NRC/CRF laser-based technique for measuring “real world”emissions seen as key to validating federal vehicle compliance procedures

Using a unique laser-based, soot heating technique, a team led by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories’ Combustion Research Facility (CRF) has demonstrated the ability to measure “real world” particulate emissions from a vehicle under actual driving conditions.

While on-board measurements of gaseous emissions are routine, real-time par

Researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Materials Science Institute of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), and various German and North American institutions have developed a simple method for measuring the maximum current that coated superconductors can carry. The material will, most likely, be used to manufacture the superconductor wires of the future. The research has been published in the journal, Applied Physics Letters.

Electric currents pass through superconductor materials wi

Optimization is an effective method for enhancing the crashworthiness of cars. In a series of simulations of crash tests at Linköping University in Sweden it was possible to reduce the penetration of passenger space by a third.

Every year 47,000 people are killed in automobile accidents in the EU. This is as if a jumbo jet were to crash every third day. Such horrendous figures cry out for ever greater investments in crashworthiness. Modern optimization technique, based on so-called finite e

Today at the “Solar platform” test site in Almeria (Spain) the European Commission presented the state of play on its research programmes in alternative energy sources, including solar thermal, wave and geothermal energy. World energy consumption will double over the next 50 years, with Europe currently depending heavily on foreign energy sources. Currently, 41% of EU energy consumption is based on oil, followed by gas (23%), coal (15%), nuclear (15%) and only 6% is based on renewable energies. The t

A power plant that generates energy from used nuclear waste and destroys it as well. Could this become a reality? A three-year research project involving 23 European partners coordinated by KTH is being launched to investigate the matter.

In the last few years great strides have been taken in research into so-called transmutation (see footnote) of nuclear waste. Therefore, the EU is now committing €4 million in Project Red Impact. The objective of the project is to present several alternati

Nanophotonics could well revolutionise the fields of telecommunications, computing and sensing, according to Professor Clivia Sotomayor Torres. But why is research into nanophotonics important?

It has the potential to provide ultra-small optoelectronic components, high speed and greater bandwidth. Professor Sotomayor Torres believes current research into fabricating nano-electronics could open the way for new methods of making nanophotonic devices, i.e. mass producing light handling devices

Wires, tubes and brushes make it possible to build and maintain the machines and devices we use on a daily basis. Now, with help from a surprising source, these same building blocks can easily be created on a scale 10,000 times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

Researchers at Argonne have figured out the basics of using electrochemistry to control the architecture of nanocrystals – small structures with dimensions in billionths of meters. Their findings, published in the

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) have demonstrated in-orbit the use of a steam propulsion system onboard the UK-DMC satellite, launched on 27th September 2003.

The novel micro-propulsion experiment used 2.06 grams of water as propellant. This ‘green’ propellant is non-toxic, non-hazardous to ground operators and results in improved specific impulse over conventional cold gas nitrogen, at a significantly lower cost.

During the first in-orbit firing, the thruster was pre-heated

A contract for the construction and supply of cutting edge neutron scanning technology was today signed by the CEOs of Customs and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Customs and the CSIRO have been working together to develop the scanner that has the ability to detect explosives, drugs and other prohibited imports in air cargo more effectively than existing x-ray systems.

Customs CEO, Lionel Woodward said: “This technology is one of the measure

Toronto’s CN Tower acts as a lightning laboratory, teaching scientists how to protect delicate electronic equipment against high-voltage surges, says a new study. Lightning data captured by measurement stations at the CN Tower point to the most effective procedures for protecting sensitive technology in tall buildings or on power lines routed through mountainous terrain. “More and more electronic equipment has very sensitive components,” says study co-author Wasyl Janischewskyj, a profe

Alexander Pines and his colleagues have discovered a remarkable new way to improve the versatility and sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the technology upon which it is based, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).

Pines, a pioneering NMR researcher, is Faculty Senior Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Glenn T. Seaborg Professor of Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. The latest details of the new techniqu

Member of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Public University of Navarre, Jesús Mª Corres Sanz, has suggested a new method which enables, amongst other applications, response enhancement to perturbations in electrical machines such as those experienced by an electric vehicle. These techniques, moreover, can be applied to any type of industrial robot.

In this thesis the design of velocity observers and perturbation par is studied for their application to mechatro

The key aspect of the project is the obtaining of metal hydrides with the capacity to “store” the hydrogen used in automotive vehicle fuel batteries.

Under the auspices of the Strategic Plan for Materials and Energy being carried out by INASMET, the Armenian Institute of Chemistry & Physics of the National Academy of Sciences has signed a joint working agreement on order to make progress in one of the future energy sources such as fuel cells based on using hydrogen.

This al

This automatic system for transport, developed under the auspices of the European Assap-one project, is a solution that enables a port container terminal to expand by means of a specific rail link to an internal or peripheral terminal (inland container terminal).

The system consists of a fleet of automatic vehicles for which IKERLAN has developed traffic system controllers that resolve the automation of the transport of containers between the two terminals in real time, thus reducing the num

Using STM, researchers demonstrate precise control needed to build molecular electronics

While the semiconductor industry today routinely dopes bulk silicon with billions of atoms of boron or phosphorous to obtain desired electrical properties, a team of physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, has succeeded in changing the properties of a single molecule by doping it just one atom at a time.

“We can precisely change the exact number of dopant atoms attached to a

Printing circuits on sheets of plastic may offer a low-cost technique for manufacturing thin-film transistors for flexible displays, but maximizing the performance of such devices will require a detailed, fundamental understanding of how charge flows through organic semiconductors.

Now, an unusual way of fabricating single-crystal organic transistors has allowed scientists to probe charge transport within the crystals and to observe a strong anisotropy of the charge transport mobility within