Tech
QUT researchers have come up with a new, safe way to clean up oil spills using compounds equally useful as common household cleaning products.
There have been more than 700 oil spills worldwide in the past 20 years, polluting oceans and coastlines as well as endangering marine ecology and other wildlife.
Associate Professor Jingsan Xu said the team from QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty, had invented a nontoxic, low-cost, easily processed foam for oil removal.
A research group comprising Associate Professor Taku Hasobe and Assistant Professor Hayato Sakai of the Keio University Faculty of Science and Technology, Toshiyuki Saegusa of the Keio University Graduate School of Science and Technology (completed master's program in 2019), and Professor Yasuhiro Kobori and postdoctoral researcher Hiroki Nagashima of the Kobe University Molecular Photoscience Research Center found that when light was exposed to the surface of a tetracene alkanethiol-modified gold nanocluster, which they developed themselves, twice as many excitons could be converted compar
Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) was first reported by Tang`s group in 2001. Many research efforts have been devoted to the exploration structure-property-application of AIE. The focal points and hot spots of AIE are to design new structural systems and to illuminate the relationship of structural properties. Many new compounds with AIE characteristics have been designed and synthesized to enrich the members in AIE family. However, there are almost no reports thus far on the analog 1,1,2,4-tetraphenyl-1,3-butadiene (TPB) that was studied in AIE fields.
Highlights
The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) causes motor performance deterioration due to anxiety
Transcranial magnetic stimulation of the dACC reduces the performance deterioration
This method could potentially be used to help athletes and musicians overcome anxiety
Abstract
Modern electronics is based on doped semiconductors. To synthesize electronic components, dopant atoms such as aluminum or phosphorus are embedded into crystals of ultrapure silicon. This allows for tailoring semiconductor conductivity according to the desired application. In modern electronic computer processors, miniaturized to just a few nanometers, only less than ten dopant atoms are relevant for the functionality.
An ambitious new Mersey barrage concept shows how tidal energy projects can offer many benefits to society in addition to clean renewable energy.
When designed holistically, tidal barrage schemes can provide additional transport links for commuters, become tourism destinations, mitigate wildlife habitat loss, as well as provide opportunities to boost people's health and wellbeing with additional options for cycling and walking, say researchers from Lancaster University and the University of Liverpool.
You mightn't think that the life of a dung beetle, a creature who eats poop every day of its short life, could get any worse, but you'd be wrong. Dung beetles, also known as rollers, pretty much live in manure. They can be found in a variety of environments-deserts, prairies, forests-and they subsist on poop. Dung beetles provide a highly useful service to the environment and to us. How?
From raindrops rolling off the waxy surface of a waterlily leaf, to the efficiency of desalination membranes, interactions between water molecules and water-repellent "hydrophobic" surfaces are all around us. The interplay becomes even more intriguing when a thin water layer becomes sandwiched between two hydrophobic surfaces, KAUST researchers have shown.
It's billed as a health booster and healing agent, but it may be the source of cognitive defects and other severe ailments. A new Stanford-led study reveals that turmeric - a commonly used spice throughout South Asia - is sometimes adulterated with a lead-laced chemical compound in Bangladesh, one of the world's predominant turmeric-growing regions.
PTEN, a tumor suppressor gene mutated in approximately 20% of primary prostate cancers, and in as many as 50% of androgen deprivation-resistant prostate cancers, relies on another gene, ARID4B, to function. These findings were published by George Washington University (GW) Cancer Center researchers in Nature Communications. This discovery provides a potential therapeutic target for prostate cancers carrying the common PTEN mutation.
DALLAS, Sept. 24, 2019 - Cardiac MRI analysis can be performed significantly faster with similar precision to experts when using automated machine learning, according to new research published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, an American Heart Association journal.
Currently, analyzing heart function on cardiac MRI scans takes approximately 13 minutes for humans. Utilizing artificial intelligence in the form of machine learning, a scan can be analyzed with comparable precision in approximately four seconds.
Ann Arbor, September 24, 2019 - Years of progress towards reducing disparities in racial/ethnic group mortality rates in the United States came to a halt between 2009 and 2012, according to a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier. Prior to this inflection period, improvements in mortality rates within the African American population had largely been closing the gap.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Something as simple as an electric field could soon make wartime missiles or drinking mugs easier to produce and more resilient for fracture.
Items such as drinking mugs, missile heads, thermal barrier coatings on engine blades, auto parts, electronic and optic components are commonly made with ceramics.
The ceramics are mechanically strong, but tend to fracture suddenly when just slightly strained under a load unless exposed to high temperatures.
Diving seabirds watch each other to work out when to dive, new research shows.
Scientists studied European shags and found they were twice as likely to dive after seeing a fellow bird go underwater.
The study is the first to investigate why large groups (known as "rafts") of shags dive together at sea.
University of Exeter scientists filmed the birds off the Isles of Scilly to examine their behaviour.
An international research team has observed in real time how football molecules made of carbon atoms burst in the beam of an X-ray laser. The study shows the temporal course of the bursting process, which takes less than a trillionth of a second, and is important for the analysis of sensitive proteins and other biomolecules, which are also frequently studied using bright X-ray laser flashes.