#Cushings syndrome: Researchers characterize new tumor syndrome Scientists at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg have published their findings that mutations in a gene known as ARMC5 promote the growth of benign tumors in the adrenal glands
#Ultra-fast charging batteries that can be recharged 70 in just two minutes Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) have developed a new battery that can be recharged up to 70 per cent in only
The battery will also have a longer lifespan of over 20 years. Expected to be the next big thing in battery technology this breakthrough has a wide-ranging impact on many industries especially for electric vehicles
which are inhibited currently by long recharge times of over 4 hours and the limited lifespan of batteries.
This next generation of lithium-ion batteries will enable electric vehicles to charge 20 times faster than the current technology.
With it electric vehicles will also be able to do away with frequent battery replacements. The new battery will be able to endure more than 10000 charging cycles--20 times more than the current 500 cycles of today's batteries.
NTU Singapore's scientists replaced the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide an abundant cheap and safe material found in soil.
It is used commonly as a food additive or in sunscreen lotions to absorb harmful ultraviolet rays.
Naturally found in a spherical shape NTU Singapore developed a simple method to turn titanium dioxide particles into tiny nanotubes that are a thousand times thinner than the diameter of a human hair.
what helps to speeds up the chemical reactions taking place in the new battery allowing for superfast charging.
NTU professor Rachid Yazami who was the co-inventor of the lithium-graphite anode 34 years ago that is used in most lithium-ion batteries today said Prof Chen's invention is the next
big leap in battery technology. While the cost of lithium-ion batteries has been reduced significantly and its performance improved
since Sony commercialised it in 1991 the market is fast expanding towards new applications in electric mobility
Ideally the charge time for batteries in electric vehicles should be less than 15 minutes which Prof Chen's nanostructured anode has proven to do.
and is currently developing new types of batteries for electric vehicle applications at the Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N). Commercialisation of technologymoving forward Prof Chen's research team will be applying for a Proof-of-Concept
grant to build a large-scale battery prototype. The patented technology has attracted already interest from the industry.
and Prof Chen expects that the new generation of fast-charging batteries will hit the market in two years'time.
Equally important we can now drastically cut down the waste generated by disposed batteries since our batteries last ten times longer than the current generation of lithium-ion batteries The long-life of the new battery also means drivers save on the cost of a battery replacement
which could cost over USD$5000 each. Easy to manufactureaccording to Frost & Sullivan a leading growth-consulting firm the global market of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries is projected to be worth US$23. 4 billion in 2016.
Lithium-ion batteries usually use additives to bind the electrodes to the anode which affects the speed in
which electrons and ions can transfer in and out of the batteries. However Prof Chen's new cross-linked titanium dioxide nanotube-based electrodes eliminate the need for these additives
and can pack more energy into the same amount of space. Manufacturing this new nanotube gel is very easy Prof Chen added.
Titanium dioxide and sodium hydroxide are mixed together and stirred under a certain temperature. Battery manufacturers will find it easy to integrate our new gel into their current production processes.
This battery research project took the team of four NTU Singapore scientists three years to complete
and is funded by Singapore's National Research Foundation. Last year Prof Yazami was awarded the Draper Prize by the National Academy of Engineering for his ground-breaking work in developing the lithium-ion battery with three other scientists.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Nanyang Technological University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Balancing renewable energy costs and optimizing energy mix Increasing reliance on renewable energies is the way to achieve greater CO2 EMISSION sustainability and energy independence.
As such energies are yet only available intermittently and energy cannot be stored easily most countries aim to combine several energy sources.
In a new study in EPJ Plus French scientists have come up with an open source simulation method to calculate the actual cost of relying on a combination of electricity sources.
Bernard Bonin from the Atomic energy Research Centre CEA Saclay France and colleagues demonstrate that cost is not directly proportional to the demand level.
Although recognised as crude by its creator this method can be tailored to account for the public's interest-and not solely economic performance-when optimising the energy mix.
The authors consider wind solar hydraulic nuclear coal and gas as potential energy sources. In their model the energy demand and availability are cast as random variables.
The authors simulated the behaviour of the mix for a large number of tests of such variables using so-called Monte-carlo simulations.
For a given mix they found the energy cost of the mix presents a minimum as a function of the installed power.
This means that if it is fixed too large the costs dominate the total and become overwhelming.
