With threats of water scarcity complicating the need to feed a growing global population, it is more important than ever to get crop irrigation right. Overwatering can deplete local water supplies and lead to polluted runoff, while underwatering can lead to sub-optimal crop performance. Yet few farmers use science-based tools to help them decide when and how much to water their crops.
Credit: Heriot-Watt University
Exploring extreme environments can put significant operational challenges on the engineering systems we depend upon to safely explore and at times operate within.
Within high-value and safety-critical applications, such as space exploration or sub-surface drilling, the extreme and at times dynamic operating conditions within the environment, can make it challenging to understand the life expectancy of critical components and sub-systems. Hence, it s a highly complex and at times impossible situation to accurately understand therefore predict.
To have safe, resilient and economically viable operations within these challenge environments, it is vital to understand the effect of high temperatures on critical devices, such as Electrochemical Capacitors (EC s). In comparison to a battery, ECs, also known as supercapacitor, ultracapacitor, or electrochemical double-layer capacitor, can withstand high discharge-charge currents and thus are suitable for w
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IMAGE: Researchers have now described a new law of physics that accounts for elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) friction, which should advance a wide range of robotic technologies. EHL friction occurs when two. view more
Credit: Lilian Hsiao
Although robotic devices are used in everything from assembly lines to medicine, engineers have a hard time accounting for the friction that occurs when those robots grip objects - particularly in wet environments. Researchers have now discovered a new law of physics that accounts for this type of friction, which should advance a wide range of robotic technologies. Our work here opens the door to creating more reliable and functional haptic and robotic devices in applications such as telesurgery and manufacturing, says Lilian Hsiao, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of a paper on the work.
Credit: Lilian Lieber, Queen s University Belfast
The foraging behaviour of seabirds is dramatically affected by turbulence caused by natural coastal features and manmade ocean structures, new research has shown.
In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists from the UK and Germany used drones to provide a synchronised bird s eye view of what seabirds see and how their behaviour changes depending on the movement of tidal flows beneath them.
The research focused on the wake of a tidal turbine structure set in a tidal channel - Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland - that has previously been identified as a foraging hotspot for terns.
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IMAGE: Michael Franz of the University of California, Irvine is the recipient of the ACM Charles P. Chuck Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award. view more
Credit: Markus Hörster/TU Braunschweig
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today announced that Michael Franz of the University of California, Irvine is the recipient of the ACM Charles P. Chuck Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award. Franz is recognized for the development of just-in-time compilation techniques that enable fast and feature-rich web services on the internet. Every day, millions of people around the world use online applications such as Gmail and Facebook. These web applications would not have been possible without the groundbreaking compilation technique Franz developed in the mid 1990s.