Tech

Cambridge, Mass. – November 1, 2013 – It doesn't take a Watson to realize that even the world's best supercomputers are staggeringly inefficient and energy-intensive machines.

Our brains have upwards of 86 billion neurons, connected by synapses that not only complete myriad logic circuits; they continuously adapt to stimuli, strengthening some connections while weakening others. We call that process learning, and it enables the kind of rapid, highly efficient computational processes that put Siri and Blue Gene to shame.

The ever-increasing threat from "superbugs" -- strains of pathogenic bacteria that are impervious to the antibiotics that subdued their predecessor generations -- has forced the medical community to look for bactericidal weapons outside the realm of traditional drugs. One promising candidate is the antimicrobial peptide (AMP), one of Mother Nature's lesser-known defenses against infections, that kills a pathogen by creating, then expanding, nanometer-sized pores in the cell membrane until it bursts.

America's once-abundant tallgrass prairies—which have all but disappeared—were home to dozens of species of grasses that could grow to the height of a man, hundreds of species of flowers, and herds of roaming bison.

For the first time, a research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has gotten a peek at another vitally important but rarely considered community that also once called the tallgrass prairie home: the diverse assortment of microbes that thrived in the dark, rich soils beneath the grass.

Brooklyn, New York— Recent studies from two research teams at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) demonstrate how underwater robots can be used to understand and influence the complex swimming behaviors of schooling fish. The teams, led by Maurizio Porfiri, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NYU-Poly, published two separate papers in the journal PLOS ONE.

Chickens could be the unexpected beneficiaries of the growing biofuels industry, feeding on proteins retrieved from the fermenters used to brew bioethanol, thanks to research supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

It has long been known that the yeasty broth left over after bioethanol production is nutritious, but it has taken a collaboration between Nottingham Trent University and AB Agri, the agricultural division of Associated British Foods, to prove that Yeast Protein Concentrate (YPC) can be separated from the fibrous cereal matter.

Research into the best ways to arrange wind turbines has produced staggering results — quite literally.

The University of Delaware's Cristina Archer and her Atmosphere and Energy Research Group found that staggering and spacing out turbines in an offshore wind farm can improve performance by as much as 33 percent.

"Staggering every other row was amazingly efficient," said Archer, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering and geography in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– By determining simple guidelines, researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Solid State Lighting & Energy Center (SSLEC) have made it possible to optimize phosphors –– a key component in white LED lighting –– allowing for brighter, more efficient lights.

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SYDNEY: An increase in aridity due to global warming will disturb the balance of nutrients in the soil and reduce productivity of the world's drylands, which support millions of people, a landmark study predicts.

The research was conducted by a global collaboration of scientists who carried out the same studies of 224 dryland sites in 16 countries on every continent except Antarctica.

This news release is available in German.

One of the world's largest dinosaurs has been digitally reconstructed by experts from The University of Manchester allowing it to take its first steps in over 94 million years.

The Manchester team, working with scientists in Argentina, were able to laser scan a 40 metre-long skeleton of the vast Cretaceous Agentinosaurus dinosaur. Then using an advanced computer modeling technique involving the equivalent of 30,000 desktop computers they recreated its walking and running movements and testedits locomotion ability tested for the very first time.

An historic tire fire 30 years ago that blazed on for nine months in the northwest Virginia Appalachians, releasing giant plumes of toxic smoke, sparked a recycling revolution and advances in fire-monitoring methods. The fire's environmental legacy is the topic of the cover story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.

New Rochelle, NY, October 30, 2013—The repair of ruptured tendons often requires the use of a graft to bridge gaps between the torn tendon and bone. A tissue-engineered collagen graft can reduce the complications associated with other types of tendon grafts, but it may not be able to support full load bearing until integrated into the surrounding tissue. A new suture technique designed to support this tissue-engineered tendon is described in BioResearch Open Access.

Terahertz waves are invisible, but incredibly useful; they can penetrate many materials which are opaque to visible light and they are perfect for detecting a variety of molecules. Terahertz radiation can be produced using tiny quantum cascade lasers, only a few millimetres wide. This special kind of lasers consists of tailor made semiconductor layers on a nanometer scale.

Whether you want to investigate objects in space, characterize the quality of light sources, optimize photovoltaics modules or analyze chemical compounds, measuring the spectrum of light- or heat sources is often the method of choice. Conventional procedures thereby generate radiation distribution curves which are distorted and have to be subsequently corrected. The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) has now developed a mathematical procedure which yields clearly improved results and can be applied in numerous fields of radiometry and photometry.