ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Superconductivity in orbit: Scientists find new path to loss-free electricity
• Cosmic roadmap to galactic magnetic field revealed
• Graphene's love affair with water: Water filters allow precise and fast sieving of salts and organic molecules
• America's natural gas system is leaking methane and in need of a fix
• Robotic construction crew needs no foreman
• Energy harvesting takes wing in merger of engineering and biology
• NASA moves longest-serving Mars spacecraft for new observations
• Light-induced degradation in amorphous silicon thin film solar cells
• Experiments on tiny gold prisms help to explain unusual electrodynamics of nanostructures
• Computers: Adding carbon gives iron–platinum nanocrystals ideal optical properties for heat-assisted magnetic recording
• Nanoparticles with a core–shell structure can minimize the overheating of cells during bioimaging experiments
• Simulating the magnetic properties of nanostructures could help to design electronic memories with increased storage capacity
• Science used to reveal masterpiece's true colors: Chemist uncovers paint details of Renoir masterpiece at Art Institute of Chicago
• Two Parents with Alzheimer's Disease? Disease May Show up Decades Early on Brain Scans
• Surgical implants: Implant stiffness is a major cause of foreign body reaction
• Capillaries will measure diffusion, help in more efficient medical treatment
• Robot may accelerate trials for stroke medications
• Pancreatic cancers now being treated with less invasive robotic surgical system

Superconductivity in orbit: Scientists find new path to loss-free electricity Posted: 13 Feb 2014 11:23 AM PST Researchers have combined atoms with multiple orbitals and precisely pinned down their electron distributions. Using advanced electron diffraction techniques, the scientists discovered that orbital fluctuations in iron-based compounds induce strongly coupled polarizations that can enhance electron pairing -- the essential mechanism behind superconductivity.

Cosmic roadmap to galactic magnetic field revealed Posted: 13 Feb 2014 11:22 AM PST Scientists report that recent, independent measurements have validated one of the IBEX mission's signature findings -- a mysterious "ribbon" of energy and particles at the edge of our solar system that appears to be a directional "roadmap in the sky" of the local interstellar magnetic field.

Graphene's love affair with water: Water filters allow precise and fast sieving of salts and organic molecules Posted: 13 Feb 2014 11:22 AM PST Graphene has proven itself as a wonder material with a vast range of unique properties. Among the least-known marvels of graphene is its strange love affair with water. Graphene is hydrophobic -- it repels water -- but narrow capillaries made from graphene vigorously suck in water allowing its rapid permeation, if the water layer is only one atom thick -- that is, as thin as graphene itself. This bizarre property has attracted intense academic and industrial interest with intent to develop new water filtration and desalination technologies.

America's natural gas system is leaking methane and in need of a fix Posted: 13 Feb 2014 11:22 AM PST The US natural gas system is letting more methane, a potent greenhouse gas, escape into the air than previously thought, a new study confirms.

Robotic construction crew needs no foreman Posted: 13 Feb 2014 11:21 AM PST On the plains of Namibia, millions of tiny termites are building a mound of soil—an 8-foot-tall "lung" for their underground nest. During a year of construction, many termites will live and die, wind and rain will erode the structure, and yet the colony's life-sustaining project will continue. Inspired by the termites' resilience and collective intelligence, a team of computer scientists and engineers has created an autonomous robotic construction crew. The system needs no supervisor, no eye in the sky, and no communication: just simple robots—any number of robots—that cooperate by modifying their environment.

Energy harvesting takes wing in merger of engineering and biology Posted: 13 Feb 2014 11:21 AM PST A bird flapping its wings or a fish's deep dive may be pictures of nature in action, but in their elegant simplicity scientists see the complex challenges of merging technology with a biological system. The motion of animals could power small devices that allow biologists to collect information about behavior that eludes them under the limitations of current technology.

NASA moves longest-serving Mars spacecraft for new observations Posted: 13 Feb 2014 09:55 AM PST NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has tweaked its orbit to help scientists make the first systematic observations of how morning fogs, clouds and surface frost develop in different seasons on the Red Planet.

