Biofuels Are Not Carbon Neutral, Predicting Jellyfish, Health Issues From Fracking, and More in the Environment News Source
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Article describes spherical tokamaks as models for the next steps in fusion energy.
In a nation-wide competition, six teams of undergraduate engineering students produced prize-winning designs for technological advances to improve human health. The Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge winning teams designed tools for a myriad of health care challenges, including diagnosing tuberculosis (TB) in children and a safer alternative for central venous catheter placements.
Berto Garcia, who will start his second year at Texas Tech, created the system in high school for a science fair project. He now has a provisional patent. He’s 19.
Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell, a Johns Hopkins engineering faculty member who designs medical imaging systems that link light, sound and robotics to produce clearer pictures, was honored today by MIT Technology Review, which placed her on its 2016 list of 35 Innovators Under 35. The list annually spotlights the nation’s most promising young scientists.
Rochester Institute of Technology undergraduates are making a “compass” for rockets using a new kind of detector technology. The instrument will fly on a NASA technology demonstration mission later this year.
Helping fish migrate past dams could cost a fraction of conventional fish ladders with the help of PNNL’s upcoming study of Whooshh Innovations’ so-called Salmon Cannon.
Three researchers have devised a new network community detection technique that hopscotches over the limitations of other methods, revealing network structure at the microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic levels quickly and simultaneously.
Virginia Tech researchers and scientists from Brigham Young University have equipped an unmanned aircraft with a newly designed radar system and optical video cameras to collect data that will help aerospace engineers develop avoidance technology. This technology will enable unmanned aircraft to accurately sense and avoid obstacles like trees, power lines, and other aircraft.
The Absorb® stent remains intact until the artery has healed and no longer is in danger of collapsing. The stent gradually breaks down into water and carbon dioxide. After three years the stent is completely dissolved. The vessel remains open on its own, with no need of support.
Sandia National Laboratories, which has been in the business of nuclear detonation detection for more than 50 years, is working on the next generation system.
Brookhaven physicist Ivan Bozovic and his team have an explanation for why certain materials can conduct electricity without resistance at temperatures well above those required by conventional superconductors.
Wind energy pricing remains attractive to utility and commercial purchasers, according to an annual report released by the U.S. Department of Energy and prepared by the Electricity Markets & Policy Group at Berkeley Lab. Prices offered by newly built wind projects are averaging around 2¢/kWh, driven lower by technology advancements and cost reductions.
Spatial reasoning measured in infancy predicts how children do at math at four years of age, finds a new study published in Psychological Science.
Scientists at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have revealed the network infrastructure used by Netflix for its content delivery, by mimicking the film request process from all over the world and analysing the responses.
More than 100 researchers from the U.S. and China met at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Argonne National Laboratory to begin a new phase of collaboration on development of technologies to enhance vehicle efficiency in the two countries. Argonne is leading the U.S-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC) Clean Vehicles Consortium (CVC).
Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) bend and twist easily in solution, making them adaptable for biological uses like DNA analysis, drug delivery and biomimetic applications, according to scientists at Rice University.
A moment of inspiration during a wiring diagram review has saved more than $2 million in material and labor costs for the Trinity supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Florida has developed a novel method that could yield lower-cost, higher-efficiency systems for water heating in residential buildings.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have created a nanostructured device, about half the size of a postage stamp, that disinfects water much faster than the UV method by also making use of the visible part of the solar spectrum, which contains 50 percent of the sun’s energy.
A new study by Huy Le, associate professor of management at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), identifies factors that could lead more young students to successful careers in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
CEOs and corporate lobbyists often spend plenty of time decrying how potential government regulations will affect their bottom line, but a new University of Kansas study finds that the U.S. Clean Water Act, when implemented in the right balance, improves firms' profitability.
The often-maligned E. coli bacteria has powerhouse potential: in the lab, it has the ability to crank out fuels, pharmaceuticals and other useful products at a rapid rate. A team from the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis has discovered a new way to remove a major stumbling block in the process, and boost biofuel production from E. coli.
Using a unique combination of advanced computational methods, University of Wisconsin–Madison chemical engineers have demystified some of the complex catalytic chemistry in fuel cells — an advance that brings cost-effective fuel cells closer to reality.
Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the U.S. With one in every four deaths occurring each year, the five-year survival rate after a heart attack is worse than most cancers. A big part of the problem is the inability of the human heart to effectively repair itself after injury. A team of University of Houston researchers is trying to change that.
