Tech

The rules of school are simple: it is all about watching the kid nearest to you and making sure you do what they do. Researchers at the mathematics department at Uppsala University, together with biologists at Sydney University have shown that fish apply similar rules when traveling in small shoals.

Getting trapped oil out of porous layers of sandstone and limestone is a tricky and costly operation for energy exploration companies the world over. But now, University of Alberta researchers have developed a way to replicate oil-trapping rock layers in a laboratory and show energy producers the best way to recover every last bit of oil from these reservoirs.

Breathing. Anyone reading this article is doing it right now. But what chemicals are we breathing in, and out? A group of Virginia Tech College of Engineering researchers has published a paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology that details how to learn just that, using microelectromechanical systems to focus on toxins and everyday impurities that enter the body through the air we intake.

Robotics researchers in Munich have joined forces with Japanese scientists to develop an ingenious technical solution that gives robots a human face. By using a projector to beam the 3D image of a face onto the back of a plastic mask, and a computer to control voice and facial expressions, the researchers have succeeded in creating Mask-bot, a startlingly human-like plastic head. Yet even before this technology is used to give robots of the future a human face, it may well soon be used to create avatars for participants in video conferences.

"Instant runoff" voting – which San Franciscans will use next week to choose their new mayor, county sheriff and district attorney – requires voters to rank their three top choices in each race, instead of simply voting for their first choice.

Advocates say instant runoff does a better than job of producing a winner who truly represents most of the voters' preference; opponents say the opposite. It all boils down to what you think of the math, which raises an obvious question: What does a mathematician think?

Enviably agile and purposeful, the mobile robot makes its way through grounds rendered off-limits to humans as the result of a chemical accident. Depressions, ruts and other obstacles are no match for this eight-legged high-tech journeyman. Its mission: with a camera and measurement equipment on board, it will provide emergency responders with an image of the situation on the ground, along with any data about poisonous substances. Not an easy task; after all, it must be prevented from tipping over.

When buying a car, customers are not just interested in its fuel consumption. They rather turn their attention to the car's appearance. The interior fittings should have a quality look, the pattern on the seat covers should be subtle and understated and the leather-look dashboard should add a sense of luxury. That is why designers want to know at an early stage how a piece of fabric or imitation leather will look in the new car cockpit. Models used to be manufactured by hand, but that was time-consuming.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2011 -- Nitrogen fertilizers from farm fields often end up in aquatic ecosystems, resulting in water quality problems, such as toxic algae and underwater 'dead zones'. There are concerns that fertilizers used on lawns may also contribute to these problems. All of the lawns in the United States cover an area almost as large as Florida, making turfgrass our largest 'crop' and lawn fertilizer use a legitimate issue.

A new study on greenhouse gas emissions from oil palm plantations has calculated a more than 50% increase in levels of CO2 emissions than previously thought – and warned that the demand for 'green' biofuels could be costing the earth.

Long gone are the days when trucks spewed black clouds of exhaust into the air: Nowadays, there are filters in place that capture the largest of these soot particles. After a time, if too much soot accumulates in the filter, the soot is burned off and the filter is regenerated. The problem: Soot particles only burn above temperatures of 500 to 600 degrees Celsius. Yet the temperature of truck exhaust is increasingly dropping as part of the effort to minimize emissions of nitric oxides harmful to the environment.

A team of scientists working at Argonne National Laboratory's (ANL) Center for Nanoscale Materials has successfully carved ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) thin films into nanowires, boosting the material's functionality and providing potential improvements to the fabrication of biosensors.

The team, led by Anirudha Sumant, a materials scientist at ANL, will present their research during AVS' 58th International Symposium & Exhibition, held Oct. 30 – Nov. 4, 2011, in Nashville, Tenn.

DURHAM, N.C. – On-the-ground photos from the next political uprising may come with added authenticity tags.

Duke University computer scientists have developed a new feature, called YouProve, which can be integrated into the Android operating system to monitor images and audio captured with mobile devices.

Over the last 5 years the Bionano Group at the Nano-Science Center and the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology at the University of Copenhagen has been working hard to characterise and test how molecules react, combine together and form larger molecules, which can be used in the development of new medicine.

Safety in traffic depends on a number of factors. One decisive aspect is how fit the driver is. A research team at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), in collaboration with researchers at the BMW Group, managed to develop a sensor system integrated into the steering wheel that can monitor the driver's state of health while driving. The driver can use his time behind the wheel for a minor health check. At the same time the device might be used recognize the onset fainting spells or heart attacks.