The Purdue University glaucoma drainage device is built with microactuators that vibrate when a magnetic field is introduced. (Image provided by Hyowon Lee)

Smart drainage device may help patients with glaucoma save their eyesight. Purdue University researchers have invented a new smart drainage device to help patients with glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness in the world, as they try to save their eyesight. Glaucoma can be treated only with medications or surgical implants, both of which offer varying degrees of success in helping to improve sight and to relieve pressure buildup inside the eye. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 3 million Americans have glaucoma.

Implantable glaucoma drainage devices have grown in popularity over the past years, but only hal...

Chronic pain is the leading cause of disability in the world.
Credit: © Kittiphan / Fotolia

For the first time, researchers at the UNC School of Medicine showed they could target one brain region with a weak alternating current of electricity, enhance the naturally occurring brain rhythms of that region, and significantly decrease symptoms associated with chronic lower back pain.

The results, published in the Journal of Pain and presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego this week, suggest that doctors could one day target parts of the brain with new noninvasive treatment strategies, such as transcranial alternating current stimulation, or tACS, which researchers used in this study to boost the naturally occurring brain waves they theorized were important for the tre...

The bandstructure in a double layer of graphene was scanned by ARPES at synchrotron light source BESSY II.
Credit: HZB

Scientists have found evidence that double layers of graphene have a property that may let them conduct current completely without resistance. They probed the band structure at BESSY II with extremely high resolution ARPES and could identify a flat area at a surprising location.

In April 2018, a group at MIT, USA, showed that it is possible to generate a form of superconductivity in a system of two layers of graphene under very specific conditions: To do this, the two hexagonal nets must be twisted against each other by exactly the magic angle of 1.1°. Under this condition a flat band forms in the electronic structure...

This image shows the apparatus that is proving the efficacy of a double-layered rooftop panel. The top layer uses the standard semiconductor materials that go into energy-harvesting solar cells, the novel materials on the bottom layer perform the cooling task. CREDIT Linda Cicero, Stanford News

Scientists at Stanford University have demonstrated for the first time that heat from the sun and coldness from outer space can be collected simultaneously with a single device. Their research, published November 8 in the journal Joule, suggests that devices for harvesting solar and (space energy will not compete for land space and can actually help each other function more efficiently.

Renewable energy is increasingly popular as an economical and efficient alternative to fossil fuels, with solar en...