The largest single research project into solar power ever funded by the UK research councils was launched this month and could help make the energy source much more widely used in Britain.
The University of Bath is among six universities and seven companies in the UK that began the £4.5 million project this month (April) to halve the cost of converting the sun’s rays to electricity using solar cells.
The four-year research project could make solar power a viable alternative to
Scientists have demonstrated, for the first time, that transistors made from single-walled carbon nanotubes can operate at extremely fast microwave frequencies, opening up the potential for better cell phones and much faster computers, perhaps as much as 1,000 times faster.
The findings, reported in the April issue of Nano Letters, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, add to mounting enthusiasm about nanotechnology’s rev
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are developing a system to rapidly produce hydrogen from gasoline in your car. “This brings fuel cell-powered cars one step closer to the mass market,” said Larry Pederson, project leader at PNNL. Researchers will present their developments at the American Institute for Chemical Engineers spring meeting in New Orleans, on April 27th, 2004.
Fuel cells use hydrogen to produce electricity which runs the vehicle
If you need bright blue light at a very specific wavelength, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can make it—and fast.
In the world of color, this is no small accomplishment. NIST’s traditional light sources, such as incandescent lamps, are thermal. A blue thermal source would need to function at such a high temperature that components would melt. Lack of blue light sources introduces uncertainty when calibrating instruments that measure the color of things like
New technology which can create ’natural’ sunlight in offices and homes and save billions on energy bills will soon be in everyday use, scientists will announce this week.
Researchers from the University of Bath will give details of work which will help change fundamentally the way that mobile phones, TVs, cars and buildings use lighting.
The new technology, called Solid State Lighting, will save billions of pounds by reducing the amount of electricity needed to li
Spring’s lush green lawns and hot pink shoes contribute at least in a small way to the world’s total carbon picture, say researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Indeed, the latest fashions on Fifth Avenue and fertilizers that help homeowners achieve that “barefoot” lawn have their associated carbon dioxide costs, and ORNL’s Gregg Marland and Tristram West keep up with them. Their task is to track the total carbon produced worldwide and es
Virginia Tech researchers are mixing air and soybean oil to create new polymers to replace petroleum-based materials.
“These natural polymers could be used in biocompatible or biodegradable ways,” says Tim Long of Blacksburg, chemistry professor in the College of Science at Virginia Tech. “We are looking for natural products derived in the United States.”
Ann R. Fornof of Toledo, Ohio, a graduate student in Virginia Tech’s Macromolecular and Science Engineering program, will
Biasing spin statistics
Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on pi-conjugated polymers offer significant advantages over other display materials. They are lightweight, flexible, easily tailored, operate on low voltages and can be deposited on large areas using simple techniques such as ink-jet printing or spin-coating.
By combining the electrical properties of metals and semiconductors with the mechanical properties of plastics, these materials are poised to provide a
Duke University researchers exploring ways to build ultrasmall electronic devices out of atom-thick carbon cylinders have incorporated one of these “carbon nanotubes” into a new kind of field effect transistor. The Duke investigators also reported new insights into their previously published technique for growing nanotubes in straight structures as long as half an inch.
Duke assistant chemistry professor Jie Liu will report on these and other nanotube developments during three talks at a na
By bombarding very thin slices of several copper/oxygen compounds, called cuprates, with very bright, short-lived pulses of light, Ivan Bozovic, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, and his collaborators have discovered an unusual property of the materials: After absorbing the light energy, they emit it as long-lived sound waves, as opposed to heat energy. This result may open up a new field of study on cuprates — materials already used in wireless comm
A scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, working with colleagues at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, has caused an individual carbon nanotube to emit light for the first time. This step in research on carbon nanotubes may help to materialize many of the proposed applications for carbon nanotubes, such as in electronics and photonics development.
The light emission is the result of a process called “electron-hole recombination.” By running an el
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered an interesting type of electronic behavior in a recently discovered class of superconductors known as cobalt oxides, or cobaltates. These materials operate quite differently from other oxide superconductors, namely the copper oxides (or cuprates), which are commonly referred to as high-temperature superconductors.
When traditional superconductors are cooled to nearly absolute zero (0 Kelvin or –452
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
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
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