Finding water in the desert is a relatively easy task for a species of moss that seems to flourish in even the most arid regions. That's according to a new study by a team of scientists and engineers who wanted to understand how Syntrichia caninervis succeeds despite its limited and inconsistent water supplies.

The findings show for the first time how the highly evolved bryophyte survives in extremely arid environments thanks in part to its specialized water collection and transportation toolkit.

Operation IceBridge, NASA's airborne survey of polar ice, ended its eighth spring Arctic campaign on May 21. During their five weeks of operations, mission scientists carried out six research flights over sea ice and ten over land ice.

Scientists from the RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics (RAP) have, for the first time, successfully used a terahertz laser to induce permanent changes in the conformation of a polymer, giving it an increased pattern of crystallization. Conformational changes are very important for macromolecular science because they can change the characteristics of a material and, in the case of proteins, can make it either possible or impossible for them to perform a certain biological function. The work, done in collaboration with Osaka University, was published in Scientific Reports.

BOSTON, MA - June 2, 2016 - Exercise-associated muscle cramps are agonizing. Millions of athletes and fitness enthusiasts suffer from them - even the best trained and most nutritionally-savvy. They're painful, unpredictable and can rob an athlete of a killer performance and confidence. Existing "remedies" that target the muscle have limited scientific evidence that they work.