Tag: physical sciences
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Patent Awarded for Heat Resistant Polylactic Acid Polymers
Cereplast Inc., a manufacturer of bio-based plastics in El Segundo, California, received a patent for its formulation of heat-resistant polymers with polylactic acid. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued number 8,222,320 to Cereplast CEO Frederic Scheer and researcher William Kelly on 17 July 2012. Polylactic acid is a natural resin that can be formed…
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Model, Software Find Minerals in Mountain Ranges
A geophysicist at Tel Aviv University in Israel has developed modeling techniques and associated software for discovering minerals in mountain ranges, which are difficult to survey for mining opportunities. Lev Eppelbaum, a professor in the university’s geophysics and planetary sciences department, presented his methods in a paper at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union…
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Purdue Awards $200K for Research Commercialization
The Trask Innovation Fund at Purdue University in Indiana has awarded some $200,000 to help Purdue researchers take their discoveries to market. The awards cover research on alternative fuels, pharmaceutical drug dosage forms, assisted reproductive technology, and a mobile app for note-taking. The Trask Innovation Fund is a program of the Purdue Research Foundation to…
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NIH to Fund Development of Organ-On-Chip Devices
National Institutes of Health will support 17 research initiatives leading to development of microfluidic chips that simulate the structure and function of human organs. NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences is funding the projects for five years at a total cost of $70 million. The project involves collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects…
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Network Model IDs Airports Most Likely to Spread Disease
Engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built a mathematical model that identifies the U.S. airports most likely to influence the spread of disease early in an epidemic. The findings of the team from MIT’s civil and environmental engineering department are found in the online journal PLoS One. The use of network models to track…
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Highly Transparent Solar Cells Developed for Window Glass
Researchers at University of California in Los Angeles have developed solar cells with greater transparency that can be made to fit over windows and generate electric power. The findings from a team of UCLA engineers, materials scientists, and chemists appeared earlier this month in the journal ACS Nano (paid subscription required). The team developed a…
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Study: Better Medical Device Security Alerts Needed
Researchers at University of Massachusetts in Amherst and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston (affiliated with Harvard Medical School) uncovered indications that security and privacy problems with medical devices may not be adequately reported or tracked by regulators. The team reported its findings yesterday in the online journal PLoS One. The computer scientists and…
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Max Planck Licenses 2-D/3-D Technology for Development
Max Planck Society in Munich, Germany has licensed to TandemLaunch Technologies in Montreal, Canada a new three-dimension display technology that lets viewers see 3-D movies or games in 2-D without glasses to construct the images. Financial terms of the exclusive licensing agreement were not disclosed. Current 3-D images are presented as stereoscopic pictures, with overlapping…
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New Study to Examine Next Generation Mobile Networks
Researchers at Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) in Brooklyn received federal, state, and business funding for a study of new wireless technologies that can define the next generation of mobile devices. Funders of the project include the National Science Foundation, Empire State Development Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR), and industry supporters…
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Grant to Fund On-Board Systems Extending Electric Car Range
University of California in Riverside has received a one-year $95,000 grant from the California Energy Commission to develop algorithms that find the route requiring the least amount of energy for an electric car’s trip. The research will be done by the Center for Environmental Research and Technology, part of the university’s Bourns College of Engineering.…