ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

---

• NASA Voyager: 'Tsunami wave' still flies through interstellar space
• Cost of cloud brightening for cooler planet revealed
• Switching to vehicles powered by electricity from renewables could save lives
• Back to future with Roman architectural concrete: Advanced light source reveals key to longevity of imperial Roman monuments
• New algorithm a Christmas gift to 3-D printing, and the environment
• NASA's MAVEN mission identifies links in chain leading to atmospheric loss
• Virtual bodyswapping diminishes people's negative biases about others
• Lead islands in a sea of graphene magnetize the material of the future
• Mathematicians prove the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture
• Squid supplies blueprint for printable thermoplastics
• Promising new method for rapidly screening cancer drugs
• Algorithm identifies networks of genetic changes across cancers
• Climate change could leave cities more in the dark
• Fraud-proof credit cards possible with quantum physics
• Nuclear should be in the energy mix for biodiversity
• Live 3-D images to be taken from inside materials
• Mobile radio passive radar makes harbors safer
• Flying robots to aid in inventory management
• Stretched-out solid exoplanets
• Control of shape of light particles opens the way to 'quantum internet'

NASA Voyager: 'Tsunami wave' still flies through interstellar space Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:42 PM PST The Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced three shock waves. The most recent shock wave, first observed in February 2014, still appears to be going on. One wave, previously reported, helped researchers determine that Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space.

Cost of cloud brightening for cooler planet revealed Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:30 PM PST Scientists have identified the most energy-efficient way to make clouds more reflective to the sun in a bid to combat climate change. Marine Cloud Brightening is a reversible geoengineering method proposed to mitigate rising global temperatures. It relies on propelling a fine mist of salt particles high into the atmosphere to increase the albedo of clouds -- the amount of sunlight they reflect back into space.

Switching to vehicles powered by electricity from renewables could save lives Posted: 15 Dec 2014 03:53 PM PST Driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy instead of gasoline could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. This finding comes from a new life cycle analysis of conventional and alternative vehicles and their air pollution-related public health impacts. The study also shows that switching to vehicles powered by electricity made using natural gas yields large health benefits.

Back to future with Roman architectural concrete: Advanced light source reveals key to longevity of imperial Roman monuments Posted: 15 Dec 2014 03:50 PM PST A key discovery to understanding Roman architectural concrete that has stood the test of time and the elements for nearly two thousand years has been made by researchers using beams of X-rays.

New algorithm a Christmas gift to 3-D printing, and the environment Posted: 15 Dec 2014 11:09 AM PST A computer science professor reveals how to print a 3-D Christmas tree efficiently and with zero material waste, using the world's first algorithm for automatically decomposing a 3-D object into what are called pyramidal parts.

NASA's MAVEN mission identifies links in chain leading to atmospheric loss Posted: 15 Dec 2014 11:08 AM PST Early discoveries by NASA's newest Mars orbiter are starting to reveal key features about the loss of the planet's atmosphere to space over time.

Virtual bodyswapping diminishes people's negative biases about others Posted: 15 Dec 2014 09:30 AM PST Researchers explain how they have used the brain's ability to bring together information from different senses to make white people feel that they were inhabiting black bodies and adults feel like they had children's bodies. The results of such virtual bodyswapping experiments are remarkable and have important implications for approaching phenomena such as race and gender discrimination.

Lead islands in a sea of graphene magnetize the material of the future Posted: 15 Dec 2014 09:29 AM PST Researchers have discovered that if lead atoms are intercalated on a graphene sheet, a powerful magnetic field is generated by the interaction of the electrons' spin with their orbital movement. This property could have implications in spintronics, an emerging technology to create advanced computational systems. Graphene is considered the material of the future due to its extraordinary optical and electronic mechanical properties, especially because it conducts electrons very quickly. However, it does not have magnetic properties, and thus no method has been found to manipulate these electrons or any of their properties to use it in new magnetoelectronic devices.

