Earth's water is older than the sun
Washington DC (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
Water was crucial to the rise of life on Earth and is also important to evaluating the possibility of life on other planets. Identifying the original source of Earth's water is key to understanding how life-fostering environments come into being and how likely they are to be found elsewhere.
New work from a team including Carnegie's Conel Alexander found that much of our Solar System's wat ...
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Japan, Mexico to join UN peacekeeping
United Nations, United States (AFP) Sept 26, 2014 -
Japan and Mexico will contribute troops to UN peacekeeping, a top UN official said Friday following a top-level meeting aimed at shoring up blue-helmet missions worldwide.
Sweden announced plans to send 250 troops to join the UN force in Mali and China said it would send a 700-strong infantry battalion to South Sudan among other pledges at the meeting chaired by US Vice President Joe Biden. ...
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New Mexico dig unearths new ankylosaur dino species
Santa Fe, N.M. (UPI) Sep 25, 2014 -
As they seem to do every week, scientists unveiled yet another new type of dinosaur on Wednesday - this one discovered in 2011 by a joint team of diggers from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science and the State Museum of Pennsylvania.
The new dino is called Ziapelta sanjuanensis and it warranted the creation of a new genus of armored dinosaurs, or ankylosaurs. Other type ...
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EU wants Greece fined over toxic waste
Brussels (AFP) Sept 25, 2014 -
The European Union called Thursday for cash-strapped Greece to be fined nearly 15 million euros ($19 million) for failing to dispose of hazardous waste properly.
The European Commission, the EU's executive, recommended that Athens be fined by the European Court of Justice for not complying with a 2009 ruling.
It said Greece lacked a management plan to dispose of material like medical was ...
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US announces world's largest marine sanctuary
Washington (AFP) Sept 25, 2014 -
The United States on Thursday announced the creation of the world's largest marine sanctuary in the Pacific, where commercial fishing and energy exploration are off limits.
The move expands the already existing Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument - west of Hawaii and northeast of Australia - to six times its previous size.
"We're talking about an area of ocean that's nearly ...
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California burns -- and there's worse to come
Los Angeles (AFP) Sept 26, 2014 -
Wildfires are nothing new in California. But in the third year of a historic drought, the tinder-dry western US state is battling near-record numbers of blazes.
And the normal fire season has only just begun.
Nearly 7,500 firefighters are currently struggling to douse the so-called King Fire east of Sacramento which has forced almost 3,000 people to evacuate as it rages across an area bi ...
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Six Nobel laureates boycott summit over Dalai Lama visa
Cape Town (AFP) Sept 25, 2014 -
Six Nobel peace laureates will boycott a global summit in South Africa next month after the government refused to grant the Dalai Lama a visa, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
South Africa denied Tibet's exiled spiritual leader permission to attend the summit to avoid angering China, which regards the Buddhist monk as a campaigner for Tibetan independence.
Six women will boycott the World Su ...
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UN confronts deadly Ebola epidemic
United Nations, United States (AFP) Sept 25, 2014 -
World leaders gathered at the United Nations heard dire warnings and desperate pleas for assistance Thursday as the deadly Ebola virus forced Sierra Leone to quarantine a million people.
US President Barack Obama led calls for a ramped up response to the growing West African outbreak, urging governments, businesses and international organizations to join the fight.
The United Nations di ...
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Sierra Leone quarantines one million ahead of UN Ebola talks
Freetown (AFP) Sept 25, 2014 -
Sierra Leone began a quarantine of more than one million people Thursday in the largest open-ended lockdown in the Ebola outbreak, as world leaders met to discuss the crisis at the United Nations.
The northern districts of Port Loko and Bombali have been closed off indefinitely along with the southern district of Moyamba - effectively sealing in around 1.2 million people.
With the easte ...
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More than 30 in 'cardiac arrest' on Japan volcano: police
Otaki, Japan (AFP) Sept 28, 2014 -
More than 30 hikers were found in "cardiac arrest" near the peak of an erupting volcano in Japan Sunday, police said, using a term usually applied before doctors can certify death.
Rescue workers found them near the summit of 3,067-metre (10,121-foot) Mount Ontake, which erupted around noon on Saturday.
"We have confirmed that more than 30 individuals in cardiac arrest have been found ne ...
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Graphene imperfections key to creating hypersensitive 'electronic nose'
Chicago IL (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
Researchers have discovered a way to create a highly sensitive chemical sensor based on the crystalline flaws in graphene sheets. The imperfections have unique electronic properties that the researchers were able to exploit to increase sensitivity to absorbed gas molecules by 300 times.
The study is available online in advance of print in Nature Communications.
Amin Salehi- Khojin, a ...
