Advance in Nanotech Gene Sequencing Technique

The allure of personalized medicine has made new, more efficient ways of sequencing genes a top research priority. One promising technique involves reading DNA bases using changes in electrical current as they are threaded through a nanoscopic hole

Now, a team led by University of Pennsylvania physicists has used solid-state nanopores to differentiate single-stranded DNA molecules containing sequences of a single repeating base. The study was led by Marija Drndić, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences, along with graduate students Kimberly Venta and Matthew Puster and... More »

New World Record in Wireless Data Transmission

Capacity of Fiber Optics Reached - Radio Links May Close Gaps in Future Broad-band Internet Supply

Researchers of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics and the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology have achieved the wireless transmission of 40 Gbit/s at 240 GHz over a distance of one kilometer. Their most recent demonstration sets a new world record and ties in seamlessly with the capacity of optical fiber transmission. In the future, such radio links will be able to close gaps... More »

Asteroid 1998 QE2 to Sail Past Earth Nine Times Larger Than Cruise Ship

On May 31, 2013, asteroid 1998 QE2 will sail serenely past Earth, getting no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon. And while QE2 is not of much interest to those astronomers and scientists on the lookout for hazardous asteroids, it is of interest to those who dabble in radar astronomy and have a 230-foot (70-meter)... More »

Skills learning program in middle schools dramatically reduces fighting

A social-emotional skills learning program for sixth-graders decreased physical fighting by 42 percent, suggests a study led by educational psychologist Dorothy Espelage in the College of Education.

Middle school children who completed a social-emotional skills learning program at school were 42 percent less likely to engage in physical fighting a year later, according to a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The study, which is ongoing, involves more than 3,600 children at 36 middle schools across Illinois and Kansas, the largest sample to date used to investigate the impact of a... More »

This Crawling Inchworm Robot Can Be Printed Out and Folds Itself

Building robots is difficult, expensive work. Wouldn’t it be great if robots could just somehow build themselves? We’ve seen robots that can be printed and robots that can be folded, but this little guy manages to do both of those things all by himself.

Self-folding happens thanks to shape memory polymers that contract when heated. By printing these polymers on one side of a hinged substrate and then heating them, the hinge can be made to bend. The amount of bend is controlled by etching flexible connectors that connect both sides of the hinge, and with enough hinges heated in the right order, it’s possible to create fairly complex folded... More »

Fat-fuelled power station to run UK’s biggest sewage works

Fat and oil from restaurants and build-ups in drains will soon be powering Britain’s biggest sewage works, it was announced today

According to plans, the grease will be fed into what will be the world's largest fat-fuelled power station at Beckton in East London. The plant, developed and run by 2OC and financed by a consortium led by iCON Infrastructure, is set to produce 130 Gigawatt hours (GWh) a year of renewable electricity - enough to run 39,000 average-sized homes. Thames Water has agreed to buy 75 GWh of this... More »

Reversing Paralysis with a Restorative Gel

Some parts of the body, like the liver, can regenerate themselves after damage. But others, such as our nervous system, are considered either irreparable or slow to recover, leaving thousands with a lifetime of pain, limited mobility, or even paralysis. Now a team of Tel Aviv University researchers, including Dr. Shimon Rochkind of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Tel Aviv Sourasky... More »

Photonic quantum computers: a brighter future than ever

Harnessing the unique features of the quantum world promises a dramatic speed-up in information processing as compared to the fastest classical machines. Scientists from the Group of Philip Walther from the Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna succeeded in prototyping a new and highly resource efficient model of a quantum computer – the boson sampling computer. The results will be... More »

Data storage: Synchronized at the write time

Numerical simulations show how to avoid imperfections in the next generation of high-density data storage

The rise of the internet and the move from paper to digital information has driven a need for large-volume electronic data storage. Maria Yu Lin and her co‐workers at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute, Singapore, have now established some important design principles to consider when developing bit patterned media recording (BPMR)1,2 — a potential high-density magnetic recording system of the... More »

NASA'S HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE FINDS DEAD STARS `POLLUTED' WITH PLANET DEBRIS

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks for Earth-sized planets in an unlikely place: the atmospheres of a pair of burned-out stars called white dwarfs.

These dead stars are located 150 light-years from Earth in a relatively young star cluster, Hyades, in the constellation Taurus. The star cluster is only 625 million years old. The white dwarfs are being polluted by asteroid-like debris falling onto them. Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph observed silicon and only low levels of carbon in the white dwarfs' atmospheres. Silicon is a... More »

Impacts of Strong Solar Flares

Given a legitimate need to protect Earth from the most intense forms of space weather -- great bursts of electromagnetic energy and particles that can sometimes stream from the sun -- some people worry that a gigantic "killer solar flare" could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth, but this is not actually possible. Solar activity is indeed currently ramping up toward what is known as... More »

Nano-breakthrough: Solving the case of the herringbone crystal

Leading nanoscientists created beautiful, tiled patterns with flat nanocrystals, but they were left with a mystery: Why did some sets of crystals arrange themselves in an alternating, herringbone style? To find out, they turned to experts in computer simulation at the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The result gives nanotechnology researchers a new tool for... More »

Flawed Diamonds Promise Sensory Perfection

From brain to heart to stomach, the bodies of humans and animals generate weak magnetic fields that a supersensitive detector could use to pinpoint illnesses, trace drugs – and maybe even read minds. Sensors no bigger than a thumbnail could map gas deposits underground, analyze chemicals, and pinpoint explosives that hide from other probes. Now scientists at the U.S. Department of... More »

Invelox wind turbine claims 600% advantage in energy output

SheerWind, a wind power company from Minnesota, USA, has announced the results of tests it has carried out with its new Invelox wind power generation technology. The company says that during tests its turbine could generate six times more energy than the amount produced by traditional turbines mounted on towers. Besides, the costs of producing wind energy with Invelox are lower, delivering... More »

The fluorescent future of solar cells

(Phys.org) —For some solar cells, the future may be fluorescent. Scientists at Yale have improved the ability of a promising type of solar cell to absorb light and convert it into electrical power by adding a fluorescent organic dye to the cell layer. This squaraine dye boosts light absorption and recycles electrons, improving the conversion of light into energy. The results suggest a new... More »