EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State University has licensed cutting-edge software that detects altered fingerprints to Morpho, part of the Safran group, one of the world’s leading suppliers of identification and detection solutions. (more…)
Links between hundreds of millions of names belonging to people all around the world have been analysed by geographers from UCL and the University of Auckland. The results reveal how our forenames and surnames are connected in distinct global networks of cultural, ethnic and linguistic communities.
The researchers’ methods could be of use to social scientists and health researchers investigating migration, identity and integration. (more…)
*Berkeley Lab Researchers Develop New Infrared Coating for Windows*
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have unveiled a semiconductor nanocrystal coating material capable of controlling heat from the sun while remaining transparent. Based on electrochromic materials, which use a jolt of electric charge to tint a clear window, this breakthrough technology is the first to selectively control the amount of near infrared radiation. This radiation, which leads to heating, passes through the film without affecting its visible transmittance. Such a dynamic system could add a critical energy-saving dimension to “smart window” coatings. (more…)
*MU researchers develop “flavor release” ice cream with two distinct flavors*
COLUMBIA, Mo. — As the spoon slides into your mouth, you feel the freshness of the ice cream cool your mouth with a rich vanilla flavor. Yet, as you dig your spoon in for more, the vanilla changes, ever so slightly at first, but then to a distinct second flavor as you begin to taste cherry just before you swallow that first bite. The two-flavor, or “flavor release,” ice cream is an experimental ice cream that is being tested by researchers at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.
Using a process known as “micro-encapsulation,” Elizabeth Fenner, a food science graduate student, and Ingolf Gruen, associate professor and chair of food sciences, developed the ice cream that starts as one flavor and — after immediately breaking down inside the mouth — releases a second flavor. (more…)
Baltimore, MD — The human genome shares several peculiarities with the DNA of just about every other plant and animal. Our genetic blueprint contains numerous entities known as transposons, or “jumping genes,” which have the ability to move from place to place on the chromosomes within a cell. (more…)
*Scientists have successfully created synthetic crystals whose structures and properties mimic those of naturally-occurring biominerals such as seashells.*
*The findings, published in the journal Nature Materials, could be an important step in the development of high-performance materials, which could be manufactured under environmentally-friendly conditions.*
Professor Stephen Eichhorn, who has just moved to the University of Exeter from the University of Manchester, played a key role in the research. Professor Eichhorn has been appointed to a Chair in Functional Materials, through the University of Exeter’s £230 million investment in science, medicine and engineering. Exeter’s vision is for a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to the understanding and application of functional materials – from fundamentals to manufacture – exploiting world-leading materials knowledge to deliver new concepts, processes and products. (more…)
*Anatomically modern humans interbred with more archaic hominin forms even before they migrated out of Africa, a UA-led team of researchers has found.*
It is now widely accepted that anatomically modern humans of the species Homo sapiens originated in Africa and eventually spread throughout the world. Ancient DNA recovered from fossil Neanderthal bones suggests they interbred with more archaic hominin forms once they had left their evolutionary cradle for the cooler climates of Eurasia, but whether they exchanged genetic material with other, now extinct archaic hominin varieties in Africa remained unclear.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, a team led by Michael Hammer, an associate professor and research scientist with the UA’s Arizona Research Labs, provides evidence that anatomically modern humans were not so unique that they remained separate. (more…)
UCL scientists are part of an international team which has developed a novel X-ray technique for imaging atomic displacements in materials with unprecedented accuracy. (more…)
