European space technology will boost the performance of at least one boat during this year’s Transat Jacques Vabre international sailing contest. The race starts on Saturday from Le Havre in France, and ends in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.

Marc Thiercelin and his sailing partner Eric Drouglazet will be competing in Thiercelin’s 60-foot yacht ProForm. The yacht has more efficient solar cells, lighter batteries and an intelligent power management system, all based on technology

Historic cities such as Siena, Aalborg and many ‘old towns’ within larger conurbations suffer excessively from the congestion and pollution that 21st century transport brings. You can ban the cars, but what about the problem of delivery vans and trucks? Researchers hope they have an answer.

Under the European Commission’s IST programme, the EDRUL pilot project investigated and tested an innovative e-logistics platform and services to manage freight distribution in such urban areas. T

Mobility Trends, the first international trade show for technological innovations and trends in mobility and transport, will take place from 31 May to 2 June 2006 at the Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre. This unique trade show will bring together both the public and private sectors, including key design, research and industry players, in order to initiate inter-sectorial cooperation and partnerships leading to technological developments.

Mobility Trends is designed for all man

Imperial College London and BP today announce a £4.5 million project to research the use of energy in cities.

The BP Urban Energy Systems project at Imperial will explore how money and energy could be saved in the future if cities integrated the systems that supply them with resources.

The project was announced today at the launch of Imperial’s Energy Futures Lab, which aims to play a major role in setting the energy agenda over the next 20 years.

The Ur

Increasing the safety and reliability of nuclear power as a solution for satisfying energy needs is the challenge addressed by a new initiative announced today. The £6.1 million Keeping the Nuclear Option Open programme will investigate how nuclear power can become a more appealing option for future energy production.

The initiative was announced today at the launch of Imperial College London’s Energy Futures Lab, which aims to play a major role in setting the energy agenda

Researchers have taken an important step toward high-volume production of new nanometer-scale structures with the first systematic study of growth conditions that affect production of one-dimensional nanostructures from the optoelectronic material cadmium selenide (CdSe).

Using the results from more than 150 different experiments in which temperature and pressure conditions were systematically varied, nanotechnology researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology created a “roa

Technical Research Centre of Finland, VTT has supervised the development of building technology that cuts the amount of energy required for heating in a block of flats by 70 per cent. The first apartment constructed with this low-energy technology was completed in the city of Espoo Finland, in the summer. Building of an entire block of flats utilising the same technology is scheduled to begin next summer.

Research on low-energy building in Finland has mainly focused on single-fami

The small device invented and developed by the St. Petersburg chemists can be easily hold in hand. It allows to perform real-time control of mercaptans content in petroleum derivatives – these sulfur compounds are extremely undesirable in gasoline.

In general, nobody likes these sulphur compounds. Besides, they reek – but fortunately, we rarely come across this property. More often they play mean tricks remaining unrecognized since even a small doze of these harmful substances

The first Norwegian-built satellite was launched yesterday from a Russian space base

The Norwegian satelite, called NCBUE-2 measures 10x10x10 centimeters and weighs one kilo.

A group of 80 students have built the satellite, which contains 1000 components, including a miniature computer, antennae, steering systems, solar panels and batteries.

The Agricultural University of Norway is primarily responsible for deciding which tasks the satellite is to carry out. The s

In her PhD thesis at the Public University of Navarre, Industrial Engineer Marta Barreras Carracedo put forward a new method of designing controllers based on QFT (Quantitative Feedback Theory) and which facilitates its real implantation in the government of real physical processes. The thesis itself validates the method putting into practice two concrete cases, an industrial electric furnace used for the drying of large pieces of composite and a heat exchanger in a solar water-heating plant.

Light can carry data at much higher rates than electricity, but it has always been too expensive and difficult to use light to transmit data among silicon chips in electronic devices. Now, electrical engineers at Stanford have solved a major part of the problem. They have invented a key component that can easily be built into chips to break up a laser beam into billions of bits of data (zeroes and ones) per second. This could help chips output data at a much higher rate than they can now.

Tape-cast silicon nitride for high temperature applications

With excellent high temperature strength, good resistance to oxidation and low coefficient of thermal expansion Si3N4 ceramic is one of the most important structural materials. However, the pure silicon nitride ceramics are difficult to densify and the addition of various oxides is used to improve sinterability.

Previous work has shown Lu2O3-SiO2 additives are useful in improving the bending strength of Si3N4 at

You fill up your “empty” fuel tank at the gas station and the pump charges you for more gallons than the tank’s rated capacity. Are you being deliberately overcharged?

Unauthorized tampering with pumps does happen, even though state and local weights and measures officials regularly check gasoline pumps to ensure their accuracy. But there are also legitimate reasons for a discrepancy between the amount of fuel metered by a gas pump and an automobile’s rated fuel ta

Berkeley Scientists Synthesize Cheap, Easy-to-Make Ultra-thin Photovoltaic Films

Imagine a future in which the rooftops of residential homes and commercial buildings can be laminated with inexpensive, ultra-thin films of nano-sized semiconductors that will efficiently convert sunlight into electrical power and provide virtually all of our electricity needs. This future is a step closer to being realized, thanks to a scientific milestone achieved at the U.S. Department of Energy

FSU researcher developing numerous uses for extraordinary ’buckypaper’

Working with a material 10 times lighter than steel — but 250 times stronger — would be a dream come true for any engineer. If this material also had amazing properties that made it highly conductive of heat and electricity, it would start to sound like something out of a science fiction novel. Yet one Florida State University research group, the Florida Advanced Center for Composite Technologies

Penn State researchers have developed a prototype sonic gas analyzer that automatically and continuously tracks the concentration of a gas in an air/gas mixture based on changes in pitch.

Miguel Horta, doctoral candidate in acoustics who is currently working on the sonic gas analyzer as part of his dissertation, says, “The system automatically cancels out the background and flow noise and can detect changes in gas concentration as low as 0.003 percent – plenty sensitive enough,