For swimmers looking to gain an edge on the competition, the notion that simply donning a different swimsuit – like a Speedo Fastskin II suit, with a surface purportedly designed to mimic by shark skin – can be the difference between first and last place is a powerful one.
It's also one that's almost completely misplaced, said George Lauder, the Henry Bryant Bigelow Professor of Ichthyology.
A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, "thresholdless" laser that funnels all its photons into lasing, without any waste.
Imagine a device combining sensors to measure physiological changes. Then imagine a smartphone with software applications designed to respond to your bodily changes in an attempt to change your behavior. That is the vision behind "iHeal," currently being developed¹ by Edward Boyer from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the US, and his colleagues. The multimedia device is an innovative combination of 'enabling technologies' which can detect developing drug cravings and intervene as the cravings develop to prevent drug use.
Individual cells modified to act as sensors using fluorescence are already useful tools in biochemistry, but now they can add good timing to their resumé, thanks in part to expertise from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
With the added capability to track the timing of dynamic biochemical reactions, cell sensors become more useful for many studies, such as measurements of protein folding or neural activity.
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published today a study mapping the potential of renewable energy sources in Africa. The report analyses the current energy consumption in Africa and assesses potential of renewable energy sources - solar, wind, biomass and hydropower - and their cost efficiency and environmental sustainability. Its publication coincides with the official European Launch of UN's Year on "Sustainable Energy for All" being held today in Brussels.
You often hear about the Framers of the Constitution, but not so much the framers of the Magna Carta. They work for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Risks related to the critical nature of arsenic — used to make high-speed computer chips that contain gallium arsenide — outstrip those of other substances in a group of critical materials needed to sustain modern technology, a new study has found. Scientists evaluated the relative criticality of arsenic and five related metals in a report in the ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Wind conditions at a fire scene can make a critical difference on the behavior of the blaze and the safety of firefighters, even indoors, according to a new report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The findings confirm earlier NIST research, but they take on a particular immediacy because they are based on detailed computer models of a tragic 2009 residential fire in Houston, Texas, that claimed the lives of two firefighters.
Satellite telephony was thought to be secure against eavesdropping. Researchers at the Horst Görtz Institute for IT-Security (HGI) at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) have cracked the encryption algorithms of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which is used globally for satellite telephones, and revealed significant weaknesses. In less than an hour, and with simple equipment, they found the crypto key which is needed to intercept telephone conversations.
New solar cells could increase the maximum efficiency of solar panels by over 25%, according to scientists from the University of Cambridge.
Scientists from the Cavendish Laboratory, the University's Department of Physics, have developed a novel type of solar cell which could harvest energy from the sun much more efficiently than traditional designs. The research, published today in the journal Nano Letters, could dramatically improve the amount of useful energy created by solar panels.
Visitors to Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building may have experienced a curious acoustic feature that allows a person to whisper softly at one side of the cavernous, half-domed room and for another on the other side to hear every syllable. Sound is whisked around the semi-circular perimeter of the room almost without flaw. The phenomenon is known as a whispering gallery.
To make a silicon solar cell, you start with a slice of highly purified silicon crystal, and then process it through several stages involving gradual heating and cooling. But figuring out the tradeoffs involved in selecting the purity level of the starting silicon wafer — and then exactly how much to heat it, how fast, for how long, and so on through each of several steps — has largely been a matter of trial and error, guided by intuition and experience.
Now, MIT researchers think they have found a better way.
A green thumb is required where plants are to grow abundantly – that also applies to watering them in dry areas. If they are watered too much, then the soil becomes saline; if the plants receive too little moisture, they let their leaves droop and, in the worst case, they wither. In the future, sensors in the soil, a central unit and an associated app will supplement the green thumb: one look at the smart phone and the farmer will know what moisture content the soil has. Which plants need water, which do not?
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama praised the potential of the country's tremendous supply of natural gas buried in shale. He echoed the recommendations for safe extraction made by an advisory panel that included Stanford University geophysicist Mark Zoback. The panel made 20 recommendations for regulatory reform, some of which go well beyond what the president mentioned in his address.
MANHATTAN, KAN. -- Think of it as cooking with carbon spaghetti: A Kansas State University researcher is developing new ways to create and work with carbon nanotubes -- ultrasmall tubes that look like pieces of spaghetti or string.