College Park, Md. (May 6, 2011) — A bold new design for thin film solar cells that requires significantly less silicon – and may boost their efficiency – is the result of an industry/academia collaboration between Oerlikon Solar in Switzerland and the Institute of Physics' photovoltaic group at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Tech
Music producers have for decades had electronics tricks at their disposal for improving a recorded vocal performance. They can add a little reverb or echo to bolster a weak rendition, use effects such as phasing and delay to add color to the vocal, fix duff notes with auto-tuning or even reprogram a whole melody line in software. In recent years, voice synthesis for converting text to spoken word has improved considerably but combining that technology with auto-tuning capability allows computers to "sing".
MADISON, WI MAY 5, 2011 – In their eagerness to cut nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, people have often sought simple explanations for the problem: too many large animal operations, for instance, or farmers who apply too much fertilizer, which then flows into waterways.
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.— It's not quite Christmas, but the DNA sequence of a small plant that resembles the seasonal conifers is providing biofuels researchers with information that could influence the development of candidate biofuel feedstock plants and offering botanists long-awaited insights into plant evolution.
Los Angeles, CA (April XX, 2011) People shop for high status items when they're feeling low, and they're more likely to make those expensive purchases on credit, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).
Those vegetables you had for dinner may have once been protected by an immune system akin to the one that helps you fight disease. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Netherland's Wageningen University found that plants rely on a complex community of soil microbes to defend themselves against pathogens, much the way mammals harbor a raft of microbes to avoid infections.
Basic scientific curiosity paid off in unexpected ways when Rice University researchers investigating the fundamental physics of nanomaterials discovered a new technology that could dramatically improve solar energy panels.
The research is described in a new paper this week in the journal Science.
Urban search and rescue (USAR) task forces are essential for locating, stabilizing, and extricating people who become trapped in confined spaces following a catastrophic event. Sometimes the search area is too unstable for a live rescue team, so rescuers have turned to robots wielding video cameras. Most recently, the USAR robots have been employed by rescuers following the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The rescuers control, or teleoperate, from a safe location.
PITTSBURGH—Learning how to program a computer to display the words "Hello World" once may have excited students, but that hoary chestnut of a lesson doesn't cut it in a world of videogames, smartphones and Twitter. One option to take its place and engage a new generation of students in computer programming is a Carnegie Mellon University-developed robot called Finch.
A product of CMU's famed Robotics Institute, Finch was designed specifically to make introductory computer science classes an engaging experience once again.
As the use of biotechnology increases and more companies move forward with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approval to begin full-scale commercialization of seed mixtures in transgenic insecticidal corn, many researchers believe pest monitoring will become even more difficult.
Researchers at the University of Southampton have designed a new pricing mechanism that could change the way in which electric vehicles are charged.
It is based on an online auction protocol that makes it possible to charge electric vehicles without overloading the local electricity network.
(WASHINGTON) -- Researchers in the Materials Science and Technology division of the Naval Research Laboratory have recently demonstrated electrical injection, detection and precession of spin accumulation in silicon, the cornerstone material of modern device technology, at temperatures up to 225 degrees Celsius. These results provide the first demonstration that spin accumulation in Si is viable as a basis for practical devices which meet the operating temperatures specified for commercial (85˚C), industrial (100˚C) and military (125˚C) applications.
A new biosensor which uses antibody-based technology has been shown to detect marine pollutants such as oil cheaper and faster than current technology. Tests of the new biosensor, published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, reveal how it could be used for the early detection and tracking of oil spills.
The biosensor has been developed by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) and was tested in the Elizabeth River and Yorktown Creek which both drain into Virginia's Chesapeake Bay.
An examination of the birth records of the more than 7million children born in the state of California during the 1990s and early 2000s has found a clear link between the month in which a child is conceived and the risk of that child later receiving a diagnosis of autism.
Tests of a new antibody-based "biosensor" developed by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science show that it can detect marine pollutants like oil much faster and more cheaply than current technologies. The device is small and sturdy enough to be used from a boat.