the mother plant provides the embryo with a backpack full of energy, called the endosperm. Since, over time, the only plants that will survive are those that reproduce
when the plant turns the Sun energy into chemical energy and then transported to the seeds.
They also discovered that SWEETS make plants susceptible to hijacking by pathogens that steal plant energy supplies before they can be transported to the seeds.
where it began beating again after being fed with oxygenated blood and electrolytes. Without such help, surgeons consider hearts from dead donors too damaged to use. he device is vital.
The heart gets an absolutely essential infusion of blood to restore its energy, says Stephen Large, a surgeon at Papworth Hospital in the United kingdom,
Several privately funded companies and small university-based research groups pursuing novel fusion reactor designs have delivered promising results that could shorten the timeline for producing a prototype machine from decades to several years.
but the outlines of such a reactor can now be perceived. Traditional fusion research has centered on large, doughnut-shaped machines called tokamaks,
which exert powerful magnetic fields to compress high-temperature plasmaoiling balls of charged particles that fuse to form helium, releasing large amounts of energy in the process.
the fusion reactors of today, such as the one at the International Thermonuclear Experimental reactor (ITER) project in southern France, use giant coils of electromagnets that consume much more energy than the machine actually produces.
ITER (pronounced ater, which combines scientists and funding from China, the European union, India, Russia, Japan, South korea,
and the United states, is projected to cost dozens of billions of dollars to produce a working reactor sometime in the 2030s.
Two recent developments, offering new and faster pathways to energy-producing fusion reactors, have galvanized the fusion community.
Tri Alpha Energy based in Foothill Ranch, California, said in early August that it has succeeded in keeping a high-energy plasma stable for five millisecondsuch less than the blink of an eye,
but alf an eternityon the scale of fusion reactions, according to chief technology officer Michl Binderbauer. Tri Alpha, says Binderbauer,
such as the Large hadron collider, to bear on the problems of fusion reactors. Specifically, the team has built a device, 23 meters long,
keeping the plasma stable at a high-enough temperature to achieve energy-positive fusion. The recent experiment indicated that the companyhich has attracted millions of dollars in funding from investors including Goldman sachs and Vulcan Inc,
a professor of nuclear science and engineering and the center director, published a conceptual design in July for a machine called the ARC reactor (ffordable, robust, compact.
the ARC reactor can achieve magnetic fields with much higher energyhus enabling a reactor design much smaller than other tokamak-based machines.
and provide an efficient heat-exchange medium to produce electricity. Increasing the amplitude of the surrounding magnetic field raises the amount of fusion power produced in the plasma to the fourth power dramatic increase that could lead to a commercial prototype in a matter of years,
Now the advent of advanced superconductor tapes could enable a compact reactor that produces fusion continuously.
the ARC reactor paper stresses that, for the moment, it a conceptual design only. Whyte is hoping to attract funding to build an experimental machine over the next few years.
but also Tokamak Energy Ltd.,based in England, and Vancouver-based General Fusion, are working on related
says that nine months ago surgeons implanted two bunches of silicon electrodes, called Utah arrays, into the volunteer motor cortex.
#Algae inspiration could boost your phone's battery Materials engineers trying to work out a way of boosting the performance of lithium-ion batteries have hit upon an unlikely inspiration-algae from a local pond.
Now, a team at Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research has developed a new type of battery component out of carbon that mimics the way that single-celled algae forms,
and early testing shows a solid improvement on traditional batteries.""In nature, a great number of microorganisms, like diatoms, can assemble biominerals into intricate hierarchical three-dimensional architectures with great structural control,
then used a similar process to develop tiny carbon spheres that act as a battery's anode.
the new batteries showed high reversible capacity, good cycling stability and high-rate performance.""The carbon spheres can only be prepared on a laboratory scale,
"We envisage that batteries composed of these anode materials could be charged faster than those fabricated using conventional carbon materials."
and translates the sensation into pulses of electricity that can be interpreted by the mammalian nervous system,
or running air conditioning could be assisted by energy from fuel normally wasted as heat emissions One of the less well-known properties of graphene could enable the carbonaceous wonder-material to help combustion engine vehicles to make better use of the energy from their fuel by converting waste heat into electricity
to charge the batteries or power onboard systems, according to the University of Manchester. Graphene-doped strontium titanium oxide has the ability to generate electricity from relatively small amounts of heat
according to a team working with a Leicester-based thermal management specialist called European Thermodynamics. Thermoelectric graphene composite, with graphene fragments ringed in the 2 m-scale image Internal combustion engines lose about 70 per cent of the energy from their fuel as heat,
so recovering some of that energy would obviously be beneficial. But materials that exhibit thermoelectric properties the ability to convert heat to electric current tend to work only at higher temperatures than those seen in engines.
