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 …
HOW many times have you waited for an elevator to make that blessed halt at where you are and found it too crammed even for a fly? Well, if Bruce Powell, a researcher at the Otis Elevators Inc has his way, those long, irritating waits for an elevator may finally …
In a pioneering effort, Vortoil Separation Systems Ltd of Gloucester, UK, has developed a hydro cyclone separator to remove oil from water. The hydrocyclone separator can convert the kinetic energy contained by flowing liquids into powerful centrifugal forces. This results in the instantaneous separation of oil and water. The vortex …
The discovery of plasma crystals (that are colloidal particles introduced into a charge neutral plasma) has led to several insights into the dynamics of melting and freezing. Hubertus Thomas and G Morfill of the Max-Planck Institute at Garching, Germany, have used polymer spheres of about seven micrometres diameter to study …
Engineers from the University of Surrey, UK, have created an intelligent robot that accomplishes hazardous feats like cleaning up contaminated wastes in nuclear reactors. The robot has been developed by integrating virtual reality (VR) soft - ware with robotics. An operator wears a special VR headset and the robot mimics …
Scientists in the optics and laser technology department of British Aerospace's Sowerby Research Centre at Filton in South UK are planning to develop 'smart' aircraft wings that look after themselves. The new wings have miniature sensors manufactured from optical fibres that change colour when they experience stress or temperature changes. …
DETERMINATION of the atomic configurations of materials is of great relevance in studying their properties. From x-ray diffraction to electron microscopy, many tools have been used over the years. But now comes a new technique of x-ray holography which promises to revolutionise the study of materials. Miklos Tegze and Gyula …
Compressed air energy storage is one of the several energy storage technologies developed for the power industry. There are two separate portions in the storage cycle: compression and expansion. A compressor pumps high-pressure air into an underground reservoir (salt dome, porous media, or hard rock) using a motor or generator. …
THREE times in this century, chemists have designed and manufactured artificial molecules that have launched whole new industries: nylon, polyethylene and plexiglass. Donald Tomalia, chemist and former employee of Dow Chemicals Inc, has claimed that he might have just come up with a fourth one. Tomalia's creation is 'dendrimer', the …
INCONCEIVABLE is what you may say to a proposal of building a 14.32 km long bridge across the Strait of Gibralter. But a revolution in bridge design technology is now on the anvil which may soon allow us to span distances long believed to be unbridgeable. This new design concept, …
Designers from the Research Centre of Building Power Tools, Russia have designed tools that, they claim, disobey the sacrosanct third law of motion laid down by Newton. The tools are specially designed for use in space, where the zero-gravity situation gives astronauts a hard time in doing a simple job …
Electronic devices are getting smaller and smaller and human workers and conventional robots are finding it increasingly difficult to assemble them. Peter Will of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California and his collaborators at the California Institute of Technology have designed microrobots modelled on hairlike …
INSPITE of recent advances in forensic, science, such as the development Of DNA profiling technique, the conventional fingerprint tests continue to remain an important aid to identify an individual suspect at the scene of crime. Now researchers from the University of Wales, in Swansea, UK, have developed a new technique …
PARTICLE accelerators are among the most sophisticated machines built by humankind. The precision which drives these machines, the magnitude of the accelerator facilities and the sophisticated electronics which are the machines' hallmark, are usually the results of a collaboration of many people. The technology also has many spin-offs in areas …
THE Swiss Central Bank, Zurich, will soon be giving the public a banknote so technologically advanced that it would be almost impossible to produce a counterfeit. This comes in the form of the world's first digitised banknote, entirely designed on a computer. The Bank chose Jorg Zintzmeyer, awell- known computer …
Quark, thought to be the simplest building block of nuclear matter, may contain still smaller building blocks, as suggested by scientists working at Fermilab's huge particle accelerator near Chicago in US. Some revision in the theory given by the team of scientists will be needed as the data is puzzlingly …
MOLECULAR magnetism, which involves designing and synthesising molecules that have properties like long-range magnetic ordering, is one of the most fascinating fields of research in material science. Many materials with this pro~ perty, useful in items like magnetic memory devices, !)ave been synthesised. But all of them suffer from the …
PHYSICISTS have created the first atoms of antimatter, giving scientists a glimpse of what they say could be a "completely new anti-world". This historical achievement was announced on January 4, after months of careful checking of data. According to scientists, it is quite possible that the universe could contain stars …
The Hubble Space Telescope's position above the earth's atmosphere enables it to provide clearer pictures of the heavens. Now, with the first integrated test of adaptive optics, ground-based telescopes - visibility through which remained affected till date due to atmospheric turbulence - could do as well. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory …
One of the challenges facing image processors has been the reconstruction of a three dimensional (3-D) image of human face from photographs. Recent work by J J Atick and others at Rockfeller University (USA) may lead to an accurate algorithm for the purpose. They started with the idea that all …
IMAGINE a tank which can hold 50,000 tonnes of water, located about a km under the earth. This is the latest neutrino detector which starts its operations in December in Japan. Located some 300 km west of Tokyo in a lead mine, the construction of the US $ 100 million …
