University of Utah engineers have shown off a wireless network of radio transmitters that can track people moving behind solid walls, which may help police grab intruders or rescue hostages and might also help retail marketing and border control.

Their method uses radio tomographic imaging (RTI), which can "see," locate and track moving people or objects in an area surrounded by inexpensive radio transceivers that send and receive signals. People don't need to wear radio-transmitting ID tags.

A company called Yellow Diesel B.V. says they have succeeded in producing biodiesel in a continuous fixed-bed micro plant based on heterogeneous catalysis, which provides pure biodiesel plus a cosmetics/food grade glycerol with much lower waste streams. 

Their process eliminates all the aqueous waste streams that stem from using the conventional homogeneous acid/base catalyst technology.   Combined with integrated process design, they claim the process saves up to 40% of the capital costs and 30% of the operating costs compared to a conventional plant.

Yellow Diesel has produced the biodiesel in its continuous micro plant, and is now scaling up the process to pilot-scale.

Researchers have developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, except on a nano scale and the resulting biomaterial could also be used to make optically active structures, such as optical diffusers for solar panels, they say.

Insects' colors and their iridescence (the ability to change colors depending on the angle) or their ability to appear metallic are determined by tiny nano-sized photonic structures (1 nanometer = 10^-9 m) which can be found in their cuticle. Scientists have focused on these biostructures to develop devices with light emitting properties.  Their work was presented in the journal Bioinspiration&Biomimetics.

Can diet make you less likely to develop depression?   A new report from the University of Navarra published in Archives of General Psychiatry. says people who follow 'Mediterranean dietary pattern' heavier in nuts and fish appear less likely to develop depression.

There is lower prevalence of diagnosed depression in Mediterranean countries than northern European ones, for example, though that could also be a cultural issue - a hundred years ago there was almost no diagnoses in the US because doctors did not diagnose it.

Everyone knows about being an organ donor - you may even have a little sticker saying it's okay for doctors to remove parts from you in order to save someone else.   Pacemaker donations from funeral homes are less well known but patients who received refurbished pacemakers in the Philiipinnes have survived without complications, according to a case series reported by the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center.

A narrow focus on carbon dioxide has long focused attention of the political and economic motivations of the European countries behind treaties like the Kyoto protocol rather than the science data and what parameters are needed to make climate simulations truly accurate.

Now that the fad aspects of global warming are behind us, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have taken a step to make better climate simulation.   Their results, published in Biogeosciences, illustrate the complexity of climate modeling by demonstrating how natural processes still have a strong effect on the carbon cycle and climate simulations.