Tech

Following the recent announcement of the discovery of the earliest known Christian imagery in the exploration of a sealed first century Jerusalem tomb, controversy predictably erupted, with numerous members of the community of biblical scholars offering alternate interpretations of the iconography and disputing the tomb's claimed Christian connections.

A Queen's physicist and a PhD student have developed a groundbreaking device that controls the depth of a laser cut, laying groundwork to provide pinpoint accuracy during surgeries. This new laser control technology is valuable in all surgeries where cutting too deeply could lead to serious complications.

Montreal, April 19, 2011 — New research at Concordia University is bringing us one step closer to clean energy. It is possible to extend the length of time a battery-like enzyme can store energy from seconds to hours, a study published in the Journal of The American Chemical Society shows.

Clean drinking water and basic sanitation are human rights. Yet almost 780 million of the world's population still have no access to drinking water and some 2.6 billion people live without sanitary facilities. Water, though, is also an important economic factor: Today, agricultural and manufacturing businesses already use up more than four fifths of this precious commodity. And the demand for water continues to rise. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is expecting that by 2050, global water consumption will have risen by more than half.

Scientists are reporting development and successful testing of a way to reuse — hundreds of times — the expensive, dirt-busting enzymes that boost the cleaning power of laundry detergents and powdered bleaches that now disappear down the drain. The discovery, reported in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, opens the door to new laundry products, like special scrub brushes or reusable enzyme-coated plastic flakes and strips that might be added to cheaper detergents and then saved for reuse.

Comic book hero superpowers may be one step closer to reality after the latest technological feats made by researchers at UT Dallas. They have designed an imager chip that could turn mobile phones into devices that can see through walls, wood, plastics, paper and other objects.

The team's research linked two scientific advances. One involves tapping into an unused range in the electromagnetic spectrum. The other is a new microchip technology.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A large, global move to produce more energy from forest biomass may be possible and already is beginning in some places, but scientists say in a new analysis that such large-scale bioenergy production from forest biomass is unsustainable and will increase greenhouse gas emissions.

A new genre of electric power-generating stations could supply electricity for more than a half billion people by tapping just one-tenth of the global potential of a little-known energy source that exists where rivers flow into the ocean, a new analysis has concluded. A report on the process — which requires no fuel, is sustainable and releases no carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) — appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Luis Montaner from the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, USA and colleagues retrospectively apply a potential capacity-saving CD4 count model to a cohort of HIV-infected patients on antiretroviral therapy. The study's findings suggest that the model could be used to optimize laboratory capacity in settings where resources are limited.

In wealthy countries, antiretroviral therapy (ART) has transformed AIDS into an often-manageable chronic condition, as patients can receive both the therapeutics and the constant monitoring that ensures the therapies remain effective. Developing nations, however, frequently need to balance expansion of treatment access versus the economic resources to sustain the routine blood testing that ART requires. At a time when global funding commitments for AIDS therapy programs are being cut, there is a great need to find new strategies to maximize available resources.

HOUSTON – (April 17, 2012) – Forests of carbon nanotubes are an efficient alternative for platinum electrodes in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), according to new research by collaborators at Rice University and Tsinghua University.

The public and press can see the latest progress in a unique, ongoing electromobility research project during the international trade fair MobiliTec, which takes place April 23-27 at the Hannover Messe. Embodied in a sleek, Colani-designed tractor-trailer that looks more like a spaceship than a truck, the project "Diesel Reloaded" aims to demonstrate how paradigm shifts in automotive, energy, and information technologies can help to address major societal trends and needs. The research group, based at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, is led by Prof. Dr.

Two years ago this week, oil began streaming from the seafloor into the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon platform. All told, the disaster cost 11 lives, released 4.9 million barrels of crude oil, and caused still unspecified impacts to marine life and the Gulf economy.

The public and press can see the latest progress in a unique, ongoing electromobility research project during the international trade fair MobiliTec, which takes place April 23-27 at the Hannover Messe. Embodied in a sleek, Colani-designed tractor-trailer that looks more like a spaceship than a truck, the project "Diesel Reloaded" aims to demonstrate how paradigm shifts in automotive, energy, and information technologies can help to address major societal trends and needs. The research group, based at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, is led by Prof. Dr.