Tech

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have made a breakthrough in the performance of microbial fuel cells that can produce electricity directly from wastewater, opening the door to a future in which waste treatment plants not only will power themselves, but will sell excess electricity.

The new technology developed at OSU can now produce 10 to 50 more times the electricity, per volume, than most other approaches using microbial fuel cells, and 100 times more electricity than some.

For a motorized hangglider or a one-seater weighing 300 kilograms: the business of flying by ultra-light aircraft is booming. That is also why numerous airfields are applying for the license to host these lightweight gliders. Most of these airfields are located on flat land, which is also the preferred terrain for wind power plant. However, these facilities could turn out to be a risk factor for aviators, especially when it comes to takeoff and landing: On the one hand, the power plants "pilfer" the winds from the planes, because wind speeds aft of such facilities are considerably lower.

WASHINGTON — A new report from the National Research Council identifies research priorities and grand challenges to fill gaps in optics and photonics, a field that has the potential to advance the economy of the United States and provide visionary directions for future technology applications. The report recommends that the federal government develop a "National Photonics Initiative" to bring together academia, industry, and government to steer federal research and development funding and activities.

Clemson researchers are taking common materials to uncommon places by transforming easily obtainable and affordable materials into fiber. Their findings are published in Nature Photonics.

Leaving your TV show midway because you had to leave your home will no longer happen as you can now 'pull' the program on your TV screen onto your tablet and continue watching it seamlessly.

You can also watch the same TV show or movie together with your family and friends, no matter which part of the world they are in. Not only that but you'll be able to discuss the show, whether you are on your personal tablet or smart phone, through a channel of your choice, be it video chat, voice or text.

Fracture under combined mechanical and electric loading is currently a hot research area in the global fracture community, while electric sticking is a major concern in the design and fabrication of micro/nanoelectromechanical systems. Professor ZHANG Tong-Yi and his student, Mr. Tao Xie, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, found that the two problems are switchable, depending on the loading conditions, sample geometries and material properties.

With a thin sliver of diamond, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have transformed the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) into an even more precise tool for exploring the nanoworld. The improvements yield laser pulses focused to higher intensity in a much narrower band of X-ray wavelengths, and may enable experiments that have never before been possible.

ZURICH – Animatronics aims at creating physical robots that move and look like real humans. Many impressive characters have been created in this spirit, like those in the Hall of Presidents attraction at Walt Disney World. Until now, creating animatronic copies of real human individuals is a difficult and labor-intensive process requiring the manual work of skilled animators, material designers and mechanical engineers.

ZURICH – Researchers at Disney Research, Zürich, ETH Zürich, and Cornell University have invented a system to digitize facial hair and skin. Capturing facial skin and geometry is a fundamental technology for a variety of computer-based special effects for movies. Conventional face capturing is well established and widely utilized in the entertainment industry to capture a three-dimensional model of an actor's face. However, up to now, no method was capable of reconstructing facial hair or even handling it appropriately.

CAMBRDIGE, Mass. — For decades, academic and industry researchers have been working on control algorithms for autonomous helicopters — robotic helicopters that pilot themselves, rather than requiring remote human guidance. Dozens of research teams have competed in a series of autonomous-helicopter challenges posed by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI); progress has been so rapid that the last two challenges have involved indoor navigation without the use of GPS.

Sparse microwave imaging is a novel concept in microwave imaging that is intended to deal with the problems of increasing microwave imaging system complexity caused by the requirements of the system applications. Under the support of the 973 program "Study of theory, system and methodology of sparse microwave imaging", Chinese scientists have conducted considerable research into most aspects of sparse microwave imaging, including its fundamental theories, system design, performance evaluation and applications.

The intricate properties of the fingertips have been mimicked and recreated using semiconductor devices in what researchers hope will lead to the development of advanced surgical gloves.

The devices, shown to be capable of responding with high precision to the stresses and strains associated with touch and finger movement, are a step towards the creation of surgical gloves for use in medical procedures such as local ablations and ultrasound scans.

Results from an expedition to far eastern Russia that set out to find the origin of naturally occurring quasicrystals have provided convincing evidence that they arrived on Earth from outer space.

Writing in IOP Publishing's journal Reports on Progress in Physics, Paul J Steinhardt and Luca Bindi reveal that new, naturally occurring quasicrystal samples have been found in an environment that does not have the extreme terrestrial conditions needed to produce them, therefore strengthening the case that they were brought to Earth by a meteorite.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Earthworms creep along the ground by alternately squeezing and stretching muscles along the length of their bodies, inching forward with each wave of contractions. Snails and sea cucumbers also use this mechanism, called peristalsis, to get around, and our own gastrointestinal tracts operate by a similar action, squeezing muscles along the esophagus to push food to the stomach.

NASA scientist Tom Hanisco is helping to fill a big gap in scientists' understanding of how much urban pollution -- and more precisely formaldehyde -- ultimately winds up in Earth's upper atmosphere where it can wreak havoc on Earth's protective ozone layer.