ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Researchers tackle collapsing bridges with new technology
• New simulation speed record on Sequoia Supercomputer
• Colossal hot cloud envelopes colliding galaxies
• New research helps to show how turbulence can occur without inertia
• New zooming technique for entering text into smartwatches
• Saturn's youthful appearance explained
• Graphene's high-speed seesaw
• How to manage motorway tolls through the Game Theory
• Does antimatter fall up or down? First direct evidence of how atoms of antimatter interact with gravity
• 'Smart' paper and antennaless RFID tags
• Deep, detailed image of distant universe
• Herschel completes its 'cool' journey in space
• NASA probe gets close-up views of large hurricane on Saturn
• One step closer to a quantum computer
• Counter-intuitive behavior of microgel composed of soft polymer blobs
• Charging electric vehicles cheaper and faster

Researchers tackle collapsing bridges with new technology Posted: 30 Apr 2013 04:41 PM PDT Researchers have proposed a new technology that could divert vibrations away from load-bearing elements of bridges to avoid catastrophic collapses. The "wave bypass" technique has many similarities to those being used by researchers looking to create Harry Potter-style invisibility cloaks, which exploit human-made materials known as metamaterials to bend light around objects.

New simulation speed record on Sequoia Supercomputer Posted: 30 Apr 2013 04:40 PM PDT Computer scientists have set a high performance computing speed record that opens the way to the scientific exploration of complex planetary-scale systems. Scientists have announced a record-breaking simulation speed of 504 billion events per second on LLNL's Sequoia Blue Gene/Q supercomputer, dwarfing the previous record set in 2009 of 12.2 billion events per second.

Colossal hot cloud envelopes colliding galaxies Posted: 30 Apr 2013 12:15 PM PDT Scientists have completed a detailed study of an enormous cloud of hot gas enveloping two large, colliding galaxies. This unusually large reservoir of gas contains as much mass as 10 billion Suns, spans about 300,000 light years, and radiates at a temperature of more than 7 million degrees.

New research helps to show how turbulence can occur without inertia Posted: 30 Apr 2013 11:21 AM PDT For more than a century, the field of fluid mechanics has posited that turbulence scales with inertia, and so massive things, like planes, have an easier time causing it. Now, new research has shown that this transition to turbulence can occur without inertia at all.

New zooming technique for entering text into smartwatches Posted: 30 Apr 2013 10:15 AM PDT Researchers have developed a solution to the problem of entering text into the next generation of ultra-small computers. Called ZoomBoard, this text entry technique is based on the familiar QWERTY keyboard layout. Though the full keyboard is impossibly small on a watch-size display, simply tapping the screen once or twice will enlarge an individual key until it can be comfortably and accurately pressed.

Saturn's youthful appearance explained Posted: 30 Apr 2013 10:15 AM PDT As planets age they become darker and cooler. Saturn, however, is much brighter than expected for a planet of its age -- a question that has puzzled scientists since the late 1960s. New research has revealed how Saturn keeps itself looking young and hot.

Graphene's high-speed seesaw Posted: 30 Apr 2013 10:13 AM PDT A new transistor capable of revolutionizing technologies for medical imaging and security screening has been developed by graphene researchers. The researchers report the first graphene-based transistor with bistable characteristics, which means that the device can spontaneously switch between two electronic states. Such devices are in great demand as emitters of electromagnetic waves in the high-frequency range between radar and infra-red, relevant for applications such as security systems and medical imaging.

How to manage motorway tolls through the Game Theory Posted: 30 Apr 2013 10:13 AM PDT Sophisticated mathematical methods could be used to improve traffic management.

Does antimatter fall up or down? First direct evidence of how atoms of antimatter interact with gravity Posted: 30 Apr 2013 08:34 AM PDT The atoms that make up ordinary matter fall down, so do antimatter atoms fall up? Do they experience gravity the same way as ordinary atoms, or is there such a thing as antigravity? Recent results, which measured the ratio of antihydrogen's unknown gravitational mass to its known inertial mass, did not settle the matter. Far from it. If an antihydrogen atom falls downward, its gravitational mass is no more than 110 times greater than its inertial mass. If it falls upward, its gravitational mass is at most 65 times greater. What the results do show is that measuring antimatter gravity is possible, using an experimental method that points toward much greater precision in future.

'Smart' paper and antennaless RFID tags Posted: 30 Apr 2013 07:59 AM PDT Researchers have developed a method to embed radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in paper, which could help combat document counterfeiting, and have developed antennaless RFID tags for use on metal.

Deep, detailed image of distant universe Posted: 30 Apr 2013 07:59 AM PDT Staring at a small patch of sky for more than 50 hours with the ultra-sensitive Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have for the first time identified discrete sources that account for nearly all the radio waves coming from distant galaxies. They found that about 63 percent of the background radio emission comes from galaxies with gorging black holes at their cores and the remaining 37 percent comes from galaxies that are rapidly forming stars.

Herschel completes its 'cool' journey in space Posted: 30 Apr 2013 07:24 AM PDT The Herschel observatory, a European space telescope for which NASA helped build instruments and process data, has stopped making observations after running out of liquid coolant as expected. The European Space Agency mission, launched almost four years ago, revealed the universe's "coolest" secrets by observing the frigid side of planet, star and galaxy formation.

NASA probe gets close-up views of large hurricane on Saturn Posted: 30 Apr 2013 07:14 AM PDT NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole. In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon.

One step closer to a quantum computer Posted: 30 Apr 2013 06:24 AM PDT Scientists have succeeded in both initializing and reading nuclear spins, relevant to qubits for quantum computers, at room temperature.

Counter-intuitive behavior of microgel composed of soft polymer blobs Posted: 30 Apr 2013 06:23 AM PDT A new study explores the counter-intuitive behavior of a microgel composed of soft polymer blobs. Being a physicist offers many perks. For one, it allows an understanding of the substances ubiquitous in everyday industrial products such as emulsions, gels, granular pastes or foams. These are known for their intermediate behavior between fluid and solid. Paint, for example, can be picked up on a paintbrush without flowing and spread under the stress of the brush stroke like a fluid.

Charging electric vehicles cheaper and faster Posted: 30 Apr 2013 06:16 AM PDT Researchers have developed a unique integrated motor drive and battery charger for electric vehicles. Compared to today's electric vehicle chargers, they have managed to shorten the charging time from eight to two hours, and to reduce the cost by around $2,000.

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