For years, scientists have known about silver's ability to kill harmful bacteria and, recently, have created consumer products containing silver nanoparticles. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that silver nanoparticles also may destroy benign bacteria that are used to remove ammonia from wastewater treatment...

A new study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory indicates that globular clusters might be surprisingly less mature in their development than previously thought. Globular clusters are dense bunches of up to millions of stars that are found in the outskirts of galaxies, including the Milky Way. Understanding the nature of...

Westinghouse is a fascinating new feature-length documentary about the life and times of George Westinghouse, one of America's greatest inventors, entrepreneurs, and industrialists. Listen to our interview with the writer and director, Mark Bussler, as he discusses this "forgotten giant" --...

Every ounce of weight brought to the lunar surface costs 40 to 60 times that in fuel needed at liftoff from the Earth. Part of that weight penalty is due to wires, but the cost of wires is much more than weight. Wired connectivity drives up the price of design...

Proprietary microbial systems use naturally occurring microbes in lieu of chemicals in fertilizers, microbial inoculants, cleaning products, and pond treatments. Products are based on incorporating beneficial micro-organisms with a variety of task-specific organic surfactants,...

Technology is needed to generate a change in the ambience of a given space. The technology must interpret a number of sensory changes within a room in order to change other parameters. Of specific interest is software that interprets multi-sensor data and the consequence hardware to...

A food company seeks ways of objectively measuring and analyzing taste, mouth feel, texture, flavor, and eating quality of foods, leading to an analysis method that is accurate and repeatable across many foods and across time. Respond to this TechNeed at: www.techbriefs.com/tn/200805d.html Email:...

University of California at San Diego computer scientists have created a fog and smoke machine for computer graphics that cuts the computational cost of making realistic smoky and foggy 3-D images, such as beams of light from a lighthouse piercing thick fog. By cutting the computing cost for creating highly realistic imagery from...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed techniques to create accurate movies of biological and chemical molecules. Scientists using the high-intensity X-rays at the Advanced Photon Source have measured images that are "blurred" by these motions and have used them to create more...