Major breakthrough in stem cell manufacturing technology

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have developed a new substance which could simplify the manufacture of cell therapy in the pioneering world of regenerative medicine.

Cell therapy is an exciting and rapidly developing area of medicine in which stem cells have the potential to repair human tissue and maintain organ function in chronic disease and age-related illnesses. But a major problem with translating current successful research into actual products and treatments is how to mass-produce such a complex living material.

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A ROBOT WALKS INTO A BAR…

(March 31, 2014) The image of a joke-telling robot, that can tailor its repartee while performing a stand-up comedy routine, has won the overall prize in a national science photography competition organised by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Comedy Lab: Human vs Robot, by Toby Harris, a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London’s Cognitive Science Research Group, stole the show ahead of many other stunning pictures, featuring research in action, which were entered into EPSRC’s inaugural competition.

The competition’s five categories were: Weird and Wonderful, Discovery, Equipment, Innovation, and People.

They feature, the beauty of Rayleigh-Taylor instability shown in salt water as it accelerates into fresh water, the amazing Gömböc - the world’s only artificial self-righting shape, micro-scale vaccine mixing, cancer cells that resemble tropical islands seen from space, and mathematicians that appear to fly.

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NanoTech Leads to Break-Through in Stealth Technology

Controlling and bending light around an object so it appears invisible to the naked eye is the theory behind fictional invisibility cloaks.

It may seem easy in Hollywood movies, but is hard to create in real life because no material in nature has the properties necessary to bend light in such a way. Scientists have managed to create artificial nanostructures that can do the job, called metamaterials. But the challenge has been making enough of the material to turn science fiction into a practical reality.

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Nano-paper filter can remove viruses

(March 31, 2014)  Researchers at the Division of Nanotechnology and Functional Materials, Uppsala University have developed a paper filter, which can remove virus particles with an efficiency matching that of the best industrial virus filters. The paper filter consists of 100 percent high purity cellulose nanofibers, directly derived from nature.

The research was carried out in collaboration with virologists from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences/Swedish National Veterinary Institute and is published in the Advanced Healthcare Materials journal.

Virus particles are very peculiar objects- tiny (about thousand times thinner than a human hair) yet mighty. Viruses can only replicate in living cells but once the cells become infected the viruses can turn out to be extremely pathogenic. Viruses can actively cause diseases on their own or even transform healthy cells to malignant tumors.

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Diamonds are an oil’s best friend

Rice University leads research to find the best nanofluid for heat transfer

 A mixture of diamond nanoparticles and mineral oil easily outperforms other types of fluid created for heat-transfer applications, according to new research by Rice University.

Rice scientists mixed very low concentrations of diamond particles (about 6 nanometers in diameter) with mineral oil to test the nanofluid’s thermal conductivity and how temperature would affect its viscosity. They found it to be much better than nanofluids that contain higher amounts of oxide, nitride or carbide ceramics, metals, semiconductors, carbon nanotubes and other composite materials.

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New Penn-Designed Gel Allows for Targeted Therapy After Heart Attack

(March 31, 2014)  Combatting the tissue degrading enzymes that cause lasting damage following a heart attack is tricky. Each patient responds to a heart attack differently and damage can vary from one part of the heart muscle to another, but existing treatments can’t be fine-tuned to deal with this variation.

University of Pennsylvania researchers have developed a way to address this problem via a material that can be applied directly to the damaged heart tissue. The potentially dangerous enzymes break down this gel-like material, releasing enzyme inhibitors contained within. This responsive, balancing approach is ideal for keeping enzymes at the right level to minimize the long-term damage that can lead to congestive heart failure.

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Using different scents to attract or repel insects

Flowering plants are able to make flexible use of their scents. If the focus is on pollination they attract insects with the scent of their flowers. If they are infested with parasites, they reduce the release of floral scents which then attracts more beneficial partner insects for their defence. This has been demonstrated by a Swiss-Italian team led by evolutionary biologists from the University of Zurich using a plant that is closely related to rapeseed.

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OLYMPUS STYLUS SH-1 Premium design camera equipped with the world's first*1

 

optical*2 5-axis Image Stabilization

OLYMPUS STYLUS SH-1

Olympus Imaging Corporation (President: Haruo Ogawa) is pleased to announce the OLYMPUS STYLUS SH-1, scheduled to go on sale from end of April 2014. This premium design camera features a sophisticated design, with a 24x, high-powered optical zoom lens, the world's first*1 optical*2 5-axis image stabilization for both still images and movies, and a built-in Wi-Fi*3 for even more enjoyable photography.

