Modeling
Engineers fly the world’s first ‘printed’ aircraft
July 28, 2011 8:19 am | News | CommentsImprovements in laser sintering technology has allowed University of Southampton’s experimental aircraft to not only be printed, but also to be built using no fasteners. The craft, which has a 6-foot wingspan, recently achieved 100 mph in testing.
Efficacy of cool roofs varies from city to city
July 26, 2011 12:08 pm | by Julie Chao | News | CommentsThe R&D Daily recently featured the new cool roof being installed at the historic Stanford Linear Accelerator Center dome at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. But not all cool roofs yield the same results in cooling, and Berkeley Lab has now conducted a nationwide study to map the variations.
Modeling plant metabolism to optimize oil production
July 26, 2011 5:29 am | News | CommentsScientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a computational model for analyzing the metabolic processes in rapeseed plants—particularly those related to the production of oils in their seeds. Their goal is to find ways to optimize the production of plant oils that have widespread potential as renewable resources for fuel and industrial chemicals.
Next Mars rover will land in 96-mile-wide crater
July 25, 2011 11:16 am | by John Antczak, Associated Press | News | CommentsGale Crater was chosen as the target for the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission after an extensive review of dozens of potential sites. NASA chose this site because they believe they have located the boundary where life may have sprung up and where it may have been extinguished.
CANARY in the computer protects water from terrorism, contaminants
July 25, 2011 6:29 am | News | CommentsAfter earning an R&D 100 Award in 2010 for its continuous water quality analysis software system, aptly dubbed CANARY, Sandia National Laboratories reports that a number of cities from Cincinnati to Singapore are now using it, and they believe the free software could benefit a great many more utilities.
Ocean rising may continue even after warming stops
July 18, 2011 12:48 pm | by Daniel Stolte | News | CommentsResearchers have found that melting ice sheets contributed much more to rising sea levels than thermal expansion of warming ocean waters during the Last Interglacial Period. The results further suggest that ocean levels continue to rise long after warming of the atmosphere levels off.
The tallest tree in the land
July 18, 2011 4:54 am | by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office | News | CommentsKnowing how tall trees can grow in any given region can give ecologists a wealth of information, from the potential density of a forest and size of its tree canopy to the amount of carbon stored in woodlands and the overall health of an ecosystem. Now an MIT-led team has come up with a simple model to predict the maximum tree height in different environments across the United States.
1888 Edison recording may be first talking doll try
July 15, 2011 9:06 am | by Josh Lederman, Associated Press | News | CommentsBerkeley Lab researchers have recently recovered a 123-year-old recording made by Thomas Edison that is believed to be the world's first attempt at a talking doll and may mark the dawn of the American recording industry.
Scientists model physics of a key dark-energy probe
July 13, 2011 6:34 am | News | CommentsOhio State University researchers are leveraging powerful supercomputers to investigate one of the key observational probes of "dark energy," the mysterious energy form that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate over time.
Simple processing flaws degrade electronic properties of graphene
July 8, 2011 5:25 am | News | CommentsUsing a combination of sophisticated computer modeling and advanced materials analysis techniques at synchrotron laboratories, a research team led by the University at Buffalo (UB) has demonstrated how some relatively simple processing flaws can seriously degrade the otherwise near-magical electronic properties of graphene.
Scripps researchers discover new force driving Earth's tectonic plates
July 6, 2011 12:23 pm | News | CommentsScientists who study tectonic motions have known for decades that the ongoing "pull" and "push" movements of the plates are responsible for sculpting continental features around the planet. Now, evidence has been presented to support the idea that hot spots of magma plumes from deep in the Earth could propel plate motions around the globe.
Pushing the boundary with high carbon emission scenarios
July 5, 2011 5:01 am | News | CommentsUS and Swiss researchers have, for the first time, modeled a climate system with extremely high carbon emissions in an attempt to test the boundaries of the current computer simulation programs that inform us.
Increased production of sulfur compound tied to climate change
June 24, 2011 11:53 am | News | CommentsAn organic compound that smells like cabbage and has been called the "smell of the sea" could be more sensitive to global climate change than commonly believed. In a recent report, a Livermore researcher, along with colleagues from Los Alamos and Oak Ridge national laboratories and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, found through computer modeling that dimethyl sulfide (DMS) will increase significantly in certain parts of the ocean and decrease in others if the world continues with a business-as-usual fossil fuel dependency.
