Wildfires cause tragic losses to life, property, and the environment. But even after the fire rages, the damage is far from done. Without vegetation, bare, burnt soil lies vulnerable to erosion, which can impede efforts towards natural forest regeneration.
Tech
Imagine if the next coat of paint you put on the outside of your home generates electricity from light—electricity that can be used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside.
A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame have made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive "solar paint" that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy.
Organic semiconductors could usher in an era of foldable smartphones, better high-definition television screens and clothing made of materials that can harvest energy from the sun needed to charge your iPad, but there is one serious drawback: Organic semiconductors do not conduct electricity very well.
Despite the numerous medical advances that happen every day, the infant mortality rate in the United States is still higher than most European countries. While experts believe this is closely linked to the growing rate of pre-term births, researchers are committed to finding ways to make labor and delivery safer. Northwestern Medicine® researchers are examining a new device that may support improved newborn health at delivery through closer monitoring of infant oxygen use during labor.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a prototype device capable of absolute measurements of optical power delivered through an optical fiber.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued the world's first reference material for single-wall carbon nanotube soot. Distantly related to the soot in your fireplace or in a candle flame, nanotube-laden soot is the primary industrial source of single-wall carbon nanotubes, perhaps the archetype of all nanoscale materials. The new NIST material offers companies and researchers a badly needed source of uniform and well-characterized carbon nanotube soot for material comparisons, as well as chemical and toxicity analysis.
Virginia Tech crashed the supercomputing arena in 2003 with System X, a machine that placed the university among the world's top computational research facilities. Now comes HokieSpeed, a new supercomputer that is up to 22 times faster and yet a quarter of the size of X, boasting a single-precision peak of 455 teraflops, or 455 trillion operations per second, and a double-precision peak of 240 teraflops, or 240 trillion operations per second.
Has the packet been properly filled? Are there impurities in the chocolate? Have the plastic seams been welded correctly? Is there a knife hidden in the parcel? Answers to all these questions are provided by SAMMI, short for Stand Alone MilliMeter wave Imager. The millimeter-wave sensor is able to see through all non-transparent materials. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Wachtberg have developed the device, whichat 50 centimeters wide and 32 centimeters high is no larger than a compact laser printer.
Estimates of malaria incidence derived from routine surveillance data suggest that 225 million episodes of malaria occurred worldwide in 2009. This estimate is lower than other published figures, such as those from the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), particularly for estimates of malaria incidence outside Africa. Richard Cibulskis and colleagues at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland present a critique of different estimation methods of the worldwide incidence of malaria in this week's PLoS Medicine.
For most of us, the word "turbomachinery" may conjure up images of superheroes or fast exotic cars, but in reality most people leverage turbomachinery to get things done nearly every day.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Forest thinning to help prevent or reduce severe wildfire will release more carbon to the atmosphere than any amount saved by successful fire prevention, a new study concludes.
There may be valid reasons to thin forests – such as restoration of forest structure or health, wildlife enhancement or public safety – but increased carbon sequestration is not one of them, scientists say.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — When one tiny circuit within an integrated chip cracks or fails, the whole chip – or even the whole device – is a loss. But what if it could fix itself, and fix itself so fast that the user never knew there was a problem?
Kyoto, Japan -- Researchers at Kyoto University have announced a breakthrough with broad implications for semiconductor-based devices. The findings, announced in the December 20 issue of the journal Nature Communications, may lead to the development of ultra-high-speed transistors and high-efficiency photovoltaic cells.
This ALD method for manufacturing fuel cells requires 60 per cent less of the costly catalyst than current methods.
-This is a significant discovery, because researchers have not been able to achieve savings of this magnitude before with materials that are commercially available, says Docent Tanja Kallio of Aalto University.
Boron Nanoribbons Reveal Surprising Thermal Properties in BundlesSize matters… but apparently so does shape – when it comes to conducting heat in very small spaces.