Culture

Troy, N.Y. – New miniature image-capturing technology powered by water, sound, and surface tension could lead to smarter and lighter cameras in everything from cell phones and automobiles to autonomous robots and miniature spy planes.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have designed and tested an adaptive liquid lens that captures 250 pictures per second and requires considerably less energy to operate than competing technologies.

HOBOKEN, N.J. - The Society for Information Management (SIM) has released an important part of its annual survey results, reporting that IT executives continue to identify lack of IT and business alignment as the top concern for companies. Other top concerns include a deficiency in business skills training for IT professionals, and the need for greater emphasis on strategic planning in IT. HR considerations were among one-third of the top ten concerns.

A technology which provides high quality images of the crystallisation process marks the next step towards a 'right first time' approach to drug manufacture, according to engineers at the University of Leeds.

Developed in collaboration with industrial scientists at Perdix and Malvern Instruments, the new process analytical technology (PAT) tool characterises particle shapes using a probe which collects images of the crystallization process. The tool will enable pharmaceutical companies to monitor and optimise these processes.

Global corporations view climate change as a driver of risk and opportunity and have cited clear regulation as key to managing the impacts, in this year's findings from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which includes exclusive data from 1550 of the world's major companies on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change related strategies.

Researchers led by Dr Robin Allaby of the University of Warwick's plant research arm Warwick HRI have found evidence that genetics supports the idea that the emergence of agriculture in prehistory took much longer than originally thought.

Listening for faint rustling noises made by tasty beetles on a quiet day is simple for bats hunting with their exquisitely sensitive hearing. So try imagining what it must be like trying to locate rustling treats just metres from a roaring highway. It would seem to be almost impossible to pick out a centipede's footsteps as a juggernaut hurtles past; or is it? How animals that locate their prey by sound alone cope in our increasingly noisy world puzzles Björn Siemers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany.

By tracking the amount of light emitted by Baghdad neighborhoods at night, a team of UCLA geographers has uncovered fresh evidence that last year's U.S. troop surge in Iraq may not have been as effective at improving security as some U.S. officials have maintained.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) uses a 2.5-meter telescope with a wider field of view than any other large telescope, located on a mountaintop in New Mexico called Apache Point and devoted solely to mapping the universe. We now know that some three-quarters of the universe consists of dark energy, whose very existence was unsuspected when telescope construction began in 1994 and still controversial when the first Sloan survey started in 2000.

New Haven, Conn. — Yale researchers have shown that the origin and evolution of the placenta and uterus in mammals is associated with evolutionary changes in a single regulatory protein, according to a report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

HOUSTON -- (Sept. 16, 2008) -- Is America's red-blue divide based on voters' physiology? A new paper in the journal Science, titled "Political Attitudes Are Predicted by Physiological Traits," explores the link.

Rice University's John Alford, associate professor of political science, co-authored the paper in the Sept. 19 issue of Science.

A new iguana has been discovered in the central regions of Fiji. The colorful new species, named Brachylophus bulabula, joins only two other living Pacific iguana species, one of which is critically endangered. The scientific name bulabula is a doubling of bula, the Fijian word for 'hello,' offering an even more enthusiastic greeting.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--- A new Bluetooth system designed primarily for blind people places a layer of information technology over the real world to tell pedestrians about points of interest along their path as they pass them.

The Talking Points urban orientation system was developed at the University of Michigan. Researchers will present their work at two conferences on Sept. 24.

The only scientific team to successfully brave Hurricane Ike's knock-down winds and swells in Galveston was the DOW, the Doppler on Wheels mobile weather radar operated by the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR) in Boulder, Colo.

"The DOW mission to Ike provided, for the first time, high-resolution radar data collected from the ground of the inside of a hurricane eye strengthening during landfall, and from a hurricane that directly impacted a large urban area," said scientist Josh Wurman of CWSR.

A groundbreaking new study into the mating and nesting practices of a common Australian frog has found they partner up to eight males sequentially – the highest recorded of any vertebrate.

Dr Phillip Byrne, from Monash University's School of Biological Sciences, has researched the frog species Bibron's toadlet (Pseudophryne bibronii) for six years and in this latest field trip, discovered a new behaviour undetected in a frog species until now.

AMES, Iowa – The five engines in Song-Charng Kong's Iowa State University laboratory have come a long way since Karl Benz patented a two-stroke internal combustion engine in 1879.

There are fuel injectors and turbochargers and electrical controls. There's more horsepower, better efficiency, cleaner burning and greater reliability.

But Kong – with the help of 15 graduate students and all kinds of sensors recording engine cylinder pressure, energy release and exhaust emissions – is looking for even more.