URBANA, Ill. – Women in rural India who participate in a vocational training program learn more than just life skills. A recent University of Illinois study found that mothers who participated in a program designed to educate and empower women gained a network of peers that led to increased bargaining strength in the home, and significantly improved their children's consumption of rice and dairy.
Tech
A team of MIT researchers has used a novel material that's just a few atoms thick to create devices that can harness or emit light. This proof-of-concept could lead to ultrathin, lightweight, and flexible photovoltaic cells, light emitting diodes (LEDs), and other optoelectronic devices, they say.
In a significant advance for the growing field of synthetic biology, Rice University bioengineers have created a toolkit of genes and hardware that uses colored lights and engineered bacteria to bring both mathematical predictability and cut-and-paste simplicity to the world of genetic circuit design.
Jena (Germany) Vast fields of sunflowers, sprawling pine trees and slim cypresses, as well as vineyards as far as the eye can see – these are typical memories of Tuscany for all those who have been there. By contrast, Professor Dr.
There's promising news from the front on efforts to produce fuels through artificial photosynthesis. A new study by Berkeley Lab researchers at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) shows that nearly 90-percent of the electrons generated by a hybrid material designed to store solar energy in hydrogen are being stored in the target hydrogen molecules.
This news release is available in German.
Simulations are an important development tool in the automobile and utility vehicle industries – they enable engineers to see into the future. The properties of vehicle components, such as how they respond in an accident, their reliability, or their energy efficiency can be investigated using simulations before the first component is manufactured. To continue to maintain the prediction power of the results, however, all of the influences that the vehicle is exposed to later on in actual operation must be taken into account – including those of drivers and operators.
SALT LAKE CITY, March 7, 2014 – Using an inexpensive inkjet printer, University of Utah electrical engineers produced microscopic structures that use light in metals to carry information. This new technique, which controls electrical conductivity within such microstructures, could be used to rapidly fabricate superfast components in electronic devices, make wireless technology faster or print magnetic materials.
The study appears online March 7 in the journal Advanced Optical Materials.
Ever worry about losing your mobile-phone reception? The problem is a weak microwave signal. The same problem hampers cosmologists looking at the early universe, a glimpse embodied in the cosmic microwave background. Or take a pressing earthly example: oncologists often locate and identify tumors using MRI scans. All three of these efforts---communications, cosmology, medicine---depend on discriminating weak microwave or radio signals from a noisy environment.
The uplifting effects of energy drinks are well advertised, but a new report finds consumption among teenagers may be linked with poor mental health and substance use.
Researchers are calling for limits on teen's access to the drinks and reduction in the amount of the caffeine in each can.
According to the results of a recent study, soil color changes in the atmosphere basically through the oxidation of chemical substances in the soil. The fundamental mechanism is the remodeling effect of micro-structures because of motion effects and chemical reactions of the water–soil–electrolyte–atmosphere system leading to the coupling and transforming of soil particles. The above provides a theoretical foundation for the assessment and forecast of the stability of the geotechnical environment.
Researchers from the University of Surrey worked together with scientists from Philips to further develop the 'Source-Gated-Transistor' (SGT) - a simple circuit component invented jointly by the teams.
Previously, they found that the component could be applied to many electronic designs of an analog nature, such as display screens. Through this current study, researchers have now shown that SGTs can also be applied to next-generation digital circuits.
This news release is available in German.
Have you ever wondered why your laptop or smartphone feels warm when you're using it? That heat is a byproduct of the microprocessors in your device using electric current to power computer processing functions — and it is actually wasted energy.
Now, a team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has made major improvements in computer processing using an emerging class of magnetic materials called "multiferroics," and these advances could make future devices far more energy-efficient than current technologies.
This news release is available in German.