science wire

Calling all Lego fans..the University of Nottingham is looking for school teams to take part in the regional heat of the global FIRST LEGO League challenge taking place on Tuesday 19 th December.

Imagine a society without secrets. A kind of space-time where everything and everyone would be known.

Von Russel Eshleman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering, developed methods of studying distant planets with radio waves and oversaw experiments between the Stanford Dish and Pioneer space probes.

The United States Army Research Laboratory has awarded the University of Pennsylvania's  School of Engineering and Applied Science  a five-year, $27 million grant to develop new methods of creating autonomous, intelligent, and resilient teams of robots.

When it comes to taking up room without adding too much weight, the bubble can't be beat. Because they are mostly air, they're ultra-lightweight and can expand to fill any given space. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with researchers from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology recently found a way to exploit these properties of bubbles to create "microbombs," a type of material that expands with heat to form "microclusters," which fit themselves to fill their physical confinement.

In 2015, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) developed the first on-chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero, meaning that the phase of light could be stretched infinitely long. The metamaterial represented a new method to manipulate light and was an important step forward for integrated photonic circuits, which use light rather than electrons to perform a wide variety of functions.

A battery developed in Stanford Professor Hongjie Dai's lab could provide low-cost storage for solar energy.

In the United States, most electricity from the grid comes from power plants that run on coal or natural gas.

Could replicants ever be a reality? In this article from The Conversation , Fumiya Iida (Department of Engineering) discusses what it would take to make a truly life-like robot.

WMG researchers, at the University of Warwick, will be a significant part of a new £65 million national battery research initiative.

Larry Pileggi and his graduate students have developed a toolkit that could help model and simulate the power grid more reliably to better protect it from cybersecurity threats.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers has created the most functional flexible transistor in the world - and with it, a fast, simple and inexpensive fabrication process that's easily scalable to the commercial level.

Imperial and one of Japan's top universities joined forces at a two-day workshop in London this week.

From butterflies that sprout wings to hermit crabs that switch their shells, many animals must adapt their exterior features in order to survive.

Multi-jointed rescue robot gets first experience in live disaster Carnegie Mellon University researchers last week deployed a snake-like robot to search for trapped survivors in a Mexico City apartment building that collapsed in the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that shook the city Sept.

A long radar boom that will probe below the surface of Jupiter's icy moons has been tested on Earth with the help of a helicopter.

ANN ARBOR-Eighty-eight percent of American adults viewed the August total solar eclipse directly or electronically.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Robots perform many tasks that humans can't or don't want to perform, getting around on intricately designed wheels and limbs.

The Southern Ocean is key to Earth's climate, but the same gusting winds, big waves and strong currents that are important to ocean physics make it perilous for oceanographers.

Tetragon, a TU Wien spin-off, has invented a completely new kind of Braille display, which is user-friendly, cost-effective and extremely portable.

System allows extra time for pedestrians with disabilities Smart traffic signals that are designed to improve the flow of traffic also could help pedestrians with visual or other disabilities safely cross streets, or even catch a bus.

As we churn through more data, cloud computing centres are overheating. Photonic chip technology offers a way forward for our insatiable appetite for information.

Lancaster engineers are looking at advanced materials for roads and pavements that could generate electricity from passing traffic Researchers are looking at advanced materials for roads and pavements that could generate electricity from passing traffic.

UCLA, SRI International researchers devise polymer film to transfer heat from batteries and processors Matthew Chin Engineers and scientists from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Appl

Imagine a robot that could help you tidy your home: roving about, sorting stray socks into the laundry and dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

University of Washington researchers have demonstrated for the first time that devices that run on almost zero power can transmit data across distances of up to 2.8 kilometers - breaking a long-held barrier and potentially enabling a vast array of interconnected devices.

For the first time, physicists have successfully imaged spiral magnetic ordering in a multiferroic material. These materials are considered highly promising candidates for future data storage media. The researchers were able to prove their findings using unique quantum sensors that were developed at Basel University and that can analyze electromagnetic fields on the nanometer scale.

As 3-D printing has become a mainstream technology, industry and academic researchers have been investigating printable structures that will fold themselves into useful three-dimensional shapes when heated or immersed in water.

Mark Shorrock, Chief Executive of Tidal Lagoon Power, used a Cardiff University event to outline his company's ambitions to harness the energy of the Seven Estuary.

Visitors to UW-Madison's Union South walk across a section of floor designed and installed by College of Engineering researchers to capture the energy of footsteps and turn it into usable electricity. Photo: Adrienne Nienow As thousands of visitors each day walk across a new flooring installation in UW-Madison's Union South this fall, they might not realize they're participating in what could very well represent a leap into the future of renewable energy production.

A major new international research programme is responding to the overwhelming demand of internet traffic to develop ubiquitous wireless data coverage with unprecedented speed at millimetre waves.

New method combines precision printing of stretchable conductive inks with pick-and-place of electronic components to make flexible, wearable sensors Human skin must flex and stretch to accommodate the body's every move.

Firebricks, designed to withstand high heat, have been part of our technological arsenal for at least three millennia, since the era of the Hittites.

Despite the welcome showers at the weekend, abnormally low soil-moisture conditions persist in central Italy. Scientists are using satellite data to monitor the drought that has gripped the country. Wildfires, water scarcity and billions of euros worth of damage to agriculture are just some of the effects of this summer's drought in Italy - not to mention the relentless heat.

Imperial is celebrating the election of two more of its academics to the Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RA Eng).

Stanford scientists cooled water without electricity by sending excess heat where it won't be noticed - space. The specialized optical surfaces they developed are a major step toward applying this technology to air conditioning and refrigeration. It looks like a regular roof, but the top of the Packard Electrical Engineering Building at Stanford University has been the setting of many milestones in the development of an innovative cooling technology that could someday be part of our everyday lives.

Star Storm , an explosive performance inspired by stellar processes in the Universe, will be premiered at the 2017 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, on 10 September.

Recording electrical signals from inside a neuron in the living brain can reveal a great deal of information about that neuron's function and how it coordinates with other cells in the brain. However, performing this kind of recording is extremely difficult, so only a handful of neuroscience labs around the world do it.

Two revolutionary medical devices developed by University of Sydney PhD students were among the top innovations awarded nearly $3 million on Tuesday evening by the NSW Government's NSW Medical Devices Fund.

Just as drivers observe the rules of the road, most pedestrians follow certain social codes when navigating a hallway or a crowded thoroughfare: Keep to the right, pass on the left, maintain a respec

Radio frequency ID tags were supposed to revolutionize supply chain management.

Our bodies are lined on the inside with soft, microscopic carpets of hair, from the grassy extensions on our tastebuds, to fuzzy beds of microvilli in our stomachs, to superfine protein strands throughout our blood vessels.