science wire

Campus news The new Fraunhofer Research Institution for Casting, Composite and Processing Technology IGCV (Fraunhofer IGCV) was inaugurated yesterday in Augsburg.

New insights into the movement of droplets could further the performance of microfluidic chips for biomedical research, and suggest a novel approach for controlling the manufacturing of nanomaterials. Scientific discoveries often arise from noticing the unexpected. Such was the case when Stanford researchers, studying a tiny device that has become increasingly important in disease diagnostics and drug discovery, observed the surprising way it funneled thousands of water droplets into an orderly single file, squeezing them drop by drop, out the tip of the device.

More than a decade ago, Ralph Hollis invented the ballbot , an elegantly simple robot whose tall, thin body glides atop a sphere slightly smaller than a bowling ball.

A novel method for curing of epoxy resins has been developed at TU Wien. Local UV flashes initiate a chemical cascade and cure the entire material.

The aim of the new CD Laboratory, a joint project between TU Graz and Mechatronics Systems - an SME from Styria, is to make use of electrical energy in auxiliary drives and household appliances as efficiently as possible.

At first glance, exoskeletons conjure up images of futuristic robots from science fiction films. But the exoskeleton from the ETH team VariLeg is a real-life aid that could allow people with paraplegia to walk again.

Is there a streetlight burned out on your block? Unless you or your neighbors phone the right city department, there's a good chance nobody knows about it. Most cities don't have any comprehensive listing or map of where their lights are located, what kind they are, what their expected operational lifetimes are, how high they are, or when they were last replaced.

Andrew Bellows, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, takes photos of a bottle opener from different angles in order to generate a point cloud from which the object can be 3D-printed.

Aircraft are becoming increasingly efficient, lower in emissions and quieter. The technology behind this is being co-developed and tested at TU Graz.

Technology advancements are expected to continue to drive down the cost of wind energy, according to a survey of the world's foremost wind power experts led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Termin From September 12 to 15, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) will host the "European Space Elevator Challenge" for the third time, an international competition for developing space elevator prototypes.

France's new Université Paris-Saclay mega-university will today (7 September, in Paris) partner with The University of Queensland in an Australian first that builds on aerospace research links.

In Rohit Karnik's lab, researchers are searching for tiny solutions to some of the world's biggest challenges.

The Precourt Institute and the TomKat Center have awarded 15 seed grants for innovative energy research at Stanford and SLAC.

For those of you who take sandcastle building very seriously, listen up: MIT engineers now say you can trust a very simple equation to calculate the force required to push a shovel - and any other 'intruder'' through sand.

Research carried out by the University of Bristol has helped in the development of bikes used by the victorious Team GB cyclists at Rio 2016.

Brian Fountaine's sketchpad is filled with detailed drawings of human organs and meticulous diagrams of scientific experiments.

Wind energy pricing remains attractive to utility and commercial purchasers, according to an annual report released by the U.S. Department of Energy and prepared by the Electricity Markets & Policy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Search-and-rescue dogs are prized for their ability to sniff out a hiker buried in deep snow. But how exactly do their noses work?

ANN ARBOR'When asked about her chosen field, Deanna Gates, director of the Rehabilitation Biomechanics Laboratory at the University of Michigan, always joked that she wanted to make Luke Skywalker's hand.

Research on rocks beneath one of the West Country's busiest motorway junctions has revealed unexpected evidence of major flooding events across southern England millions of years ago.

If you want to save on your monthly electric bill and reduce your greenhouse gas emissions at the same time, you might buy a new, energy-efficient refrigerator. Or water heater. Or clothes dryer. But if you can only replace one of these, which will give you the biggest payback? You could try to figure that out by comparing the energy-use labels from your existing appliances with those of the models you might purchase - if you still have your old labels.

China and the United States, the planet's top producers of C02, also lead the world in wind power installation.

The U. of I. is represented in the 2016 List of Most Cited Researchers in Materials Science and Engineering by Elsevier Scopus Data.

General Electric Among Key Players in Center's Research, Training By Hannah Diorio-Toth From airplane parts to custom hip replacements, 3-D printing - also known as additive manufacturing - is changing how everything can be constructed.

Researchers at The University of Queensland have contributed to the discovery of three new genes which increase the risk of motor neurone disease (MND), opening the door for targeted treatments.

