Highway columns of glass or carbon fibre help structures meet and exceed building code requirements

Just how trustworthy are disintegrating columns that bulge and expose bent, rusting steel on elevated highways? “They are sitting ducks that, in an earthquake, could crumble,” says Professor Shamim Sheikh of U of T’s Department of Civil Engineering. His team has devised a strong, cost-effective method of structural reinforcement that is already proving its worth on highways and ot

Using photon emissions from individual molecules of silver, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created what may be the world’s smallest electroluminescent light source.

Believed to be the first demonstration of electroluminescence from individual molecules, the work could lead to new types of nanometer-scale optical interconnects, high-resolution optical microscopy, nanometer-scale lithography and other applications that require very small light sources. And becaus

An enormous source of clean energy is available to us. We see it almost every day. It’s just a matter of harnessing it.

The problem with solar energy is that it has not been inexpensive enough in the past. David Kelley, professor of chemistry at Kansas State University, developed a new type of nanoparticle — a tiny chemical compound far too small to be seen with the naked eye — that may reap big dividends in solar power.

Kelley’s team is studying the properties and tech

DuPont scientist identifies key issues in future coatings technology

Dr. Robert R. Matheson, Jr., one of the world’s foremost scientists on coatings – one of the oldest technologies known to humans – will have his scientific paper “20th- to 21st-Century Technological Challenges in Soft Coatings” featured in the upcoming edition of SCIENCE magazine.

As part of the Aug. 9 edition of SCIENCE, Dr. Matheson, a DuPont senior scientist, details the future of technological adva

The technological centre Robotiker from Zamudio (Basque Country) has developed a system of artificial sight to separate metals that come with copper, in order to obtain high purity copper.

To recover copper from old cables it is not something new. However, the recycled copper is not pure, because it is mixed with other metals, such as lead, aluminium and tin. It is quite complicated to separate copper from those components by using mechanical, physical and other methods. Nevertheless it is

New technology for generating power from coal mining waste was launched by the Federal Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, the Hon. Ian Macfarlane, at CSIRO in Brisbane today.

The revolutionary technology has the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gases and bring big savings to mining companies operating coal mines.

The CSIRO-Liquatech hybrid coal and gas turbine system unveiled at the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies will generate electricity from wa

The kerosene that lights your heater or stove might be the same type of fuel powering the nation’s next space vehicle.

Kerosene — almost as common to American life as gasoline — is being considered as a fuel for two main engine candidates for a second generation reusable launch vehicle, now in development by the Space Launch Initiative. The Initiative is NASA’s technology development program to design a complete space transportation system with increased safety and reliability at a lower c

Simple method may improve catalysts, nanodevices

A way to help next-generation computers boot up instantly, making entire memories immediately available for use, has been developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The patented technique is able to deposit flat, ultrathin metallic layers on very thin oxide layers. The thinness of the deposition reduces material cost and requires less electricity to produce more rapid mag

Ironing must surely be one of the most dreaded household activities. Local entrepreneur Jonathan Nwabueze from Guildford, got so fed up with ironing and being delayed in the morning because of last minute ironing that he invented an iron that works without the need for a board.

His invention, featured on Tomorrow’s World on 24 July 2002, takes the drudgery out of ironing by using a heated vacuum to remove the creases from clothes. The 30-year old entrepreneur said “it can even smooth out wri

A recently released study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) concludes that hybrid buses operate with lower emissions and greater fuel efficiency than conventional diesel buses.

The year long evaluation of 10 prototype diesel hybrid-electric buses in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s New York City Transit (NYCT) fleet of 4,489 buses showed that these hybrid buses have a 10 percent higher in-service fuel economy. Ac

Why would an uneven coating of gold on a silica surface excite any interest, much less earn cover-story honors in a respected scientific journal?

This uneven coating – nanoparticles of gold in a layer that changes from very dense to very sparse across a surface of selected molecules – will allow improvements in a wide range of processes and devices. And it’s the decreasing concentration of the coating and overlaying particles, the designed-in gradient, that has chemical engineers and ph

A University of Michigan physicist and a research scientist are questioning the belief that bigger and heavier vehicles are automatically safer than other cars and trucks. U-M physicist Marc Ross and Tom Wenzel, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), recently released a report which shows that vehicle quality is actually a better predictor of safety – both for the driver and for other drivers – than weight. The two will discuss their results at a briefi

New field studies produce environment-friendly results An Arizona State University researcher is making good use of some of the 14 million Firestone tires that were recalled two years ago. The tires were used on Ford Explorers and recalled after reports of tread separation. How to dispose of all those used tires without causing serious environmental hazards once had state officials scratching their heads, but Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Han Zhu believes has the answe

A new type of nanotechnology-based filter that can separate out mixtures of biological molecules has been developed by researchers at the University of California, Davis. The technology could potentially be used, for example, to build small-scale devices for research in genomics by sorting mixtures of different proteins or DNA molecules.

The filter consists of a polycarbonate membrane etched with tiny, evenly-sized pores less than 10 nanometers — a few billionths of an inch — in size. The

It was the early 1990s and building Jefferson Lab’s Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator was in high gear. The Accelerator Division was busy installing some 30 vacuum ion pumps in the tunnel. Simultaneously, above ground in the long, low service buildings sitting over the tunnel, workers were installing and wiring the 7 kV, high-voltage power supplies for those ion pumps.

“With the procedures we had in place we were never in danger,” recalled Rick Gonzales, Accelerator Electronics Suppo

A `traffic light` system that helps network operators assess how much consultation is needed when it comes to siting a new mobile phone mast plus training workshops for local authority officers and elected councillors are among the outcomes of a package of `Ten Commitments` to best practice developed by the UK?s five biggest mobile phone network operators.

In a presentation today (27 June) at the Society for Radiological Protection’s meeting on ’Radio wave exposures’, Mike Do