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Monday, February 18, 2013

ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

ScienceDaily: Top Technology News


Affordable fuel cells closer: Synthetic molecule first electricity-making catalyst to use iron to split hydrogen gas

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 10:42 AM PST

To make fuel cells more economical, engineers want a fast and efficient iron-based molecule that splits hydrogen gas to make electricity. Researchers now report such a catalyst. It is the first iron-based catalyst that converts hydrogen directly to electricity. The result moves chemists and engineers one step closer to widely affordable fuel cells.

Engineers are catching rainbows: Material that slows light opens new possibilities in solar energy, other fields

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:52 AM PST

Engineers have created a more efficient way to catch rainbows, an advancement in photonics that could lead to technological breakthroughs in solar energy, stealth technology and other areas of research.

Highly flexible organic semiconductors: Research paves way for thin-sheet plastic displays or wearable electronics

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:52 AM PST

Physicists have demonstrated extremely flexible organic semiconductors that withstood multiple bending cycles in which the devices were rolled to a radius as small as 200 micrometers. The technology holds promise for making low-cost flexible electronics -- conceivably video displays that bend like book pages or roll and unroll like posters, or wearable circuitry sewn into uniforms or athletic wear.

Shifting sands: Force is the key to granular state-shifting

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:50 AM PST

Ever wonder why sand can both run through an hourglass like a liquid and be solid enough to support buildings? It's because granular materials -- like sand or dirt -- can change their behavior, or state. Researchers have found that the forces individual grains exert on one another are what most affect that transition.

Breakthrough architecture for quantum computers proposed

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:49 AM PST

Scientists have proposed a new computational model that may become the architecture for a scalable quantum computer.

'Bionic proteins': Nano-machines recreate protein activities

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:49 AM PST

Physicists have developed nano-machines which recreate principal activities of proteins. They present the first versatile and modular example of a fully artificial protein-mimetic model system. These "bionic proteins" could play an important role in innovating pharmaceutical research.

Brain prostheses create a sense of touch: Infrared signaling could create sense of touch in artificial limbs

Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:41 AM PST

Infrared sensing might be built into a whole-body prosthesis for paraplegics so patients wearing the "exoskeleton" could have sensory information about where their limbs are and how objects feel when they touch them.

Tough, light and strong: Lessons from nature could lead to the creation of new materials

Posted: 14 Feb 2013 11:18 AM PST

In a sweeping review of the field of bio-inspired engineering and biomimicry, two engineers have identified three characteristics of biological materials that they believe engineers would do well to emulate in human-made materials: light weight, toughness and strength.

Combining quantum information communication and storage

Posted: 14 Feb 2013 04:54 AM PST

Researchers in Finland have successfully connected a superconducting quantum bit, or qubit, with a micrometer-sized drum head. Thus they transferred information from the qubit to the resonator and back again.

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