Surgeons at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center are the first in the U.S. to implant a new device designed to relieve knee pain and help prevent or delay the need for knee replacements in people with osteoarthritis. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — Simply making nanoparticles spin coaxes them to arrange themselves into what University of Michigan researchers call ‘living rotating crystals’ that could serve as a nanopump. They may also, incidentally, shed light on the origin of life itself.
The researchers refer to the crystals as ‘living’ because they, in a sense, take on a life of their own from very simple rules. (more…)
Almost one in 10 people will someday experience a kidney stone, which creates what is described as the most intense pain imaginable. This increasingly common condition leads to hundreds of thousands of surgeries in the United States each year.
A new device developed at the University of Washington would let doctors use ultrasound to move kidney stones inside the body and help them pass by natural means. (more…)
Splitting water into its components, two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, is an important first step in achieving carbon-neutral fuels to power our transportation infrastructure – including automobiles and planes.
Now, North Carolina State University researchers and colleagues from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that a specialized coating technique can make certain water-splitting devices more stable and more efficient. Their results are published online in two separate papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (more…)
Early in September Yale passed a milestone in mobile computing, with a record 39,414 mobile devices connected to its wireless networks. As on most college campuses the growth of mobile computing at Yale has been explosive, from well under 10,000 devices three years ago to almost 40,000 today.
A recent Gartner study showed that smartphone ownership among college students went from 55% in 2011 to 62% in 2012, and the percentage of students using their smartphones for academic work doubled in the same period. The typical U.S. college student now routinely uses between 2-3 wireless devices, and higher education computing experts predict that average to grow to 3-4 devices over the next year. (more…)
Using a “patient monitoring” device attached to a whale entangled in fishing gear, scientists showed for the first time how fishing lines changed a whale’s diving and swimming behavior. The monitoring revealed how fishing gear hinders whales’ ability to eat and migrate, depletes their energy as they drag gear for months or years, and can result in a slow death.
The scientists in this entanglement response suction-cupped a cellphone-size device called a Dtag to a two-year-old female North Atlantic right whale called Eg 3911. The Dtag, developed at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), recorded Eg 3911’s movements before, during, and after at-sea disentanglement operations. (more…)
Researchers from North Carolina State University have created flower-like structures out of germanium sulfide (GeS) – a semiconductor material – that have extremely thin petals with an enormous surface area. The GeS flower holds promise for next-generation energy storage devices and solar cells.
“Creating these GeS nanoflowers is exciting because it gives us a huge surface area in a small amount of space,” says Dr. Linyou Cao, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research. “This could significantly increase the capacity of lithium-ion batteries, for instance, since the thinner structure with larger surface area can hold more lithium ions. By the same token, this GeS flower structure could lead to increased capacity for supercapacitors, which are also used for energy storage.” (more…)
Shark migrations studied with underwater robot along Delmarva Peninsula
University of Delaware researchers are using an underwater robot to find and follow sand tiger sharks that they previously tagged with transmitters. The innovative project is part of a multi-year partnership with Delaware State University to better understand the behavior and migration patterns of the sharks in real time.
“In the past week our new, specially equipped glider OTIS – which stands for Oceanographic Telemetry Identification Sensor – detected multiple sand tiger sharks off the coast of Maryland that were tagged over the past several years,” said Matthew Oliver, assistant professor of oceanography in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. “This is the first time that a glider has found tagged sharks and reported their location in real time.” (more…)
