science wire

Through the Bruny Island trial we have demonstrated how the NAC approach can solve wider grid problems, in particular those that can arise through the mass deployment of renewables and battery storage.

It's still easy to tell computer-simulated motions from the real thing - on the big screen or in video games, simulated humans and animals often move clumsily, without the rhythm and fluidity of their real-world counterparts. UC Berkeley researchers created a virtual stuntman that could make computer-animated characters more lifelike.

Plastics are excellent insulators, meaning they can efficiently trap heat - a quality that can be an advantage in something like a coffee cup sleeve.

Scandinavian mythology stories are rich in fantastic creatures, and a Nordic astronaut is about to write a new chapter as Space Viking Andreas Mogensen monitors the arrival of the Dragon cargo vessel at the International Space Station next week.

CMU researchers foresee machines capable of on-demand knitting Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists have developed a system that can translate a wide variety of 3-D shapes into stitch-by-st

Daylight saving is a ritual observed by over 40 percent of the world, but why do we change our clocks and how does it impact your sleep? University of Sydney experts explain.

Researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Southampton, in collaboration with Microsemi, have demonstrated reliable operation of microelectromechanical relays by coating the contacts with nanocrystalline layers of graphite, to enable ultra-low-power electronics for harsh environments.

Carnegie Mellon's radiation-measuring robots go where humans cannot A pair of autonomous robots developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute will soon be driving through miles of pipe

UCL and Xtera , a provider of innovative subsea fibre optic technology, have broken current world records by transmitting 120 Terabit/s over a single fibre spanning 630 km.

The pace of advances in key clean energy technologies has been growing faster than many experts have predicted, to the point that solar and wind power, combined with systems for storing their output, can often be the least expensive options for new types of power-generating capacity.

Researchers at Harvard University have built soft robots inspired by nature that can crawl, swim, grasp delicate objects and even assist a beating heart, but none of these devices has been able to sense and respond to the world around them. That's about to change.

Who needs legs' With their sleek bodies, snakes can slither up to 14 miles-per-hour, squeeze into tight space, scale trees and swim. How do they do it? It's all in the scales. As a snake moves, its scales grip the ground and propel the body forward - similar to how crampons help hikers establish footholds in slippery ice.

The rod at top right is positioned to modify electrical signaling between the neurons. The entire image is smaller than the diameter of a single human hair.

Stanford researchers have set the stage for an evolution in electronics by taking the concept of 'artificial skin' to the next level, demonstrating not only a stretchable circuitry that can feel the touch of a ladybug, but a manufacturing process to mass produce this circuitry.

Unpacking groceries is a straightforward albeit tedious task: You reach into a bag, feel around for an item, and pull it out.

Imagine a sports arena full of cheering fans. Are you picturing basketball, or perhaps hockey? Actually, that image also applies to high-level e-sports (short for electronic sports), the competitions where fans watch people playing popular video games.

In light of changes in how electricity is being both generated and consumed, the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has written a new report analyzing challenges facing the nation's electric grid and making recommendations for ensuring continued reliability.

A device that's turned off doesn't suck battery life, but it also doesn't work. Now a low-power system that's always on the alert can turn devices on when they are needed, saving energy in the networked internet of things. As smartphone users know all too well, a sleeping device can still suck the life out of a battery.

A blueprint to cut UK electricity prices to bring them into line with competitor countries such as Germany and France as we move to low-carbon power generation has been proposed by UCL researchers.

Imagine living in a cramped studio apartment in a large city - but being able to summon your bed or closet through a mobile app, call forth your desk using voice command, or have everything retract at the push of a button.

ESA's next mission, the miniature GomX-4B, includes a piggyback experiment to test how well everyday commercial computer memories perform in the radiation-soaked environment of space. Ready to be launched from China this Friday, GomX-4B was built from six standard 10 cm CubeSat units by GomSpace in Denmark.

Current computer systems represent bits of information - the 1's and 0's of binary code - with electricity. Circuit elements, such as transistors, operate on these electric signals, producing outputs that are dependent on their inputs. Agarwal's research on photonic computing has been focused on finding the right combination and physical configuration of materials that can amplify and mix light waves in ways that are analogous to electronic computer components.

O ne drone landed on a moving Roomba-like robot while being guided by arm gestures. Another streamed a live, high-definition, 360-degree video feed as it flew overhead. These were some of the demos last week that helped inaugurate the first open-air aerodrome for unmanned aerial vehicles here on campus.

TU Wien has developed a sensor for measuring the strength of electric fields, which is much smaller, simpler and less prone to distortion than comparable devices.

The first cryomodule has arrived at SLAC. Linked together and chilled to nearly absolute zero, 37 of these segments will accelerate electrons to almost the speed of light and power an upgrade to the nation's only X-ray free-electron laser facility.

Because of their high precision and speed, Delta robots are deployed in many industrial processes, including pick-and-place assemblies, machining, welding and food packaging.

A farmer harvests cranberries from a flooded marsh at Cranberry Creek Cranberries Inc. in Necedah, Wisconsin. UW-Madison engineers have invented a device that automates the process of counting cranberries on the bush and estimating the harvest. Photo: Jeff Miller It's a quintessential cranberry scene: Thigh-deep in a flooded bog full of millions of floating berries, two farmers extol the merits of products made from the tart red fruit.

Mapping common pathways along which the effects of natural and man-made disasters travel allows more flexible and resilient responses in the future, according to UCL researchers.

If the epicenter of the electronics revolution is named after the material that made it possible - silicon - then the birthplace of the photonics revolution may well be named after lithium niobate.

Imperial is a partner in a new project funded by Ofgem that is researching how to make electricity networks more responsive to change.

Applying modern film scanning technology and machine learning to a rare trove of historical airborne radar measurements could provide new insights about how Antarctica's ice sheets will change in a warming world. Fifty years ago, a team of scientists crisscrossed Antarctica by plane, collecting radar images of the ice sheets.

More materials for electronic applications could be identified, thanks to the discovery of a new metal-organic framework (MOF) that displays electrical semiconduction with a record high photoresponsivity, by a global research collaboration involving the University of Warwick.