In contrast if it is too small expensive energy sources need to be solicited frequently. The authors are also able to optimise the energy mix according to three selected criteria namely economy environment and supply security.
The simulation tested on the case of France based on 2011 data shows that an optimal mix is 2. 4 times the average demand in this territory.
This mix contains a large amount of nuclear power and a small amount of fluctuating energies: wind and solar.
and Research (BMBF) hydraulic engineering experts of KIT built an underground cave power station. For the first time they succeeded in completely filling a karst cave with water.
In 2010 they handed the cave power station over to the Indonesian authorities. The plant can supply 80000 people with water.
By a pipeline system fecal sludge of the hospital enters a two-stage unaerobic reactor where it is mixed with biowaste.
Bacteria decompose the mixture and produce among others the energy-rich gas of methane. It is used then for the gas stoves in the kitchen of the hospital.
which studies the interaction between electromagnetic fields and free electrons in metal. In the experiment her group manufactured 75-nanometer silver nanocubes
and consumes no energy until readings are being made she said. In the short term we hope to use devices like this to track packages
Grasslands support more species than cornfields In Wisconsin bioenergy is for the birds. Really. In a study published today in the journal PLOS ONE University of Wisconsin-Madison
whether corn and perennial grassland fields in southern Wisconsin could provide both biomass for bioenergy production and bountiful bird habitat.
These grassland fields can also produce ample biomass for renewable fuels. Monica Turner UW-Madison professor of zoology and study lead author Peter Blank a postdoctoral researcher in her lab hope the findings help drive decisions that benefit both birds
and biofuels too by providing information for land managers farmers conservationists and policy makers as the bioenergy industry ramps up particularly in Wisconsin and the central U s as bioenergy production demand increases we should pay attention to the ecological consequences says Turner.
when UW-Madison's Carol Williams coordinator of the Wisconsin Grasslands Bioenergy Network and the DNR's David Sample approached Turner
of which are used already for small-scale bioenergy production--and 11 cornfields in southern Wisconsin. Over the course of two years the researchers characterized the vegetation growing in each field calculated
and estimated the biomass yields possible and counted the total numbers of birds and bird species observed in them.
According to Blank and Turner the study is one of the first to examine grassland fields already producing biomass for biofuels
and is one of only a few analyses to examine the impact of bioenergy production on birds.
and other types of vegetation the new findings indicate grassland fields may represent an acceptable tradeoff between creating biomass for bioenergy and providing habitat for grassland birds.
Our study suggests diverse bioenergy crop fields could benefit birds more so than less diverse fields.
new findings indicate grassland fields may represent an acceptable tradeoff between creating biomass for bioenergy and providing habitat for grassland birds.
By locating biomass-producing fields near existing grasslands both birds and the biofuels industry can win.
They also add that the biomass yields calculated in the study may represent the low end of
We really can produce bioenergy and provide habitat for rare birds in the state. Story Source:
The ability to mold inorganic nanoparticles out of materials such as gold and silver in precisely designed 3d shapes is a significant breakthrough that has the potential to advance laser technology microscopy solar cells electronics environmental testing disease
This capability should open up entirely new strategies for fields ranging from computer miniaturization to energy and pathogen detection.
It is so strong that the binding energy of the proton gives a much larger contribution to the mass through Einstein's equation E=mc2 than the quarks themselves. 3 Due in part to the forces'relative simplicity scientists have previously been able to solve the equations behind gravity
Similar but more powerful transformers are used in electricity substations to convert the high voltages of the transmission grid into the standard AC power supply delivered to households.
To minimize the energy loss associated with this process special types of iron-silicon alloy known as electrical steel are used to make the core.
In high-performance machines such as vehicle engines which are designed to run at high rotational speeds energy loss can be reduced by a few percentage points In high-torque electric motors such as those used to operate pumps the reduction in energy loss can be as high as twentyfive
Dr. Blanchard adapted an imaging technique that uses fluorescence to measure distance on molecular scale--single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smfret) imaging--to study viral particles.
and replace them with synthetic components to create a new generation of solar cells. Evans concludes:"
--whether it is for energy capture, or to create artificial noses for the early detection of disease
Autophagy is a fundamental process used by cells to degrade unnecessary components in times of starvation releasing energy stores that help promote cell survival.
