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Mar 11 | News
Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Lab are analyzing 1,000 samples of biomass at a time, finding which one, combined with the right enzyme, most eagerly gives up its sugars to be converted into biofuel. Their work is part of an effort to meet federal regulations that require the U.S. produce 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022.
Mar 11 | News
An analysis of more than 70,000 galaxies by physicists in the U.S. and Switzerland demonstrates that the universe—at least up to a distance of 3.5 billion light years from Earth—plays by the rules set out 95 years ago by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity.
Mar 10 | News
For decades, the traditional practice in animal testing has been standardization, but a study involving Purdue Univ. has shown that adding as few as two controlled environmental variables to preclinical mice tests can greatly reduce costly false positives, the number of animals needed for testing and the cost of pharmaceutical trials.
Mar 10 | News
The Optical Society of America has highlighted an upcoming presentation at an annual optics conference San Diego in which the researchers from Germany will describe a method for encoding a wireless broadband signal through the light generated by a common household lamp. Visible-frequency signals have a tremendous advantage in bandwidth, and modulation would be so fast no one would notice the flickering.
Mar 9 | News
It’s been a busy time for seismologists, but massive earthquakes also provides work for experts in civil engineering, urban planning, architecture, geography, and social support. The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute had just published its team report of the magnitude 7.0 quake in Haiti when the Chilean city of Concepción was moved 10 feet to the west by the most recent 8.8 magnitude earthquake.
Mar 9 | News
What if space held the key to producing alternative energy crops on Earth? That's what researchers are hoping to find in a new experiment on the International Space Station. The experiment, National Lab Pathfinder-Cells 3, is aimed at learning whether microgravity can help jatropha curcas plant cells grow faster to produce biofuel, or renewable fuel derived from biological matter.
Mar 9 | News
A team of engineers from MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL) are working on tiny, low-power chips that could diagnose heart problems, monitor patients with Parkinson’s disease or predict seizures in epileptic patients.
Mar 9 | News
Scientists have made synthetic ‘sea shells’ from a mixture of chalk and polystyrene cups—and produced a tough new material that could make our homes and offices more durable.
Mar 8 | News
Today, at the world’s largest supercollider, all of the control rooms will be staffed by women. A brainstorm of Indiana Univ.'s Pauline Gagnon, the event is part of a larger observation of International Women’s Day and a celebration of the accomplishments of women in the highly technical field of high-energy physics.
Mar 8 | News
Most polymers—materials made of long, chain-like molecules—are very good insulators for both heat and electricity. But an MIT team has found a way to transform the most widely used polymer, polyethylene, into a material that conducts heat just as well as most metals, yet remains an electrical insulator.