Tech

The search for a less-expensive, sustainable source of biomass, or plant material, for producing gasoline, diesel and jet fuel has led scientists to duckweed, that fast-growing floating plant that turns ponds and lakes green. That's the topic of a report in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.

In a step toward understanding and exploiting an exotic form of matter that has been sparking excitement for potential applications in a new genre of supercomputers, scientists are reporting the first identification of a naturally occurring "topological insulator" (TI). Their report on discovery of the material, retrieved from an abandoned gold mine in the Czech Republic, appears in the ACS journal Nano Letters.

For the growing number of runners who are considering trying "barefoot" five-finger running shoes, researchers at BYU have a message for you: Take it slow!

A new study from a team of exercise science professors found that runners who transition too quickly to minimalist shoes suffer an increased risk of injury to bones in the foot, including possible stress fractures.

With minimalist shoes now making up 15 percent of the $6.5 billion running shoe market, the findings are nothing to run from.

Yaoundé, Cameroon (7 March 2013) -- While African governments are moving gradually towards protecting the land rights of rural people and indigenous communities, they are moving quickly to give away community forests and other lands for development. These conflicting choices are the focus of two new reports and a regional dialogue on forests, governance, and climate change.

The authors base their findings on an analysis of the anonymised search logs of millions of US web users, who agreed to install a browser add-on and share their online searches with Microsoft throughout 2010.

The researchers developed automated tools to analyse the queries of people who searched for information on the antidepressant (paroxetine) and a cholesterol lowering drug (pravastatin), using the search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo.

A screening tool from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) eases and greatly quickens one of the thorniest tasks in the biofuels industry: determining cell wall chemistry to find plants with ideal genes.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers have shown theoretically how to control or eliminate the formation of "dendrites" that cause lithium-ion batteries to fail, an advance that if realized would improve safety and might enable the batteries to be charged within a matter of minutes instead of hours.The dendrites are lithium deposits that form on electrode surfaces and may continue to grow until they cause an internal short circuit, which results in battery failure and possible fire.

New research from North Carolina State University finds that older adults who play video games report higher levels of emotional well-being.

Researchers asked 140 people aged 63 and older how often they played video games, if at all. The study participants then took a battery of tests to assess their emotional and social well-being. 61 percent of study participants played video games at least occasionally, with 35 percent of participants saying they played at least once per week.

Ultrasound technology could soon experience a significant upgrade that would enable it to produce high-quality, high-resolution images, thanks to the development of a new key material by a team of researchers that includes a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Dining on field grasses would be ruinous to human teeth, but mammals such as horses, rhinos and gazelles evolved long, strong teeth that are up to the task.

New research led by the University of Washington challenges the 140-year-old assumption that finding fossilized remains of prehistoric animals with such teeth meant the animals were living in grasslands and savannas. Instead it appears certain South American mammals evolved the teeth in response to the gritty dust and volcanic ash they encountered while feeding in an ancient tropical forest.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Bringing the concept of an "artificial leaf" closer to reality, a team of researchers at MIT has published a detailed analysis of all the factors that could limit the efficiency of such a system. The new analysis lays out a roadmap for a research program to improve the efficiency of these systems, and could quickly lead to the production of a practical, inexpensive and commercially viable prototype.

CHICAGO --- A new mother may constantly worry and check to see if her baby is still breathing. Or she may fret about germs, obsessing whether she's properly sterilized the bottles, then wash and rewash them.

A new Northwestern Medicine® study found that women who have recently given birth have a much higher rate of obsessive-compulsive symptoms than the general population.

Humidity measurements in the atmosphere are of essential importance, since water vapour, as the most important natural greenhouse gas, has a strong influence on the Earth's atmospheric radiation balance and, thus, decisively influences our climate. In addition, water is responsible for meteorological phenomena such as the formation of clouds and precipitation.

ENERGY – Reducing biorefinery waste . . .

A century after Western explorers first crossed the dangerous landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic, researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have successfully deployed a self-guided robot that uses ground-penetrating radar to map deadly crevasses hidden in ice-covered terrains.

Deployment of the robot--dubbed Yeti--could make Arctic and Antarctic explorations safer by revealing unseen fissures buried beneath ice and snow that could potentially claim human lives and expensive equipment.