Category Environment/Geology

Smart needle which is able to detect blood vessels deep in the body. Credit: University of Adelaide

A new high-tech medical device to make brain surgery safer has been developed by researchers at the University of Adelaide. The tiny imaging probe, encased within a brain biopsy needle, lets surgeons ‘see’ at-risk blood vessels as they insert the needle, allowing them to avoid causing bleeds that can potentially be fatal. The project is a collaboration with the University of Western Australia and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. “We call it a smart needle...

A high-yielding 4-step process for converting a naturally occurring terpene, β-pinene, into a substituted ε-caprolactone, and ring-opening polymerisation and copolymerisation of this monomer.

Most current plastics are made from oil, which is unsustainable. However, scientists from the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies (CSCT) at the University of Bath have developed a renewable plastic from a chemical called pinene found in pine needles. Pinene is the fragrant chemical from the terpene family that gives pine trees their distinctive “Christmas smell” and is a waste product from the paper industry.

The researchers hope the plastic could be used in a range of applications, including food packaging, plastic bags and even medical implants...

This is the newly-developed hetero-type dual photoelectrodes by Professor Jae Sung Lee and Professor Ji-Wook Jang’s joint reserach team. Credit: UNIST

An international team with UNIST has engineered a new artificial leaf that can convert sunlight into fuel with groundbreaking efficiency. In the study, the research presented a hetero-type dual photoelectrodes, in which 2 photoanodes of different bandgaps are connected in parallel for extended light harvesting. Their new artificial leaf mimics the natural process of underwater photosynthesis of aquatic plants to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which can be harvested for fuel.

This study is expected to contribute greatly to the reduction and treatment of carbon dioxide emissions in accordance with the recent Paris Agreement on climate c...

MIT scientists have found that extreme precipitation events in California should become more frequent as the Earth’s climate warms over this century. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

On Dec. 11, 2014, a freight train of a storm steamed through much of California, deluging the SF Area with 3 inches of rain in just 1 hour. The storm was fueled by what meteorologists refer to as the “Pineapple Express”—an atmospheric river of moisture that is whipped up over the Pacific’s tropical waters and swept north with the jet stream. By evening, record rainfall had set off mudslides, floods, and power outages across the state. The storm, which has been called California’s “storm of the decade,” is among the state’s most extreme precipitation events in recent history.

Now MIT scientists...