A new method for producing electricity from carbon dioxide could be the start of a classic trash-to-treasure story for the troublesome greenhouse gas, scientists are reporting.
Tech
Cambridge, Mass. -- Computer graphics and digital video lag behind reality; despite advances, the best software and video cameras still cannot seem to get computer-generated images and digital film to look exactly the way our eyes expect them to.
But Hanspeter Pfister and Todd Zickler, computer science faculty at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), are working to narrow the gap between 'virtual' and 'real' by asking a common question: how do we see what we see?
PITTSBURGH—It would be impossible to compute all of the ways a piece of cloth might shift, fold and drape over a moving human figure. But after six months of computation, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Berkeley, are pretty sure they've simulated almost every important configuration of that cloth.
"I believe our approach generates the most beautiful and realistic cloth of any real-time technique," said Adrien Treuille, associate professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon.
Climate data can help predict some crop failures several months before harvest, according to a new study from an international team, including a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Alexandria, VA - In a field like earth science, adventures in the outdoors are commonplace. As this summer's field season comes to a close and the lanterns are extinguished one last time, EARTH Magazine explores the ritual of field camp as geoscientists' rite of passage from classroom learner to a workforce-ready scientist.
PITTSBURGH—The fingers of thousands of people who created sketches of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on their iPhones can collectively guide and correct the drawing strokes of subsequent touchscreen users in an application created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research.
"A wave is a deformation in the surface of a liquid that moves at a speed that is independent of that liquid," the researchers explain. For example: in the waves that are formed when a rock is thrown into a pond, the water remains still while the waves move away from the center at their own speed. "In our case, what occurs is actually the opposite: the water moves very rapidly (at several meters per second), but the wave moves at a speed of zero.
Considerable improvement in device performance of polymer-based optoelectronic devices is reported today by researchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea. The new plasmonic material, can be applied to both polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) and polymer solar cells (PSCs), with world-record high performance, through a simple and cheap process.
The contrary demands of these devices mean that there are few metal nanoparticles that can enhance performance in PLEDs and PSCs at the same time.
BERKELEY — A new milestone by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, can help robots become more touchy-feely, literally.
A research team led by Ali Javey, UC Berkeley associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, has created the first user-interactive sensor network on flexible plastic. The new electronic skin, or e-skin, responds to touch by instantly lighting up. The more intense the pressure, the brighter the light it emits.
Although it may not be immediately obvious, the mechanical properties of optical components have a significant impact on the performance of lasers employed in precision sensing applications. Currently, the mechanical damping of such components, and the inherent mechanical fluctuations they generate, present a roadblock to further advancement of ever more precise measurements of time and space.
Climate friendly fuel cells for hydrogen cars have come one step closer. Researchers at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, have shown how to build fuel cells that produce as much electricity as current models, but require markedly less of the rare and valuable precious metal platinum. Their discovery was published in the highly reputable periodical Nature Materials.
Cheaper hydrogen cars with new fuel cell design
A large reservoir can provide reliable access to water, control flooding, and be used to generate hydroelectricity.
But environmentalists who once advocated dams have now turned on them, claiming they upset local ecosystems by changing river flow patterns or by affecting nutrient and oxygen concentrations in downstream flows.
Damming a river and constructing a reservoir in a litigious culture armed with well-paid environmental lawyers requires balancing benefits and risks to avoid lawsuits.
Most big data centers, the global backbone of the Internet, could slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 88 percent by switching to efficient, off-the-shelf equipment and improving energy management, according to new research.
Depth cameras and other motion-tracking devices allow people to use natural gestures to play computer games, yet the experience remains unnatural because they can't feel what their eyes can see. Disney Research, Pittsburgh, has developed a solution, however, that could enhance not only games, but a variety of virtual experiences.
Investigators at Disney Research, Zürich have developed a method for using hundreds of photographic images to build 3D computer models of complex, real-life scenes that meet the increasing demands of today's movie, TV and game producers for high-resolution imagery.