A new type of paint made with carbon nanotubes at Rice University can help detect strain in buildings, bridges and airplanes.
The Rice scientists call their mixture "strain paint" and are hopeful it can help detect deformations in structures like airplane wings. Their study, published online this month by the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters details a composite coating they invented that could be read by a handheld infrared spectrometer.
Alexandria, VA – In the 1980s, acid rain was a big topic of conversation. Everyone knew about it. Today, just a couple of decades later, it's all but been forgotten. Why and how did this happen?
In work published in the open access journal PLoS ONE today, more than 500 8 to 10-year-olds wore activity monitors providing Newcastle University and University of Strathclyde researchers with a very accurate picture of how little time children spent being physically active.
They were monitored for a range of actions from moving around, climbing stairs to running, playing games and skipping.
Researchers found:
DURHAM, N.C. -- By synchronizing 98 tiny cameras in a single device, electrical engineers from Duke University and the University of Arizona have developed a prototype camera that can create images with unprecedented detail.
The camera's resolution is five times better than 20/20 human vision over a 120 degree horizontal field.
With a beam of infrared light, scientists have sent ripples of electrons along the surface of graphene and demonstrated that they can control the length and height of these oscillations, called plasmons, using a simple electrical circuit.
This is the first time anyone has observed plasmons on graphene, sheets of carbon just one atom thick with a host of intriguing physical properties, and an important step toward using plasmons to process and transmit information in spaces too tight to use light.
Spanish research groups achieve first ever visualizations of light guided with nanometric precision on graphene (a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms). This visualization proves what theoretical physicists have long predicted; that it is possible to trap and manipulate light in a highly efficient way, using graphene as a novel platform for optical information processing and sensing.
New research suggests that overall happiness in life is more related to how much you are respected and admired by those around you, not to the status that comes from how much money you have stashed in your bank account.
Psychological scientist Cameron Anderson of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and his co-authors explore the relationship between different types of status and well-being in a new article published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
In a study that could solidify the trend toward construction of gigantic windmills, scientists have concluded that the larger the wind turbine, the greener the electricity it produces. Their report appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Nanotechnology has developed tremendously in the past decade and was able to create many new materials with a vast range of potential applications. Some of those innovative materials are promising to reduce environmental pollution. For instance, carbon nanotubes and metal nano-particles are great candidate materials for cleaning polluted water and soils.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Researchers creating electricity through photovoltaics want to convert as many of the sun's wavelengths as possible to achieve maximum efficiency. Otherwise, they're eating only a small part of a shot duck: wasting time and money by using only a tiny bit of the sun's incoming energies.
Aircraft morphing, especially in the case of the variable camber airfoil, has potential from the viewpoints of both fundamental aerodynamics and flight application. In the field of aerodynamics, the use of a variable camber airfoil can improve aircraft flight performance and allow efficient multiple missions; in biology, the concept of the variable camber airfoil can be employed to explain the mystery of animal flight.
This new global energy study outlines a range of 41 alternative sustainable energy pathways that offer viable, cost effective choices for policy makers to achieve necessary human health and environmental sustainability goals by 2050.
Laxenburg, Austria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Health advocates need to organize strong public health campaigns to educate the public and policymakers about the dangers of both sugary beverages and the misleading industry corporate social responsibility campaigns that distract from their products' health risks, according to US experts writing in this week's PLoS Medicine.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The vegetables in salads are chock-full of important vitamins and nutrients, but you won't get much benefit without the right type and amount of salad dressing, a Purdue University study shows.
New mothers who read and write blogs may feel less alone than mothers who do not participate in a blogging community, according to family studies researchers.