news 2013

Steam condensation is key to the worldwide production of electricity and clean water: It is part of the power cycle that drives 85 percent of all electricity-generating plants and about half of all desalination plants globally, according to the United Nations and International Energy Agency. So anything that improves the efficiency of this process could have enormous impact on global energy use.

Is your cable television on the fritz? One explanation, scientists suspect, may be the weather - the weather in space, that is. MIT researchers are investigating the effects of space weather - such as solar flares, geomagnetic storms and other forms of electromagnetic radiation - on geostationary satellites, which provide much of the world's access to cable television, Internet services and global communications.

A rapid way of diagnosing anaemia using microwave technology has been developed by scientists. There are different types of anaemia, which causes lethargy, jaundice, tiredness and shortness of breath. It is generally the result of an iron deficiency in people. According to the World Health Organisation, it affects up to a quarter of the world's population at any given time.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated a new mechanism for extracting energy from light, a finding that could improve technologies for generating electricity from solar energy and lead to more efficient optoelectronic devices used in. Dawn Bonnell , Penn's vice provost for research and Trustee Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science , led the work, along with David Conklin, a doctoral student.

A surprising low-tech tool—Scotch Magic tape—was one of the keys to the discovery MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (09/03/2013) —An international group of researchers from the University of Minnesota, Argonne National Laboratory and Seoul National University have discovered a groundbreaking technique in manufacturing nanostructures that has the potential to make electrical and optical devices smaller and better than ever before.

UAlberta research paves way for nanoparticle-based 'ink' to make printable or spray-on solar cells. University of Alberta researchers have found that abundant materials in the Earth's crust can be used to make inexpensive and easily manufactured nanoparticle-based solar cells.

Yale researchers have discovered a new technique that allows them to measure electrical activity of genetically-targeted sets of neurons in a living organism, a prerequisite for understanding the complex language of the brain. The technique, described in the Aug. 8 issue of the journal Cell, involves inserting fluorescent proteins in neurons of a fruitfly that responds to changes in electrical signals and are recorded by optical sensors.

Layer of microscopic spheres offers new approach to controlling acoustic waves. In some ways, granular material - such as a pile of sand - can behave much like a crystal, with its close-packed grains mimicking the precise, orderly arrangement of crystalline atoms. Now researchers at MIT have pushed that similarity to a new limit, creating two-dimensional arrays of micrograins that can funnel acoustic waves, much as specially designed crystals can control the passage of light or other waves.

University of Minnesota engineers discover novel technology for producing "electronic ink" MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (07/30/2013) —Electronic touch pads that cost just a few dollars and solar cells that cost the same as roof shingles are one step closer to reality today. Researchers in the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., have overcome technical hurdles in the quest for inexpensive, durable electronics and solar cells made with non-toxic chemicals.

Understanding the properties that control surface dissipation of heat could lead to improved power plants and electronics with high heat-transfer rates. A team of MIT researchers has succeeded in carrying out the first systematic investigation of the factors that control boiling heat transfer from a surface to a liquid.

ANN ARBOR-Use of electronic health records can reduce the costs of outpatient care by roughly 3 percent, compared to relying on traditional paper records. That's according to a new study from the University of Michigan that examined more than four years of healthcare cost data in nine communities. The "outpatient care" category in the study included the costs of doctor's visits as well as services typically ordered during those visits in laboratory, pharmacy and radiology.

CeCoIn 5 is an oxymoron. It's a "heavy fermion" material, in which electrons act like their mass is 1,000 times what it should be, because moving electrons interact magnetically with its atoms and slow down. But it also can be a superconductor, in which an electric current flows without resistance, when its super heavy electrons join in "Cooper pairs" that are magnetically neutral and avoid magnetic interference.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa - If you tickle a robot, it may not laugh, but you may still consider it humanlike - depending on its role in your life, reports an international group of researchers. Designers and engineers assign robots specific roles, such as servant, caregiver, assistant or playmate. Researchers found that people expressed more positive feelings toward a robot that would take care of them than toward a robot that needed care.

ANN ARBOR-In findings that could help overcome a major technological hurdle in the road toward smaller and more powerful electronics, an international research team involving University of Michigan engineering researchers, has shown the unique ways in which heat dissipates at the tiniest scales. A paper on When a current passes through a material that conducts electricity, it generates heat.

12 Jun 2013 Wonder material graphene can be made magnetic and its magnetism switched on and off at the press of a button, opening a new avenue towards electronics with very low energy consumption. In a report published in Nature , a University of Manchester team led by Dr Irina Grigorieva shows how to create elementary magnetic moments in graphene and then switch them on and off.

Scientists have discovered a way to better exploit a process that could revolutionise the way that electronic products are made. The scientists from Imperial College London say improving the industrial process, which is called crystallisation, could revolutionise the way we produce electronic products, leading to advances across a whole range of fields; including reducing the cost and improving the design of plastic solar cells (see pull-out box).

Advances would boost security screening systems, infrared thermal cameras, energy harvesting, and radar systems This development is a key step toward replacing bulky conventional optics with flexible sheets that are about the thickness of a human hair and weighing a fraction of an ounce.

Stanford scientists have developed inexpensive silicon-based electrodes that dramatically improve the charge storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries. Stanford University scientists have dramatically improved the performance of lithium-ion batteries by creating novel electrodes made of silicon and conducting polymer hydrogel, a spongy substance similar to the material used in soft lenses and other household products.

A weak electrical signal can boost people's powers of mental arithmetic over a period of months, suggests a small scale study at the University of Oxford. The technique involves placing electrodes on the scalp of the head and applying random electrical noise to stimulate parts of the brain and encourage nerve cells to fire.

New experiments reveal previously unseen effects, could lead to new kinds of electronics and optical devices. Graphene has dazzled scientists, ever since its discovery more than a decade ago, with its unequalled electronic properties, its strength and its light weight. But one long-sought goal has proved elusive: how to engineer into graphene a property called a band gap, which would be necessary to use the material to make transistors and other electronic devices.