ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Mapping a room in a snap: Four microphones and a computer algorithm are enough to produce a 3-D model of a simple, convex room
• 'Chemical architects' build materials with potential applications in drug delivery and gas storage
• Is there an invisible tug-of-war behind bad hearts and power outages?
• Artificial bone: Designing synthetic materials and quickly turning the design into reality with 3-D printing
• How useful is fracking anyway? Study explores return of investment
• Efficient and inexpensive: Researchers develop catalyst material for fuel cells
• Polymer-coated catalyst protects 'artificial leaf'
• Coatings could help medical implants function better
• Simple and inexpensive process to make a material for carbon dioxide adsorption
• A robot that runs like a cat
• Uniquely shaped enzyme amazes chemists
• Researchers unmask Janus-faced nature of mechanical forces with supercomputer

Mapping a room in a snap: Four microphones and a computer algorithm are enough to produce a 3-D model of a simple, convex room Posted: 17 Jun 2013 01:08 PM PDT An algorithm makes it possible to measure the dimensions of a room using just a few microphones and a snap of your fingers. There are many promising applications on the horizon.

'Chemical architects' build materials with potential applications in drug delivery and gas storage Posted: 17 Jun 2013 11:23 AM PDT Home remodelers understand the concept of improving original foundations with more modern elements. Using this same approach -- but with chemistry -- researchers have now designed a family of materials that could make drug delivery, gas storage, and gas transport more efficient and at a lower cost.

Is there an invisible tug-of-war behind bad hearts and power outages? Posted: 17 Jun 2013 09:24 AM PDT Researchers report the first purely physical experimental evidence that an invisible and chaotic tug-of-war known as a chimera state can occur naturally within any process that relies on spontaneous synchronization, including clock pendulums, power grids and heart valves.

Artificial bone: Designing synthetic materials and quickly turning the design into reality with 3-D printing Posted: 17 Jun 2013 09:23 AM PDT Researchers have developed a new method to design synthetic materials and quickly turn the design into reality using computer optimization and 3-D printing.

How useful is fracking anyway? Study explores return of investment Posted: 17 Jun 2013 08:13 AM PDT The value of a fuel's long-term usefulness and viability is judged through its energy return on investment; the comparison between the eventual fuel and the energy invested to create it. The energy return on investment study finds that shale gas has a return value which is close to coal.

Efficient and inexpensive: Researchers develop catalyst material for fuel cells Posted: 17 Jun 2013 08:12 AM PDT Efficient, robust and economic catalyst materials hold the key to achieving a breakthrough in fuel cell technology. Scientists have developed a material for converting hydrogen and oxygen to water using a tenth of the typical amount of platinum that was previously required. With the aid of state-of-the-art electron microscopy, the researchers discovered that the function of the nanometre-scale catalyst particles is decisively determined by their geometric shape and atomic structure.

Polymer-coated catalyst protects 'artificial leaf' Posted: 17 Jun 2013 08:12 AM PDT One option is to use the electrical energy generated inside solar cells to split water by means of electrolysis, in the process yielding hydrogen that can be used for a storable fuel.

Coatings could help medical implants function better Posted: 17 Jun 2013 08:06 AM PDT Researchers have been working on the customized synthesis of biocompatible polymers that can coat sensors that are then implanted into the body to cloak them from the immune system.

Simple and inexpensive process to make a material for carbon dioxide adsorption Posted: 17 Jun 2013 07:46 AM PDT Researchers in South Korea have developed a novel, simple method to synthesize hierarchically nanoporous frameworks of nanocrystalline metal oxides such as magnesia and ceria by the thermal conversion of well-designed metal-organic frameworks.

A robot that runs like a cat Posted: 17 Jun 2013 07:46 AM PDT Thanks to its legs, whose design faithfully reproduces feline morphology, a four-legged "cheetah-cub robot" has the same advantages as its model: it is small, light and fast. Still in its experimental stage, the robot will serve as a platform for research in locomotion and biomechanics.

Uniquely shaped enzyme amazes chemists Posted: 17 Jun 2013 07:45 AM PDT Chemists in the Netherlands have found that a uniquely shaped enzyme that has never been seen before in biology is real: two interlocked ring structures, known as catenanes.

Researchers unmask Janus-faced nature of mechanical forces with supercomputer Posted: 17 Jun 2013 06:19 AM PDT The harder you pull, the quicker it goes. At least, that used to be the rule in mechanochemistry, a method that researchers apply to set chemical reactions in motion by means of mechanical forces. However, as chemists report in a new study, more force cannot in fact be translated one to one into a faster reaction. With complex molecular dynamic simulations on a supercomputer, they unmasked the Janus-faced nature of mechanochemistry. Up to a certain force, the reaction rate increases in proportion to the force. If this threshold is exceeded, greater mechanical forces speed up the reaction to a much lesser extent.

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