Tech

BOULDER, Colo.--Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have added to their collection of ingredients for future quantum computers by performing logic operations--basic computing steps--with two atoms of different elements. This hybrid design could be an advantage in large computers and networks based on quantum physics.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have demonstrated that diamonds may hold the key to the future for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies

Wearable power sources for wearable electronics are limited by the size of garments.

With that in mind, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed flexible wire-shaped microsupercapacitors that can be woven into a jacket, shirt or dress.

By their design or by connecting the capacitors in series or parallel, the devices can be tailored to match the charge storage and delivery needs of electronics donned.

It's not every day that there's a news story about socks. But in November, a pair won the Best New Wearable Technology Device Award at a Silicon Valley conference. The smart socks, which track foot landings and cadence, are at the forefront of a new generation of wearable electronics, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.

The 2015 Monitoring the Future survey (MTF) shows decreasing use of a number of substances, including cigarettes, alcohol, prescription opioid pain relievers, and synthetic cannabinoids ("synthetic marijuana"). Other drug use remains stable, including marijuana, with continued high rates of daily use reported among 12th graders, and ongoing declines in perception of its harms.

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, Dec. 16, 2015 -- When a fake phone company released its line of products, NoPhones, a thin, rectangular-shaped plastic block that looked just like a smartphone but did not function, many doubted that the simulated smartphones would find any users. Surprisingly, close to 4,000 fake phones were sold to consumers who wanted to curb their phone usage.

As smartphones penetrate every facet of our daily lives, a growing number of people have expressed concern about distractions or even the addictions they suffer from overusing smartphones.

A bit of stray moisture during an experiment tipped off scientists about the strange behavior of a complex oxide material they were studying--shedding light on its potential for improving chemical sensors, computing and information storage. In the presence of a water molecule on its surface, the layered material emits ultraviolet light from its interior.

The movement of charge carriers perpendicular to an electric driving field - even without a magnetic field - constitutes one of the most intriguing properties of carriers in solids. This anomalous velocity is at the origin of fascinating physical phenomena - with the spin Hall effect and the anomalous Hall effect being two prominent examples - and might be important for future spintronic applications or even new quantum computers.

A nanotechnology breakthrough from DTU revolutionizes laser printing technology, allowing you to print high-resolution data and colour images of unprecedented quality and microscopic dimensions.

Using this new technology, DTU researchers from DTU Nanotech and DTU Fotonik have reproduced a colour image of Mona Lisa which is less than one pixel on an iPhone Retina display. The laser technology allows printing in a mind-blowing resolution of 127,000 DPI. In comparison, weekly or monthly magazines are normally printed in a resolution equivalent to 300 DPI.

Researchers have developed a revolutionary new app to capture accurate global cause of death data on tablets and mobile phones.

Worldwide, two in three deaths - 35 million each year - are unregistered. Around 180 countries that are home to 80 per cent of the world's population do not collect reliable cause of death statistics.

The app is the result of a decade-long global collaboration, led by the University of Melbourne and researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

To hold up its end of the landmark climate deal signed in Paris last week, the U.S. will need to make cars and trucks of the future far more fuel efficient.

Its commitment to reduce carbon pollution relies -- in part -- on fuel economy standards enacted by the Obama administration that aim to increase the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks to the equivalent of 54 miles per gallon by 2025.

Four UC Santa Barbara engineers have been elected to the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) for 2015. Recognized for their "highly prolific spirit of invention," professors John Bowers, Craig Hawker, Umesh Mishra and Galen Stucky are among the newest fellows elected by the organization.

They join 164 other new NAI members for 2015, bringing the total of NAI fellows to 582, representing more than 190 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutions.

Scientists are learning more about how the upper atmosphere and ionosphere affect space satellites as well as communications and navigation here on Earth, thanks to new data from a U.S. Air Force satellite that recently completed a more than seven-year mission.

People vary according to different personality traits, such as extraversion or conscientiousness, and new research suggests that they also vary according to a particular cognitive trait: distractibility. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers are proposing a new "hydricity" concept aimed at creating a sustainable economy by not only generating electricity with solar energy but also producing and storing hydrogen from superheated water for round-the-clock power production.