• Universal Detection unveils radiation detection smartphone app

    Last week Universal Detection Technology unveiled its first generation smartphone app designed to detect nuclear radiation levels on a variety of surfaces including food

  • New paper gas detectors developed

    Researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, have developed a quick and simple way to detect the presence of nerve gases

  • Origami-inspired paper sensor tests for malaria, HIV for less than 10 cents

    Chemists have developed a 3-D paper sensor that may be able to test for diseases such as malaria and HIV for less than ten cents a pop; such low-cost, point-of-care sensors could be useful in the developing world, where the resources often do not exist to pay for lab-based tests, and where, even if the money is available, the infrastructure often does not exist to transport biological samples to the lab

  • Computer spots liars by looking at the way they talk

    Computer scientists are exploring whether machines can read the visual cues of an individual’s conduct to discover whether or not that individual is lying; in a study of forty videotaped conversations, an automated system the researchers developed correctly identified whether interview subjects were lying or telling the truth 82.5 percent of the time

  • Robot for shipboard firefighting

    In both war and peace, fire in the shipboard environment is serious and frequently results in excessive damage and high repair costs because the fire is not detected or controlled adequately; researchershave developed a humanoid robot that could fight fires on the next generation of combatants

  • National Academies calls for expanded nuclear-fusion research

    A report out on Wednesday from the National Academies says university researchers studying nuclear fusion still have a long way to go before overcoming the many scientific hurdles to the commercial generation of what is hoped to be a virtually limitless supply of energy

  • Solving the major problem of renewable energy: intermittency

    Intermittency, sometimes called the Achilles’ heel of renewable energy, has so far limited the penetration of renewable sources in most power grids; engineers imagine an energy future where giant transmission grids are backed up by massive energy storage units

  • Company develops telephone line “fingerprint” detector

    Researchers at Pindrop, a new security company, have developed technology that can read telephone line “fingerprints” to prevent fraud and identify a caller

  • Pasta-shaped radio waves beamed across Venice

    One solution to communication congestion during emergencies is to create a public safety-dedicated band of the spectrum, allowing for a unified and uninterrupted communication among first responders; another solution is twisting radio waves into the shape of fusilli pasta, allowing a potentially infinite number of channels to be broadcast and received

  • Poultry feathers-based filters remove arsenic from water

    Thousands of people die each year in developing countries from drinking arsenic-contaminated water; researchers develop inexpensive filters made from the modified protein (keratin) in poultry feathers to remove arsenic from drinking water

  • Energy from differences between salt- and fresh water – produced inland

    Production of energy from the difference between salt water and fresh water is most convenient near the oceans, but now, using an ammonium bicarbonate salt solution, researchers can combine bacterial degradation of waste water with energy extracted from the salt-water fresh-water gradient to produce power anywhere

  • Snake-emulating search-and-rescue robot

    An all-terrain robot for search-and-rescue missions must be flexible enough to move over uneven surfaces, yet not so big that it is restricted from tight spaces; it might also be required to climb slopes of varying inclines; researchers say the solution would be a search-and-rescue robot which emulates the locomotion of a certain type of flexible, efficient animals: snakes

  • Researchers develop record-breaking plastic solar cell

    Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have made a breakthrough with plastic solar cells, creating a record-breaking polymer cell that converts 10.6 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity

  • Physicists predict when brittle materials fail

    It does not happen often, but structures like bridges, airplanes, and buildings do fail, sometimes catastrophically; what are the odds, and how can it be prevented? Researchers just published new theoretical insights into the probability of structural failures, based on hundreds of thousands of computer simulations

  • Detecting explosives from a distance with laser beams

    Scientists have found a way to detect chemicals over long distances, even if they are enclosed in containers; the scientists tested the system by trying to detect frequently used explosives, such as TNT, ANFO, or RDX from a distance – and the tests were successful