Pinpointing cyanobacterial genes that capture the sun's energy
June 23, 2011 10:57 am | News | CommentsA new computer model of blue-green algae can predict which of the organism's genes are central to capturing energy from sunlight and other critical processes.
The best animators know their physics
June 14, 2011 7:07 am | News | CommentsPhysicist Alejandro Garcia, a professor at San Jose State Univ., advises DreamWorks animators on how to create believable characters. With physics in mind, he and other scientists help animators make people walk right, dragons fly right, and explosions look real.
New parallelization technique boosts ability to model biological systems
June 9, 2011 10:01 am | News | CommentsResearchers at North Carolina State Univ. have developed a new technique for using multi-core chips more efficiently, significantly enhancing a computer’s ability to build computer models of biological systems. The technique improved the efficiency of algorithms used to build models of biological systems more than seven-fold, creating more realistic models that can account for uncertainty and biological variation.
New method simplifies complex fluids for the first time
June 2, 2011 1:26 pm | News | CommentsA European research team has developed a microscopic theory that describes the interactions between the various components of a complex polymer mixture. Now that it has been experimentally proven by physicists through neutron scattering, the technique can be used to describe difficult fluids and draw realistic conclusions about the liquid’s behavior on the macroscopic scale.
A hot body could help ships reduce drag, save fuel
June 2, 2011 8:04 am | News | CommentsIn revisiting the 255 year-old Leidenfrost effect, which describes how a liquid produces an insulating vapor layer when contacting a solid hotter than its boiling point, researchers at the University of Melbourne and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia have found a new way to reduce drag on large ships.
Randomness rules in turbulent flows
June 2, 2011 7:57 am | News | CommentsRecent studies of turbulent flow phenomena by a Johns Hopkins Univ. engineer have resulted in the astonishing proof of "spontaneous stochasticity", which basically means that objects placed in a turbulent flow – even objects that are identical and which are dropped into the same spot – will end up in different places. The study also upended a long-held belief about the “flux freezing” of magnetic lines those same flows.
Noise research to combat 'wind turbine syndrome'
June 1, 2011 5:57 am | News | CommentsUniv. of Adelaide acoustics researchers are investigating the causes of wind turbine noise with the aim of making them quieter and solving 'wind turbine syndrome'. They are also developing a computer model to predict the noise output from wind farms so they can accurately and quickly assess the effectiveness of potential noise-reducing designs and control methods.
Science can't design away tornadoes' deadly threat
May 31, 2011 7:49 am | by Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer | News | CommentsWhether 2011 has set a modern record for tornado deaths is still unclear, but the severity of this year’s storms has left little doubt about the inability of current science to provide adequate forecasting. Warnings have improved from the addition of weather radar throughout the country in the 1990s, but even 20 minutes of advance notice hasn’t helped in some cases.
Unusual earthquake gave Japan tsunami extra punch
May 24, 2011 11:54 am | by Louis Bergeron | News | CommentsThe earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11 were generated on a fault that didn't rupture in the usual fashion, according to a study by researchers at Stanford Univ. and the Univ. of Tokyo. The quake’s motion amplified fault slip near the surface, causing violent seafloor sediment deformations previously seen only in computer simulations.
How much radioactivity is in the oceans?
May 24, 2011 6:25 am | News | CommentsSome scientists have debated the actual severity of the nuclear power plant incident at Fukushima Dai-ichi, but its impact on the ocean is no question much greater than that of Chernobyl. Now, researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are starting to build a global database of baseline levels of marine radionuclides so they can be more accurately tracked in the future.
COMSOL expands multiphysics with Version 4.2
May 20, 2011 1:37 pm | Product Releases | CommentsThe latest version of the COMSOL Multiphysics simulation environment was recently launched by Burlington, Mass.-based COMSOL Inc. According to the company, core multiphysics improvements have accelerated simulation performance across the platform, and three new applications modules have been added.
Study: Earth's core is melting and freezing
May 18, 2011 12:07 pm | News | CommentsThe Earth is cooling from the inside out, causing the inner core of iron to slowing solidify. But research have brought scientists to the realization that the core is also undergoing melting. Using a computer model of convection in the outer core, together with seismology data, researchers now believe they know how and why the inner core does this.
