Peer Reviewed

A student team from The HKPolyU has made a strong presence in the 2013 Taiwan Innovative Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle (UAV) Design Competition by taking home the Second Runner-up (Navigated Flight Category).

Singapore, 10 May 2013 – Lloyd’s Register (LR) and A*STAR’s Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) have officially opened a joint laboratory, which will deliver innovative technological solutions to address the challenges faced by the marine, energy and offshore sectors.

Everyone’s been talking about the musical film Les Misérables that came out last year, but what is it that makes it so appealing? Opinion article by Prof. Yoshitaka Watanabe of Waseda University

Opinion article by Prof. Waichiro Iwashi of Waseda University on the implementation of a new non-invasive prenatal genetic testing that uses maternal blood in Japan

Singapore – 8 May 2013 – The Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) announced two collaborations with ST Electronics (Info-Comm Systems) and Singapore Power in the areas of Software Defined Communications systems and Grid Networks respectively.

It’s no secret that traditional crops such as millets and pulses are highly nutritious. Now researchers, working with women in Ethiopia and India are making it easier for them to use these local crops when cooking healthy meals at home and creating new business ventures.

Citizens in remote rural areas in 11 Asian countries are leaping over language barriers and into the Internet age. They may now access government services online, and submit college applications without making an arduous trek to the city. And their children are learning the computer skills that promise greater economic opportunities in the future.

Researchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) demonstrated high-performance polymer solar cells (PSCs) with power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.92% which is the highest values reported to date for plasmonic PSCs using metal nanoparticles (NPs).

A research group at the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) of NIMS discovered an intriguing phenomenon in which an inorganic layered crystal expanded and contracted by 100 times its original size in a few seconds in an aqueous solution, displaying a behavior similar to a living cell.

On 27th of April, the Bornean Frog Race was held at the Kubah National Park in Sarawak, Malaysia

The NIMS Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN) and Tokyo Metropolitan University have measured the volumetric expansion of single particles of silicon accompanying the charging reaction. This finding demonstrated the importance of electrode design from the viewpoint of volumetric energy density.

Tsukuba, Japan 26 April - Nanoparticles are used in many commercial products catalysts to cosmetics. A review published today in the Science and Technology of Advanced Materials by researchers in Sweden and Spain describes recent work on the 3 main nanoparticles used in photocatalytic, UV-blocking and sunscreens.

Trapping free electrons with polycyclic aromatic molecules creates materials with enhanced optical, electronic and magnetic properties

Replacing a high-temperature processing technique with an infrared treatment allows the manufacture of tiny devices without damaging the polymer components

Professor Albert PC Chan of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU)'s Department of Building and Real Estates, who is also Associate Dean of the Faculty of Construction and Environment, has been recently appointed by the Swedish Research Council Formas as a member of the review panel in built environment.

The government of Timor-Leste has developed a National Aquaculture Development Strategy, designed to help reduce high levels of poverty and chronic malnutrition throughout the country.

S Cube Design Lab, designers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) received the Silver A’Design Award at the A’DESIGN AWARD & COMPETITION with “Puncheart”, a squeeze punch. More than 4500 art works from about 140 countries entered this competition.

Studies on this disease recently completed by researchers from the Asia Partnership on Emerging Infectious Diseases Research (APEIR) developed a series of messages for policy makers that are highly relevant to the current outbreak.

Two years after the Great East Japan Earthquake, Prof. Kohara outlines some problems faced by the local authorities in the areas afflicted by the disaster especially in rebuilding local administration and communities.

University Teknology MARA researchers investigated the effects of rice, barley and mung beans in heated bags for treating soft tissue injuries. Rice displayed superior quality in maintaining heat and can act as a substitute to ice packs or heat gels in treating these injuries.

Tsukuba, Japan & Los Angeles, Ca. 12 April - A new study by researchers at UCLA suggests that the elasticity of the physical matrix used for growing heart muscle cells outside of the body may be critical to the success of cardiac tissue engineering. The results were published in the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials this week.

Innovative policies and new technologies that reduce water waste are helping countries across the Middle East and North Africa deal with chronic water shortages.

A novel material shows its credentials to facilitate the integration of photonic and electronic components in practical devices

Color printing at the highest resolution possible is enabled by the use of arrays of metal-coated nanostructures

Simply changing the pattern by which data is recorded may lead to increased hard drive capacities

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has won the Best Green ICT (Adoption - Organisations) Silver Award in the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2013 for the project “A Greener Era – start from here (Greening University Administration – Out with the Old! )”

The UPM team designed and developed a software to be installed in Android- based mobile devices, which can be used as a scanner to scan the barcode of a product to verify of its halal status from a database.

Hanyang University in collaboration with Stanford University has succeeded in fabricating peel-and-stick thin film solar cells (TFSCs). The Si wafer is clean and reusable. Moreover, as the peeled-off TFSCs from the Si wafer are thin, light-weight, and flexible, it can be attached onto any form or shape of surface like a sticker.

Opinion article by Prof. Yukiko Fukagawa of Waseda University "The freshest aspect of this administration is not the president’s position as the first female president of South Korea, but the president’s goal of achieving happy society and for being the first administration in history to push social policy."

Singapore, 9 April 2013 – GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and A*STAR’s Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (ICES) have signed a five-year strategic agreement to develop new evidence based formulations (EBFs) specifically for emerging markets. EBFs are medicines which are reformulated to provide additional patient benefit.