science wire

ANN ARBOR'When it comes to programs that improve quality and cost in hospitals new research from the University of Michigan finds a carrot is indeed better than a stick. Participation in one or more voluntary value-based health care programs had a greater impact on keeping patients from returning to the hospital within 30 days for three common diagnoses than the government's mandatory program that penalizes acute care facilities for high readmission rates, U-M researchers found.

New Stanford study describes a model for designing novel materials used in electrical storage devices, such as car batteries and capacitors. This approach may dramatically accelerate discovery of new materials that provide cheap and efficient ways to store energy. Research led by a Stanford scientist promises to increase the performance of high-power electrical storage devices, such as car batteries.

Due to a variety of factors, the traditional business model for the nationâ??s investor-owned electric utilities, such as TXU or Reliant Energy, is in trouble.

From an electron's point of view, graphene must be a hair-raising thrill ride. For years, scientists have observed that electrons can blitz through graphene at velocities approaching the speed of light, far faster than they can travel through silicon and other semiconducting materials. Graphene, therefore, has been touted as a promising successor to silicon, with the potential to enable faster, more efficient electronic and photonic devices.

'Alex Taylor provides a sensory snapshot of his fieldwork in high-security subterranean data centres exploring fears of technological failure in our data-dependent society.

How to reliably transfer quantum information when the connecting channels are impacted by detrimental noise? Scientists at the University of Innsbruck and TU Wien (Vienna) have presented new solutions to this problem.

A webpage today is often the sum of many different components.

In the power grid, supply and demand need to match exactly. If consumers demand more power than producers can supply, or if producers provide more power than consumers need, the result can be rolling blackouts.

Twenty-five University of Queensland researchers are celebrating a combined multi-million-dollar success in the Queensland Government's Advance Queensland Fellowships scheme.

A new way of harnessing the sun's rays to power 'synthetic skin' could help to create advanced prosthetic limbs capable of returning the sense of touch to amputees. Engineers from the University of Glasgow, who have previously developed an 'electronic skin' covering for prosthetic hands made from graphene, have found a way to use some of graphene's remarkable physical properties to use energy from the sun to power the skin.

In this age of smartphones and tablet computers, touch-sensitive surfaces are everywhere. They're also brittle, as people with cracked phone screens everywhere can attest.

Moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk of several, but not all, cardiovascular diseases, according to a large study of UK adults led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and University College London published today in The BMJ .

A team of researchers is to develop a biomimetic forebrain for controlling 3D-printed robot hands with a sense of touch.

Modern biology labs often use robotic assemblies to drop precise amounts of fluids into experimental containers.

ANN ARBOR'The thinnest, smoothest layer of silver that can survive air exposure has been laid down at the University of Michigan, and it could change the way touchscreens and flat or flexible displays are made.

Trees and other plants, from towering redwoods to diminutive daisies, are nature's hydraulic pumps. They are constantly pulling water up from their roots to the topmost leaves, and pumping sugars produced by their leaves back down to the roots.

Steady state lasing with colloidal quantum dots an important step toward practical lasing technology. 'This work brings us a step closer to the next important goal - the demonstration of lasing with electrical pumping, at which point colloidal quantum dot laser diodes will become a technological reality,' said Victor Klimov.

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will make two more spacewalks under NASA's plans to maintain the International Space Station during his mission.

Demanding electric, magnetic and power requirements, harsh radiation, and strict planetary protection rules are some of the critical issues that had to be tackled in order to move ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer - Juice - from the drawing board and into construction.

Some of the most wonderful pictures taken by astronauts from space are of aurora dancing over our planet. Now the photos are more than just pretty pictures thanks to an ESA project that makes them scientifically usable. Aurora offer a visual means to study space weather, the conditions in the upper regions of our atmosphere.

Researchers of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have made detailed 3-D images of a commercially available computer chip. This marks the first time a non-destructive method has visualized the paths of a chip's internal wiring (just 45 nanometres — 45 millionths of a millimetre — wide) and its 34-nanometre-high transistors clearly without distortions or deformations.

The Australian Government has announced a $2 billion expansion to the Snowy Hydro scheme, involving new tunnels and pumped hydro storage, designed to help stabilise electricity supplies.

Distributed planning , communication , and control algorithms for autonomous robots make up a major area of research in computer science. But in the literature on multirobot systems, security has gotten relatively short shrift. In the latest issue of the journal Autonomous Robots , researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and their colleagues present a new technique for preventing malicious hackers from commandeering robot teams' communication networks.

