Technology News

Southampton engineers fly the world’s first ‘printed’ aircraft
Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 09:59

Engineers at the University of Southampton have designed and flown the world’s first ‘printed’ aircraft, which could revolutionise the economics of aircraft design.  The SULSA (Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft) plane is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) whose entire structure has been printed, including wings, integral control surfaces and access hatches. It was printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, which fabricates plastic or metal objects, building up the item layer by layer.
 

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OSU pigment discovery expanding to new colors – including orange
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 16:16

Chemists at Oregon State University have discovered that the same crystal structure they identified two years ago to create what may be the world’s best blue pigment can also be used with different elements to create other colors, with significant potential in the paint and pigment industries.

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Devices Based on Piezoelectric Nanowires Create New Form of Memory
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 09:00

Taking advantage of the unique properties of zinc oxide nanowires, researchers have demonstrated a new type of piezoelectric resistive switching device in which the write-read access of memory cells is controlled by electromechanical modulation. Operating on flexible substrates, arrays of these devices could provide a new way to interface the mechanical actions of the biological world to conventional electronic circuitry.

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UT Given $18 Million to Link Nation’s Supercomputers
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 06:25

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has been awarded $18 million to help create a new generation of linkages among high-performance computers and research facilities across the nation. The new supercomputing grid will create a powerful tool for taking on some of the most complex problems in science.

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Caltech Engineers Develop One-way Transmission System for Sound Waves
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 13:21

While many hotel rooms, recording studios, and even some homes are built with materials to help absorb or reflect sound, mechanisms to truly control the direction of sound waves are still in their infancy. However, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now created the first tunable acoustic diode-a device that allows acoustic information to travel only in one direction, at controllable frequencies.

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Scientists decipher brain commands for different grasp types
Monday, July 25, 2011 - 07:02
Quickly grabbing a cup of coffee is an everyday action for most of us. For people with severe paralysis however, this task is unfeasible – yet not “unthinkable”. Because of this, interfaces between the brain and a computer can in principle detect these “thoughts” and transform them into steering commands. Scientists from Freiburg now have found a way to distinguish between different types of grasping on the basis of the accompanying brain activity.

 

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