Applied Physics

Can Professors Say The Truth?

Kaiping Peng, a friend of mine who is a professor at Berkeley, recently said to me that professors have an unusual place in our society: They are expected to tell the truth. Hardly anyone else is, he said. But what happens when they do? The most impressive ...

Article - Seth Roberts - Dec 19 2007 - 3:25pm

Coherent Optical Spectroscopy Breakthrough Means Better Encryption For Computers

By using pulses of light to dramatically accelerate quantum computers, University of Michigan researchers have made strides in technology that could foil national and personal security threats. It's a leap, they say, that could lead to tougher protect ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 16 2007 - 2:06pm

New Prion Protein May Offer Insight Into Mad Cow Disease

Scientists have discovered a new protein that may offer fresh insights into brain function in mad cow disease. “Our team has defined a second prion protein called ‘Shadoo’, that exists in addition to the well-known prion protein called ‘PrP’ ” said Profess ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 16 2007 - 2:08pm

Researchers Design Software That Recognizes Jokes- Sort Of

All bad jokes aside, their research represents a step forward in computers reaching the capability of a human mind. "This work has a relationship to 'Sociable Computing,'" says Larry Mazlack. "Currently, computers are often difficu ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 16 2007 - 2:20pm

Birds And Biofuel

A Virginia Tech researcher is working on a device to create biofuels from bird litter- bedding, manure, feathers, spilled feed and everything else on the floor of chicken coops. Foster Agblevor, associate professor of biological systems engineering, and a ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 19 2007 - 3:46pm

Rocket-Powered Mechanical Arm Could Revolutionize Prosthetics

Combine a mechanical arm with a miniature rocket motor: The result is a prosthetic device that is the closest thing yet to a bionic arm. A prototype of this radical design has been successfully developed and tested by a team of mechanical engineers at Vand ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 21 2007 - 9:39am

Rethinking Homogeneous Nucleation And The Magic Of Bubbles

Chemical engineers at Purdue believe they have discovered a fundamental flaw in the conventional view of how liquids form bubbles that grow and turn into vapors and that their findings cast into doubt some aspects of a theory dating back to the 1920s, said ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 22 2007 - 8:57pm

Engineers Perfecting Hydrogen-Generating Technology

Engineers at Purdue are working on technology that produces hydrogen by adding water to an alloy of aluminum and gallium. When water is added to the alloy, the aluminum splits water by attracting oxygen, liberating hydrogen in the process. The Purdue resea ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 27 2007 - 5:00pm

Milestone In Magnetic Cooling

Between 5 and 10 degrees of cooling was the success criteria for the first milestone in a project involving magnetic cooling at Risø National Laboratory – Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the first milestone has been achieved. The figure is curren ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 28 2007 - 7:00pm

Changing Goals Impacted Speed Of Evolution

New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science says that the pace of evolution might speed up if the goals themselves change continuously. Nadav Kashtan, Elad Noor and Prof. Uri Alon of the Institute’s Molecular Cell Biology and Physics of Complex Syste ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 28 2007 - 12:43am