2016

Beetle-Inspired Engineering Could Lessen Energy Costs Associated With Controlling Frost

In a discovery that may lead to ways to prevent frost on airplane parts, condenser coils, and even windshields, a team of researchers led by Virginia Tech has used chemical micropatterns to control the growth of frost caused by condensation.

Storms and Ozone May Play a Pivotal Role in Rainforest Cloud Creation

Some storms transport ozone molecules to the canopy of the rainforest, influencing chemical processes that ultimately affect cloud formation, according to an international research team led by Penn State.

New Finding May Explain Heat Loss in Fusion Reactors

Researchers at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, working with the University of California - San Diego, General Atomics, and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, say that they have found the key to the mismatch between theory and experimental results – the interactions between turbulence at the tiniest scale, that of electrons, and turbulence at a scale 60 times larger, that of ions.

New Nanoparticle Catalysts Could Reduce Need for Precious Metals

Researchers at MIT have found a less-expensive way to get the same amount of catalytic activity, using a lesser amount of platinum or palladium as an atomically-thin coating over a tiny ceramic particle.

UB's Wackeroth Named One of Fermilab’s Inaugural Distinguished Scholars

Doreen Wackeroth, University at Buffalo professor of physics, has been named a Fermilab Distinguished Scholar, making her one of the first four researchers to be selected for the honor.

UCR Researchers Discover New Method to Dissipate Heat in Electronic Devices

For the first time, an international team of scientists led by a researcher at the University of California, Riverside has modified the energy spectrum of acoustic phonons— elemental excitations, also referred to as quasi-particles, that spread heat through crystalline materials like a wave—by confining them to nanometer-scale semiconductor structures.

Managing Photosynthesis' Traffic Jams

The Ducat lab at Michigan State University has coaxed a lab-grown cyanobacteria to efficiently make and export sugar, a technique which could someday lead to greater biofuel production at lower cost.

Johns Hopkins Researcher Advance Treatment of Tuberculosis By Targeting New Enzyme

Researchers at Johns Hopkins report they have laid the foundation to develop novel antibiotics that work against incurable, antibiotic-resistant bacteria like tuberculosis by targeting an enzyme essential to the production and integrity of bacterial cell walls.