Working with the thermoelectric base material strontium titanium oxide, the team led by Professors Ian Kinloch and Robert Freer has found that making it into a composite with grapheme could be advantageous.?
Freer said. he new material will convert 3-5%of the heat into electricity. That is not much, Freer conceded,
ecovering even a small percentage of the lost energy with thermoelectric technology would be worthwhile.
This would significantly reduce energy dissipation, increasing the speed of those calculations and improving computer performance. o reduce the power draw
According to Tour, it uses 100 times less energy than current devices. his tantalum memory is based on two-terminal systems,
designed to hold a camera, LED light, an integrated circuit for receiving control instructions and transmitting data, antenna, 1. 5v button battery and, at the rear, the drive unit, to
#Electric compressor could double output of hydrogen fuel cells Fuel cells require a constant source of oxygen to sustain the chemical reaction that they use to release positively charged hydrogen ions.
This allows the motor to be powered directly by the fuel cell without the use of an intermediate voltage regulator.
the nitrogen also lowered the energy needed to kick electrons into the state in which they were available to split water.
Splitting water into its constituent elements has long been touted as a potential source of clean and sustainable energy,
#Aluminium battery can charge phone in one minute, scientists say Scientists say they have invented a new battery that could fully charge a smartphone in just one minute.
The researchers have created an aluminium battery which they hope could replace the lithium models commonly found in laptops and mobile phones.
And as well as the nprecedented charging timesof their aluminium prototype, the team said it was also safer than lithium-ion batteries as it was less prone to catching fire and more environmentally friendly than alkaline models such as AA and AAA.
Publishing the findings in the journal Nature Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford university, hailed it as a breakthrough in battery technology that went further than previous attempts using aluminium.
He said: e have developed a rechargeable aluminium battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries,
which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames.
Our new battery won catch fire, even if you drill through it. illions of consumers use 1. 5-volt AA and AAA BATTERIES.
Our rechargeable aluminium battery generates about two volts of electricity. That higher than anyone has achieved with aluminium.
The prototype was said to be more durable, withstanding more than 7, 500 cycles without any loss of capacity and surpassing previous aluminium batteries
which died after just 100 charge-discharge cycles, while a typical lithium-ion battery lasts about 1,
000 cycles. his was the first time an ultra-fast aluminium-ion battery was constructed with stability over thousands of cycles,
the report authors wrote. Dai added that lithium batteries could o off in an unpredictable mannerand cited a ban by US airlines Delta
and United on bulk shipments on passenger planes. And the new design could be used to store renewable energy of the electrical grid, the researchers suggested.
Meanwhile, co-author Ming Gong said: nother feature of the aluminium battery is flexibility. You can bend it
and fold it, so it has the potential for use in flexible electronic devices. Aluminium is also a cheaper metal than lithium. p
#Streaming helps digital music match global physical sales Fuelled by the popularity of streaming, digital music has matched
#Tesla announces low-cost solar batteries The electric car company Tesla has announced its entry into the energy market, unveiling a suite of low-cost solar batteries for homes, businesses and utilities,
he missing piece it said, in the transition to a sustainable energy world. The batteries, which will retail at $3,
500 in the US, were launched on Thursday at a Tesla facility in California by the company ambitious founder, Elon musk,
who heralded the technology as fundamental transformation in how energy is delivered across the Earth Wall-mounted, with a sleek design,
the lithium-ion batteries are designed to capture and store up to 10kwh of energy from wind or solar panel.
The reserves can be drawn on when sunlight is low, during power cuts or at peak demand times,
when electricity costs are highest. The smallest owerwallis 1. 3m by 68cm, small enough to be hung inside a garage on
or an outside Wall up to eight batteries could be tackedin a home, Musk said, to applause from investors and journalists at the much-anticipated event.
The batteries will initially be manufactured at the electric car company factory in California, but will move production to its planned igafactoryin Nevada
when it opens in 2017. The Nevada facility will be the largest producer of lithium-ion batteries in the world
and it is hoped its mass-production scale will help to bring down costs even further. It is not the only battery storage system on the market,
but the Powerwall boasts a relatively high storage capacity, a competitive price, and the heft of investment and excitement generated by Musk vision.
