An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) with the potential to produce the same quality of white light as incandescent bulbs, but with power efficiencies much better than even fluorescent lighting, has been developed at the Institute for Applied Photophysics, in Dresden, Germany.
The OLED exhibits efficiencies of 90 lumens per watt and shows potential to go up to 124 lumens per watt, compared to 10 to 17 lumens per watt… read more
Researchers from the University of York and the University of Warwick are working on plans for a device able to manipulate five of a person’s senses, to given them the sensation of being somewhere else.
The quest to produce the ultimate realistic virtual grand piano took a big leap today with “Ivory,” announced by Synthogy and distributor ILIO at Winter NAMM 2004 in Anaheim.
The secret: Synthogy’s proprietary 32-bit sample-playback and digital signal processing (DSP) engine, which was specifically built from the ground up to bring out the resonance, response and character of three of the world’s finest concert grands:… read more
Rice University scientists have found the “ultimate” solvent for all kinds of carbon nanotubes (CNTs): chlorosulfonic acid, which can dissolve half-millimeter-long nanotubes in solution, they reported this month in the online journal ACS Nano. This is a critical step in spinning fibers from ultralong nanotubes, and a breakthrough that brings the creation of a highly conductive quantum nanowire closer.
Nanotubes have the frustrating habit of bundling, making them less… read more
Viruses and bacteria are the ultimate parasites — and our only true predators. With the advent of international jet travel, these parasites can escape from their remote lairs to every corner of the world in just a few hours. The greatest threat humanity is facing is that one day a virus will emerge that can spread as efficiently as tuberculosis and that is as deadly as Ebola.
Scientists at Newcastle University have created part-human, part-animal hybrid embryos for the first time in the UK.
The Catholic Church has branded them “experiments of Frankenstein proportion.”
The embryos survived for up to three days and are part of medical research into a range of illnesses. They were created by injecting DNA derived from human skin cells into eggs taken from cows ovaries that have had virtually all… read more
Using a gloves fitted with flex sensors, touch sensors, gyroscopes and accelerometers a Ukrainian team in a Microsoft competition has built a system called EnableTalk that can translate sign language into text and then into spoken words using a text-to-speech engine.
The whole system then connects to a smartphone over Bluetooth.
There are currently about 40 million deaf, mute and deaf-mute people. Many of them use sign language,… read more
The UK Government has commissioned the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering to conduct an independent study to examine in detail the benefits and risks of nanotechnology.
The study will:
The UK plans to give the public access to academic research via the Internet free of charge.
Science Minister David Willetts outlined details of the plan in an article in the Guardian newspaper ahead of a speech to the Publishers Association. He noted that the state currently spent about £5bn a year funding university studies.
The announcement followed a campaign dubbed the “academic spring” in which thousands… read more
University of Warwick scientists have discovered how a pneumonia-causing bacterium became resistant to penicillin, in research that could restore penicillin’s full antibiotic effect and help in designing drugs to fight MRSA (an antibiotic-resistant superbug bacterium).
By replicating the activity of the bacterial enzyme MurM–an enzyme associated with strength of the bacteria’s cell wall–in the lab, the scientists found out how the bacteria deployed MurM to neutralize penicillin.
The UK’s Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering today released their long-awaited report on the potential risks and benefits of nanotechnology. The report proposes:
Women in the UK will be allowed to donate their eggs solely for stem cell cloning experiments to find new ways of treating degenerative diseases.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority proposed the change to help research into therapeutic cloning and address a shortage of donor eggs.
We may one day give sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally reserved for humans, according to the British government-commissioned Horizon Scan report.
“If granted full rights, states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time,” it says.
Britain’s fertility regulator tells the government parents should not be able to choose the sex of their children, based on potential health dangers of selecting sperm by the available methods and for social reasons.
The British government has approved research on embryonic stem cells for developing new treatments for disease and for therapeutic cloning, involving the cloning of embryos up to 14 days old.