Video of astronauts tripping over moon rocks can make for entertaining Internet viewing , but falls in space can jeopardize astronauts? missions and even their lives.

Although driving is now more commonly associated with road-rage than relaxation - at least in congested urban areas - research into the ways in which the concentration required for driving can positively direct and structure thought raises interesting questions for a 'driverless' future.

The University of Nottingham and Royal Norwegian Naval Academy (RNoNA) are investigating how to prevent shipping Global Positioning Signals (GPS) being jammed in potential cyberattacks that may cause vessels to go off course and collide or run aground. Big, modern ships are highly automated with networked navigational systems, including differential GPS (DGPS) which offers more accurate positioning (to one metre) than conventional GPS.

Darrell Velegol and Ayusman Sen have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for a research proposal that aims to produce autonomous, micron-sized catalytic colloidal motors with the ability to transport cargo in high-salt environments including blood, seawater and geo-reservoirs.

In the world of quantum, infinitesimally small particles, weird and often logic-defying behaviors abound. Perhaps the strangest of these is the idea of superposition, in which objects can exist simultaneously in two or more seemingly counterintuitive states. For example, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, electrons may spin both clockwise and counter-clockwise, or be both at rest and excited, at the same time.

An ¢830K research project to speed up the shift from fossil-fuel reliant to greener, quieter and cheaper electric vehicles, using low carbon propulsion technologies, is being run at The University of Nottingham.

Campus news The Fraunhofer IGCV, the new Fraunhofer facility for Casting, Composites and Production Technologies, will begin operation in Augsburg and Garching (near Munich) as of July 1, 2016.

Unique worldwide and made in Austria: TU Graz is strengthening the field of production technology with a new grinding machine for engines and drive components to the value of 1 million euros.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Penn State researchers have received a two-year, $277,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that will support fundamental research on an integrated paradigm of modeling and advanced control for additive manufacturing (AM) of critical metal components.

Campus news If the German Innovation Lab (GIL) gets its way, the Garching campus of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) my become one of the first testing sites for autonomous vehicles within the next few years.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Strands of cow cartilage substitute for ink in a 3D bioprinting process that may one day create cartilage patches for worn out joints, according to a team of engineers.

An illustration of two different types of adhesive wear - asperity smoothing and fracture, dependent on the length of the microscopic nubs, or asperities - caused when two surfaces rub against one another.

Engineers from Advanced Design Consulting in Lansing, New York meet with Cornell graduate students, led by professor Stuart Leigh Phoenix (pointing), in the machine shop of ADC's Ridge Road facility.

When Edward (Ned) Burnell sees a design problem, he is always ready to find a better solution. Even while chatting with a journalist outside his office, he points out ceilings and windows in different spaces and describes how he would improve them.

A new approach to the design of a liquid battery, using a passive, gravity-fed arrangement similar to an old-fashioned hourglass, could offer great advantages due to the system's low cost and the sim

It's as easy as riding a bike.. or so the saying goes. But how do we manage to stay upright on a bicycle? If anyone ventures an answer they most often say that it's because of the "gyroscopic effect" - but this can't be true.

ANN ARBOR-Despite greater coverage of driverless technology advancements the past couple of years, most Americans still prefer to drive themselves-at least partially, say University of Michigan researchers.

Travelling from Sydney to London in less than two hours is no longer a farfetched concept following a successful hypersonic test flight conducted by an international team, including University of Queensland researchers and students.

Researchers at Yale and in Europe are exploring a natural "cloaking" mechanism that allows certain elastic materials - think Jell-O, for instance - to imbibe substantial amounts of liquid droplets without changing their own mechanical properties. Writing in the May 18 online edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, John Wettlaufer and his colleagues expanded on previous work about surface tension to find the limits of such natural cloaking.

UW engineers for the first time have analyzed interactions between microscale granular crystals - which include up-and-down, horizontal, and rotational motion. Read more scientific details here. (GIF credit: Samuel Wallen/University of Washington) Designing materials that better respond to dynamic loading can help vehicles minimize vibration, better protect military convoys or potentially make buildings safer during an earthquake.

In April the U.S. Department of Defense announced awards to 23 research teams across the country to support groundbreaking projects at the intersection of engineering and scientific disciplines.