Musk also unveiled a larger owerpack a 100kwh battery block to help utilities smooth out their supply of wind and solar energy
-or to pump energy into the grid when demand soars. He said on Thursday about two billion Powerpacks could store enough electricity to meet the entire world needs. hat may seem like an insane number,
he said. ut this is actually within the power of humanity to do. Deutsche bank estimates sales of battery storage systems for homes
and businesses could yield as much as $4. 5bn in revenue for Tesla. The energy storage industry is expected to grow to $19bn by 2017, according to research firm IHS CERA.
Tesla is currently taking orders for the systems, with the first units expected to shift in August u
Kepler Energy, whose technology is being developed by Oxford university department of engineering science, says the turbines will in time produce electricity more cheaply than offshore wind farms.
It hopes to install its new design in what is called a tidal energy fence, one kilometre long, in the Bristol Channel#an estuary dividing South Wales from the west of England#at a cost of £143m.
The fence is a string of linked turbines each of which will start generating electricity as it is completed,
until the whole array is producing power. The fence total output is 30 megawatts (MW),
And just to visualise that, it like one small nuclear reactor worth of electricity being generated from the tides in the Bristol Channel. he new Transverse Horizontal Axis Water turbine (THAWT)
and solar energy#gave the go-ahead for a large offshore wind farm that could provide power for up to two million homes.
The new wind farm is to be built near the Dogger Bank in the North sea and will have 400 turbines.
with the new development, will form one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world. But the fossil fuel industry is far from abandoning its own interest in British waters as the energy giant BP has announced that it is to invest about £670m to extend the life of its North sea assets.
It said it would be drilling new wells replacing undersea infrastructure, and introducing new technologies to help it to produce as much as possible from the area,
The hover engine essentially creates"swirls of electricity"that form magnetic fields both within the hover engine and the conductive surface.
since April, will incentivize Chinese companies to reduce costs by switching to greener energy sources. To further push the issue, The New york times says President Xi Jinping is planning to set up a"green dispatch"scheme that will offer a price incentive to low-carbon power sources.
#Qualcomm's new Quick Charge will take batteries from 0 to 80 percent in 35 minutes Fast charging is an increasingly widespread and popular addition to modern smartphones.
Almost every new Android handset features some sort of solution for giving it a rapid injection of energy,
this will mean that the typical smartphone can be recharged from a flat battery all the way to 80 percent in 35 minutes.
Qualcomm also notes that it's implemented"additional steps to help protect battery cycle life,
and more forgiving on the battery. The Snapdragon 820 chipset will be joined by the Snapdragon 620
and a 250mah battery. Samsung unveiled the new Galaxy Note 5 phablet and the plus-sized Galaxy S6 Edge Plus at the press event Thursday n
and energy saving desalination technology Researchers at the Alexandria University in Egypt have developed a new desalination technology that can produce potable water at reduced energy.
"Using pervaporation eliminates the need for electricity that is used in classic desalination processes, thus cutting costs significantly."
#Gallium nitride and Sol-Gel Transistors to Change Electronics and Energy consumption Cambridge Electronics, Inc. CEI), whose motto is"Dream it.
"is a Massachusetts company on a mission to reduce energy consumption while giving energy users access to all the familiar technology they want and need.
How can it achieve this promise? Through a new semiconductor material, gallium nitride (Gan. Already being used in LED light bulbs, television and computer displays,
and mobile phones, Gan has efficient light emission capability, something silicon cannot duplicate. But silicon remains the defacto material of choice semidconductors
It also means huge savings for energy utilities who will benefit not only from the use of Gan in power generating equipment
a material that cuts power consumption by more than 90%,produces the same or better levels of performance,
and other electronics will produce $900 billion in energy savings annually by 2025. That's impressive.
Sporting higher energy density than lithium-ion we may even see batteries made with this material.
Performance of sol-gel thin film electrodes at Georgia Tech's laboratories has exceeded all existing commercial electrolytic capacitors and thin-film lithium-ion batteries.
but to the best of our knowledge, this is the fist time these two types of materials have been combined into high-density energy storage devices...
this is the first time I've seen a capacitor beat a battery on energy density.""The research into sol-gel supercapacitors appeared in the July 14th edition of the journal, Advanced Energy Materials.
Now the question becomes, can the materials be scaled up and become cost competitive e
#Stash App Brings $5 Investments, and Advice, to Newcomers to Trading The ebb and flow of the public markets gets a lot of attention these days,
Underneath the hood though they are investing in the ishares S&p global clean energy index fund. The app lets users choose from some 30 types of investments
"The second area where Google expects Cloud Bigtable to find a role is in new projects in areas such as the internet of things, advertising, energy, financial services and telecoms.
