Technology

The UK spends around £2.5 billion each year on dental materials to replace or strengthen teeth*. The Chewing Robot is a new biologically inspired way to test dental materials and it will be shown to the public for the first time at this year’s Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition [30 June to 4 July].
Researchers at [...]

The holographic structure on the frisbee glistens colorfully. It is unique to this batch and makes the product forgery-proof. Explosives are used to emboss the original pattern into the injection moulding tool. This method can be used to give copy protection to industrial goods, and also mass-produced goods such as DVDs or medical pills and [...]

Physicists have found a way to drastically prolong the shelf life of quantum bits, the 0s and 1s of quantum computers.
These precarious bits, formed in this case by arrays of semiconductor quantum dots containing a single extra electron, are easily perturbed by magnetic field fluctuations from the nuclei of the atoms creating the quantum dot. [...]

A summer barbecue by the lake — as the sausages sizzle on the grill some of the party would like to watch the soccer on TV. Today, a choice has to be made whether to stay by the lake or watch the match on a big public screen or the TV set at home. In [...]

New research by a team of University of Toronto scientists could lead to substantial advancements in the performance of a variety of electronic devices including digital cameras. The paper appears in the June 19 edition of the journal Science.
Researchers created a light sensor — like a pixel in a digital camera — that benefits from [...]

Inspired by the behavior of the human eye, Boston College computer scientists have developed a technique that lets computers see objects as fleeting as a butterfly or tropical fish with nearly double the accuracy and 10 times the speed of earlier methods.
The linear solution to one of the most vexing challenges to advancing computer vision [...]

A study of stickers peeling from windows could lead to a new way to precisely control the fabrication of stretchable electronics, according to a team of researchers including one at MIT.
Stretchable electronics, which would enable electronic devices embedded into clothing, surgical gloves, electronic paper or other flexible materials, have proven difficult to engineer because the [...]

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed an “electronic glue” that could accelerate advances in semiconductor-based technologies, including solar cells and thermoelectric devices that convert sun light and waste heat, respectively, into useful electrical energy.
Semiconductors have served as choice materials for many electronic and optical devices because of their [...]

A new study appearing in Neurology and Urodynamics evaluates the use of a daytime diaper that uses a musical “wetting alarm” for children in day-care centers. The findings show that wetting alarm diaper training is an effective option for toilet training in a child-friendly way.
Thirty-nine healthy young children between 18 and 30 months old were [...]

An electronic diagnostic tool called the SmartPill is swallowed by patients in order to take measurements as it travels through the gastrointestinal tract. A new study by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center used the device in patients with mild to moderate ulcerative colitis (UC), determining that they have significantly more acidic pH in their [...]

When it comes to data storage, density and durability have always moved in opposite directions - the greater the density the shorter the durability. For example, information carved in stone is not dense but can last thousands of years, whereas today’s silicon memory chips can hold their information for only a few decades. Researchers with [...]

A team of physicists and engineers at Bristol University has demonstrated exquisite control of single particles of light — photons — on a silicon chip to make a major advance towards long-sought-after quantum technologies, including super-powerful quantum computers and ultra-precise measurements.
The Bristol Centre for Quantum Photonics has demonstrated precise control of four photons using a [...]

MIT engineers have built a fast, ultra-broadband, low-power radio chip, modeled on the human inner ear, that could enable wireless devices capable of receiving cell phone, Internet, radio and television signals.
Rahul Sarpeshkar, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and his graduate student, Soumyajit Mandal, designed the chip to mimic the inner ear, or [...]

In nature, trees pull vast amounts of water from their roots up to their leaves hundreds of feet above the ground through capillary action, but now scientists at the University of Rochester have created a simple slab of metal that lifts liquid using the same principle — but does so at a speed that would [...]

An ultra-powerful laser can turn regular incandescent light bulbs into power-sippers, say optics researchers at the University of Rochester. The process could make a light as bright as a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb while remaining far cheaper and radiating a more pleasant light than a fluorescent bulb can.
The laser process [...]

UGR researchers Miguel Delgado, Waldo Fajardo, and Miguel Molina decided to design a software programme that would enable a person who knew nothing about composition to create music. The system they devised, using AI, is called Inmamusys, an acronym for Intelligent Multiagent Music System, and is able to compose and play music in real time.
If [...]

Researchers have created a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in “transformation optics.”
Whereas previous cloaking designs have used exotic “metamaterials,” which require complex nanofabrication, the new [...]

A new sponge-like material that is black, brittle and freeze-dried (just like the ice cream astronauts eat) can pull off some pretty impressive feats. Designed by Northwestern University chemists, it can remove mercury from polluted water, easily separate hydrogen from other gases and, perhaps most impressive of all, is a more effective catalyst than the [...]

An NSERC-funded lab at the University Of Waterloo has laid the groundwork for a lithium battery that can store and deliver more than three times the power of conventional lithium ion batteries.
The research team of professor Linda Nazar, graduate student David Xiulei Ji and postdoctoral fellow Kyu Tae Lee are one of the first to [...]

For more than a decade, scientists have been frustrated in their attempts to create continuously emitting light sources from individual molecules because of an optical quirk called “blinking,” but now scientists at the University of Rochester have uncovered the basic physics behind the phenomenon, and along with researchers at the Eastman Kodak Company, created a [...]