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Northern and Southern Hemisphere Climates Follow the Beat of Different Drummers

Over the last 1000 years, temperature differences between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres were larger than previously thought. Using new data from the Southern Hemisphere, researchers have shown that climate model simulations overestimate the links between the climate variations across the Earth with implications for regional predictions. These findings are demonstrated in a new international study coordinated by Raphael Neukom from the Oeschger Centre of the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and are published today in the journal "Nature Climate Change".

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Heat-Conducting Polymer Cools Hot Electronic Devices at 200 Degrees C

Polymer materials are usually thermal insulators. But by harnessing an electropolymerization process to produce aligned arrays of polymer nanofibers, researchers have developed a thermal interface material able to conduct heat 20 times better than the original polymer. The modified material can reliably operate at temperatures of up to 200 degrees Celsius.

The new thermal interface material could be used to draw heat away from electronic devices in servers, automobiles, high-brightness LEDs and certain mobile devices. The material is fabricated on heat sinks and heat spreaders and adheres well to devices, potentially avoiding the reliability challenges caused by differential expansion in other thermally-conducting materials.

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ASU researchers develop new model of Earth's dynamic interior

Seeking to better understand the composition of the lowermost part of Earth’s mantle, located nearly 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) below the surface, a team of Arizona State University researchers has developed new simulations that depict the dynamics of deep Earth.

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Erasing a genetic mutation

MIT team reverses a liver disorder in mice by correcting a mutated gene.

Using a new gene-editing system based on bacterial proteins, MIT researchers have cured mice of a rare liver disorder caused by a single genetic mutation.

The findings, described in the March 30 issue of Nature Biotechnology, offer the first evidence that this gene-editing technique, known as CRISPR, can reverse disease symptoms in living animals. CRISPR, which offers an easy way to snip out mutated DNA and replace it with the correct sequence, holds potential for treating many genetic disorders, according to the research team.

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It’s not a fixture, it’s not a bulb - Philips presents a single panel of light that fills the ceiling

Philips’ OneSpace luminous ceiling predicted by Isaac Asimov 50 years ago

Philips, the global leader in lighting, will reveal an innovative luminous panel that can cover a whole ceiling with homogenous white light. The panel will be displayed at Light + Building, the world’s biggest trade fair for lighting and building services technology in Frankfurt (March 30 – April 4, 2014).

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Fabricating Nanostructures with Silk Could Make Clean Rooms Green Rooms

Tufts University engineers have demonstrated that it is possible to generate nanostructures from silk in an environmentally friendly process that uses water as a developing agent and standard fabrication techniques. This approach provides a green alternative to the toxic materials commonly used in nanofabrication while delivering fabrication quality comparable to conventional synthetic polymers. Nanofabrication is at the heart of manufacture of semi-conductors and other electronic and photonic devices.

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Revolutionary solar cells double as lasers

Latest research finds that the trailblazing ‘perovskite’ material used in solar cells can double up as a laser, strongly suggesting the astonishing efficiency levels already achieved in these cells is only part of the journey.

Commercial silicon-based solar cells - such as those seen on the roofs of houses across the country - operate at about 20% efficiency for converting the Sun’s rays into electrical energy. It’s taken over 20 years to achieve that rate of efficiency.

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Bamboo-Loving Giant Pandas Also Have a Sweet Tooth

Despite the popular conception of giant pandas as continually chomping on bamboo to fulfill a voracious appetite for this reedy grass, new research from the Monell Center reveals that this highly endangered species also has a sweet tooth. A combination of behavioral and molecular genetic studies demonstrated that the giant panda both possesses functional sweet taste receptors and also shows a strong preference for some natural sweeteners, including fructose and sucrose.

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Engineered Bacteria Produce Biofuel Alternative for High-Energy Rocket Fuel

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Joint BioEnergy Institute have engineered a bacterium to synthesize pinene, a hydrocarbon produced by trees that could potentially replace high-energy fuels, such as JP-10, in missiles and other aerospace applications. With improvements in process efficiency, the biofuel could supplement limited supplies of petroleum-based JP-10, and might also facilitate development of a new generation of more powerful engines.

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Toshiba Self-Encrypting HDD Gains Government-Class Security Validation

Self-encrypting HDDs validated to U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard

Toshiba Electronics Europe has announced its mobile-grade thin 7mm hard disk drive (HDD) with self-encrypting technology has been validated to U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 (FIPS 140-2). The MQ01ABUxxxBW series is the first Toshiba self-encrypting drive (SED) validated to the FIPS 140-2 standard and includes Toshiba’s unique wipe technology, which automatically erases data when an HDD is accessed by an unregistered system.