Non-toxic, edible batteries could one day power ingestible devices for diagnosing and treating disease. One team reports new progress toward that goal with their batteries made with melanin pigments, naturally found in the skin, hair and eyes.
Scrap tires have been on environmentalists’ blacklist for decades. They pile up in landfills, have fed enormous toxic fires, harbor pests and get burned for fuel. Scientists trying to rid us of this scourge have developed a new way to make synthetic rubber. And once this material is discarded, it can be easily degraded back to its chemical building blocks and reused in new tires and other products.
Car emissions is a high-stakes issue, as last year’s Volkswagen scandal demonstrated. Pressure to meet tightening standards led the carmaker to cheat on emissions tests. But wrongdoing aside, how are automakers going to realistically meet future, tougher emissions requirements to reduce their impact on the climate? Researchers report today that a vehicle’s cold start — at least in gasoline-powered cars — is the best target for future design changes.
What does one need to strengthen or toughen concrete? A lot of nothing. Or something.
Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a way to direct the self-assembly of multiple molecular patterns within a single material, producing new nanoscale architectures. This is a significant conceptual leap in self-assembly that could change the way we design and manufacture electronics.
A new family of nature-inspired materials that, when placed in water, spontaneously assemble into nanotubes is the latest in the effort to use synthetic polymers to precisely build durable nanotubes that approach the complexity and function of nature’s proteins.
To create circuits the size of molecules, scientists need molecular diodes that let current travel in one direction, but not another. Scientists restructured a carbon-based diode that is 1,000 times more effective at conducting current in one direction than the other.
Fire tornados, or 'fire whirls,' pose a powerful and essentially uncontrollable threat to life, property, and the surrounding environment in large urban and wildland fires. But now, a team of researchers in the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering say their discovery of a type of fire tornado they call a 'blue whirl' could lead to beneficial new approaches for reducing carbon emissions and improving oil spill cleanup.
A group of tribologists – scientists who study the effect of friction in machines – and computational materials scientists at Argonne recently discovered a revolutionary diamond-like film that is generated by the heat and pressure of an automotive engine. The discovery of this ultra-durable, self-lubricating tribofilm – a film that forms between moving surfaces – was first reported yesterday in the journal Nature. It could have profound implications for the efficiency and durability of future engines and other moving metal parts that can be made to develop self-healing, diamond-like carbon tribofilms.
Scientists have tracked the flight paths of a group of bumblebees throughout their entire lives to find out how they explore their environment and search for food.
Thanks to the work of a Missouri University of Science and Technology doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering and her faculty mentors, mine remediation of former mine tailings impoundments could receive an organic boost from a product most communities are eager to get rid of — sewage sludge from a municipal wastewater treatment plant.
Cornell University scientists have developed an oxygen-assisted aluminum/carbon dioxide power cell that uses electrochemical reactions to both sequester the carbon dioxide and produce electricity.
Researchers have engineered living bone tissue to repair bone loss in the jaw, a structure that is typically difficult to restore. They grafted customized implants into pig jaws that resulted in integration and function of the engineered graft into the recipient’s own tissue.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided $299,954 in funding to the research team led by Penn State's Hui Yang for research focused on improving health care delivery to patients who have had cardiac surgery.
Reza Montazami and his research group have developed a working battery that quickly self-destructs in water. The team's findings were recently published in the Journal of Polymer Science, Part B: Polymer Physics.
University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have created high-performance, micro-scale solar cells that outshine comparable devices in key performance measures. The miniature solar panels could power myriad personal devices — wearable medical sensors, smartwatches, even autofocusing contact lenses.
Solar cells based on cadmium and tellurium could move closer to theoretical levels of efficiency because of some sleuthing by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
For the first time, scientists introduced an ionic semiconductor to the family of 2D nanomaterials. As an ionic material, it has special properties that graphene and other 2D nanomaterials don’t have.
Flow batteries offer low-cost energy storage, but the battery’s membrane reduces its operating life and efficiency. Scientists made a better membrane.
Scientists built enzymes that efficiently produce hydrogen, one half of the "holy grail" of splitting water to make hydrogen to fuel cars.
A new protective barrier can prevent lithium-metal batteries from failing. The barrier allows the electrode to work at room temperature and hampers the detrimental formation of dendrites. Scientists made this film.
Scientists discovered a self-assembly mechanism that surprisingly drives negatively charged molecules to clump together to form islands when graphene is supported by an electrical insulator.
Scientists changed our understanding of metal-organic frameworks. They uprooted the belief that these frameworks must be made from rigid starting materials.