Technology

‘Juiced-up’ Sugar-Fueled Battery Could Power Portable Electronics

Juicing up your cell phone or iPod may take on a whole new meaning in the future. Researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri have developed a fuel cell battery that runs on virtually any sugar source — from soft drinks to tree sap — and has the pot ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 26 2007 - 3:01pm

Was Henry Ford The Father Of The Assembly Line?

Henry Ford has long been heralded as the father of modern mass automotive production. However, a controversial new paper by two Cardiff University researchers suggests that history may have got the wrong man. Dr Paul Nieuwenhuis and Dr Peter Wells of the ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 5 2007 - 11:09am

Carnegie Mellon P2P System Promises Faster Downloads

A Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist says transferring large data files, such as movies and music, over the Internet could be sped up significantly if peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services were configured to share not only identical files, b ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 11 2007 - 1:00am

How Do We Measure Exposure To Airborne Nanomaterials

There will be 10 million workers in nanotechnology related jobs by 2014, according to Andrew Maynard and Robert Aitken. Measuring the health of these workers, and their exposure to airborne engineered nanomaterials, is vital. Maynard is chief science advi ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 17 2007 - 1:45pm

Mosquito Repellents That Emit High-pitched Sounds Don't Prevent Bites

A Cochrane Systematic Review of the use of electronic mosquito repellents (EMRs) failed to find any evidence that they work. The researchers therefore say that there is no reason for recommending their use, and that there is no reason for even trying to d ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 17 2007 - 7:06pm

Robotic Caterpillar Can Fix Hearts Without Major Surgery

This device, called HeartLander, can be inserted using minimally invasive keyhole surgery. Once in place, it will attach itself to the heart and begin inching its way across the outside of the organ, injecting drugs or attaching medical devices. In tests ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 18 2007 - 5:50pm

Terahertz Imaging From 25 Meters Away

Terahertz (THz) radiation, or far-infrared light, can penetrate clothing and other materials to provide images of concealed weapons, drugs, or other objects. However, THz scanners must usually be very close to the objects they are imaging because water va ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 29 2007 - 10:46pm

Fading Dinosaur Tracks Saved By Lasers

The Fumanya site, in the Bergueda region of central Catalonia, is so delicate that experts cannot get physically close enough to the tracks to examine them. In the years since the tracks were discovered they have been exposed to the elements, and as a resu ...

Article - News Staff - May 10 2007 - 10:07am

Marijuana That Won't Get You Busted

A smokeless cannabis-vaporizing device delivers the same level of active therapeutic chemical and produces the same biological effect as smoking cannabis, but without the harmful toxins, according to UCSF researchers. "We showed in a recent paper in t ...

Article - News Staff - May 15 2007 - 1:20pm

Fingerprints Can Now Reveal If You Do Drugs, Have A Disease Or Even If You Smoke

British scientists working with David A. Russell have made it possible to gain information about the lifestyle of a person from their fingerprint- this includes drug and doping transgressions, what foods have been consumed, diagnosis of diseases and they c ...

Article - News Staff - May 19 2007 - 8:49pm