Tech | Page 1377 | Science Codex

Adding a '3D print' button to animation software

Cambridge, Mass. - July 31, 2012 - Watch out, Barbie: omnivorous beasts are assembling in a 3D printer near you.

A group of graphics experts led by computer scientists at Harvard have created an add-on software tool that translates video game characters -- or any other three-dimensional animations -- into fully articulated action figures, with the help of a 3D printer.

The project is described in detail in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Transactions on Graphics and will be presented at the ACM SIGGRAPH conference on August 7.

Never again a flat vehicle battery: RUB researchers develop early warning system

Bochum, 31.7.2012No. 256

Never again a flat battery

RUB researchers develop an early warning system for vehicle batteriesBattery management permanently checks the age, state of charge and operational reliability

Solid waste fuels: Trash to treasure

Alexandria, VA – One man's trash is quickly becoming society's new treasure, according to an article in EARTH Magazine, where they explore how materials that were once considered garbage are now being recognized for their true potential as valuable energy resources capable of solving multiple problems at once.

If successful, these "waste-to-energy" options could serve as a silver bullet – displacing fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and decreasing the amount of trash that winds up in already teeming landfills.

MIT News Release: 10-year-old problem in theoretical computer science falls

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Interactive proofs, which MIT researchers helped pioneer, have emerged as one of the major research topics in theoretical computer science. In the classic interactive proof, a questioner with limited computational power tries to extract reliable information from a computationally powerful but unreliable respondent. Interactive proofs are the basis of cryptographic systems now in wide use, but for computer scientists, they're just as important for the insight they provide into the complexity of computational problems.

How to avoid traps in plastic electronics

Plastic electronics hold the promise of cheap, mass-produced devices. But plastic semiconductors have an important flaw: the electronic current is influenced by "charge traps" in the material. These traps, which have a negative impact on plastic light-emitting diodes and solar cells, are poorly understood.

Breakthrough by U of T-led research team leads to record efficiency for next-generation solar cells

TORONTO, ON – Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) and King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) have made a breakthrough in the development of colloidal quantum dot (CQD) films, leading to the most efficient CQD solar cell ever. Their work is featured in a letter published in Nature Nanotechnology.

The researchers, led by U of T Engineering Professor Ted Sargent, created a solar cell out of inexpensive materials that was certified at a world-record 7.0% efficiency.

A new high performance and fault-tolerant datacenter network for modular datacenters was proposed

A modular datacenter network (MDCN) is the key component in building mega-datacenters. Huang Feng, Li Dongsheng, and their group from the National Key Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Processing, School of Computers, National University of Defense Technology present a novel hybrid intra-container network for a modular datacenter (MDC), called SCautz, together with a suite of routing protocols. SCautz is able to provide high network throughput for various traffic patterns, and achieves graceful performance degradation when failures occur and increase.

BELLA laser achieves world record power at 1 pulse per second

On the night of July 20, 2012, the laser system of the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA), which is nearing completion at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), delivered a petawatt of power in a pulse just 40 femtoseconds long at a pulse rate of one hertz – one pulse every second. A petawatt is 1015 watts, a quadrillion watts, and a femtosecond is 10-15 second, a quadrillionth of a second. No other laser system has achieved this peak power at this rapid pulse rate.

Photovoltaics from any semiconductor

A technology that would enable low-cost, high efficiency solar cells to be made from virtually any semiconductor material has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. This technology opens the door to the use of plentiful, relatively inexpensive semiconductors, such as the promising metal oxides, sulfides and phosphides, that have been considered unsuitable for solar cells because it is so difficult to taylor their properties by chemical means.

The first robot that mimics the water striders' jumping abilities

The first bio-inspired microrobot capable of not just walking on water like the water strider – but continuously jumping up and down like a real water strider – now is a reality. Scientists reported development of the agile microrobot, which could use its jumping ability to avoid obstacles on reconnaissance or other missions, in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

World's smallest semiconductor laser created by University of Texas scientists

AUSTIN, Texas — Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with colleagues in Taiwan and China, have developed the world's smallest semiconductor laser, a breakthrough for emerging photonic technology with applications from computing to medicine.

The scientists report their efforts in this week's Science.

Switching the state of matter

Sixty years after the transistor began a technological revolution that transformed nearly every aspect of our daily lives, a new transistor brings innovations that may help to do so again. Developed at RIKEN, the device uses the electrostatic accumulation of electrical charge on the surface of a strongly-correlated material to trigger bulk switching of electronic state.

German National Academy of Sciences issues a critical statement on the use of bioenergy

In a statement on the chances and limits of using bioenergy, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina has come to the conclusion that in quantitative terms, bioenergy plays a minor role in the transition to renewable, sustainable energy sources in Germany at the present time and probably in the future. Bioenergy requires more surface area, is associated with higher greenhouse gas emissions and is more harmful to the environment than other renewable sources such as photovoltaic, solar thermal energy and wind energy. In addition, energy crops potentially compete with food crops.

Unique scientific collaboration reveals hard facts on European drug use

Amsterdam, July 26, 2012 - Surveys of drug use form an important basis for the development of effective drug policies, and also for measuring the effectiveness of existing policies. For the first time in history, scientists have now made direct comparisons of illicit drug use in 19 European cities by a cooperative analysis of raw sewage samples.

Mediterranean earthworm species found thriving in Ireland as global temperatures rise

Scientists have discovered a thriving population of Mediterranean earthworms in an urban farm in Dublin, Ireland.

The findings by University College Dublin scientists published in the journal Biology Letters on 25 July 2012 suggest that rising soil temperatures due to climate change may be extending the geographical habitat range of the earthworm Prosellodrilus amplisetosus.