science wire

On Dec. 6, working nearly a mile underground in the cleanest space in South Dakota, Ryan Martin of Berkeley Lab's Nuclear Science Division (NSD) assembled the first of 70 detector units for the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR experiment. Each unit consists of a polished slice of pure germanium crystal the size of a hockey puck, attached to an electronics board on a wafer-thin disk of fused silica.

A new innovative programme of discovery has been launched at the University of Sheffield to help school pupils across South Yorkshire delve into the intriguing worlds of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

The decision to approve the University of Sheffield's planning application for an £81 million state of the art New Engineering Building on the Jessop East site will open the door to growth and investment, making a huge contribution to the Sheffield and regional economy.

Berkeley, Calif. Dec. 2012 -Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley, have developed an elegant and powerful new microscale actuator that can flex like a tiny beckoning finger.

A number of international students from Imperial will be spending time with British families over the festive period, as part of a scheme run by the charity HOST UK together with the College's International Office.

By using electric voltage instead of a flowing electric current, researchers from UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have made major improvements to an ultra-fast, high-capacity class of computer memory known as magnetoresistive random access memory, or MRAM.

Research could lead to better ways to heal injuries and develop new drugs.

The field of metamaterials involves augmenting materials with specially designed patterns, enabling those materials to manipulate electromagnetic waves and fields in previously impossible ways. Now, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have come up with a theory for moving this phenomenon onto the quantum scale, laying out blueprints for materials where electrons have nearly zero effective mass.

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered that knocking out a particular "partner" gene is the Achilles heel of some cancers. Cancer-causing genes often have a partner in crime, meaning when either of the two genes is active in cancer cells, the tumour grows. The challenge for researchers has been pinpointing the genes' "lethal partners." Loss of one of the partners alone isn't deadly to the cell, but if both are removed, the cancer cells are destroyed.

Light has become one of our most powerful servants, carrying information ranging from a chat room "LOL" to an entire digitized movie through hundreds of miles of fiber optics in seconds. But like many servants, light is sometimes uncooperative. Among other things, it doesn't like to go around tight corners.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. On the road to smaller, high-performance electronics, University of Illinois researchers have smoothed one speed bump by shrinking a key, yet notoriously large element of integrated circuits. Three-dimensional rolled-up inductors have a footprint more than 100 times smaller without sacrificing performance.

Hundreds of school children from across the region will get an entertaining and exciting insight into engineering at The University of Nottingham's annual Engineering Christmas Lecture.

Are you allergic to peanuts and worried there might be some in that cookie? Now you can find out using a rather unlikely source: your cell phone.

MIT researchers develop the smallest indium gallium arsenide transistor ever built.

A bullet and a knife blade hidden inside a toy. Inset: The teraherz image obtained with the silicon chip reveals the hidden objects without needing to cut open the toy.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. For the first time, a silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities has been developed that has been shown to be scalable to many meters in length. The research opens the door to the possibility of weaving together solar-cell silicon wires to create flexible, curved or twisted solar fabrics.

As technology advances, it tends to shrink. From cell phones to laptops-powered by increasingly faster and tinier processors-everything is getting thinner and sleeker.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Five professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been named Swanlund Chairs, the highest endowed titles on the Urbana campus.

Bob Webster has been named Associate Director for Weapon Physics and John Benner has been named Associate Director for Weapon Engineering and Experiments.

New research has demonstrated a way to make bismuth electrons and nuclei work together as qubits in a quantum computer. The discovery takes us a key step further to creating practical quantum computing which could tackle complex programs that would otherwise take the lifetime of the universe to finish.

Stanford Report, December 3, 2012 Scientists have long suspected that a vast ocean of liquid water lies under the crusty exterior of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded two Yale engineering researchers more than $2.6 million to develop a low-cost power generation system that relies on waste heat for fuel.

Posted under: Engineering , Health and Medicine , News Releases , Research , Science , Technology The only way to protect against HIV and unintended pregnancy today is the condom.

Reconfigurable robot a step toward something that can become almost anything. The device doesn't look like much: a caterpillar-sized assembly of metal rings and strips resembling something you might find buried in a home-workshop drawer.

AUSTIN, Texas — Seven faculty members at The University of Texas at Austin have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Engineers at Yale University have developed a new breed of micro fuel cell that could serve as a long-lasting, low-cost, and eco-friendly power source for portable electronic devices, such as tablet computers, smart phones, and remote sensors. The researchers describe their novel device in a paper published online in the journal Small.

A Caltech imaging innovation will ease your trip to the dentist and may soon energize home entertainment systems too.

The properties of basic electronic components can be simulated with ultracold atoms that flow through structures made of laser light. This is the result of work in which scientists at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, use a new generation of quantum experiments to explore the behaviour of electronic currents in a regime where predictions are often difficult to make.

A University of Toronto engineering team has received a major grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to continue work on designing a waterless, hygienic toilet that is safe and affordable for people in the developing world.

News Release MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (11/28/2012) —The University of Minnesota has been awarded a $1.8 million grant over three years from the Department of Energy's Advanced Resea

: Caroline Perry , (617) 496-1351 Now you see it, now you don't. A new device invented at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) can absorb 99.75% of infrared light that shines on it.

: Byron Spice / 412-268-9068 / bspice [a] cs.cmu (p) edu PITTSBURGH-Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) and Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) of Johnstown, Pa.

For Sue Rosser, the obstacles women in the STEM disciplines face today may be less obvious than they were 40 years ago, but they're as real as ever.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.

MIT engineers propose a new way of harnessing photons for electricity, with the potential for capturing a wider spectrum of solar energy. The quest to harness a broader spectrum of sunlight's energy to produce electricity has taken a radically new turn, with the proposal of a "solar energy funnel" that takes advantage of materials under elastic strain.

Scientists are developing new materials which could one day allow people to print out custom-designed personal electronics such as games controllers which perfectly fit their hand shape.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. With self-assembly guiding the steps and synchronization providing the rhythm, a new class of materials forms dynamic, moving structures in an intricate dance. Researchers from the University of Illinois and Northwestern University have demonstrated tiny spheres that synchronize their movements as they self-assemble into a spinning microtube.

Supporting the development of the next generation of passenger aircraft, using advanced materials, design and manufacturing processes, will be the focus of a new £5 million partnership between Imperial College London and a major Chinese aerospace conglomerate, announced today.

Stanford Report, November 18, 2012 Stanford researchers have designed the fastest, most accurate mathematical algorithm yet for brain-implantable prosthetic systems that can help disabled people maneuver computer cursors with their thoughts.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. They're soft, biocompatible, about 7 millimeters long - and, incredibly, able to walk by themselves.

As part of UC San Diego's Founders' Day celebration, the Founders' Symposium on Friday, Nov. 16 will feature six innovative faculty members offering brief talks about the world-changing research happening on our campus.

A revolutionary glove pioneered by graduates from the University of Sheffield is helping to give a voice to people left isolated by severe speech impediments.

AUSTIN, Texas — The storage capacity of hard disk drives could increase by a factor of five thanks to processes developed by chemists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin.

ANN ARBOR-While both young and middle-aged men and women are less likely to have a driver's license today than nearly 20 years ago, the proportion of male motorists is declining at a higher rate, according to University of Michigan researchers.