Light-induced degradation in amorphous silicon thin film solar cells Posted: 13 Feb 2014 09:24 AM PST Researchers have taken a leap forward towards a deeper understanding of an undesired effect in thin film solar cells based on amorphous silicon -- one that has puzzled the scientific community for the last 40 years. The researchers were able to demonstrate that tiny voids within the silicon network are partly responsible for reducing solar cell efficiency by some 10 to 15 percent as soon as you start using them.

Experiments on tiny gold prisms help to explain unusual electrodynamics of nanostructures Posted: 13 Feb 2014 09:16 AM PST Nanoplasmonics -- the study of light manipulation on the nanometer scale -- has contributed to the production of novel devices for chemical and biological sensing, signal processing and solar energy. However, components at such small scales experience strange effects that classical electrodynamics cannot explain. A particular challenge for theorists lies in isolating so-called 'nonlocal' effects, whereby the optical properties of a particle are not constant but depend on nearby electromagnetic fields.

Computers: Adding carbon gives iron–platinum nanocrystals ideal optical properties for heat-assisted magnetic recording Posted: 13 Feb 2014 09:16 AM PST The disk drive in a computer works by using a magnetic field to change the physical properties of a tiny volume of a magnetically susceptible material. Current research aims to develop novel materials and technologies that can maximize storage capacity by focusing data into the smallest possible volume.

Nanoparticles with a core–shell structure can minimize the overheating of cells during bioimaging experiments Posted: 13 Feb 2014 09:16 AM PST Upconversion nanoparticles -- new types of luminescent nanomaterials that release high-energy photons after laser light stimulation -- can penetrate deeper into tissue and are more photochemically stable than conventional bioimaging agents, such as quantum dots and organic dyes. Luminescent nanocrystals doped or impregnated with small amounts of rare-earth ytterbium (Yb) ions are particularly effective at photon upconversion. The specific lasers used to excite Yb dopants, however, can also heat water molecules in biological samples causing cell death or tissue damage.

Simulating the magnetic properties of nanostructures could help to design electronic memories with increased storage capacity Posted: 13 Feb 2014 09:16 AM PST Scientists hope that patterning magnetic materials with nanometer-scale structures will help the development of non-volatile electronic memories with large storage capacities and no moving parts. So-called magnetoresistive random access memories are one example. But material properties at such tiny dimensions are not always the same as those of larger structures.

Science used to reveal masterpiece's true colors: Chemist uncovers paint details of Renoir masterpiece at Art Institute of Chicago Posted: 13 Feb 2014 08:27 AM PST Chemists have been using a powerful scientific method to investigate masterpieces by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Winslow Homer and Mary Cassatt. They recently identified the chemical components of paint, now partially faded, used by Renoir in his painting "Madame Léon Clapisson." The artist used carmine lake, a brilliant but light-sensitive red pigment.

Two Parents with Alzheimer's Disease? Disease May Show up Decades Early on Brain Scans Posted: 12 Feb 2014 01:43 PM PST People who are dementia-free but have two parents with Alzheimer's disease may show signs of the disease on brain scans decades before symptoms appear, according to a new study.

Surgical implants: Implant stiffness is a major cause of foreign body reaction Posted: 12 Feb 2014 10:28 AM PST Surgical implants are widely used in modern medicine but their effectiveness is often compromised by how our bodies react to them. Now, scientists have discovered that implant stiffness is a major cause of this so-called foreign body reaction.

Capillaries will measure diffusion, help in more efficient medical treatment Posted: 12 Feb 2014 06:33 AM PST How strongly do two dissolved analytes react with each other? Such information is of paramount importance not only in chemistry and molecular biology, but also in medicine or pharmacy, where it is used, such as in the determination of optimal drug doses. A new method will allow for determining diffusion coefficients of analytes in fluids and equilibrium constants of reactions – quickly, at low cost, and most importantly: universally.

Robot may accelerate trials for stroke medications Posted: 11 Feb 2014 08:38 AM PST A new study's authors found that by using a robot's measurements to gauge patient performance, companies might only have to test 240 patients to determine whether a drug works -- a reduction of 70 percent that would translate to a similar reduction in time and cost.

Pancreatic cancers now being treated with less invasive robotic surgical system Posted: 11 Feb 2014 06:39 AM PST The Whipple procedure, used to remove tumors from pancreatic cancer patients, is one of surgery's most extensive and challenging operations. Now, surgeons are using a minimally invasive robotic surgical system to perform the surgery.

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