Surprisingly, transmitting information-rich photons thousands of miles through fiber-optic cable is far easier than reliably sending them just a few nanometers through a computer circuit. However, it may soon be possible to steer these particles of light accurately through microchips because of research performed at the Joint Quantum Institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland, together with Harvard University.
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Researchers at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) in close collaboration with colleagues in France and UK, have engineered a material that exhibits a rare and versatile trait in magnetism at room temperature. It's called a "multiferroic," and it means that the material has properties allowing it to be both electrically charged (ferroelectric) and also the ability to be magnetic (ferromagnetic), with its magnetisation controlled by electricity.
The Naval Research Laboratory's Tactical Satellite IV (TacSat-4) is scheduled to launch from the Alaska Aerospace Corporation's Kodiak Launch Complex, Tuesday, September 27, 2011, aboard an Orbital Sciences Corporation Minotaur-IV+ launch vehicle. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored the development of the payload and the first year of operations. The Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office funded the launch which is managed by the Space Development and Test Directorate (SD), a directorate of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC).
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The next generation of communications systems could be built with a sewing machine.
To make communications devices more reliable, Ohio State University researchers are finding ways to incorporate radio antennas directly into clothing, using plastic film and metallic thread.
In the current issue of the journal IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, they report a new antenna design with a range four times larger than that of a conventional antenna worn on the body – one that is used by American soldiers today.
Growing up is not easy, especially for tiny nanowires: With no support or guidance, nanowires become unruly, making it difficult to harness their full potential as effective semiconductors. Prof. Ernesto Joselevich of the Weizmann Institute's Chemistry Faculty has found a way to grow semiconductor nanowires out, not up, on a surface, providing, for the first time, the much-needed guidance to produce relatively long, orderly, aligned structures.
One year after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and two decades after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound, the scientific lesson is clear -- microbes matter! Despite vast differences in the ecosystems and circumstances of these two worst oil spills in US history, oil-degrading microorganisms played a significant role in reducing the overall environmental impact of both spills, a Berkley Lab scientist reports.
Eutrophication harms the environment in many ways. Unexpectedly, nitrogen fertilizer may also be positive for the environment. And even acidic soils, promoting the destruction of forests, can have a positive effect.
Researchers from the Biogeochemistry Department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz found out that nitrogen fertilizer indirectly strengthens the self-cleaning capacity of the atmosphere. Their study shows that nitrous acid is formed in fertilized soil and released to the atmosphere, whereby the amount increases with increasing soil acidity.
Knots can now be tied systematically in the microscopic world. A team of scientists led by Uroš Tkalec from the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana (Slovenia), who has been working at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen (Germany) since September 2010, has now found a way to create every imaginable knot inside a liquid crystal.
Computer scientists in the field of artificial intelligence have made an important advance that blends computer vision, machine learning and automated planning, and created a new system that may improve everything from factory efficiency to airport operation or nursing care.
And it’s based on watching the Oregon State University Beavers play football.
23andMe, Inc., a leading personal genetics company has replicated over 180 genetic associations from a list of associations curated by the National Human Genome Research Institute's Office of Population Genomics ("GWAS Catalog") demonstrating that self-reported medical data is effective and reliable to validate known genetic associations. The results establish 23andMe's methodology as a significant research platform in a new era of genetic research.
A new lower-limb prosthetic developed at Vanderbilt University allows amputees to walk without the leg-dragging gait characteristic of conventional artificial legs.
Researchers have developed new computational tools that help computers determine whether faces fall into categories like attractive or threatening, according to a recent paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. Mario Rojas and other researchers at the Computer Vision Center in the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, in cooperation with researchers from the Department of Psychology of Princeton University, developed software that is able to predict those traits in some cases with accuracies beyond 90%.
Researchers working to fix global positioning system (GPS) errors have devised software to take a more accurate measurement of altitude, particularly in mountainous areas. The software is still under development, but in initial tests it enabled centimeter-scale GPS positioning, including altitude, up to 97 percent of the time.
GPS is most often used by drivers who getting from place-to-place in two dimensions on the earth's surface. The third dimension of altitude has always been available through GPS, just with lower accuracy than that of the horizontal coordinates.
The Naval Research Laboratory and the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) through the support of the Office of Naval Research (ONR), has shown an autonomous multi-sensor motion-tracking and interrogation system that reduces the workload for analysts by automatically finding moving objects, then presenting high-resolution images of those objects with no human input.
Despite growing evidence that biofuels may not be the cure-all once envisioned, many countries are still rushing headlong with biofuels development policies that experts say are having negative as well as positive impacts on the sustainable-energy dream. That's the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS' weekly newsmagazine.