News by Subject Technology & Engineering

A new system for synthesizing quantum dots across the entire spectrum of visible light drastically reduces manufacturing costs, can be tuned on demand to any color and allows for real-time process monitoring to ensure quality control.

While it's not a case of reinventing the wheel, researchers are looking at ways to improve standard braking equipment on trains and cars. By mixing carbon fibers into polymer-based brakes, a group of researchers at UBC Okanagan, Sharif University of Technology in Iran and the University of Toronto were able to design brakes that are self-lubricating.

Researchers have examined a method to extract rare-earth elements from mining waste that could provide the world with a reliable supply of the valuable materials. The research, led by Idaho National Laboratory and Rutgers University with support from the Critical Materials Institute, is online and in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics.

A new deep-mapping computer model can detect visual changes to individual properties, allowing researchers to more rapidly track gentrification within neighborhoods and cities, according to a study published March 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Lazar Ilic, Michael Sawada, and Amaury Zarzelli of the University of Ottawa, Canada.

A persistent question among urban ecology researchers has been the long-term impact of urbanization on bird species biodiversity. Specifically, they wonder whether the portions of cities with higher diversity are simply exhibiting an 'extinction debt' -- populations doomed to extinction but not yet disappeared -- or if other factors such as range shifts or local environmental changes play a role in changes in diversity.

Spending time in nature boosts children's academic achievement and healthy development, concludes a new analysis examining hundreds of studies.