Feature Channels: Technology

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This is the first in series of five planned profiles on past National Science Bowl competitors.

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An international team of researchers, led by Dr. Asier Gomez-Olivencia of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and including Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam, has provided new insights on one of the most famous Neandertal skeletons, discovered over 100 years ago: La Ferrassie 1.

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Actuarial math and computer science come together in a new study that aims to convince policymakers to invest in infrastructure cybersecurity.

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Fiber-optic cables package everything from financial data to cat videos into light, but when the signal arrives at your local data center, it runs into a silicon bottleneck. Instead of light, computers run on electrons moving through silicon-based chips, which are less efficient than photonics. To break through, scientists have been developing lasers that work on silicon. In this week’s APL Photonics, researchers write that the future of silicon-based lasers may be in quantum dots.

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Using his own version of Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility, Rutgers professor Andrew Norris can help make underwater objects appear invisible. Norris, a distinguished professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, is developing honeycomb-like metallic structures that reroute sound waves to create the impression that both the cloak and anything beneath it are not there. Rutgers Today asked Norris to discuss his pioneering research, which could lead to improved acoustic technology, including better imaging under water, and biomedical applications, such as better imaging of tissue.

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A team of researchers has developed a wearable, non-invasive system to monitor electrical activity in the stomach over 24 hours—essentially an electrocardiogram but for the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract.

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An algorithm can predict which passengers survived the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 and can do so with 97 percent accuracy—a result that both demonstrates the power of artificial intelligence and, more subtly, points to its shortcomings. AI may get things right, this finding shows, but for all the wrong reasons.

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Researchers have developed a stretchable, flexible patch that could make it easier to perform ultrasound imaging on odd-shaped structures, such as engine parts, turbines, reactor pipe elbows and railroad tracks—objects that are difficult to examine using conventional ultrasound equipment. The ultrasound patch is a versatile and more convenient tool to inspect machine and building parts for defects and damage deep below the surface.

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Professor Peter Debaere examines the relationship between water and economics and suggests how we can improve water productivity and sustainability.

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Physicians, trainees and even laypeople can now stand right beside an expert radiologist as he performs one of the most difficult medical procedures of its kind – in virtual reality

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Join physicist Rob Moore for a live webcast Apr. 4 as he explores the subatomic realm of quantum materials, and explains how they may shape our technological future.

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Scientists have used the Hubble Space Telescope to chemically analyze the gas in the Leading Arm (the arching collection of gas that connects the Magellanic Clouds to the Milky Way) and determine its origin.

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An international team of researchers is getting a clear look at the hidden text of the Syriac Galen Palimpsest with an X-ray study at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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Dexter's Engineers have developed a Magnetic Bead Resuspension Technology to automatically keep the bead solution homogenous in a reagent trough and allows for the bead concentrations to be quantitatively verified.

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Researchers from TU Delft and Rijksmuseum Boerhaave have solved an age-old mystery surrounding Antonie van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes. A unique collaboration at the interface between culture and science has proved conclusively that the linen trader and amateur scholar from Delft ground and used his own thin lenses.

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The Grand Unified File Index (GUFI) is designed using a new, heirarchical approach to storing file metadata, allowing rapid parallel searches across many internal databases.

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People with heart and vascular conditions have benefited from technologies and treatments introduced in recent years. But traditional qualities such as expertise and teamwork are essential in making the most effective use of new products and procedures, says David Zhao, M.D., chief of cardiovascular medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

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Miniaturized sensors when mounted directly on a tooth and communicating wirelessly with a mobile device, can transmit information on sugars, alcohol and salt. Researchers note that future adaptations of these sensors could enable the detection and recording of a wide range of nutrients, chemicals and physiological states.

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A promising discovery for advanced cancer therapy reveals that the efficiency of drug delivery in DNA nanostructures depends on their shapes, say researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology and the University of Kansas in a scientific paper published today (March 21, 2018).

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Online gift-giving is spreading in social networks and causing people to give more gifts – online and in person – according to a new study led by René Kizilcec, Cornell University assistant professor of information science. About half of these gifts were unlikely to have occurred offline or via another online channel.

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Researchers from Penn State, China and Australia have developed a material with twice the piezo response of any existing commercial ferroelectric ceramics.

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A new CU Boulder study found that two-thirds of Twitter users are unaware their data can be used for science. Many think this would be against their terms of service agreement. It's not.

