It sounds like science fiction but a team from the University of Exeter, with support from Shell, has developed a method to make bacteria produce diesel on demand. While the technology still faces many significant commercialisation challenges, the diesel, produced by special strains of E. coli bacteria, is almost identical to conventional diesel fuel and so does not need to be blended with petroleum products as is often required by biodiesels derived from plant oils.
Tech
DURHAM, NC -- Drug developers may have a new tool to search for more effective medications and new materials.
It's a computer algorithm that can model and catalogue the entire set of lightweight, carbon-containing molecules that chemists could feasibly create in a lab.
The small-molecule universe has more than 10^60 (that's 1 with 60 zeroes after it) chemical structures. Duke chemist David Beratan said that many of the world's problems have molecular solutions in this chemical space, whether it's a cure for disease or a new material to capture sunlight.
Fueled by industrial greenhouse gas emissions, Earth's climate warmed more between 1971 and 2000 than during any other three-decade interval in the last 1,400 years, according to new regional temperature reconstructions covering all seven continents.
Researchers from ETH Zurich, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the Politec-nico di Milano have jointly developed a manufacturing technique to render the semiconductor germanium laser-compatible through high tensile strain. In their article recently published in "Nature Photonics", they reveal how they can gen-erate the necessary tensile strain efficiently.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new global-scale modeling study that takes into account nitrogen – a key nutrient for plants – estimates that carbon emissions from human activities on land were 40 percent higher in the 1990s than in studies that did not account for nitrogen.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Bristol Cabot Institute published their findings in the journal Global Change Biology. The findings will be a part of the upcoming Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A smaller proportion of black carbon created during combustion will remain in soil than have been estimated before. Contrary to previous understanding, burying black carbon in the ground in order to restrain climate change will not create a permanent carbon reserve. Instead, a part of black carbon will dissolve from soil to rivers. The flux of dissolved black carbon from the rivers to the ocean was estimated in a research article published in Science on 19 April.
Sales of chicken products in China plummeted recently during an outbreak of a deadly new strain of bird flu. From bird flu to mad cow disease, numerous food scares have made global headlines in recent years. A technique developed by University of Missouri Professor of Engineering Shubhra Gangopadhyay's group may make food contamination testing more rapid and accurate. The detection test also could accelerate warnings after bioterrorism attacks.
Keeping up with current scientific literature is a daunting task, considering that hundreds to thousands of papers are published each day. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a computer program to help them evaluate and rank scientific articles in their field.
Approximately 2 million children in the United States have at least one parent deployed in military service; 750,000 of those children are 5 years old and younger. Deployment can disrupt children's well-being and development due to its impact on the care children receive, the destabilization of daily routines, and the effect on soldiers' physical and psychological health upon returning home. Research has indicated that for some children, separation during deployment contributes to heightened levels of behavioral problems, psychiatric difficulties, and poor school performance.
In 2010, Arizona passed an immigration law (S.B. 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act) that gave state police unprecedented power to detain individuals unable to prove their U.S. citizenship when asked. At a symposium during the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), researchers will examine the effect of the law on the health and well-being of Latino youth and families.
Portable electric generators retrofitted with off-the-shelf hardware by the University of Alabama (UA) emitted significantly lower levels of carbon monoxide (CO) exhaust, according to the results* of tests conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
Compared with standard portable generators, CO emissions from the prototype machines were reduced by 90 percent or more, depending on the specific hardware used and operating conditions.
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Kansas State University have demonstrated a spray-on mixture of carbon nanotubes and ceramic that has unprecedented ability to resist damage while absorbing laser light.*
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Children and teens with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) use screen-based media, such as television and video games, more often than their typically developing peers and are more likely to develop problematic video game habits, a University of Missouri researcher found.
WASHINGTON--U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Chemistry Division scientists have developed a second generation, cost-effective polyetheretherketone (PEEK)-like phthalonitrile-resin demonstrating superior high temperature and flammability properties for use in numerous marine, aerospace and domestic applications.
Popular texting, messaging and microblog apps developed for the Android smartphone have security flaws that could expose private information or allow forged fraudulent messages to be posted, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis.
Zhendong Su, professor of computer science, said that his team has notified the app developers of the problems, although it has not yet had a response.