Tech

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Researchers have found a way to use chaos to help develop digital fingerprints for electronic devices that may be unique enough to foil even the most sophisticated hackers.

Just how unique are these fingerprints? The researchers believe it would take longer than the lifetime of the universe to test for every possible combination available.

"In our system, chaos is very, very good," said Daniel Gauthier, senior author of the study and professor of physics at The Ohio State University.

A novel way to pinpoint and illuminate bone damage promises to make X-rays more efficient at diagnosing bone and other injuries, Flinders University researchers say.

The new technique, looking at potential biomedical applications of an ancient inorganic salt-based aggregation induced emission (AIE) radio-luminescence material, could open new frontiers in medicine including X-ray dosimetry, bioimaging and advanced applications such as optogenetics, says Professor Youhong Tang, from Flinders University's College of Science and Engineering.

Membranes that allow certain molecules to quickly pass through while blocking others are key enablers for energy technologies from batteries and fuel cells to resource refinement and water purification. For example, membranes in a battery separating the two terminals help to prevent short circuits, while also allowing the transport of charged particles, or ions, needed to maintain the flow of electricity.

The global production of sheep's milk is one the rise, in the vast majority of cases used to produce cheese. However, a relatively large amount of milk is needed to produce it, so science is looking for ways to increase its yield; that is, to obtain more cheese using less milk.

It is more complicated than copy and paste, but digital twins could be way of future manufacturing according to researchers from the University of Kentucky. They developed a virtual environment based on human-robot interactions that can mirror the physical set up of a welder and their project. Called a digital twin, the prototype has implications for evolving manufacturing systems and training novice welders. They published their work in the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica (Volume 8, Issue 2, February 2021).

Conspiracy theories appear to be increasing in popularity as the Covid-19 pandemic continues. But to what extent do people really agree with them, and what is the association with cognitive biases? A research team from the University of Basel studied these questions in German-speaking Switzerland and Germany.

A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, with archaeologists from Oxford Archaeology, have found the first evidence of a religious diet locked inside pottery fragments excavated from the early medieval Jewish community of Oxford.

Keeping kosher is one of the oldest known diets across the world and, for an observant Jew, maintaining these dietary laws (known as Kashruth) is a fundamental part of everyday life. It is a key part of what identifies them as Jews, both amongst their own communities and to the outside world.

Working safely is not only about processes, but context - understanding the work environment and circumstances, and being able to predict what other people will do next. A new system empowers robots with this level of context awareness, so they can work side-by-side with humans on assembly lines more efficiently and without unnecessary interruptions.

A recent study finds that unhealthy eating behaviors at night can make people less helpful and more withdrawn the next day at work.

"For the first time, we have shown that healthy eating immediately affects our workplace behaviors and performance," says Seonghee "Sophia" Cho, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University. "It is relatively well established that other health-related behaviors, such as sleep and exercise, affect our work. But nobody had looked at the short-term effects of unhealthy eating."

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- If, as the saying goes, less is more, why do we humans overdo so much?

In a new paper featured on the cover of Nature, University of Virginia researchers explain why people rarely look at a situation, object or idea that needs improving -- in all kinds of contexts -- and think to remove something as a solution. Instead, we almost always add some element, whether it helps or not.

The hormone auxin is of central importance for the development of plants. Scientists at the University of Bayreuth and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen have now developed a novel sensor that makes the spatial distribution of auxin in the cells of living plants visible in real time. The sensor opens up completely new insights into the inner workings of plants for researchers. Moreover, the influences of changing environmental conditions on growth can now also be quickly detected. The team presents its research results in the journal Nature.

In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers found that an outdoor science program was linked to higher average science grades and an increase in a measure of science knowledge for a group of fifth grade girls in North Carolina.

The findings, published in the International Journal of Science Education, indicates outdoor education could be a promising tool to help close gender gaps in science.

Tracking carbon dioxide levels indoors is an inexpensive and powerful way to monitor the risk of people getting COVID-19, according to new research from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the University of Colorado Boulder. In any given indoor environment, when excess CO2 levels double, the risk of transmission also roughly doubles, two scientists reported this week in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

HOUSTON -- (April 7, 2021) -- Rice University computer scientists have demonstrated artificial intelligence (AI) software that runs on commodity processors and trains deep neural networks 15 times faster than platforms based on graphics processors.

"The cost of training is the actual bottleneck in AI," said Anshumali Shrivastava, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice's Brown School of Engineering. "Companies are spending millions of dollars a week just to train and fine-tune their AI workloads."

ZANZIBAR CITY (April 7, 2021) - A new study revealed that a drastic reduction of deaths of one of Africa's rarest primates, the Zanzibar red colobus (Piliocolobus kirkii), followed the installation of four speedbumps along a stretch of road where the species frequently crossed.

Zanzibar red colobus are found only in the Zanzibar archipelago and classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List. Reliant on Unguja Island's forests for their survival, around half of the species population is found in Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park.