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22 hours ago | News
Mars may have been arid for more than 600 million years, making it too hostile for any life to survive on the planet’s surface, according to researchers who have been carrying out the painstaking task of analyzing individual particles of Martian soil. The researchers have spent three years analyzing data on Martian soil that was collected during the 2008 NASA Phoenix mission to Mars.
Feb 3 | News
As the United States transitions away from a primarily petroleum-based transportation industry, a number of different alternative fuel sources—ethanol, biodiesel, electricity, and hydrogen—have each shown their own promise. Hoping to expand the pool even further, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have begun to investigate adding one more contender to the list of possible energy sources for light-duty cars and trucks: Compressed natural gas.
Feb 3 | News
A
team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers has
developed a
way of making a high-temperature version of a kind of materials called
photonic
crystals, using metals such as tungsten or tantalum. The new
materials—which
can operate at temperatures up to 1,200 C—could find a wide variety of
applications powering portable electronic devices, spacecraft to probe
deep
space, and new infrared light emitters that could be used as chemical
detectors
and sensors.
Feb 2 | News
A series of neutron scattering experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other research centers is exploring the key question about a long-sought quantum state of matter called supersolidity: Does it exist?
Feb 2 | News
A professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is turning the term "power plant" on its head. The biochemist and a team of researchers have developed a system that taps into photosynthetic processes to produce efficient and inexpensive energy.
Feb 2 | News
To improve the next generation of insect-size flying machines, Johns Hopkins engineers have been aiming high-speed video cameras at some of the prettiest bugs on the planet. By figuring out how butterflies flutter among flowers with amazing grace and agility, the researchers hope to help small airborne robots mimic these maneuvers.
Feb 2 | News
A Stanford University research team has designed a
high-efficiency charging system that uses magnetic fields to wirelessly
transmit large electric currents between metal coils placed several feet
apart.
The long-term goal of the research is to develop an all-electric highway
that
wirelessly charges cars and trucks as they cruise down the road.
Feb 2 | News
Researchers from the NIST Center
for Nanoscale Science and Technology have made a grating coupler that
transmits
over 45% of the incident optical energy from a plane wave into a single
surface
plasmon polariton (SPP) mode propagating on a flat gold surface, an
order-of-magnitude increase over any SPP grating coupler reported to
date.
Feb 1 | News
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers have developed a relatively fast, easy, and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods to self-assemble into aligned and ordered macroscopic structures. This technique should enable more effective use of nanorods in solar cells, magnetic storage devices, and sensors, and boost the electrical and mechanical properties of nanorod-polymer composites.
Feb 1 | News
Physicists at JILA have created the first "frequency comb" in the extreme ultraviolet band of the spectrum, high-energy light less than 100 nm in wavelength. In reaching the new band of the spectrum, the JILA experiments demonstrated for the first time a very fine mini-comb-like structure within each subunit, or harmonic, of the larger comb, drastically sharpening the measurement tool.
