ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Research conducted at the University of Michigan College of Engineering may lead to the use of insects to monitor hazardous situations before sending in humans.
Professor Khalil Najafi, the chair of electrical and computer engineering, and doctoral student Erkan Aktakka are finding ways to harvest energy from insects, and take the utility of the miniature cyborgs to the next level.
Having survived long centuries, political upheaval, and even bombings during World War II, Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece Last Supper now faces the risk of damage from air pollution due to its location in one of Western Europe's most polluted cities.
In late 2009, the refectory of Santa Maria Delle Grazie Church, where the painting is located, installed a sophisticated heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system to protect the painting from the polluted air of Milan.
The question of how many polyhedral nanocrystals of silver can be packed into millimeter-sized supercrystals may not be burning on many lips but the answer holds importance for one of today's hottest new high-tech fields – plasmonics! Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) may have opened the door to a simpler approach for the fabrication of plasmonic materials by inducing polyhedral-shaped silver nanocrystals to self-assemble into three-dimensional supercrystals of the highest possible density.
Proposals to remove the carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuel from the atmosphere include letting commercially managed forests grow longer between harvests or not cutting them at all.
EUGENE, Ore. -- University of Oregon chemists have developed a boron-nitrogen-based liquid-phase storage material for hydrogen that works safely at room temperature and is both air- and moisture-stable -- an accomplishment that offers a possible route through current storage and transportation obstacles.
By 2017, quantum physics will help reduce the energy consumption of our computers and cellular phones by up to a factor of 100. For research and industry, the power consumption of transistors is a key issue. The next revolution will likely come from tunnel-FET, a technology that takes advantage of a phenomenon referred to as "quantum tunneling." At the EPFL, but also in the laboratories of IBM Zurich and the CEA-Leti in France, research is well underway.
The results of a recent study by the University of Santiago de Compostela on Kentish Plover eggs has shown that there was a unexpected increase in hydrocarbon levels along the coast of Galicia five years after the Prestige oil spill. Worsened in previous years by works to remove the wreck, pollution levels began to rise again in the summer of 2006 along with numerous forest fires.
The streaming of real-time information across your field of vision is a step closer to reality with the development of a prototype contact lens that could potentially provide the wearer with hands-free information updates.
In a study published today, 22 November, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, researchers constructed a computerised contact lens and demonstrated its safety by testing it on live eyes. There were no signs of adverse side effects.
Costs for second-generation ethanol processing, which will ease the stress on corn and sugarcane, are unlikely to be competitive until 2020, according to a unique Queen's University study.
"This study really lays out in black and white where we are and where we are going," says Warren Mabee, an assistant professor in the School of Policy Studies and Department of Geography. "It should prompt companies to reassess (their processes going forward)."
MANHATTAN, KAN. -- While the price of oil has risen in recent years, it has not affected the price of goods as much as in the past, according to research by two Kansas State University economists.
More than that, the prices of many goods -- such as clothing or vacations -- are actually deflating instead of inflating because of improved technology and reduced energy costs.
A new class of high power lasers can effectively accelerate particles like electrons and ions with very intense, short laser pulses. This has attracted the interest of researchers around the globe, working out the details of the acceleration process which occurs when a laser beam impinges on a thin foil to accelerate ions from the foil's rear surface to high energies. The electrons in the foil are heated by the laser pulse, thereby gaining energy. These electrons in turn give part of their energy to the ions, thereby converting laser pulse energy to ion energy.
The system created by these researchers can be used to automatically adapt the dialogue to the user's situation, so that the machine's response is adequate to the person's emotional state. "Thanks to this new development, the machine will be able to determine how the user feels (emotions) and how s/he intends to continue the dialogue (intentions)", explains one of its creators, David Grill, a professor in UC3M's Computer Science Department.
Many experts believe that advanced biofuels made from cellulosic biomass are the most promising alternative to petroleum-based liquid fuels for a renewable, clean, green, domestic source of transportation energy. Nature, however, does not make it easy. Unlike the starch sugars in grains, the complex polysaccharides in the cellulose of plant cell walls are locked within a tough woody material called lignin.
WASHINGTON -- Researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Marine Meteorology Division (MMD), Monterey, Calif., have developed the Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System Tropical Cyclone (COAMPS-TC™) model, achieving a significant research milestone in predictions of tropical cyclone intensity and structure.
While the predictions of the paths or tracks of hurricanes, more generally referred to as tropical cyclones (TC), have steadily improved over the last few decades, improvements in the predictions of storm intensity have proven much more difficult.