Geologists have built a new tool to study how earthquakes change the landscape down to a few inches, offering insight into how earthquake faults behave. A team of scientists from the U.S., Mexico, and China reports a comprehensive before-and-after picture of an earthquake zone, using data from the...

Researchers at Cambridge University, Stony Brook University, and New York University have developed methodology to improve battery performance and safety by serving as a diagnostic of its internal workings.Because radio frequency fields do not penetrate metals, one can actually perform very sensitive...

A new study led by Jun Zhang, a Professor at NYU's Courant Institute, determined that hovering in mid-air might actually depend more on weight distribution than once thought. The researchers used pyramid-shaped paper "bugs," which were kept afloat in a stream of blown air. Contrary to...

Recent earthquake damage has exposed the vulnerability of existing structures to strong ground movement. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, researchers are analyzing shape-memory alloys for their potential use in constructing seismic-resistant structures.Georgia Tech researchers have developed...

The Army has identified physical overburden as one of its top five science and technology challenges. To help alleviate physical weight on troops, DARPA is developing a highly mobile, semi-autonomous legged robot, the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), to integrate with a squad of Marines or...

A Stanford University research team has designed a high-efficiency charging system that uses magnetic fields to wirelessly transmit large electric currents between metal coils placed several feet apart. The long-term goal of the research is to develop an all-electric highway that...

New circuitry is able to monitor and deliver electrical impulses into living tissue. The elastic electronics are made of tiny, wavy silicon structures containing circuits that are thinner than a human hair, and bend and stretch with the body. The elastic technology attempts to bridge the gap from...

A team of researchers from Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal in Canada has focused on making soft versions of multitouch screens, batteries, microchip transistors, and other electronics. Those technologies could lead to "smart clothing" that, for example, monitors a person's health signs, or even...

A technique for inducing nanorods – rod-shaped semiconductor nanocrystals – to self-assemble into one-, two-, and three-dimensional macroscopic structures will enable more effective use of nanorods in solar cells, magnetic storage devices, and sensors. The development should also help boost the...

A research team led by investigators at Mayo Clinic in Florida has found that a small device worn on a patient's brow can be useful in monitoring stroke patients in the hospital. The device measures blood oxygen, similar to a pulse oximeter, which is clipped onto a finger.The tool, known as frontal near-infrared...

An international team of researchers has developed a process that improves the efficiency of generating electric power using molecular structures extracted from plants. The system taps into photosynthetic processes to produce efficient and inexpensive energy.

Task requirements for rocket propulsion test preparations of the test stand facilities drive the need to model the test facility propellant systems prior to constructing physical modifications. The Propellant System Modeling Environment (PSME) is an initiative...

A theory was developed to explain the properties of the chorus magnetic and electric field components in the case of an arbitrary propagation angle. The new theory shows that a whistler wave has circularly polarized magnetic fields for oblique propagation. This...

The performance of an optical system (for example, a telescope) is limited by the misalignments and manufacturing imperfections of the optical elements in the system. The impact of these misalignments and imperfections can be quantified by the phase variations imparted on light traveling through the system. Phase retrieval...