#South korea to invest $300m in biotech The South korean Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy,
TRU-D's system analyzes the variables of the room and floods the space (both line-of-site and shadowed spaces) with the proper dose of UV LIGHT energy.
which, according to Modern Healthcare,"is backed by three venture funds--Battery Ventures, Targeted Technology Fund II,
and the Georgia Institute of technology report today that they have made the first experimental observation of piezoelectricity
and the piezotronic effect in an atomically thin material molybdenum disulfide (Mos2) resulting in a unique electric generator
In a paper published online October 15 2014 in Nature research groups from the two institutions demonstrate the mechanical generation of electricity from the two-dimensional (2d) Mos2 material.
The piezoelectric effect in this material had previously been predicted theoretically. Piezoelectricity is a well-known effect in which stretching or compressing a material causes it to generate an electrical voltage (or the reverse in
which an applied voltage causes it to expand or contract). But for materials of only a few atomic thicknesses no experimental observation of piezoelectricity has been made until now.
The observation reported today provides a new property for two-dimensional materials such as molybdenum disulfide opening the potential for new types of mechanically controlled electronic devices.
This material--just a single layer of atoms--could be made as a wearable device perhaps integrated into clothing to convert energy from your body movement to electricity
and power wearable sensors or medical devices or perhaps supply enough energy to charge your cell phone in your pocket says James Hone professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia and co-leader of the research.
Proof of the piezoelectric effect and piezotronic effect adds new functionalities to these two-dimensional materials says Zhong Lin Wang Regents'Professor in Georgia Tech's School of Materials science and engineering and a co-leader of the research.
and demonstrating the piezoelectric effect in it adds a new facet to the material. Hone and his research group demonstrated in 2008 that graphene a 2d form of carbon is the strongest material.
Zhong Lin Wang and his research group pioneered the field of piezoelectric nanogenerators for converting mechanical energy into electricity.
He and postdoctoral fellow Wenzhuo Wu are also developing piezotronic devices which use piezoelectric charges to control the flow of current through the material
but Zhong Lin Wang notes so an even number of layers cancels out the piezoelectric effect.
They monitored the conversion of mechanical to electrical energy and observed voltage and current outputs. The researchers also noted that the output voltage reversed sign
The presence of piezotronic effect in odd layer Mos2 was observed also for the first time. What's really interesting is we've now found that a material like Mos2 which is not piezoelectric in bulk form can become piezoelectric
and give zero net piezoelectric effect. This adds another member to the family of piezoelectric materials for functional devices says Wenzhuo Wu.
In fact Mos2 is just one of a group of 2d semiconducting materials known as transition metal dichalcogenides all of
whose piezoelectric materials remain unexplored. Importantly as has been shown by Hone and his colleagues 2d materials can be stretched much farther than conventional materials particularly traditional ceramic piezoelectrics
which are quite brittle. The research could open the door to development of new applications for the material and its unique properties.
This study also reveals the piezotronic effect in two-dimensional materials for the first time which greatly expands the application of layered materials for human-machine interfacing robotics MEMS and active flexible electronics.
The study was supported by the U s. Department of energy (DOE) Office of Basic energy Sciences (BES)( No. DE-FG02-07er46394) and U s. National Science Foundation (DMR-1122594
It will help us make parts that are stronger lighter and function better for more energy-efficient transportation and energy production applications such as cars and wind turbines.
The research was supported by the Advanced Manufacturing Office in DOE's Office of Energy efficiency and Renewable energy.
greener LED light bulbs The phase out of traditional incandescent bulbs in the U s . and elsewhere as well as a growing interest in energy efficiency has given LED lighting a sales boost.
However that trend could be short-lived as key materials known as rare earth elements become more expensive.
Switching lighting to LEDS over the next two decades reports the U s. Department of energy could save the country $250 billion in energy costs over that period reduce the electricity consumption for lighting by nearly one half
Its dipole magnetic field like that of a bar magnet remains about the same intensity for thousands to millions of years but for incompletely known reasons it occasionally weakens
Research for this project was conducted at ORNL's National Transportation Research center and Manufacturing Demonstration Facility DOE user facilities with funding from DOE's Office of Energy efficiency and Renewable energy.
They go into quiescence to conserve energy and nutrients. That's when they produce the equivalent of vegetable oil.
and gives scientists a way to potentially produce high amounts of oil and biomass. In terms of human medicine this discovery gives scientists a promising new model to study tumor suppression and growth.
Brighter, new energy saving flat panel lights based on carbon nanotubes Even as the 2014 Nobel prize in Physics has enshrined light emitting diodes (LEDS) as the single most significant and disruptive energy-efficient lighting solution of today scientists
when consuming a unit amount of electric power which is an important index to compare the energy-efficiency of different lighting devices Shimoi said.