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Eye movement when reading could be an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease

Researchers have suggested that alterations in eye movements when reading could be linked to impairments in working memory and an early indication of Alzheimer’s disease according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology .

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ATHENA desktop human “body” could reduce need for animal drug tests

ATHENA project team is developing four human organ constructs that are based on a significantly miniaturized platform.

Surrogate organ system developed for toxicity testing

Creating surrogate human organs, coupled with insights from highly sensitive mass spectrometry technologies, a new project is on the brink of revolutionizing the way we screen new drugs and toxic agents.

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New Technique for Identifying Gene-Enhancers

Berkeley Lab-Led Research Team Unveils Powerful New Tool for Studying DNA Elements that Regulate Genes

An international team led by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed a new technique for identifying gene enhancers – sequences of DNA that act to amplify the expression of a specific gene – in the genomes of humans and other mammals. Called SIF-seq, for site-specific integration fluorescence-activated cell sorting followed by sequencing, this new technique complements existing genomic tools, such as ChIP-seq (chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing), and offers some additional benefits.

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Scientists Track 3D Nanoscale Changes in Rechargeable Battery Material During Operation

First 3D nanoscale observations of microstructural degradation during charge-discharge cycles could point to new ways to engineer battery electrode materials for better performance.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have made the first 3D observations of how the structure of a lithium-ion battery anode evolves at the nanoscale in a real battery cell as it discharges and recharges. The details of this research, described in a paper published in Angewandte Chemie, could point to new ways to engineer battery materials to increase the capacity and lifetime of rechargeable batteries.

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Lack of coronin 1 protein causes learning deficits and aggressive behavior

Learning and memory relies on the proper processing of signals that stimulate neuronal cells within the brain. Researchers at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, together with an international team of scientists, has uncovered an important role for the protein coronin 1 in cognition and behavior. They found that a lack of coronin 1 in mouse and in man is associated with poor memory, defective learning and aggressive behavior. The results, recently published in PLOS Biology, identify a novel risk factor for neurobehavioral dysfunction and reveal a molecular pathway involved in transferring information within neurons.

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Lick's Automated Planet Finder: First robotic telescope for planet hunters

In its first months of operation, the APF has found two new planetary systems, giving astronomers a taste of planetary riches to come

Lick Observatory's newest telescope, the Automated Planet Finder (APF), has been operating robotically night after night on Mt. Hamilton since January, searching nearby stars for Earth-sized planets. Every night the fully autonomous system checks the weather, decides which stars to observe, and moves the telescope from star to star throughout the night, collecting measurements that will reveal the presence of planets.

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DON’T FORGET F-TYPE STARS IN SEARCH FOR LIFE, UT ARLINGTON RESEARCHERS SAY

Scientists searching for habitable planets beyond Earth shouldn’t overlook F-type stars in favor of their more abundant, smaller and cooler cousins, according to new research from University of Texas at Arlington physicists.

Stars fall into seven lettered categories according to their surface temperature, but they also differ in other factors such as mass, luminosity and abundance in the universe. Scientists looking for habitable planets typically have focused on the less massive end of the spectrum, where our own G-type Sun as well as the even less massive K and M-type stars reside.

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Nanotube coating helps shrink mass spectrometers

Nanotechnology is advancing tools likened to Star Trek's "tricorder" that perform on-the-spot chemical analysis for a range of applications including medical testing, explosives detection and food safety.

Researchers found that when paper used to collect a sample was coated with carbon nanotubes, the voltage required was 1,000 times reduced, the signal was sharpened and the equipment was able to capture far more delicate molecules.

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Microfluidic Device With Artificial Arteries Measures Drugs’ Influence on Blood Clotting

A new microfluidic method for evaluating drugs commonly used for preventing heart attacks has found that while aspirin can prevent dangerous blood clots in some at-risk patients, it may not be effective in all patients with narrowed arteries. The study, which involved 14 human subjects, used a device that simulated blood flowing through narrowed coronary arteries to assess effects of anti-clotting drugs.

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New discovery finds missing hormone in birds

How does the Arctic tern (a sea bird) fly more than 80,000 miles in its roundtrip North Pole-to-South Pole migration? How does the Emperor penguin incubate eggs for months during the Antarctic winter without eating? How does the Rufous hummingbird, which weighs less than a nickel, migrate from British Columbia to Mexico? These physiological gymnastics would usually be influenced by leptin, the hormone that regulates body fat storage, metabolism and appetite. However, leptin has gone missing in birds - until now.

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Hot nanoparticles for cancer treatments

Nanoparticles have a great deal of potential in medicine: for diagnostics, as a vehicle for active substances or a tool to kill off tumours using heat. ETH Zurich researchers have now developed particles that are relatively easy to produce and have a wide range of applications.

