Tech

Nanotechnology has developed tremendously in the past decade and was able to create many new materials with a vast range of potential applications. Some of those innovative materials are promising to reduce environmental pollution. For instance, carbon nanotubes and metal nano-particles are great candidate materials for cleaning polluted water and soils.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Researchers creating electricity through photovoltaics want to convert as many of the sun's wavelengths as possible to achieve maximum efficiency. Otherwise, they're eating only a small part of a shot duck: wasting time and money by using only a tiny bit of the sun's incoming energies.

Aircraft morphing, especially in the case of the variable camber airfoil, has potential from the viewpoints of both fundamental aerodynamics and flight application. In the field of aerodynamics, the use of a variable camber airfoil can improve aircraft flight performance and allow efficient multiple missions; in biology, the concept of the variable camber airfoil can be employed to explain the mystery of animal flight.

This new global energy study outlines a range of 41 alternative sustainable energy pathways that offer viable, cost effective choices for policy makers to achieve necessary human health and environmental sustainability goals by 2050.

Laxenburg, Austria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Health advocates need to organize strong public health campaigns to educate the public and policymakers about the dangers of both sugary beverages and the misleading industry corporate social responsibility campaigns that distract from their products' health risks, according to US experts writing in this week's PLoS Medicine.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The vegetables in salads are chock-full of important vitamins and nutrients, but you won't get much benefit without the right type and amount of salad dressing, a Purdue University study shows.

New mothers who read and write blogs may feel less alone than mothers who do not participate in a blogging community, according to family studies researchers.

Water held in soil plays an important role in the climate system. The dataset released by ESA is the first remote-sensing soil moisture data record spanning the period 1978 to 2010 – a predecessor of the data now being provided by ESA's SMOS mission.

The datasets are now available to the science community for feedback analyses and climate model validation.

The amount of water held in global soils makes up only about 0.001% of the total water found on Earth.

What does a robot feel when it touches something? Little or nothing until now. But with the right sensors, actuators and software, robots can be given the sense of feel – or at least the ability to identify different materials by touch.

Small, shifting human populations existed in the Amazon before the arrival of Europeans, with little long-term effect on the forest.

That's the result of research led by Crystal McMichael and Mark Bush of the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT). The finding overturns the idea the Amazon was a cultural parkland in pre-Columbian times with large human populations that transformed vast tracts of the landscape.

UPTON, N.Y. — Overturning two long-held misconceptions about oil production in algae, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory show that ramping up the microbes' overall metabolism by feeding them more carbon increases oil production as the organisms continue to grow. The findings — published online in the journal Plant and Cell Physiology on May 28, 2012 — may point to new ways to turn photosynthetic green algae into tiny "green factories" for producing raw materials for alternative fuels.

An experiment of surfaces in hotel rooms finds television remotes to be among the most heavily contaminated with bacteria and items on housekeeping carts carry the potential to cross-contaminate rooms. Researchers from the University of Houston report the findings today at the 2012 General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

Superhydrophobicity is one of most important interfacial properties between solids and liquids. SHI Yanlong and his group from the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Key laboratory of Hexi Corridor Resources Utilization of Gansu Universities, Hexi University investigated the superhydrophobicity of the water boatman's hind wings. The study showed that superhydrophobicity plays a crucial role in the water boatman's swimming, balance, and breathing in water, and in its escape ability from water area under unfavorable conditions.

Tiny microbes are at the heart of a novel agricultural technique to manage harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists have discovered how microbes can be used to turn carbon dioxide emissions into soil-enriching limestone, with the help of a type of tree that thrives in tropical areas, such as West Africa.

Researchers have found that when the Iroko tree is grown in dry, acidic soil and treated with a combination of natural fungus and bacteria, not only does the tree flourish, it also produces the mineral limestone in the soil around its roots.