The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
Auburn University's Institute for Biological Detection Systems, with a team of veterinarians, chemists and physiologists, is working towards the ultimate detective device: an electronic artificial nose. Such a device would find a host of applications ranging from crime investigation to helping in the detection of drugs. It could even be …
for aerial fire-fighters, exchanging information over vast expanses of flaming wilderness is fraught with high risk and exigency . In an effort to improve the safety and efficiency of aerial fire-fighting, four us-based agencies, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa), the Bureau of Land Management, the United States Department …
on a table-top in Kazuo Hosokawa's laboratory is a small petri-dish filled with water. It contains a hundred or so small, flat silicon pieces. When Hosokawa shakes the dish, some of the little silicon pieces begin to clump together into something that looks similar to four-leaf clovers. To many, the …
The Mexican state of Coahuila will be an experimental area to test a new rain-making technique. Until now, creating rain involved flying over a supercooled cloud at a high altitude and sprinkling it with silver iodide crystals, which have a structure similar to that of ice. However, this method increases …
The delivery of a suspicious-looking parcel can cause enormous disruption in the working hours of any organisation, even if it eventually proves to be entirely harmless. Algis, a Derby-based company in the UK, that specialises in blast protection equipment has designed a
the image of spinning motors of no more than a hair's width graced the columns of newspapers in the late '80s. But what exactly would you do with a motor that is 70 microns (a micron is a millionth of a metre) wide? The rotating elements on these tiny motors …
it looks like timber, works like it, but retains its good look for several years without any protective treatment. This new material is wood prepared from recycled polystyrene. Polystyrene is a plastic material composed of hydrocarbons
leaks of halon, chlorofluorocarbon, hydrochlorofluorocarbon and hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants in concentrations as low as 10 parts per million can now be located with a hand-held, easy-to-use, portable leak detector from Lidbury, a uk-based company. The portable detector, called Portamonitor, weighs 370 gm and has its sensor mounted on a 250 mm …
The bacterium belonging to the Rhodococcus genus can not only neutralise benzene but may also be able to transform it into a source of useful chemicals. This was reported by microbiologists at the University of New South Wales in Australia. The bacterium neutralises benzene's effect by metabolising it. It destroys …
J Siegel and his colleagues at the University of California in San Diego, US, have synthesised a cage-like molecule similar to buckyballs and fullerenes, but one whose size and shape as well as overall chemistry is far easier to manipulate. The molecule used by Siegel is corannulene, which is shaped …
The physicists at Los Alamos national labs in US have announced a large amount of new data from the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector. This data supports their earlier claim that there are neutrino oscillations between different kinds of neutrinos. With 22 events in which the group observed evidence of oscillations, …
David Adermann, a lecturer of photography in the University of Newcastle, UK, has invented an indestructible camera which is likely to help scientists and military experts in filming activities on the site of an explosion. Adermann claims that no other camera can work as close to the explosion site as …
over the last few years, the military's network of 24 global positioning satellites has emerged as a promising technology for landing planes in bad weather. Compared with the existing system of poor-visibility landings, the global positioning system (gps) is cheaper, more versatile, and could drastically reduce weather related airport delays. …
that the shape of a material can be distorted by applying sufficient force is well known. What is not very clearly understood are the processes going on at the atomic level which take place, when for instance, a piece of metal is bent. But now a group of scientists have …
A fleet of buses powered by electricity and guided by a satellite navigation system will soon be launched in London. The progress of the 12-seater buses will be monitored using global positioning signal satellites that allow an operator to plan the most efficient route and change the route to suit …
Patients having heart diseases or those suffering from symptoms like recurrent rapid heart beat despite drug treatment, are now introduced to an electrical device -the defibrillator, manufactured by Guidant Corporation of Indianapolis, US. About the size of a cassette tape, it is implanted in the abdomen or chest and linked …
WITH the deadline to phase out ozone depleting substances (ODS) of the industrialised nations of the world already getting over, the countdown for developing nations has begun. As if to signal the urgency, an international conference on eco -refrigeration - fridges using chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) substitutes - was held in New …
Siemens has developed a device called the Siemens Molecular Analysis Research Tool (SMART), which will substantially cut down the time taken to analyse crystal structure. The device uses a molybdenum X-ray tube to produce the X-rays which are then incident on the crystal sample. After bouncIng off from the atoms …