A collaborative team of researchers is to develop a wearable robotic system for minimally invasive surgery, also known as keyhole surgery, that will offer surgeons natural and dexterous movement as well as the ability to 'sense', 'see', control and safely navigate through the surgical environment.

In the center of a distant galaxy, almost 300 million light years from Earth, scientists have discovered a supermassive black hole that is 'choking' on a sudden influx of stellar debris. In a paper published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters , researchers from MIT, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and elsewhere report on a 'tidal disruption flare' - a dramatic burst of electromagnetic activity that occurs when a black hole obliterates a nearby star.

ANN ARBOR?Extremely short, configurable "femtosecond" pulses of light demonstrated by an international team could lead to future computers that run up to 100,000 times faster than today's electronics.

Scientists use Earth-imaging technologies to study the intrusion of saltwater into freshwater aquifers along the California coast. Researchers from Stanford and the University of Calgary have transformed pulses of electrical current sent 1,000 feet underground into a picture of where seawater has infiltrated freshwater aquifers along the Monterey Bay coastline.

Paving the way for flexible electronics, Stanford chemical engineers have developed a plastic electrode that stretches like rubber but carries electricity like wires.

Faster, more efficient data storage and computer logic systems could be on the horizon thanks to a new way of tuning electronic energy levels in two-dimensional films of crystal, discovered by researchers at MIT. The discovery could ultimately pave the way for the development of so-called 'valleytronic' devices, which harness the way electrons gather around two equal energy states, known as valleys.

Al Molnar, holding a circuit board, is pictured with graduate student Hazal Yüksel in Molnar's Phillips Hall lab.

Researchers at Imperial College London have programmed human learning behaviour into robots to help humans complete physical tasks. The robots predicted the movements of their human partners to help improve their performance on computer-related physical tasks. The researchers believe their findings could be used in the future to help patients rehabilitate from stroke - for example, using robots to deliver physiotherapy.

A publicly owned national electricity grid is the logical solution to Australia's energy crisis, according to University of Queensland economist Professor John Quiggin.

Cohort of aspiring young researchers come together at special reception in Cardiff to celebrate latest stage of Welsh Government programme Early-career researchers from across the world have been wel

Get your hands on mind-controlled Scalextric, smell with an electronic nose, and see a smoke-ring cannon - all this at the University of Warwick's Engineering Day Your chance to see cutting-edge innovation and incredible machines - developed at Warwick, and changing the world.

Sam Halliday , Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century American Literature at QMUL's School of English and Drama writes about a new exhibition at the Wellcome Library: Electricity, The spark of life.

Is artificial intelligence a benign and liberating influence on our lives - or should we fear an impending rise of the machines' And what rights should robots share with humans' Christopher Markou, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, suggests an urgent need to start considering the answers.

Dr Christos Markides talks about a volunteer project he is involved in to build up scientific expertise in solar energy in Africa.

The development of robotics and autonomous technology at WMG, University of Warwick has received part of a £6.5 million boost from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The quest for highly efficient 5G wireless connectivity has been given a boost thanks to a collaboration between a team of 5G engineers from the Universities of Bristol and Lund, National Instruments (NI), and BT, one of the world's leading providers of communications services. The research team has undertaken field trials of a massive MIMO system at the BT Labs in Adastral Park, Suffolk.

With Australia wrestling with how to secure its energy supply, we've found we can make the switch to affordable and reliable clean power.

ESA Space in Images California has seen some heavy rains recently after years of drought, filling many of the state's reservoirs.

A novel airborne experiment over the flat agricultural landscape of the Netherlands recently simulated, for the first time, images that could be taken by radar satellites orbiting in tandem. Involving two aircraft flying in very close formation with each carrying a radar instrument, this first flight is part of a larger campaign in Belgium next month.

Researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a new antenna array that greatly expands the operation bandwidth and level of sensitivity for imaging and sensing systems that use terahertz frequencies.

The following email was sent today to the MIT community by President L. Rafael Reif. To the members of the MIT community, Yesterday, we lost a giant - an exceptionally creative scientist and engineer who was also a delightful human being.

Cardiff University scientists are joining a £4m project to develop technologies that support tomorrow's phone networks, space and defence systems.

The 'internet of things' is the idea that vehicles, appliances, civil structures, manufacturing equipment, and even livestock will soon have sensors that report information directly to networked servers, aiding with maintenance and the coordination of tasks.

Following the appearance of a large crack in the ice shelf close to the Halley VI research station in Antarctica, information from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites helped to decide to close the base temporarily. Nourished by an inflow of ice from grounded glaciers and snow accumulating on its surface, Brunt Ice Shelf is a floating ice sheet in the Weddell Sea Sector of Antarctica.