NSF funds state's first imaging system for UAB microscale research lab

30-Sep-2009 - The National Science Foundation has awarded $431,200 to the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Physics to facilitate the purchase of a new highly-specialized imaging system — the first of its kind in Alabama — that will be a centerpiece of a new interdisciplinary research ...

Smaller isn't always better: Catalyst simulations could lower fuel cell cost

21-Sep-2009 - Imagine a car that runs on hydrogen from solar power and produces water instead of carbon emissions. While vehicles like this won't be on the market anytime soon, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are making incremental but important strides in the fuel cell technology that could make ...

ABB names Brice Koch to Group Executive Committee

11-Sep-2009 - ABB has appointed Brice Koch to the Group Executive Committee as Head of Marketing and Customer Solutions, a new role created to drive additional growth across the company’s markets and regions. Koch, 45, will oversee relations with ABB’s largest customers and the development of opportunities in ...

Acoustic tweezers can position tiny objects

01-Sep-2009 - Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough to place on a chip, according to Penn State engineers. "Current methods for moving individual cells or tiny ...

Bio-enabled, surface-mediated approach produces nanoparticle composites

21-Aug-2009 - Using thin films of silk as templates, researchers have incorporated inorganic nanoparticles that join with the silk to form strong and flexible composite structures that have unusual optical and mechanical properties. This bio-enabled, surface-mediated formation approach mimics the growth and ...

Ultrathin leds create new classes of lighting and display systems

21-Aug-2009 - A new process for creating ultrathin, ultrasmall inorganic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and assembling them into large arrays offers new classes of lighting and display systems with interesting properties, such as see-through construction and mechanical flexibility, that would be impossible to ...

Camera flash turns an insulating material into a conductor

14-Aug-2009 - An insulator can now be transformed to conduct electricity by an ordinary camera flash. A Northwestern University professor and his students have found a new way of turning graphite oxide -- a low-cost insulator made by oxidizing graphite powder -- into graphene, a hotly studied material that ...

Carbon nanoparticles toxic to adult fruit flies but benign to young

14-Aug-2009 - Carbon nanoparticles are widely used in medicine, electronics, optics, materials science and architecture, but their health and environmental impact is not fully understood. In a series of experiments, researchers at Brown University sought to determine how carbon nanoparticles would affect ...

Capping a two-faced particle gives duke engineers complete control

13-Aug-2009 - Scientists drew fittingly from Roman mythology when they named a unique class of miniscule particles after the god Janus, who is usually depicted as having two faces looking in opposite directions. For years, scientists have been fascinated by the tantalizing possibilities of these particles for ...

University of Minnesota researchers discover breakthrough method for chemical separations

New process could greatly reduce energy used in the production of biofuels

05-Aug-2009 - A team of researchers, led by chemical engineering and materials science professor Michael Tsapatsis in the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology, have developed a more energy-efficient method of chemical separations that could revolutionize processes in the petrochemical and biofuels ...