Tech

Anyone who has picked dandelions as a child will be familiar with the white liquid that seeps out of the stalks as you break them off. Viscous, sticky – and a much sought-after material: natural latex. Around 30,000 everyday products contain natural rubber, everything from car tires, catheter tubes, latex gloves to tops for drinks bottles. Car tires, for instance, would not be elastic enough without the incorporation of natural rubber. The bulk of this material comes from rubber trees in Southeast Asia.

Unwanted blooms of Cladophora algae throughout the Baltic and in other parts of the world are not entirely without a positive side. A group of researchers at the Ångström Laboratory at Uppsala University have discovered that the distinctive cellulose nanostructure of these algae can serve as an effective coating substrate for use in environmentally friendly batteries. The findings have been published in an article in Nano Letters.

Berkeley, CA - In a development that holds much promise for the future of solar cells made from nanocrystals, and the use of solar energy to produce clean and renewable liquid transportation fuels, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have reported a technique by which the electrical conductivity of nanorod crystals of the semiconductor cadmium-selenide was increased 100,000 times.

A new robot has spent most of July traveling across the muddy ocean bottom, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) off the California coast. This robot, the Benthic Rover, has been providing scientists with an entirely new view of life on the deep seafloor. It will also give scientists a way to document the effects of climate change on the deep sea. The Rover is the result of four years of hard work by a team of engineers and scientists led by MBARI project engineer Alana Sherman and marine biologist Ken Smith.

If you wanted to know whether or not your child had a fever if that the roast in the oven was thoroughly cooked, you would, of course, use a thermometer. However, it isn't that simple for researchers who need to measure temperatures in microfluidic systems—tiny, channel-lined devices used in medical diagnostics, DNA forensics and "lab-on-a-chip" chemical analyzers—as their current "thermometer" can only be precisely calibrated for one reference temperature.

WASHINGTON – A policy paper that identifies and analyzes the key drivers of health care costs was released today by the American College of Physicians (ACP). Controlling Health Care Costs While Promoting the Best Possible Health Outcomes provides nearly four dozen recommendations to achieve better quality care to more people.

ACP is particularly concerned that the high cost of health care in the United States is not correlated with high quality and efficiency in the delivery of services or improved health outcomes.

A chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has demonstrated a relatively simple, inexpensive method for detecting and measuring elusive hazards such as concealed explosives and toxins, invisible spoilage in food or pesticides distributed in soil by wind and rain. The prototype method is more sensitive than conventional techniques for detecting traces of these materials, which are polar—like water molecules, having distinct electrically positive and negative ends—and do not readily evaporate.