EurekAlert! InContext Modules

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012
High honor for 2 UC Riverside physicists
Two physicists at the University of California, Riverside -- Richard Seto and Jing Shi -- have been elected as fellows of the American Physical Society. Only 250 researchers received the high honor this year. The APS represents more than 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories and industry in the United States and throughout the world. Fellowship in the society is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the membership.

American Physical Society

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012
Rensselaer professor Shawn-Yu Lin named Fellow of the AAAS
Nano-photonics expert Shawn Yu-Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a member of the university's Future Chips Constellation and Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center, has been selected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012
Industrial carbon management research gets $3.75 million boost
Carbon Management Canada (CMC) has awarded a total of $3.75 million to eight new research projects. Carbon Management Canada (CMC) was established in 2009 as a national network with a mandate to radically reduce carbon emissions in the upstream fossil energy industry and in large stationary emitters. CMC has over 160 investigators, more than 200 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, network agreements with 28 Canadian academic institutions, and industry and government sponsors.

Carbon Management Canada

Public Release: 29-Nov-2012

Science
Harvard's Wyss Institute team creates versatile 3d nanostructures using DNA 'bricks'
Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created more than 100 three-dimensional nanostructures using DNA building blocks that function like Lego bricks -- a major advance from the two-dimensional structures the same team built a few months ago.

Office of Naval Research, Army Research Office, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Harvard/Wyss Institute

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012
ARPA-e awards $130 million for transformation energy technology projects
Sixty six cutting-edge research projects have been selected by the Energy Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to receive a total of $130 million in funding.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012

Nature
Research discovery could revolutionize semiconductor manufacture
A completely new method of manufacturing the smallest structures in electronics could make their manufacture thousands of times quicker, allowing for cheaper semiconductors. The findings have been published in the latest issue of Nature. Instead of starting from a silicon wafer or other substrate, as is usual today, researchers have made it possible for the structures to grow from freely suspended nanoparticles of gold in a flowing gas.

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012
U of Minn. receives $1.8 million grant for improving efficiencies in fuel and plastics production
The University of Minnesota has been awarded a $1.8 million grant over three years from the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy to develop revolutionary membrane technology that will enable energy-efficient separations in the chemical, petrochemical, water, fossil fuel, and renewable energy industries. When fully implemented, the technology could reduce US energy consumption by as much as 3 percent. Science magazine named initial research as one of the biggest breakthroughs of 2011.

Public Release: 27-Nov-2012
Fast forward to the past: NASA technologists test 'game-changing' data-processing technology
It's a digital world. Or is it? NASA technologist Jonathan Pellish isn't convinced. In fact, he believes a computing technology of yesteryear could potentially revolutionize everything from autonomous rendezvous and docking to remotely correcting wavefront errors on large, deployable space telescope mirrors like those to fly on the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA

Public Release: 27-Nov-2012
Pioneering electrical engineering work recognized
Alexander A. Balandin, a professor of electrical engineering in the Bourns College of Engineering and founding chair of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Riverside has been named an IEEE Fellow for 2013.

Public Release: 27-Nov-2012
Developing 'second skin' military fabric to repel chemical and biological agents
The researchers say the fabric will be able to switch reversibly from a highly breathable state to a protective one in response to the presence of the environmental threat without the need for an external control system. In the protective state, the uniform material will block the chemical threat while maintaining a good breathability level.

US Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Public Release: 27-Nov-2012
Surface analysis techniques for advanced materials enhance Mazovia's research potential
Properties of several of the most external atomic layers of materials can be studied at Mazovia Centre for Surface Analysis by a number of modern techniques. Just opened at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, the Centre provides a spectrum of surface analysis tools including a state-of-the-art scanning electron microscope and specialized spectroscopic equipment for surface studies in high and ultra high vacuum.

Public Release: 27-Nov-2012

Nature Communications
James' bond: A graphene/nanotube hybrid
A seamless graphene/nanotube hybrid created at Rice University may be the best electrode interface material possible for many energy storage and electronics applications.

Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Lockheed Martin Corp., LANCER IV pro

Public Release: 26-Nov-2012

Nature Communications
Penn researchers make flexible, low-voltage circuits using nanocrystals
Electronic circuits are typically integrated in rigid silicon wafers, but flexibility opens up a wide range of applications in a world where electronics are becoming more pervasive. Finding materials with the right mix of performance and manufacturing cost, however, remains a challenge. Now researchers from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that nanoscale particles, or nanocrystals, of the semiconductor cadmium selenide can be "printed" or "coated" on flexible plastics to form high-performance electronics.

US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation

Public Release: 26-Nov-2012

Applied Physics Letters
New device hides, on cue, from infrared cameras
Now you see it, now you don't. A new device invented at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences can absorb 99.75 percent of infrared light that shines on it. When activated, it appears black to infrared cameras.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and more

Public Release: 22-Nov-2012
Following in Marie Curie's footsteps
More than a century ago, a brilliant young chemist and physicist named Marie Curie, won a Nobel Prize for her ground-breaking discoveries in radioactivity. Emma Martin Rodriguez, a post-doctoral researcher in Concordia's Department of Chemistry, is carrying on Curie's spirit of trail-blazing scientific inquiry, thanks to a prestigious research fellowship, created in Curie's name.

Public Release: 22-Nov-2012

IEEE Electron Device Letters
Spanish scientists design a revolutionary data storage device
The new device is protected with ten international patents including Japan, the USA, Corea and the European Union. The most important electronic companies worldwide such as Samsung and Hynix (Corea) and Micron (USA) have shown interest in this innovative data storage device.

Public Release: 22-Nov-2012

Science
Transforming 'noise' into mechanical energy at nanometric level
A team of researchers at the Freie Universität Berlin, co-ordinated by José Ignacio Pascual (current leader of the Nanoimagen team at CIC nanoGUNE), have developed a method that enables efficiently using the random movement of a molecule in order to make a macroscopic-scale lever oscillate. The research was published in Science.

Public Release: 22-Nov-2012
Inspired: Canada funds 68 bold, inventive ways to improve health, save lives in developing countries
Some 51 innovators in 18 low and middle income countries and 17 in Canada will share $7 million in Canadian grants to pursue bold, creative ideas for tackling health problems in resource-poor parts of the world. The projects will be implemented worldwide: 38 in Africa, 23 in Asia, five in Latin America/Caribbean, and two in the Middle East

Grand Challenges Canada