Take a fine strand of silica fiber, attach it at each end to a slow-turning motor, torture it over a flame until it nearly reaches its melting point and then pull it apart. The middle will thin out like taffy until it is less than half a micron across, and that, according to researchers at the University of Maryland, is how you fabricate ultrahigh transmission optical nanofibers, a potential component for future quantum information devices.
An Albuquerque startup company has licensed a Sandia National Laboratories technology that offers a way to make molybdenum-99, a key radioactive isotope needed for diagnostic imaging in nuclear medicine, in the United States.
Beginning with the development of smaller products, such as solar lanterns to replace kerosene lighting, the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University is expanding its efforts to produce energy alternatives with a new program to test larger scale renewable energy-powered consumer products.
Computer scientists from the University of Washington and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle have created the first fully automated computer program that teaches everything there is to know about any visual concept.
Georgia Tech researchers froze ant rafts and scanned them with a miniature CT scan machine to look at the strongest part of the structure – the inside – to discover how opaque ants connect, arrange and orient themselves with each other.
Doctors at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center are the first in the country to begin treating some heart failure patients with a new wireless, implantable hemodynamic monitor that was just approved by the FDA.
A group of Kansas State University engineers are collaborating with Heartspring Inc. to develop technology that helps children with severe developmental disabilities.
Researchers in the University of Toronto’s Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering have designed and tested a new class of solar-sensitive nanoparticle that outshines the current state of the art employing this new class of technology.
This new form of solid, stable light-sensitive nanoparticles, called colloidal quantum dots, could lead to cheaper and more flexible solar cells, as well as better gas sensors, infrared lasers, infrared light emitting diodes and more.
Iowa State University researchers tested eight different fitness bands to determine the accuracy of each model. The activity monitors make it easy for anyone to track their physical activity and calories burned, but researchers found not all devices are created equal.
Computer scientists at Virginia Tech have developed a unique anomaly protection security approach for the detection of malicious activities on networked computers. The work was performed using a National Science Foundation CAREER award and is being presented at an international conference in Tokyo, Japan.
The Health Data Exploration project, from the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) and the University of California, Irvine (UCI), has been awarded a $1.9 million grant from the& Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), to create a network of researchers, scientists, companies and others to catalyze the use of personal health data for the public good. The Network will be spotlighted today in a presentation at Health Datapalooza by Matthew Bietz, PhD, lead co-investigator for the Health Data Exploration project.
Research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences makes it possible to predict how subjecting metals to severe pressure can lower their electrical resistance, a finding that could have applications in computer chips and other materials that could benefit from specific electrical resistance.
A team of researchers has developed sperm-inspired microrobots, which consist of a head coated in a thick cobalt-nickel layer and an uncoated tail. When the robot is subjected to an oscillating field of less than five millitesla, it experiences a magnetic torque on its head, which causes its flagellum to oscillate and propel it forward. The researchers are then able to steer the robot by directing the magnetic field lines towards a reference point.
For patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) that can't be controlled by medications, a minimally invasive laser procedure performed under MRI guidance provides a safe and effective alternative to surgery, suggests a study in the June issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
Sandia experts expect multiple computing device-level technologies in the future, rather than one dominant architecture. About a dozen possible next-generation candidates exist, including tunnel FETs (field effect transistors, in which the output current is controlled by a variable electric field), carbon nanotubes, superconductors and fundamentally new approaches, such as quantum computing and brain-inspired computing.
Using computer vision and machine learning techniques, Columbia Engineering researchers have developed Birdsnap, a free new iPhone app that's an electronic field guide featuring 500 of the most common North American bird species. The app enables users to identify bird species through uploaded photos, + accompanies a comprehensive website.
Firing thousands of rounds of ammunition weekly can causing debilitating stress injuries and chronic nerve and joint pain. The Department of Homeland Security, with the help of agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs Armory Operations Branch, hopes their “Virtual Shooter” eliminates these injuries.
New Structure Glove addresses fit, form, and dexterity issues. Firefighters need gloves in the field that fit properly, enable dexterity, and aren’t bulky, while still meeting the heat and water resistance criteria. If structure gloves become soggy and uncomfortable, a firefighter may need to remove them in order to complete tasks. This exposes their hands to the dangerous conditions of a fire or other emergency environment. Designed using current technology and improved materials, the Improved Structure Firefighting Glove is lightweight, provides improved fit and form, and allows for more precise movements.Firefighters wear protective gloves called “structure gloves” to keep their hands safe on the job. The protective equipment firefighters wear—including structure gloves—give them the confidence to focus on putting out fires and saving lives; however, the structure gloves currently used by firefighters are not designed for the precision movements our first responders must perform.
A new type of computing architecture that stores information in the frequencies and phases of periodic signals could work more like the human brain to do computing using a fraction of the energy of today’s computers.