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Smallest possible diamonds form ultra-thin nanothreads
University Park PA (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
For the first time, scientists have discovered how to produce ultra-thin "diamond nanothreads" that promise extraordinary properties, including strength and stiffness greater than that of today's strongest nanotubes and polymers. A paper describing this discovery by a research team led by John V. Badding, a professor of chemistry at Penn State University, will be published in the journal Nature ...
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University of Utah engineers unlock potential for faster computing
Salt Lake City UT (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
University of Utah engineers discovered a way to create a special material - a metal layer on top of a silicon semiconductor - that could lead to cost-effective, superfast computers that perform lightning-fast calculations but don't overheat.
This new "topological insulator" behaves like an insulator on the inside but conducts electricity on the outside and may pave the way for quantum com ...
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Quick-change materials break the silicon speed limit for computers
Cambridge, UK (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
Faster, smaller, greener computers, capable of processing information up to 1,000 times faster than currently available models, could be made possible by replacing silicon with materials that can switch back and forth between different electrical states.
The present size and speed limitations of computer processors and memory could be overcome by replacing silicon with 'phase-change materi ...
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Future flexible electronics based on carbon nanotubes
Washington DC (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and Northwestern University have demonstrated a new method to improve the reliability and performance of transistors and circuits based on carbon nanotubes (CNT), a semiconductor material that has long been considered by scientists as one of the most promising successors to silicon for smaller, faster and cheaper electronic devices.
The re ...
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Blackout? Robots to the Rescue
Houghton MI (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
Big disasters almost always result in big power failures. Not only do they take down the TV and fridge, they also wreak havoc with key infrastructure like cell towers. That can delay search and rescue operations at a time when minutes count.
Now, a team led by Nina Mahmoudian of Michigan Technological University has developed a tabletop model of a robot team that can bring power to places ...
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New discovery could pave the way for spin-based computing
Pittsburgh PA (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
Electricity and magnetism rule our digital world. Semiconductors process electrical information, while magnetic materials enable long-term data storage.
A University of Pittsburgh research team has discovered a way to fuse these two distinct properties in a single material, paving the way for new ultrahigh density storage and computing architectures.
While phones and laptops rely on ...
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Engineers show light can play seesaw at the nanoscale
Minneapolis MN (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
University of Minnesota electrical engineering researchers have developed a unique nanoscale device that for the first time demonstrates mechanical transportation of light. The discovery could have major implications for creating faster and more efficient optical devices for computation and communication.
The research paper by University of Minnesota electrical and computer engineering ass ...
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World's smallest reference material is big plus for nanotechnology
Washington DC (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
If it's true that good things come in small packages, then the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can now make anyone working with nanoparticles very happy. NIST recently issued Reference Material (RM) 8027, the smallest known reference material ever created for validating measurements of these man-made, ultrafine particles between 1 and 100 nanometers (billionths of a meter) ...
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Toward optical chips
Boston MA (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
Chips that use light, rather than electricity, to move data would consume much less power - and energy efficiency is a growing concern as chips' transistor counts rise.
Of the three chief components of optical circuits - light emitters, modulators, and detectors - emitters are the toughest to build. One promising light source for optical chips is molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), which has exce ...
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Oxides Discovered by CCNY Team Could Advance Memory Devices
New York NY (SPX) Sep 26, 2014 -
The quest for the ultimate memory device for computing may have just taken an encouraging step forward. Researchers at The City College of New York led by chemist Stephen O'Brien have discovered new complex oxides that exhibit both magnetic and ferroelectric properties.
Combining both properties is very exciting scientifically for the coupling that can occur between them and for the device ...
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Fingertip sensor gives robot unprecedented dexterity
Boston MA (SPX) Sep 25, 2014 -
Researchers at MIT and Northeastern University have equipped a robot with a novel tactile sensor that lets it grasp a USB cable draped freely over a hook and insert it into a USB port.
The sensor is an adaptation of a technology called GelSight, which was developed by the lab of Edward Adelson, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Vision Science at MIT, and first described in 2009.
...
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New RFID technology helps robots find household objects
Atlanta GA (SPX) Sep 25, 2014 -
Mobile robots could be much more useful in homes, if they could locate people, places and objects. Today's robots usually see the world with cameras and lasers, which have difficulty reliably recognizing things and can miss objects that are hidden in clutter. A complementary way robots can "sense" what is around them is through the use of small ultra-high frequency radio-frequency identification ...
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Soft robotics 'toolkit' features everything a robot-maker needs
Boston MA (SPX) Sep 25, 2014 -
A new resource unveiled by researchers from several Harvard University labs in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin provides both experienced and aspiring researchers with the intellectual raw materials needed to design, build, and operate robots made from soft, flexible materials.
With the advent of low-cost 3D printing, laser cutters, and other advances in manufacturing technology, ...
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