Tech

A new "smart" window system has the unprecedented ability to inexpensively change from summer to winter modes, darkening to save air conditioning costs on scorching days and returning to crystal clarity in the winter to capture free heat from the sun, scientists are reporting. Their study appears in the journal ACS Nano.

Not long after the development of the first laser in 1960 scientists discovered that shining a beam through certain crystals produced light of a different color; more specifically, it produced light of exactly twice the frequency of the original. The phenomenon was dubbed second harmonic generation.

Physicists at the RUB, working in collaboration with researchers from Grenoble and Tokyo, have succeeded in taking a decisive step towards the development of more powerful computers. They were able to define two little quantum dots (QDs), occupied with electrons, in a semiconductor and to select a single electron from one of them using a sound wave, and then to transport it to the neighbouring QD. A single electron "surfs" thus from one quantum dot to the next like a fish on a wave.

University of Southampton and British School at Rome (BSR) archaeologists, leading an international excavation of Portus – the ancient port of Rome, believe they have discovered a large Roman shipyard.

The team, working with the Italian Archaeological Superintendancy of Rome, has uncovered the remains of a massive building close to the distinctive hexagonal basin or 'harbour', at the centre of the port complex.

Scientists are reporting refinement of a new test that promises to help assure the safety of supplies of heparin, the blood thinner taken by millions of people worldwide each year to prevent blood clots. The test can quickly and economically detect adulterants, including the substance responsible for hundreds of illnesses and deaths among patients taking heparin in 2008. The report appears in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry.

September 20th, 2011，Shenzhen, China – Beijing Genomics Institute reported that they have achieved optimization RNA-Seq (Quantification) library construction with total RNA inputs as low as 100 ng. This breakthrough enables the application of RNA-Seq (Quantification) technology to experimental designs utilizing samples derived from small numbers of cells, such as those widely used in pharmaceutical research, cancer research, and immunology.

People prefer to make friends with others who share their beliefs, values, and interests. The more choice people have, the more their friends are alike, according to research published in Group Processes and Intergroup Relations (published by SAGE).

High-performance flexible and lightweight solar cells, say, on plastic foils, have excellent potential to lower the manufacturing costs through roll-to-roll processing and the so called "balance-of-system" cost, thus enabling affordable solar electricity in the near future. Thus far, however, flexible solar cells on polymer films have been lacking behind in performance compared to rigid cells, primarily because polymer films require much lower temperatures during deposition of the absorber layer, generally resulting in much lower efficiencies.

Record-breaking team

Usually it's the frog that catches the unsuspecting bug for a tasty snack, but in an unprecedented predator-prey role reversal, a certain group of ground beetle larvae are able to lure their amphibious would-be predators and consume them with almost 100% success. In a report published today in the online journal PLoS ONE, researchers begin to describe how these larvae are able to pull off this feat.

Anyone who has watched one of the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation television shows knows that PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) is a technology used to amplify the tiniest samples of DNA into forensic evidence that can identify perpetrators or victims of a crime. Microbiologists also use PCR to uncover the identity of microbes in samples taken from a wide range of sources for a wide range of purposes. However, for microbial analysis, the use of PCR technology can pose problems. Now, researchers with the U.S.

Cambridge, Mass. – September 21, 2011 – After a rain, the cupped leaf of a pitcher plant becomes a virtually frictionless surface. Sweet-smelling and elegant, the carnivore attracts ants, spiders, and even little frogs. One by one, they slide to their doom.

Adopting the plant's slick strategy, a group of applied scientists at Harvard have created a material that repels just about any type of liquid, including blood and oil, and does so even under harsh conditions like high pressure and freezing temperatures.

Scientists at Cambridge University have shown an amazing degree of control over the most fundamental aspect of an electronic circuit, how electrons move from one place to another.

Researchers from the University's Cavendish Laboratory have moved an individual electron along a wire, batting it back and forth over sixty times, rather like the ball in a game of ping-pong. The research findings, published today (22 September) in the journal Nature, may have applications in quantum computing, transferring a quantum 'bit' between processor and memory, for example.

BINGHAMTON, NY – The Civil War — already considered the deadliest conflict in American history — in fact took a toll far more severe than previously estimated. That's what a new analysis of census data by Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker reveals.

Hacker says the war's dead numbered about 750,000, an estimate that's 20 percent higher than the commonly cited figure of 620,000. His findings will be published in December in the journal Civil War History.

New hybrid carbon material, which combines both graphene and SWNTs, Graphene Nanoribbons encapsulated into Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (GNR@SWNTs) have been discovered by researchers from Aalto University (Finland) and Umea University.

Carbon nanotubes and graphene materials have attracted enormous interest from a broad range of specialists.

Researchers at the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) and the Northern Ireland Semiconductor Research Centre (NISRC) at Queen's University Belfast have devised a way to eliminate the need for motors in space borne radiometers by incorporating liquid crystals in their Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) antenna arrays.