Tech

Mobile phones currently on the market are capable of showing high quality images and video, but the phones' small size sets insurmountable limits on screen size, and thus the viewing experience. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, EpiCrystals Oy and the Aalto University are developing a better laser light source for projectors that will be integrated into mobile phones, which will enable accurate and efficient projection of, for example, photographs and movies on any surface.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The frigid McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica are a cold, polar desert, yet the sandy soils there are frequently dotted with moist patches in the spring despite a lack of snowmelt and no possibility of rain.

A new study, led by an Oregon State University geologist, has found that that the salty soils in the region actually suck moisture out of the atmosphere, raising the possibility that such a process could take place on Mars or on other planets.

COLUMBIA, Mo. ¬— In the past few years, the video game industry has grown from a niche market into a major part of mainstream media. This increase in popularity and use of technology has allowed video game developers to insert more detail and nuance into the storylines of their games. Many video games have begun incorporating religion as a key aspect to plot points and story lines. Greg Perreault, a doctoral student in the University of Missouri School of Journalism, found that the many newer-generation video games equate religion with violence in the game narratives.

Cambridge, Mass. - February 27, 2012 - In 2009, when the United States fell into economic recession, greenhouse gas emissions also fell, by 6.59 percent relative to 2008.

In the power sector, however, the recession was not the main cause.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have shown that the primary explanation for the reduction in CO2 emissions from power generation that year was that a decrease in the price of natural gas reduced the industry's reliance on coal.

Web applications such as Google Mail, Facebook and Amazon are used every day. However, so far there are no methods to test them systematically and at low cost for malfunctions and security vulnerabilities. Therefore, computer scientists from Saarland University are working on automatic methods of testing, which check complex web applications autonomously. For the first time, they will present this work at exhibition booth F34 in hall 26 at the computer fair Cebit. The trade show will take place from March 6 to 10 in Hannover.

People like to keep a safe distance from explosive substances, but in order to analyze them, close contact is usually inevitable. At the Vienna University of Technology, a new method has now been developed to detect chemicals inside a container over a distance of more than a hundred meters. Laser light is scattered in a very specific way by different substances. Using this light, the contents of a nontransparent container can be analyzed without opening it.

Scattered Light as a "Chemical Fingerprint"

NEW YORK – February 24, 2012 – A forthcoming article in the Journal of Consumer Research by Professor Michel Tuan Pham, Kravis Professor of Business, Marketing, Columbia Business School; Leonard Lee, Associate Professor, Marketing, Columbia Business School; and Andrew Stephen, PhD '09, currently Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, finds that a higher trust in feelings may result in more accurate predictions about a variety of future events.

A life cycle assessment of growing crops for fuel as opposed to refining and using fossil fuels has revealed that substitution of gasoline by bioethanol converted from energy crops has considerable potential for rendering our society more sustainable, according to a Japanese study published in the International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy.

At the CeBIT in Hanover, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology will present innovations for our everyday life in the future. At the joint stand G33 in hall 26, a humanoid kitchen robot will move around, three-dimensional visualizations will open up new perspectives, and new algorithms will be presented to protect data in the cloud. The FZI House of Living Labs will present the interactive HoLLiE service robot and solutions for intelligent energy management.

ARMAR Robot Learns by Watching

At this time, wireless networks are able to brake just one bike, but in the future, the technical elements will be further developed to regulate entire trains as they travel over the lines. In view of that fact, computer scientists at Saarland University are designing mathematical calculations to check such systems automatically. The scientists will present their results at stand F34 in hall 26 at the computer fair Cebit. The trade show takes place in Hanover, Germany from March 6 to 10.

Athens, Ga. – Most convenience stores have a wide variety of chips, colorful candies and bottles of sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages. While shoppers can buy calorie-heavy foods wrapped in pretty packages in these locations, what they usually can't find are the fresh produce, whole grains and low-fat dairy products necessary for a healthy diet.

PHILADELPHIA -- The technological world of the 21st century owes a tremendous amount to advances in electrical engineering, specifically, the ability to finely control the flow of electrical charges using increasingly small and complicated circuits. And while those electrical advances continue to race ahead, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are pushing circuitry forward in a different way, by replacing electricity with light.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- University at Buffalo engineers have developed a one-step, low-cost method to fabricate a polymer with extraordinary properties: When viewed from a single perspective, the polymer is rainbow-colored, reflecting many different wavelengths of light.

Used as a filter for light, this material could form the basis of handheld multispectral imaging devices that identify the "true color" of objects examined. An image of the material is available here: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/13214.

Cambridge, Mass. - February 23, 2012 – Engineers at Harvard have demonstrated a new kind of tunable color filter that uses optical nanoantennas to obtain precise control of color output.

Whereas a conventional color filter can only produce one fixed color, a single active filter under exposure to different types of light can produce a range of colors.

The advance has the potential for application in televisions and biological imaging, and could even be used to create invisible security tags to mark currency. The findings appear in the February issue of Nano Letters.

University of California, Berkeley, chemists are reimagining catalysts in ways that could have a profound impact on the chemical industry as well as on the growing market for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Catalysts are materials typically metals that speed up chemical reactions and are widely used in the synthesis of chemicals and drugs. They also are employed in automobile catalytic converters to change combustion chemicals into less-polluting emissions and in fuel cells to convert water into hydrogen.