Keck Graduate Institute

In cities and large-scale manufacturing plants, a water leak in a complicated network of pipes can take tremendous time and effort to detect, as technicians must disassemble many pieces to locate the problem. The American Water Works Association indicates that nearly a quarter-million water line breaks occur each year in the U.S., costing public water utilities about

The benefits of this research and its progeny could be substantial, says Cox. A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin have identified 46 genes in Escherichia coli that are necessary for its survival at exceptionally high levels of radiation. The paper appears ahead of print in the Journal of Bacteriology. “The research has revealed new pathways

We’ve all done it – thrown out fruit or vegetables because they went rotten. Fungal contamination is the most common cause of spoilage of fresh produce, with an estimated 30 percent of harvested fruit and veggies falling victim to it. Countermeasures currently including synthetic fungicides and pre-package sanitation treatments involving the use of chlorine or

Altering bioelectric networks reveals a “hidden code” that controls the number of heads produced after injury even in normal-appearing flatworms Researchers have succeeded in permanently rewriting flatworms’ regenerative body shape by resetting their internal bioelectric pattern memory, causing even normal-appearing flatworms to harbor the “code” to regenerate as two-headed worms. The findings, published today in

Ecological traps have the potential to effectively control pest species and inhibit the spread of infectious diseases, according to a University of Maine researcher. A recently published study led by Allison Gardner, an assistant professor of arthropod vector biology at UMaine, provides new insights into how ecological traps, which occur when organisms show preference for

Advances in genetics may change aspects of environmental policy in the future.   Protecting endangered species is a legitimate goal for public policy. But we cannot expect that public policy will prevent all species extinctions, because scientists estimate that hundreds of species, if not thousands, become extinct every year, many without our knowledge. A rational

Researchers have invented a range of instruments from giant telescopes to rovers to search for life in outer space, but so far, these efforts have yielded no definitive evidence that it exists beyond Earth. Now scientists have developed a new tool that can look for signs of life with 10,000 times more sensitivity than instruments

Image via Wikipedia It’s no longer illegal under the DMCA to jailbreak your iPhone or bypass a DVD’s CSS in order to obtain fair use footage for educational purposes or criticism. These are the new rules that were handed down moments ago by the U.S. Copyright Office. This is really big. Like, really big. The

A team of masters students from the Queen Mary, University of London is hoping to develop the world’s first photovoltaic multi-copter. Dubbed “Solarcopter,” the team’s creation is a solar powered remote controlled helicopter-prototype designed for multipurpose applications. “The Solarcopter was inspired from the love of flight, and the urge to do something different for the

Better Place may have given up on its electric vehicle battery swap technology, but Tesla is moving full-speed ahead. Here’s what the company’s ultra-fast swap stations look like. A few weeks ago, we speculated about the possibility of Tesla introducing battery-swapping technology into its vehicles–presumably as part of an attempt to build a battery swap station network,