Thirteen-year-old Sydney Kendall had one request for the Washington University in St. Louis students building her a robotic prosthetic arm: Make it pink. Kendall Gretsch, Henry Lather and Kranti Peddada, seniors studying biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, accomplished that and more. Using a 3-D printer, they created a robotic prosthetic arm out of bright-pink plastic. Total cost: $200, a fraction of the price of standard prosthetics, which start at $6,000.
University of Adelaide research may help in the fight against terrorism with the creation of a sensor that can detect tiny quantities of explosives with the use of light and special glass fibres.
Musicians can now perform as the soloist with a full philharmonic orchestra from the comfort of their own living rooms, thanks to a new computer system that will be described in a presentation at the 167th meeting of the ASA.
Complex networks researchers at Indiana University have developed a tool that helps anyone determine whether a Twitter account is operated by a human or an automated software application known as a social bot.
Engineering researchers at the University of Arkansas have developed a wireless health-monitoring system that detects early signs of traumatic brain injury by continuously monitoring various brain and neural functions.
Technion researchers have developed an underwater imaging system that allows submariners to view objects above the water's surface - without a periscope. Researchers at Israel's Technion have developed an underwater imaging system that allows submariners to view objects above the water's surface - without a periscope.
Inexpensive computers, cell phones and other systems that substitute flexible plastic for silicon chips may be one step closer to reality, thanks to research published on April 16 in the journal Nature Communications.
A $500,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will help Globus deliver on its mission to accelerate discovery by making advanced research data management infrastructure available to small laboratories and individual researchers around the world.
The University of California, San Diego and Emotient, the leading provider of facial expression recognition data and analysis, announced publication of a joint study by two Emotient co-founders affiliated with UC San Diego, together with researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia State University.
The Micro Phone Lens, developed by UW mechanical engineering alumnus Thomas Larson ('13), can turn any smartphone or tablet computer into a hand-held microscope. The soft, pliable lens sticks to a device's camera without any adhesive or glue and makes it possible to see things magnified dozens of times on the screen.
By depositing an array of tiny, metallic, U-shaped structures onto a dielectric material, a team of researchers in China has created a new artificial surface that can bend and focus electromagnetic waves the same way an antenna does.
The complexity of biology can befuddle even the most sophisticated light microscopes. Biological samples bend light in unpredictable ways, returning difficult-to-interpret information to the microscope and distorting the resulting image. New imaging technology developed at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus rapidly corrects for these distortions and sharpens high-resolution images over large volumes of tissue. The approach, a form of adaptive optics, works in tissues that do not scatter light, making it well suited to imaging the transparent bodies of zebrafish and the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, important model organisms in biological research. Janelia group leader Eric Betzig says his team developed the new technology by combining adaptive optics strategies that astronomers and ophthalmologists use to cancel out similar distortions in their images.
Newswise hosts the first live, interactive virtual event for major research finding for journalists. Newswise and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center are collaborating to offer direct access to the investigator via Newswise Live, an interactive virtual event.
University of Chicago researchers and their colleagues at University College London have performed a proof-of-concept experiment that will aid the future development of programmable quantum computers.
University of Washington researchers have developed software that automatically generates images of a young child's face as it ages through a lifetime. The technique is the first fully automated approach for aging babies to adults that works with variable lighting, expressions and poses.
Assistant Professor Christian A. Nijhuis of the Department of Chemistry at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Faculty of Science, in collaboration with researchers from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), namely Dr Bai Ping of the Institute of High Performance Computing and Dr Michel Bosman of the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, has successfully designed and fabricated electrical circuits that can operate at hundreds of terahertz frequencies, which is tens of thousands times faster than today’s state-of-the-art microprocessors.
Researchers at the Japanese National Projects have broadly envisioned the future of spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive random access memory (STT-MRAM), and in the Journal of Applied Physics, they describe how it will radically alter computer architectures and consumer electronics.
At St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, a section of the dome called the Whispering Gallery makes a whisper audible from the other side of the dome as a result of the way sound waves travel around the curved surface. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have used the same phenomenon to build an optical device that may lead to new and more powerful computers that run faster and cooler.
For about a decade that ended in the mid-1990s, the fledgling Internet ran out of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. Now a School of Information professor who played a key role in bringing that early web to life has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has implemented a new feature of the Globus software that will allow researchers using the Center’s computational and storage resources to easily and securely access and share large data sets with colleagues.
Georgia Tech researchers have developed a new security system that continuously monitors how a user taps and swipes a mobile device. If the movements don’t match the owner’s tendencies, the system recognizes the differences and can be programmed to lock the device.
Researchers have developed a small electronic sensing device that can alert users wirelessly to the presence of chemical vapors in the atmosphere. The technology, which could be manufactured using familiar aerosol-jet printing techniques, is aimed at myriad applications in military, commercial, environmental, healthcare and other areas.
“During this flight, important sensors failed, and reported erroneous data. But the autopilot didn’t know that, and it acted as if the data were correct,” said Varela. “We have computers that can beat the best human Jeopardy! players, and yet we rely on these relatively weak autopilot systems to safeguard hundreds of people on each flight. Why don’t we add more intelligence to autopilot systems?”
RSS