Tag: physical sciences
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U.K. Universities Form Advanced Materials Consortium
The universities of Manchester, Cambridge, and Lancaster in the U.K. received funding from the European Research Council to develop new two-dimensional materials similar to graphene. The €13.4 million ($US17.7 million) grant was awarded to the three institutions under the council’s Synergy Grant initiative. The universities will form what they call a Synergy Group to support…
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R&D Project Aims To Cut Time, Cost of Solar Installations
A new research and development project led by North Carolina State University in Raleigh seeks to reduce the time and cost of installing rooftop solar energy systems. The five-year, $9 million grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy to a consortium of NC State’s FREEDM Systems Center — an energy engineering research lab…
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Merck, GE Healthcare Partner on Alzheimer’s Treatment Trial
The pharmaceutical company Merck and GE Healthcare, the medical technologies unit of General Electric, are collaborating in a clinical trial of Merck’s drug candidate for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The trial is testing Merck’s compound known as MK-8931, a beta amyloid precursor protein site cleaving enzyme inhibitor. The accumulation of beta amyloid proteins in…
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Portable Air Pollution Sensors Built Into Smartphones
Computer scientists at University of California in San Diego created pollution sensors that monitor air quality in real time on smartphones. CitiSense, as the sensor system is called, comes from the lab of computer scientist William Griswold that described the system at the Wireless Health 2012 conference in October, also in San Diego. The sensors…
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University, Company Share Ion Detection Technology Patent
University of Texas at Arlington and Dionex Corporation in Sunnyvale, California recently received a patent for a new process that detects the charge of ions in a solution, and can enable more sensitive testing for compounds in water, food, and chemicals. Patent 8,293,099 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was awarded in late October…
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Nanotech Fibers Remove Sulfur from Petroleum Fuels
Engineering and chemical researchers at University of Illinois in Champaign developed a nanoscale fiber that, when woven into a material, can adsorb sulfur from petroleum-based fuels more efficiently than current methods. The team from the labs of chemistry professor Prashant Jain and the late engineering professor Mark Shannon published their findings online in the journal…
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Miniature Robots Being Developed to Work in Swarms
A computer science lab at University of Colorado in Boulder is building a miniature, limited-function robot designed to work in a swarm of similar devices. Computer science professor Nikolaus Correll and colleagues are building these small devices that they call droplets as building blocks for increasingly complex systems. Correll, with lab research associate Dustin Reishus…
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Method Devised to Reliably Capture Circulating Cancer Cells
Engineering and medical researchers at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with colleagues in China developed a simple technique to capture circulating cancer cells believed to spread cancer from the original tumor to other parts of the body. The team from the labs of Michigan breast cancer researcher Sofia Merajver (pictured left) and biomedical engineering professor…
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DNA Sequencing Performed with Tiny Samples, No Library Prep
Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Babraham Institute, both in the U.K., developed a technique for sequencing DNA molecules requiring a tiny fraction of material and without the laborious library preparation that had been needed before. The work of the team led by Harold Swerdlow (pictured left), Sanger Institute research and development director,…
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Smallest Indium Gallium Arsenide Chip Developed
Engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a process for creating nanoscale transistors, like those designed for computer logic operations, made of indium gallium arsenide. The team from MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories will discuss its findings later this week at the International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco. The team led by electrical engineering professor…