Tech | Page 1445 | Science Codex

Potential for odd election outcomes with ranked choice voting system, says mathematician

"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?

High-tech spider for hazardous missions

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.

Simulating real-world surfaces

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.

Nitrogen fertilizers' impact on lawn soils

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.

EU biofuels as carbon intensive as petrol

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.

Clean soot particle filters

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.

Scientists carve nanowires out of ultrananocrystalline diamond thin films

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.

Android add-on monitors eyewitness mobile media reports

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.

Nano-tech makes medicine greener

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.

Health check on the road

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.

Vegetarian diet, physical activity protect against diabetes in black population, study shows

LOMA LINDA, Calif. — New research shows that following a vegetarian diet and exercising at least three times a week significantly reduced the risk of diabetes in African Americans, who are twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes when compared to non-Hispanic whites.

Clemson researcher says high blood pressure may lead to missed emotional cues

CLEMSON, S.C. — Your ability to recognize emotional content in faces and texts is linked to your blood pressure, according to a Clemson University researcher.

A recently published study by Clemson University psychology professor James A. McCubbin and colleagues has shown that people with higher blood pressure have reduced ability to recognize angry, fearful, sad and happy faces and text passages.

Hybrid power plants can help industry go green

Hybrid cars, powered by a mixture of gas and electricity, have become a practical way to "go green" on the roads. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University are applying the term "hybrid" to power plants as well.

The perfect clone

Professional safecrackers use a stethoscope to find the correct combination by listening to the clicks of the lock. Researchers at the Ruhr-University Bochum have now demonstrated how to bypass the security mechanisms of a widely used contactless smartcard in a similar way. Employing so-called "Side-Channel Analysis" the researchers of the Chair for Embedded Security (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christof Paar) can break the cryptography of millions of cards that are used all around the world.

Mathematically secure

UCSB physicists identify room temperature quantum bits in widely used semiconductor

Santa Barbara, Calif. –– A discovery by physicists at UC Santa Barbara may earn silicon carbide –– a semiconductor commonly used by the electronics industry –– a role at the center of a new generation of information technologies designed to exploit quantum physics for tasks such as ultrafast computing and nanoscale sensing.

The research team discovered that silicon carbide contains crystal imperfections that can be controlled at a quantum mechanical level. The finding is published this week in the journal Nature.