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A start-up company in Scotland is working to capitalize on the tons of waste produced by one of the country’s most valued industries and turn the dregs of whisky-making into fuel. Celtic Renewables, formed in 2011, has refined its process based on a century-old fermentation technique and is now taking the next step toward a commercial plant, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.

DNA has garnered attention for its potential as a programmable material platform that could spawn entire new and revolutionary nanodevices in computer science, microscopy, biology, and more. Researchers have been working to master the ability to coax DNA molecules to self assemble into the precise shapes and sizes needed in order to fully realize these nanotechnology dreams.

Some years ago, when Ebola was not in any global news headlines, researchers presented their paper, “Use of Medical Robotics in Biothreat Situations” to an American Medical Informatics Association symposium where they said that “In biothreat situations, mobile robots have several advantages over humans including: imperviousness to infection; ability to be coated in self-decontaminating surfaces; 24-hour availability; and the ability to serve as a virtual telepresence and communication conduit for one or more participants.

A trio of researches with the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has found that though there are fewer total days per year when tornados occur in the U.S., the number that occur on days when there are tornados has increased over the past couple of decades. In their paper published in the journal Science, Harold Brooks, Gregory Carbin and Patrick Marsh describe how they studied weather data over the past half century and what they found when looking for trends.

An international team of scientists has succeeded in explaining the formation and propagation over astronomical distances of jets of matter emitted by young stars—one of the most fascinating mysteries of modern astronomy. Using a patented experimental device and large-scale numerical simulations, the team obtained data consistent with astrophysical observations.

Industrial ecology, a rapidly growing field focused on sustainable production and consumption, has contributed numerous important tools to modern environmental management—life cycle assessment; “industrial symbiosis,” or the by-product exchange between neighboring facilities; “design for environment”; and the use of material flow analysis to track resource use in supply chains, companies, and economies.

Kazutomo Suenaga of the Nanotube Research Center of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and Ryosuke Senga of the Nano-carbon Characterization Team, NTRC, AIST, have synthesized an atomic chain in which two elements are aligned alternately and have evaluated its physical properties on an atomic level.

Hiking in the mountains or lying on the beach are good ways to relieve stress on Earth, but on spaceflights there’s no way to get back to nature. Astronauts feeling stressed on long-duration flights, however, may soon find computerized solace in the form of a virtual reality-based relaxation system being developed by Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues.

Four urban sections of the San Andreas Fault system in Northern California have stored enough energy to produce major earthquakes, according to a new study that measures fault creep. Three fault sections – Hayward, Rodgers Creek and Green Valley – are nearing or past their average recurrence interval, according to the study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA).

Observing the quantum behavior of light is a big part of Alan Migdall’s research at the Joint Quantum Institute. Many of his experiments depend on observing light in the form of photons—-the particle complement of light waves—-and sometimes only one photon at a time, using “smart” detectors that can count the number of individual photons in a pulse.