Mathematicians prove the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture Posted: 15 Dec 2014 08:48 AM PST Monstrous moonshine, a quirky pattern of the monster group in theoretical math, has a shadow -- umbral moonshine. Mathematicians have now proved this insight, known as the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture, offering a formula with potential applications for everything from number theory to geometry to quantum physics.

Squid supplies blueprint for printable thermoplastics Posted: 15 Dec 2014 08:45 AM PST Squid, what is it good for? You can eat it and you can make ink or dye from it, and now a team of researchers is using it to make a thermoplastic that can be used in 3-D printing.

Promising new method for rapidly screening cancer drugs Posted: 15 Dec 2014 08:42 AM PST Traditional genomic, proteomic and other screening methods currently used to characterize drug mechanisms are time-consuming and require special equipment, but now researchers offer a multi-channel sensor method using gold nanoparticles that can accurately profile various anti-cancer drugs and their mechanisms in minutes.

Algorithm identifies networks of genetic changes across cancers Posted: 15 Dec 2014 08:42 AM PST Using a computer algorithm that can sift through mounds of genetic data, researchers have identified several networks of genes that, when hit by a mutation, could play a role in the development of multiple types of cancer. The researchers hope the new genetic insights might aid in the development of new drugs and treatment approaches for cancer.

Climate change could leave cities more in the dark Posted: 15 Dec 2014 08:39 AM PST Cities like Miami are all too familiar with hurricane-related power outages. But a new analysis finds climate change will give other major metro areas a lot to worry about in future storms.

Fraud-proof credit cards possible with quantum physics Posted: 15 Dec 2014 06:43 AM PST Though corporations and individuals work to improve safeguards, it has become increasingly difficult to protect financial data and personal information from criminal activity. Fortunately, new insights into quantum physics may soon offer a solution.

Nuclear should be in the energy mix for biodiversity Posted: 15 Dec 2014 06:41 AM PST Leading conservation scientists from around the world have called for a substantial role for nuclear power in future energy-generating scenarios in order to mitigate climate change and protect biodiversity.

Live 3-D images to be taken from inside materials Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:46 AM PST X-rays are a tried and tested way to investigate components and materials. Researchers are now developing an X-ray detector capable of delivering particularly high-quality 3-D images in real time. This will make it possible to precisely reconstruct even the processes going on inside materials and e.g. provide a reliable way of detecting minoscule faults.

Mobile radio passive radar makes harbors safer Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:44 AM PST Many coastal areas and harbors go almost unprotected against acts of terror. Soon a new sensor system relying on signal echoes from cell towers can quickly detect even the smallest of attack boats. This mobile radio passive radar can also help airplanes avoid colliding with wind turbines.

Flying robots to aid in inventory management Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:44 AM PST Standing on top of a ladder several meters high, pad and pen in hand, just to count boxes? Inventories in large warehouses could soon appear quite different and proceed to take flight, in the truest sense of those words: The goal of the InventAIRy Project is to automatically localize and record existing inventories with the aid of flying robots.

Stretched-out solid exoplanets Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:44 AM PST Astronomers could soon be able to find rocky planets stretched out by the gravity of the stars they orbit. Since the first discovery in 1993, more than 1800 planets have been found in orbit around stars other than our Sun. These 'exoplanets' are incredibly diverse, with some gaseous like Jupiter and some mostly rocky like the Earth. The worlds also orbit their stars at very different distances, from less than a million km to nearly 100 billion km away.

Control of shape of light particles opens the way to 'quantum internet' Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:44 AM PST In the same way as we now connect computers in networks through optical signals, it could also be possible to connect future quantum computers in a 'quantum internet'. The optical signals would then consist of individual light particles or photons. One prerequisite for a working quantum internet is control of the shape of these photons. Researchers have now succeeded for the first time in getting this control within the required short time.

You are subscribed to email updates from Top Technology News -- ScienceDaily To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States