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Indiana University, Northwestern University, Purdue University, Rutgers University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have announced the launch and activation of OmniSOC, a specialized, sector-based cyber security operations center, or SOC, that provides trusted, rapid, actionable cyber intelligence to its members.

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Innovative “lighthouse” detectors that use a sweeping beam to quickly pinpoint a radiation source in seconds are reducing radiation exposure for workers and opening up new areas for robotic monitoring to avoid potential hazards.

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is among the very few universities in the country with a team and projects dedicated to researching blogs. Blogtrackers, a tool designed to track and analyze blogs and gain insights from the blogosphere, is being developed for public use.

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Texas A&M researchers are using redundancy in stored files to correct errors.

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Research led by the University of Southampton is helping governments in low-income countries strengthen their capacity to build and use population maps, to plan for the future and respond to emergencies.

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Flexible, tunable technique warms plants without need for electricity, aiding ecosystem research in remote locales.

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From moon landings to mobile phones, many of the farfetched visions of science fiction have transformed into reality. In the latest example of this trend, scientists report that they have developed a powerful printer that could streamline the creation of self-assembling structures that can change shape after being exposed to heat and other stimuli.

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has been researching ways to minimize risk from a dam failure and improve the response capability of stakeholders in affected areas.

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Weather patterns, brain activity and heartbeats each generate lines of complex data. To analyze this data, researchers must first divide up this continuous data into discrete pieces -- a task difficult to perform simply and accurately. Researchers have devised a method to transform data from complex systems, reducing the amount of important information lost, while still using less computing power than existing methods. They describe this new method in the current issue of Chaos.

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Our faces broadcast our feelings in living color—even when we don’t move a muscle. That’s the conclusion of a groundbreaking study into human expressions of emotion, which found that people are able to correctly identify other people’s feelings up to 75 percent of the time—based solely on subtle shifts in blood flow color around the nose, eyebrows, cheeks or chin.

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A first of its kind study shows typical interruptions experienced by on-call radiologists do not reduce diagnostic accuracy but do change what they look at and increase the amount of time spent on a case. The implication of the finding is that as radiologists contend with an increasing number of workplace interruptions, they must either process fewer cases or work longer hours — both of which have adverse effects in terms of patient outcomes, said Trafton Drew, the study's lead author. They also may spend more time looking at dictation screens than reviewing medical images.

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Recognizing that the issues of water and energy are critically interdependent, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is launching a new research institute to focus resources on its growing portfolio of projects for water innovation.

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Japanese researchers have optimized the design of laboratory-grown, synthetic diamonds. This brings the new technology one step closer to enhancing biosensing applications, such as magnetic brain imaging. The advantages of this layered, sandwichlike, diamond structure are described in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters.

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Jian Shi, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has won a Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). Shi will use the three-year, $450,000 grant to pursue fundamental research on nanoscale complex materials that could lead to the development of next-generation resilient and high-performance energy conversion and sensing technologies.

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A wearable medical patch measuring the beat-to-beat variation in heart rate is a promising device for the early detection of hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, in type 1 diabetes, according to the researchers who tested the new monitor. Results of their preliminary study will be presented Saturday at ENDO 2018, the Endocrine Society’s 100th annual meeting in Chicago.

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The award recognizes the contributions Kleese van Dam—director of Brookhaven Lab’s Computational Science Initiative since 2015—has made to scientific computing and data management over the past three decades.

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Opioid addicts and others battling compulsion around drugs or alcohol are using a new high-tech, low-risk method to practice saying no—through virtual reality.

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Personalized medicine is one step closer for consumers, thanks to tiny, implantable sensors that could give an early warning of a person’s developing health problems, indicate the most effective type of exercise for an individual athlete, or even help triage wounded soldiers. That’s the vision for a family of devices that scientists are now developing.

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Precise weighing of very rare titanium isotopes has revealed subtle behaviours that have stymied predictions of the most successful theories of nuclear matter.

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In less than one month, over a hundred college students from across the United States will convene in one of the largest cyber defense competitions in the nation. The event, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy, will take place on April 6-7, 2018. This event will be simultaneously hosted across three of the Department’s national laboratories: Argonne, Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest. The completion challenges students to respond to a scenario based on a real-world challenge of vital importance: protecting the Nation’s energy critical infrastructure from the cyber threat.