No evidence of residential property value impacts near US wind turbines
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) analyzed more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind facilities in 27 counties across nine U.S. states, yet was unable to uncover any impacts to nearby...
View ArticleQuantum inverted pendulum: Control scheme dynamically maintains unstable...
A simple pendulum has two equilibrium points: hanging in the "down" position and perfectly inverted in the "up" position. While the "down" position is a stable equilibrium, the inverted position is...
View ArticleNissan to have self-driving car on market in 2020
Motorists could go hands-free, leaving their cars' computer brains fully in charge, as early as 2020, when Nissan says it plans to have a self-driving vehicle ready for the market.
View ArticleThe extraordinary evolution of REVs
A new study by Anna Maria Niewiadomska and Robert Gifford, of The Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, New York, reveals that reticuloendotheliosis viruses (REVs), which originated in mammals, spread to...
View ArticleNew insights on wildfire smoke could improve climate change models
(Phys.org) —Where there's wildfire, there's smoke—a lot of it. And those vast, carbon-laden clouds released by burning biomass can play a significant role in climate change.
View ArticleDwarf planet Ceres: 'A game changer in the solar system'
In March of 2015, NASA's Dawn mission will arrive at the dwarf planet Ceres, the first of the smaller class of planets to be discovered and the closest to Earth. Ceres, which orbits the Sun in the...
View ArticleRobot's face determines user comfort
A recent University of Auckland study has revealed a preference for humanlike features on a robot's display screen.
View ArticleResearch reveals how elephants 'see' the world
Designed with middle school students, study helps to inform better practices for protecting these endangered animals.
View ArticleNeutron stars in the computer cloud
The combined computing power of 200,000 private PCs helps astronomers take an inventory of the Milky Way. The Einstein@Home project connects home and office PCs of volunteers from around the world to a...
View Article'Zero knowledge' may answer computer security question
(Phys.org) —In the age of the Internet, it's getting harder and harder to keep secrets. When you type in your password, there's no telling who might be watching it go by. New research at Cornell may...
View ArticleUltracold Big Bang experiment successfully simulates evolution of early universe
(Phys.org) —Physicists have reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation in a laboratory simulation of the Big Bang, using ultracold cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber at the...
View ArticleNew component in the quantum electronics toolbox
The coherence of quantum systems is the foundation upon which hardware for future information technologies is based. Quantum information is carried by units called quantum bits, or qubits. They can be...
View ArticleNew grayscale technique opens a third dimension for nanoscale lithography
Engineers at the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) have developed a new technique for fabricating high aspect ratio three-dimensional (3D) nanostructures over large device areas...
View ArticleNovel self-powered nanoparticles developed to deliver healing drugs directly...
(Phys.org) —A novel method for finding and delivering healing drugs to newly formed microcracks in bones has been invented by a team of chemists and bioengineers at Penn State University and Boston...
View ArticleRibosome research takes shape
In a new state-of-the-art lab at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, components of ribosomes – tiny biological machines that make new proteins and play a vital role in gene expression and antibiotic...
View ArticleSea-floor microbes may be affected by ailing shrimp in acidified oceans
Disrupting just one process in the important relationship between microbes and bigger plants and animals that live in ocean floor sediment may have knock-on effects that could reduce the productivity...
View ArticleAir pollution causes 200,000 early deaths each year in the US, study finds
Researchers from MIT's Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment have come out with some sobering new data on air pollution's impact on Americans' health.
View ArticleCuriosity Mars rover views eclipse of the Sun by Phobos
(Phys.org) —Images taken with a telephoto-lens camera on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity catch the larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos, passing directly in front of the sun—the sharpest images of a solar...
View ArticleSpinning out the future of our electronic devices
To satisfy the world's desire for ever more processing power, at ever diminishing energy cost, in even tinier devices, scientists are looking to spintronics (spin transport electronics) to provide the...
View ArticleCrowd called to power Hyperloop high-speed transport
The Internet crowd on Thursday was called on to make real Elon Musk's vision of a Hyperloop transport system that carries passengers in pressurized tubes at near-supersonic speeds.
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