Tech

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Hydraulic fracturing of shale formations to extract natural gas has no direct connection to reports of groundwater contamination, based on evidence reviewed in a study released Thursday by the Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin.

Cellular networks leak the locations of cell phone users, allowing a third party to easily track the location of the cell phone user without the user's knowledge, according to new research by computer scientists in the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Robots could one day navigate through constantly changing surroundings with virtually no input from humans, thanks to a system that allows them to build and continuously update a three-dimensional map of their environment using a low-cost camera such as Microsoft's Kinect.

The system, being developed by researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), could also allow blind people to make their way unaided through crowded buildings such as hospitals and shopping malls.

Industrial robots have been a familiar sight in the workplace for many years. In automotive and household appliance manufacture, for example, they have proved highly reliable on production and assembly lines. But now a new generation of high-tech helpers is at hand: Mobile robots are being used in place of humans to explore hazardous and difficult-to-access environments such as buildings in danger of collapsing, caves, or ground that has been polluted by an industrial accident.

John just loves playing soccer, and he's really looking forward to the weekend game, which he's agreed to organize. First, he needs to tell his teammates and friends about it, then he must rustle up an opposing team and find a referee – all of which will take him a considerable amount of time. In order to contact everyone, he'll have to send countless SMS messages; he'll have to make all the arrangements on his cell phone because he lives in a rural area in Zambia, and has no internet access.

CHICAGO -- Fish oil is an underused ingredient in the food industry because of its association with a strong odor and aftertaste. A new study in the February issue of the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists, shows that fish oil can be added to goat cheese to deliver high levels of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids without compromising taste or shelf-life.

Washington, D.C.— Could replacing coal-fired electricity plants with generators fueled by natural gas bring global warming to a halt in this century? What about rapid construction of massive numbers of solar or wind farms, hydroelectric dams, or nuclear reactors—or the invention of new technology for capturing the carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fueled power plants and storing it permanently underground?

A drastic switch to low carbon-emitting technologies, such as wind and hydroelectric power, may not yield a reduction in global warming until the latter part of this century, research published today suggests.

Furthermore, it states that technologies that offer only modest reductions in greenhouse gases, such as the use of natural gas and perhaps carbon capture and storage, cannot substantially reduce climate risk in the next 100 years.

Cambridge, Mass. - February 15, 2012 - A new technique inspired by elegant pop-up books and origami will soon allow clones of robotic insects to be mass-produced by the sheet.

Devised by engineers at Harvard, the ingenious layering and folding process enables the rapid fabrication of not just microrobots, but a broad range of electromechanical devices.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Half of the young adult Latino men and women responding to a survey in rural Oregon acknowledge not using regular effective contraception – despite expressing a desire to avoid pregnancy, according to a new Oregon State University study.

Researchers say the low rate of contraception among sexually active 18- to 25-year-olds needs to be addressed – and not just among Latino populations. Research has shown many young adults from all backgrounds eschew contraception for many reasons including the mistaken belief that they or their partners cannot get pregnant.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the leading multi-technological applied research organisation in Northern Europe, has developed an optical accessory that turns an ordinary camera phone into a high-resolution microscope. The device is accurate to one hundredth of a millimetre. Among those who will benefit from the device are the printing industry, consumers, the security business, and even health care professionals. A new Finnish enterprise called KeepLoop Oy and VTT are already exploring the commercial potential of the invention.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Is weight loss "contagious"? According to a new study published online in the journal Obesity, teammates in a team-based weight loss competition significantly influenced each other's weight loss, suggesting that shedding pounds can have a ripple effect.

Washington, D.C. -- By combining airborne laser technology, satellite mapping, and ground-based plot surveys, a team of researchers has produced the first large-scale, high-resolution estimates of carbon stocks in remote and fragile Madagascar. The group has shown that it is possible to map carbon stocks in rugged geographic regions and that this type of carbon monitoring can be successfully employed to support conservation and climate-change mitigation under the United Nations initiative on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).

Equipped with specialized lasers and GPS technology, scientists are working to address a critical wintertime weather challenge: how to accurately measure the amount of snow on the ground.

Transportation crews, water managers and others who make vital safety decisions need precise measurements of how snow depth varies across wide areas.

But traditional measuring devices such as snow gauges and yardsticks are often inadequate for capturing snow totals that may vary even within a single field or neighborhood.

Oral blood samples drawn from deep pockets of periodontal inflammation can be used to measure hemoglobin A1c, an important gauge of a patient's diabetes status, an NYU nursing-dental research team has found. Hemoglobin A1c blood glucose measures from oral blood compare well to those from finger-stick blood, the researchers say. The findings are from a study funded by an NYU CTSI (Clinical and Translational Science Institute) grant awarded to the research team last year.