ScienceDaily: Matter & Energy News

Machines teach astronomers about stars Posted: 16 Jan 2015 11:56 AM PST Astronomers are enlisting the help of machines to sort through thousands of stars in our galaxy and learn their sizes, compositions and other basic traits. The research is part of the growing field of machine learning, in which computers learn from large data sets, finding patterns that humans might not otherwise see.

New device for measuring how birds take flight Posted: 16 Jan 2015 08:03 AM PST A new device promises to answer long-held questions about the forces birds generate while flying, and could lead to the development of innovative, efficient unmanned aerial vehicles.

Solving an organic semiconductor mystery Posted: 16 Jan 2015 08:03 AM PST The mysterious source of performance issues in organic semiconductors have been uncovered by scientists -- nanocrystallites cluttering domain interfaces.

Breakthrough lights up metamaterials Posted: 16 Jan 2015 06:30 AM PST Researchers have successfully demonstrated how to both enhance light emission and capture light from metamaterials embedded with light emitting nanocrystals. The breakthrough could lead to a range of applications including ultrafast LEDs, nanoscale lasers and efficient single photon sources.

Bicyclists willing to ride up to 3 miles to catch bus, train Posted: 16 Jan 2015 06:23 AM PST Only about 2 percent of commuters in three metro areas - Atlanta, the Twin Cities and Los Angeles - reported pedaling their bicycles to the transit station, suggesting the need for better infrastructure, a researcher reports.

New 'triggered-release' mechanism could improve drug delivery Posted: 16 Jan 2015 05:49 AM PST More efficient medical treatments could be developed thanks to a new method for triggering the rearrangement of chemical particles, scientists say. The new method uses two 'parent' nanoparticles that are designed to interact only when in proximity to each other and trigger the release of drug molecules contained within both The release of the drug molecules from the 'parent' nanoparticles could subsequently form a third 'daughter' particle, which comprises molecules from both 'parent' nanoparticles, researchers explain.

Nanoparticles for clean drinking water Posted: 16 Jan 2015 05:49 AM PST One way of removing harmful nitrate from drinking water is to catalyse its conversion to nitrogen. This process suffers from the drawback that it often produces ammonia. By using palladium nanoparticles as a catalyst, and by carefully controlling their size, this drawback can be partially eliminated, researchers have discovered.

Sensors could give machines more accurate sense of smell than that of humans Posted: 16 Jan 2015 05:49 AM PST Scientists have come up with a way of creating sensors which could allow machines to smell more accurately humans. Every odour has its own specific pattern which our noses are able to identify. Using a combination of proteins coupled to transistors, for the first time machines are able to differentiate smells that are mirror images of each other, so called chiral molecules, something that has not been possible before. The human nose can distinguish between some of these molecules and the different forms of the same molecule of carvone, for example, can smell either like spearmint or caraway. Previous machines would not have been able to distinguish between the two.

Perovskites provide big boost to silicon solar cells Posted: 15 Jan 2015 01:35 PM PST Stacking perovskites onto a conventional silicon solar cell dramatically improves the overall efficiency of the cell, according to a new study.