If you put your hand over a switched-on torch in the dark, it appears to glow red. This is because long-wavelength red light beams penetrate human tissue more effectively than short-wavelength blue light. ETH Zurich researchers exploit this fact in a new kind of nanoparticles: so-called plasmonic particles, which heat up when they absorb near-infrared light. This could enable them to kill tumour tissue with heat, for instance.

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Scientists find a molecular clue to the complex mystery of auxin signaling in plants

Interaction domain on proteins that modulate this potent hormone allows them to stack back-to-front like button magnets

Wikipedia lists 65 adjectives that botanists use to describe the shapes of plant leaves. In English (rather than Latin) they mean the leaf is lance-shaped, spear-shaped, kidney-shaped, diamond shaped, arrow-head-shaped, egg-shaped, circular, spoon-shaped , heart-shaped, tear-drop-shaped or sickle-shaped — among other possibilities.

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Researchers improve performance of III-V nanowire solar cells on graphene

Imagine a field of small wires—standing at attention like a tiny field of wheat—gathering the Sun’s rays as the first step in solar energy conversion. 

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have achieved new levels of performance for seed-free and substrate-free arrays of nanowires from class of materials called III-V (three-five) directly on graphene. These compound semiconductors hold particular promise for applications involving light, such as solar cells or lasers.

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What Life on the Internet will be like in 2025

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project partnered with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center to ask 2,558 experts to make predictions about the state of digital life by the year 2025. This is the first report of eight which will canvass hundreds of experts about the future of such things as privacy, cybersecurity, the “Internet of things,” and net neutrality. The experts answered open-ended questions about what the future of digital life will look like in the next 10 years.

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Researchers Grow Carbon Nanofibers Using Ambient Air, Without Toxic Ammonia

Researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated that vertically aligned carbon nanofibers (VACNFs) can be manufactured using ambient air, making the manufacturing process safer and less expensive. VACNFs hold promise for use in gene-delivery tools, sensors, batteries and other technologies.

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NTU scientists discover material that can be solar cell by day, light panel by night

New material could lead to new touch and display screens doubling up as solar panels

In future, when your mobile or tablet runs out of battery, you could just recharge it by putting it out in the sun.

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) scientists have developed a next-generation solar cell material which can also emit light, in addition to converting light to electricity.

This solar cell is developed from Perovskite, a promising material that could hold the key to creating high-efficiency, inexpensive solar cells. The new cells not only glow when electricity passes through them, but they can also be customised to emit different colours.

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Sony picks up a host of prizes at the 2014 Red Dot Design Awards

Currently in its 70th year, the Red Dot Design Awards are one of the world’s largest and most renowned product design competitions. The awards celebrate the finest in product design from around the world, and represent a great accolade for Sony in that both XperiaTM Z Ultra smartphone and the QX lens-style camera series for smartphones have been rewarded with Red Dot’s ‘Best of the Best’ awards this year.

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Engineers design ‘living materials’

Hybrid materials combine bacterial cells with nonliving elements that can conduct electricity or emit light.

Inspired by natural materials such as bone — a matrix of minerals and other substances, including living cells — MIT engineers have coaxed bacterial cells to produce biofilms that can incorporate nonliving materials, such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots.

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Electric “thinking cap” controls learning speed

Caffeine-fueled cram sessions are routine occurrences on any college campus. But what if there was a better, safer way to learn new or difficult material more quickly? What if “thinking caps” were real?

In a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Vanderbilt psychologists Robert Reinhart, a Ph.D. candidate, and Geoffrey Woodman, assistant professor of psychology, show that it is possible to selectively manipulate our ability to learn through the application of a mild electrical current to the brain, and that this effect can be enhanced or depressed depending on the direction of the current.

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Cold short-cut to CO2 storage

Could refrigeration technology – against all the odds – kick-start CO2 storage in the North Sea?

All over the world, scientists are on the hunt for solutions that will allow CO2 to be captured from large power stations and industrial plants.

Many of the methods in use today employ chemicals or advanced materials to extract CO2 from flue-gases. But now, a chilly alternative is showing signs of heating up.

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Computers spot false faces better than people

A joint study by researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Toronto has found that a computer system spots real or faked expressions of pain more accurately than people can. The work, titled “Automatic Decoding of Deceptive Pain Expressions,” is published in the latest issue of Current Biology.

“The computer system managed to detect distinctive dynamic features of facial expressions that people missed,” said Marian Bartlett, research professor at UC San Diego’s Institute for Neural Computation and lead author of the study. “Human observers just aren’t very good at telling real from faked expressions of pain.”

