Saving Seeds the Right Way Can Save the World's Plants
Knoxville TN (SPX) Aug 01, 2014 -
Exotic pests, shrinking ranges and a changing climate threaten some of the world's most rare and ecologically important plants, and so conservationists establish seed collections to save the seeds in banks or botanical gardens in hopes of preserving some genetic diversity.
For decades, these seed collections have been guided by simple models that offer a one-size-fits-all approach for how ...
more
A new way to make microstructured surfaces
Boston MA (SPX) Jul 31, 2014 -
A team of researchers has created a new way of manufacturing microstructured surfaces that have novel three-dimensional textures. These surfaces, made by self-assembly of carbon nanotubes, could exhibit a variety of useful properties - including controllable mechanical stiffness and strength, or the ability to repel water in a certain direction.
"We have demonstrated that mechanical forces ...
more
Building the Foundation for Future Synthetic Biology Applications with BRICS
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 31, 2014 -
The development of increasingly sophisticated techniques and tools to sequence, synthesize and manipulate genetic material has led to the rapidly maturing discipline of synthetic biology. To date, work in synthetic biology has focused primarily on manipulating individual species of domesticated organisms to perform specific tasks, such as producing medicines or fuels.
These species tend to ...
more
Tough foam from tiny sheets
Houston TX (SPX) Jul 31, 2014 -
Tough, ultralight foam of atom-thick sheets can be made to any size and shape through a chemical process invented at Rice University. In microscopic images, the foam dubbed "GO-0.5BN" looks like a nanoscale building, with floors and walls that reinforce each other.
The structure consists of a pair of two-dimensional materials: floors and walls of graphene oxide that self-assemble with the ...
more
New gadget helps the vision impaired to read graphs
Perth, Australia (SPX) Jul 31, 2014 -
Opening up new career paths and educational opportunities for people with vision impairment, the system combines a number of pattern recognition technologies into a single platform and, for the first time, allows mathematics and graphical material to be extracted and described without sighted intervention.
Senior Lecturer Dr Iain Murray and PhD student Azadeh Nazemi of Curtin's Department ...
more
Vision-correcting display makes reading glasses so yesterday
Berkeley CA (SPX) Jul 31, 2014 -
What if computer screens had glasses instead of the people staring at the monitors? That concept is not too far afield from technology being developed by UC Berkeley computer and vision scientists. The researchers are developing computer algorithms to compensate for an individual's visual impairment, and creating vision-correcting displays that enable users to see text and images clearly without ...
more
Scientists separate a particle from its properties
Grenoble, France (SPX) Jul 31, 2014 -
Researchers from the Vienna University of Technology have performed the first separation of a particle from one of its properties. The study, carried out at the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL) and published in Nature Communications, showed that in an interferometer a neutron's magnetic moment could be measured independently of the neutron itself, thereby marking the first experimental observation ...
more
