Millions of vehicles produced each year are transported by purpose-built car carrying ships that can be turned around quickly. Research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council confirms that as a consequence of technical, infrastructure and production changes in the industry, crew members have experienced a decline in work/life balance. Shore leave for many may amount to having time for a telephone call home at the port of destination only – before needing to set sail again.

Double threat could power 900 American homes

An environmental engineer at Washington University in St. Louis has created a device similar to a hydrogen fuel cell that uses bacteria to treat wastewater and create electricity.

Lars Angenent, Ph.D., assistant professor of Chemical Engineering, and a member of the University’s Environmental Engineering Science Program, has devised a microbial fuel cell which he calls an upflow microbial fuel cell (UMFC) that is fed co

EUREKA project E! 2512 MINIMOBIL has developed a vehicle specifically designed for life in Europe’s congested cities that uses a hybrid drive combining the environmental benefits of an electric motor with the range of a petrol engine. The compact city car relieves congested roads and reduces urban pollution.

The MINIMOBIL measures a slim two by one metres, and is little bigger than a motorbike. It is ideal for swiftly moving through traffic, while doors positioned at the front a

The technology improvements that are giving us ever quieter cars are not proving popular with many car drivers. Car manufacturers now want to restore to the inside of a car the sounds their customers want to hear while preserving the reduction in exterior noise. But what exactly do their customers want to hear? – researchers at the University of Warwick’s Warwick Manufacturing Group are helping them answer that question.

Researchers at the University of Warwick’s Warwick Manufac

Novel electronic devices based upon nanotechnology may soon be realized due to a new understanding of how impurities, or ’dopants,’ can be intentionally incorporated into semiconductor nanocrystals. This understanding, announced today by researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the University of Minnesota (UMN), should help enable a variety of new technologies ranging from high-efficiency solar-cells and lasers to futuristic ’spintronic’ and ultra-sensitive biodete

Scientists have shown for the first time that carbon nanotubes make an ideal scaffold for the growth of bone tissue. The new technique could change the way doctors treat broken bones, allowing them to simply inject a solution of nanotubes into a fracture to promote healing.

The report appears in the June 14 issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal Chemistry of Materials. ACS is the world’s largest scientific society.

The success of a bone graft de

Tension is mounting for three teams of architects and engineers who are competing for the design of the new British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Halley Research Station. The winning team will be announced on Tuesday 19 July.

The Jury Panel and technical advisory team have a difficult choice to select just one from three stunning solutions. Each proposal is designed to withstand Antarctica’s extreme environment. Each scheme is elevated above the ice to avoid burial by snow; and is capa

The microelectronics industry is continually striving to miniaturize conventional silicon-based electronic devices to provide higher performance technology that can be housed in smaller packaging.

Progress resulting from this miniaturization is evident from the rapid advances in consumer electronics, such as cell phones and laptop computers, that have been observed in recent years. Now, silicon-based molecular electronics — a complementary technology to conventional microelectr

Delayed trains cost time and money not just for passengers but also for railway operators and national economies. Enhancing the performance of rail networks and improving the exploitation of existing infrastructure is the COMBINE 2 project.

Since the IST programme-funded project ended early last year, the COMBINE 2 algorithms have gone on to be used commercially in the Milan metro and its system has undergone extensive field trials with real trains in The Netherlands, proving its p

Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard is constructing a solar-powered plane to fly around the world. His aim is to support sustainable development by demonstrating what renewable energy and new technologies can achieve. ESA is assisting by making available European space technologies and expertise through its Technology Transfer Programme.

Bertrand Piccard made the first non-stop around the world balloon-flight in a Breitling Orbiter in 1999 with Brian Jones from Britain. Now togeth

Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study.

“There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. “These strategies are not sustainable.”

Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental eng

The Gaiker Technology Centre, member of the IK4 technological platform, has carried out in collaboration with ANTEC, S.A. and TENNECO a technological research project to manufacture a new range of ecological shock absorbers able to provide major security level and comfort to drivers and users of vehicles and to improve their competitiveness from traditional products.

The importance of this project is that it increases substantially the security of vehicles, by improving damping through th

A new study of the carbon dioxide emissions, cropland area requirements, and other environmental consequences of growing corn and sugarcane to produce fuel ethanol indicates that the “direct and indirect environmental impacts of growing, harvesting, and converting biomass to ethanol far exceed any value in developing this energy resource on a large scale.” The study, published in the July 2005 issue of BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), uses the “eco

How sunny is it outside right now – not just locally but all across Europe and Africa? Answering this question is at the heart of many weather-related business activities: solar power and the wider energy sector, architecture and construction, tourism, even health care. Today accurate and continent-wide scale measurements of ground radiances are provided every 15 minutes by ESA’s Meteosat Second Generation satellite.

Integrating this information with the business practices of solar

University of California, Berkeley, researchers have invented a variation on the standard electronic transistor, creating the first “nanofluidic” transistor that allows them to control the movement of ions through sub-microscopic, water-filled channels.

The researchers – a chemist and a mechanical engineer – predict that, just as the electronic transistor became the main component of microprocessors and integrated circuits, so will nanofluidic transistors anchor molecular pr

With cars become ever more computerised, there is an increasing need for robust real-time embedded software to maintain the effectiveness and safety of critical onboard systems.

The IST-funded RISE project, which ended in February 2005, set out to address this demand by developing a software toolset specifically geared to the automotive industry.

RISE succeeded in delivering on all of its principal objectives and answers a genuine need in the automotive industry, according t