Thus the new flat-panel device has compared smaller energy loss with other current lighting devices which can be used to make energy-efficient cathodes that with low power consumption.
and graduate student Manish Shankla applied an electric charge to the graphene sheet hoping that the DNA would react to the charge in a way that would let them control its movement down to each individual link or nucleotide in the DNA chain.
The world's rapidly growing demand for energy and the requirement of sustainable energy production calls for an urgent change in today's fossil fuel based energy system.
Research groups worldwide work intensively to develop novel advanced energy conversion and storage systems with high efficiency low cost and environmental compatibility.
Fuel cell systems represent a promising alternative for low carbon emission energy production. Traditional fuel cells are limited however by the need of efficient catalysts to drive the chemical reactions involved in the fuel cell.
Historically platinum and its alloys have frequently been used as anodic and cathodic catalysts in fuel cells
but the high cost of platinum due to its low abundance motivates researchers to find efficient catalysts based on earth-abundant elements.
They are only able to reproduce inside the host's cells they have known the smallest genome of all organisms with a cell nucleus (eukaryotes) and they posses no mitochondria of their own (the cell's power plant.
The research will be published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 13 2014 Mitochondria are structures within cells that produce energy
They affect organs that require a lot of energy including the heart skeletal muscle and brain. They are devastating diseases
and technologies such as energy saving LED LIGHTS where dopants can affect color and atom movement can determine the failure modes.
#Smart lithium-ion battery warns of fire hazard Stanford university scientists have developed a smart lithium-ion battery that gives ample warning before it overheats
The new technology is designed for conventional lithium-ion batteries now used in billions of cellphones laptops and other electronic devices as well as a growing number of cars and airplanes.
The system can detect problems that occur during the normal operation of a battery but it does not apply to batteries damaged in a collision or other accident.
Cui and his colleagues describe the new technology in a study published in the Oct 13 issue of the journal Nature Communications.
Lowering the oddsa series of well-publicized incidents in recent years has raised concern over the safety of lithium-ion batteries.
In 2013 the Boeing aircraft company temporarily grounded its new 787 Dreamliner fleet after battery packs in two airplanes caught fire.
In 2006 the Sony Corporation recalled millions of lithium-ion batteries after reports of more than a dozen consumer-laptop fires.
The company said that during the manufacturing process tiny metal impurities had gotten inside the batteries causing them to short-circuit.
We want to lower the odds of a battery fire to one in a billion or even to zero.
A typical lithium-ion battery consists of two tightly packed electrodes--a carbon anode and a lithium metal-oxide cathode--with an ultrathin polymer separator in between.
If it's damaged the battery could short-circuit and ignite the flammable electrolyte solution that shuttles lithium ions back and forth.
The separator is made of the same material used in plastic bottles said graduate student Denys Zhuo co-lead author of the study.
so that lithium ions can flow between the electrodes as the battery charges and discharges. Manufacturing defects such as particles of metal and dust can pierce the separator
if the battery is charged too fast or when the temperature is too low--a phenomenon known as overcharge.
and eventually make contact with the cathode causing the battery to short. Smart separatorin the last couple of years we've been thinking about building a smart separator that can detect shorting before the dendrites reach the cathode said Cui a member of the photon science faculty at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
That lets you know that the dendrites have grown halfway across the battery. It's a warning that the battery should be removed before the dendrites reach the cathode and cause a short circuit.
The build up of dendrites is most likely to occur during charging not during the discharge phase
when the battery is being used. You might get a message on your phone telling you that the voltage has dropped to zero so the battery needs to be replaced Zhuo said.
That would give you plenty of lead-time. But when you see smoke or a fire you have to shut down immediately.
when a battery is likely to fail. Locating defectsin addition to observing a drop in voltage co-lead author Hui Wu was able to pinpoint where the dendrites had punctured the copper conductor simply by measuring the electrical resistance between the separator and the cathode.
Adding this thin conducting layer doesn't change the battery's performance but it can make a huge difference as far as safety.
Most lithium-ion batteries are used in small electronic devices. But as the electric vehicle market expands
The bigger the battery pack the more important this becomes Cui added. Some electric cars today are equipped with thousands of lithium-ion battery cells.
If one battery explodes the whole pack can potentially explode. The early-warning technology can also be used in zinc aluminum and other metal batteries.
It will work in any battery that would require you to detect a short before it explodes Cui said.
Video: http://youtu. be/2vsqny0zyjystory Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Stanford university. Note:
Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
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