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Anti-counterfeit 'fingerprints' made from silver nanowires

Unique patterns made from tiny, randomly scattered silver nanowires have been created by a group of researchers from South Korea in an attempt to authenticate goods and tackle the growing problem of counterfeiting.

The nanoscale ‘fingerprints’ are made by randomly dumping 20 to 30 individual nanowires, each with an average length of 10 to 50 µm, onto a thin plastic film, and could be used to tag a variety of goods from electronics and drugs to credit cards and bank notes.

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Honda Announces NM4 Vultus – New Model with a Futuristic Edge

Honda announces the new NM4 Vultus, a ground-breaking machine inspired by futuristic machines seen in the anime and manga television and film styles, known collectively as “Japanimation”.

Created by a young design team who remained true to their original concept at every stage through to production, the NM4 Vultus brings radical style to the streets, with function from the future for a new breed of rider. The NM4 represents a machine capable of crossing traditional two-wheeled lines and reaching out to a wider audience.

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Discovery of New Semiconductor Holds Promise for 2D Physics and Electronics

From super-lubricants, to solar cells, to the fledgling technology of valleytronics, there is much to be excited about with the discovery of a unique new two-dimensional semiconductor, rhenium disulfide, by researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry. Rhenium disulfide, unlike molybdenum disulfide and other dichalcogenides, behaves electronically as if it were a 2D monolayer even as a 3D bulk material. This not only opens the door to 2D electronic applications with a 3D material, it also makes it possible to study 2D physics with easy-to-make 3D crystals.

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Scania truck with Euro 6 engine wins German environmental award

Scania has the environmentally lowest-impact truck in the heavy tractor class, according to the respected German transport trade magazines Verkehrs­Rundschau and Trucker, which have given the Scania G 410 their Green Truck 2014 award.

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The Human Brain Project just got bigger

One of the biggest EU-funded initiatives, the Human Brain Project (HBP), today announced the beneficiaries of its €8.3 million competitive call for new partners. 32 organisations from 13 countries – Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK – will join the partnership. This represents a 40% increase in the number of partners in the HBP consortium.

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Algae may be a potential source of biofuels and biochemicals even in cool climate

Algae are organisms useful in many ways in the transition towards a bio-economy. Even in a cool climate as in Finland, algae might be used to produce biochemicals and biofuels, besides use in capture of industrial carbon dioxide emissions. The ALGIDA project coordinated by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland explored algae growing in Finland.

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Tiny Transistors for Extreme Environs

U OF UTAH ENGINEERS SHRINK PLASMA DEVICES TO RESIST RADIATION

University of Utah electrical engineers fabricated the smallest plasma transistors that can withstand high temperatures and ionizing radiation found in a nuclear reactor. Such transistors someday might enable smartphones that take and collect medical X-rays on a battlefield, and devices to measure air quality in real time.

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A ‘Chicken from Hell’ Dinosaur

Scientists from Carnegie and Smithsonian museums and the University of Utah today unveiled the discovery, naming and description of a sharp-clawed, 500-pound, bird-like dinosaur that roamed the Dakotas with T. rex 66 million years ago and looked like an 11 ½-foot-long “chicken from hell.”

“It was a giant raptor, but with a chicken-like head and presumably feathers. The animal stood about 10 feet tall, so it would be scary as well as absurd to encounter,” says University of Utah biology postdoctoral fellow Emma Schachner, a co-author of a new study of the dinosaur.

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Analysis: Industry-sponsored academic inventions spur increased innovation

Study of records from the University of California system reveals surprising findings

Industry-sponsored, academic research leads to innovative patents and licenses, says a new analysis led by Brian Wright, University of California, Berkeley professor of agricultural and resource economics.

The finding calls into question assumptions that corporate support skews science toward inventions that are less accessible and less useful to others than those funded by the government or non-profit organizations.

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Eyes are windows to the soul – and evolution

Why do we become saucer-eyed from fear and squint from disgust?

These near-opposite facial expressions are rooted in emotional responses that exploit how our eyes gather and focus light to detect an unknown threat, according to a study by a Cornell University neuroscientist.

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Dry future climate could reduce orchid bee habitat

During Pleistocene era climate changes, neotropical orchid bees that relied on year-round warmth and wet weather found their habitats reduced by 30 to 50 percent, according to a Cornell University study that used computer models and genetic data to understand bee distributions during past climate changes.

In previous studies, researchers have tracked male and female orchid bees and found that while females stay near their nests, male orchid bees travel, with one study concluding they roam as far as 7 kilometers per day. These past findings, corroborated by genetic data in the current study, reveal that males are more mobile than females.

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