ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Scaling-up production of biopolymer microthreads
• High-yield path to making key ingredient for plastic, xylene, from biomass
• Remarkable outburst seen from old black hole
• Rogue stars ejected from the galaxy are found in intergalactic space
• Molecular spectroscopy tracks living mammalian cells in real time as they differentiate
• Redefining time: Extremely precise clock signals transmitted over long distances
• Conquering LED efficiency droop
• Electric charge disorder: A key to biological order?
• Old star, new trick: Astronomers have detected arsenic and selenium in ancient star for first time
• Record-breaking radio waves discovered from ultra-cool star
• Restoring hearing with discrete device: A middle-ear microphone for more convenient cochlear implants
• Superconducting strip could become an ultra-low-voltage sensor
• Attosecond lighthouses may help illuminate the tempestuous sea of electrons

Scaling-up production of biopolymer microthreads Posted: 30 Apr 2012 01:44 PM PDT Development of new therapies for a range of medical conditions -- from common sports injuries to heart attacks -- will be supported by a new production-scale microthread extruder. The system is in the final stages of testing and validation and will soon be manufacturing thousands of hair-like biopolymer threads a day.

High-yield path to making key ingredient for plastic, xylene, from biomass Posted: 30 Apr 2012 01:42 PM PDT Chemical engineers have discovered a new, high-yield method of making the key ingredient used to make plastic bottles from biomass. The process currently creates the chemical p-xylene with an efficient yield of 75-percent.

Remarkable outburst seen from old black hole Posted: 30 Apr 2012 12:17 PM PDT An extraordinary outburst produced by a black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of old, volatile stellar black holes. The discovery provides new insight into the nature of a mysterious class of black holes that can produce as much energy in X-rays as a million suns radiate at all wavelengths.

Rogue stars ejected from the galaxy are found in intergalactic space Posted: 30 Apr 2012 11:00 AM PDT Astronomers have identified nearly 700 rogue stars that appear to have been ejected from the Milky Way galaxy.

Molecular spectroscopy tracks living mammalian cells in real time as they differentiate Posted: 30 Apr 2012 08:49 AM PDT Cells regulate their functions by adding or subtracting phosphates from proteins. If scientists could study the process in detail, in individual cells over time, understanding and treating diseases would be greatly aided. Formerly this was impossible without damaging the cells or interfering with the process itself, but scientists have now achieved the goal by using bright infrared beams and a technique called Fourier transform spectromicroscopy.

Redefining time: Extremely precise clock signals transmitted over long distances Posted: 30 Apr 2012 07:54 AM PDT Scientists have successfully sent a highly accurate clock signal across the many hundreds of kilometers of countryside that separate two institutions.

Conquering LED efficiency droop Posted: 30 Apr 2012 07:54 AM PDT Like a coffee enthusiast who struggles to get a buzz from that third cup of morning joe, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) seem to reach a point where more electricity no longer imparts the same kick and productivity levels-off. Now a team of researchers has devised a new design for green and blue LEDs that avoids much of this vexing efficiency droop.

Electric charge disorder: A key to biological order? Posted: 30 Apr 2012 07:53 AM PDT Researchers have shown how small random patches of disordered, frozen electric charges can make a difference when they are scattered on surfaces that are overall neutral. These charges induce a twisting force that is strong enough to be felt as far as nanometers or even micrometers away. These results could help scientists to understand phenomena that occur on surfaces such as those of large biological molecules.

Old star, new trick: Astronomers have detected arsenic and selenium in ancient star for first time Posted: 30 Apr 2012 07:53 AM PDT For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of arsenic and selenium, neighboring elements near the middle of the periodic table, in an ancient star in the faint stellar halo that surrounds the Milky Way. Arsenic and selenium are elements at the transition from light to heavy element production, and have not been found in old stars until now.

Record-breaking radio waves discovered from ultra-cool star Posted: 30 Apr 2012 07:10 AM PDT Astronomers have discovered flaring radio emissions from an ultra-cool star that is not much warmer than the planet Jupiter, shattering the previous record for the lowest temperature at which radio waves had been detected from a star. The detection technique may be used to hunt for giant planets outside our solar system.

Restoring hearing with discrete device: A middle-ear microphone for more convenient cochlear implants Posted: 30 Apr 2012 07:10 AM PDT Cochlear implants have restored basic hearing to some 220,000 deaf people, yet a microphone and related electronics must be worn outside the head, raising reliability issues, preventing patients from swimming and creating social stigma. Now, engineers have developed a tiny prototype microphone that can be implanted in the middle ear to avoid such problems.

Superconducting strip could become an ultra-low-voltage sensor Posted: 30 Apr 2012 07:10 AM PDT Researchers studying a superconducting strip observed an intermittent motion of magnetic flux which carries vortices inside the regularly spaced weak conducting regions carved into the superconducting material. These vortices resulted in alternating static phases with zero voltage and dynamic phases, which are characterized by non-zero voltage peaks in the superconductor.

Attosecond lighthouses may help illuminate the tempestuous sea of electrons Posted: 30 Apr 2012 07:09 AM PDT Scientists have developed an elegant new method to study electrons' fleeting antics using isolated, precisely timed, and incredibly fast pulses of light.

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