March 26, 2018
Purdue University researchers have demonstrated the ability of a thin film to conduct heat on just its surfaces, identifying a potential solution to overheating in electronic devices such as phones and computers.
Read MoreMarch 26, 2018
Purdue professor Jeff Miller worked with researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles to characterize extremely small titanium dioxide that could help convert visible light into renewable energy.
On its own, titanium dioxide captures ultraviolet light but not visible light, leaving out half of the solar spectrum. UCLA researchers discovered that adding boron oxide to titanium dioxide resulted in nanoparticles capable of absorbing a wider range of light to be transformed for electricity and other energy uses.
Read MoreMarch 22, 2018
The way that an earwig insect folds its wings could be applied to how engineers preprogram technology to perform certain tasks, according to research published on March 23 in the journal Science.
The earwig insect has more folds in its wings than any other organism in the animal kingdom but uses minimal energy to move. Through simulations and creating a 4-D replica of these folds, researchers from ETH Zürich in Switzerland and Purdue University have likened the wing to self-folding origami that could inform how to make machines be more adaptable and responsive with less energy used.
Read MoreMarch 14, 2018
About 21 percent of the American food supply goes to waste, with much at the consumer level in restaurants and homes. But the choice to throw out leftovers may often be a rational one based on time and food safety, according to research from Purdue University economist Jayson Lusk.
Read MoreMarch 12, 2018
Researchers may be able to stop the replication of Ebola virus by mutating its most important protein, according to a paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Researchers were able to mutate Viral Protein 40 (VP40) in a way that changed the residues of the protein, blocking the budding and replication of Ebola virus in a model system.
Read MoreMarch 5, 2018
A long-distance telehealth study at Purdue University could help researchers identify autism symptoms in infancy, which could ultimately help children receive targeted therapy earlier.
Read MoreFebruary 22, 2018
Researchers at Purdue University have performed the first experimental tests of several fundamental theorems in thermodynamics, verifying the relationship between them and providing a better understanding of how nanoparticles behave under fluctuation.
As a system gets smaller, fluctuations away from equilibrium begin to dominate its behavior. This makes the data from experiments in small systems, such as biological molecular motors and nanoscale magnets, messy and difficult to make sense of. Fluctuation theorems help researchers make sense of the fluctuations in these systems.
Read MoreFebruary 22, 2018
Purdue University researchers studying whether concrete is made stronger by infusing it with microscopic-sized nanocrystals from wood are moving from the laboratory to the real world with a bridge that will be built in California this spring.
The researchers have been working with cellulose nanocrystals, byproducts generated by the paper, bioenergy, agriculture and pulp industries, to find the best mixture to strengthen concrete, the most common man-made material in the world.
Read MoreFebruary 22, 2018
Researchers at Purdue University have developed new heterostructures that could make optoelectrical devices, such as solar panels and sensors, more efficient.
Heterostructures are made by stacking layers of two-dimensional materials. The researchers stacked two very thin materials, tungsten disulfide and graphene, to see if they would work together to create electricity.
Read MoreFebruary 20, 2018
Chinese space laboratory Tiangong-1 is predicted to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in late April, but where or when it will reach the surface is hard to say.
“Debris comes into Earth’s atmosphere all the time,” said Jay Melosh, a professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at Purdue University. “With a spacecraft like this, most of the material burns up high in the atmosphere, but a few denser things might come down.”
Tiangong-1 was the first operational component of the Tiangong program, a larger, modular space station intended to be in space by 2023. It was originally planned to be deorbited in 2013, but never came down. In March 2016, the China National Space Administration announced it had lost contact with the lab.
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