More than 20 partners from all areas of the European car industry worked together in the EUREKA ITEA Cluster EAST-EEA project to develop a common software interface for electronic devices to be used in all cars from 2009. This will make the next generation of vehicles quicker to design and cheaper to bring to market, while maintaining high quality standards.

Electronics are being used increasingly to improve safety and comfort in all areas of the car – from engine, steering and br

Engineers and applied physicists have laid the foundations for a new type of “plug and play” laser — the Raman injection laser — and in the process, several key innovations in laser technology. The device combines the advantages of nonlinear optical devices and semiconductor injection lasers with a compact design, and may one day lead to wide-ranging applications in imaging and detection.

Published in the Feb. 24th issue of Nature, the proof of concept model was developed by Mari

”Smart clothes” are clothes that employ new technologies: technological developments have made it possible to integrate electronic components into conventional garments. In demanding conditions, such as working in heavy industries, very specific demands are placed on work apparel and materials, as they must protect the wearer from any hazards found in the working environment. Smart clothes design offers new material technology applications to make work apparel safer and more specifically suit

A new ‘specimen access device’ (SPAD) to allow safe and fast access to spacecraft being tested in the Large Space Simulator chamber is now fully operational at ESA’s Test Centre.

The SPAD is basically a customised crane, carrying a basket to move an operator inside the Large Space Simulator (LSS). The LSS is a huge chamber at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, which can simulate the space environment. Its exceptional test volume makes it

Studies may help identify best materials for variety of future electronics applications

Flexible displays that can be folded up in your pocket? More accurate biological and chemical sensors? Biocompatible electronics? In research that may help determine the best materials for a wide range of future electronics applications, a scientist from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory will report on the intrinsic electronic properties of molecular organic crystals

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are taking a new approach to “filling up” a fuel cell car with a nanoscale solid, hydrogen storage material. Their discovery could hasten a day when our vehicles will run on hydrogen-powered, environmentally friendly fuel cells instead of gasoline engines.

The challenge, of course, is how to store and carry hydrogen. Whatever the method, it needs to be no heavier and take up no more space than a

Materials scientists and engineers at Northwestern University are developing a new “high-security” steel that would be resistant to bomb blasts such as the one that struck — and nearly sank — the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. The researchers now have a state-of-the-art instrument that enables them to get a precise look at steel’s composition on the nanoscale: a $2 million atom-probe tomograph that is only the fourth of its kind in the world.

Using the new Local-Electrode Ato

Research could result in clean, inexpensive hydrogen fuel

Sunlight splitting water molecules to produce hydrogen using devices too small to be seen in a standard microscope. That’s a goal of a research team from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Sandia National Laboratories. The research has captured the interest of chemists around the world pursuing methods of producing hydrogen from water.

“The broad objective of the research is to design and fabric

PNNL-led group controls loading of functional ’anchor’ molecules on carbon nanotubes without encumbering tubes’ strength, conductivity

Touch the tines of a tuning fork and it goes silent. Scientists have faced a similar problem trying to harness the strength and conductivity of carbon nanotubes, regarded as material of choice for the next generation of everything from biosensors to pollution-trapping sponges.

Leonard Fifield, a staff scientist at the Depart

PlayStation users worldwide can now see for themselves what happens when Ariane launcher technology is applied to Le Mans racing. All they have to do is sit back and select which Pescarolo racing car they want to test-drive.

Gran Turismo 4, a new PlayStation 2 game, features the two custom-built top-performance Pescarolo racing cars that took part in the Le Mans endurance race in 2003 and 2004. Both were constructed using technologies developed for European space programmes.

A unique rover-based life detection system developed by Carnegie Mellon University scientists has found signs of life in Chile’s Atacama Desert, according to results being presented at the 36th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference March 14-18 in Houston. This marks the first time a rover-based automated technology has been used to identify life in this harsh region, which serves as a test bed for technology that could be deployed in future Mars missions.

“Our life detec

Although NASA’s X-43A and other hypersonic airplanes use air-breathing engines and fly much like 747s, there’s a big difference between ripping air at Mach 10 (around 7,000 mph) and cruising through it at 350 mph.

These differences are even more pronounced when hypersonic aircraft sip rarified air at 100,000 feet, while commercial airliners gulp the much thicker stuff at 30,000. Aero-thermodynamic heating is a very big deal at Mach 10. The critical point comes where air changes f

University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a novel machining technique that uses a jet of solid carbon dioxide (CO2) to cool/lubricate the surface of metal parts and remove the cut material during machining. Called Snow-Machining, the process could someday eliminate the use of oil-based or synthetic chemical fluids for metal cutting and metal parts cleaning in industry.

The Snow-Machining technology creates a high velocity stream

Research into making the emerging nanomaterial industry environmentally sustainable is showing promise in a preliminary engineering study conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Rice University.

Under the auspices of the Rice University Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), researchers have been investigating the potential environmental impact of nanomaterial waste. Specifically, they want to kn

North Carolina scientists have found that “thinnest” is not necessarily “best” in rating structure and function of carbon nanotubes, the molecule-sized cylinders that show promise for futuristic technology scaled at a billionths of a meter.

During an American Chemical Society national meeting, researchers at Duke University and Xintek, Inc. of Research Triangle Park, N.C., will report on the synthesis and testing of a new class of nanotubes made up of two to five layers of carbon

It’s possible to grow thin films of mother of pearl in the laboratory that are even stronger than the super-strong material that naturally lines the inside of abalone shells. The trick is to add compounds normally found in insect shells and fungi cell walls to the recipe.

Materials scientists have long been fascinated by mother of pearl, also known as nacre, (NACK-er) because it is several times stronger than nylon, said Nicholas Kotov, associate professor at the U-M College