MTORC1 is a critical protein complex that regulates energy consumption and growth in cells. he ability of let-7 alone to activate autophagy in this way was totally unknown
The driver can be plugged in or battery-powered. In the pilot study 20 patients with New york Heart Association (NYHA) functional class III or ambulatory functional class IV heart failure were implanted with the device.
and conduct both heat and electricity. This scanning electron microscope image shows the network of conductive nanoribbons in Rice university's high-density graphene nanoribbon film.
The material would replace a bulky and energy-hungry metal oxide framework. The graphene-infused paint worked well,
The basic concept behind resistive memory devices is the insertion of a dielectric material--one that won't normally conduct electricity--between two wires.
The energy generated by the sun and transferred to the fiber-optic cable system--similar in some ways to a data transmission line--can heat up the reaction chamber to over 600 degrees Fahrenheit to treat the waste material disinfect pathogens in both feces and urine and produce char.
and provides energy comparable to that of commercial charcoal. Linden is working closely with project co-investigators Professor R. Scott Summers of environmental engineering and Professor Alan Weimer chemical and biological engineering and a team of postdoctoral fellows professionals graduate students undergraduates
Tests have shown that each of the eight fiber-optic cables can produce between 80 and 90 watts of energy meaning the whole system can deliver up to 700 watts of energy into the reaction chamber said Linden.
and energy on our team and the Gates Foundation values that Linden said. It is one thing to do research another to screw on nuts and bolts
and can save irrigation water labor energy and fertilizer. The authors of a report published in Horttechnology said that the use of sensor-based irrigation technology can also accelerate container and greenhouse plant production time.
Sensor-based irrigation systems substitute capital for water and associated inputs such as energy labor and fertilizer the authors explained.
#New Technique Increases Nanofiber Production Rate Fourfold Nanofibers polymer filaments only a couple of hundred nanometers in diameter have a huge range of potential applications, from solar cells
to water filtration to fuel cells. But so far, their high cost of manufacture has relegated them to just a few niche industries.
while reducing energy consumption by more than 90 percent, holding out the prospect of cheap, efficient nanofiber production. e have demonstrated a systematic way to produce nanofibers through electrospinning that surpasses the state of the art,
that actuate, that exchange energy between different domains, like solar to electrical or mechanical. We have something that naturally fits into that picture.
Tangled tale Nanofibers are useful for any application that benefits from a high ratio of surface area to volume solar cells, for instance,
or fuel cell electrodes, which catalyze reactions at their surfaces. Nanofibers can also yield materials that are permeable only at very small scales, like water filters,
and then there suddenly a catastrophic release of energy. he group continued to stretch and squeeze the ion crystal to manipulate the arrangement of atoms,
#Researchers Increase Energy-Burning Brown Fat cells A team of researchers has discovered a way to increase energy-burning human brown fat cells
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) scientists have found a way to both make more energy-burning human brown fat cells
or ad, fat cells, oodbrown fat cells make a protein called UCP1 that converts energy stored in glucose
brown fat cells can also use energy stored by white fat cells, and as a result reduce the size of nearby white fat cells.
determined that the amount of energy burned varies from person to person and from cell to cell.
a brown fat cell can make the energy-burning protein, and when it is turned off, it doesn.
the additional brown fat cells would burn energy from the existing white fat cells. Tseng hopes this technique could eventually replace invasive procedures such as liposuction and gastric bypass surgery.
meaning they use energy to produce heat and thus burn calories, we may discover novel therapeutics for the treatment of obesity
Eva is one of the many devices created to harness evaporation energy. Credit: Sahin Laboratory, Columbia University An immensely powerful yet invisible force pulls water from the earth to the top of the tallest redwood
or produce electricity has remained largely untapped until now. In the June 16 online issue of Nature Communications, Columbia University scientists report the development of two novel devices that derive power directly from evaporation a floating,
piston-driven engine that generates electricity causing a light to flash, and a rotary engine that drives a miniature car.
When evaporation energy is scaled up the researchers predict, it could one day produce electricity from giant floating power generators that sit on bays or reservoirs,
or from huge rotating machines akin to wind turbines that sit above water, said Ozgur Sahin, Ph d,
They pack more energy pound for pound, than other materials used in engineering for moving objects,
Building on last year findings, Sahin and his Columbia colleagues sought to build actual devices that could be powered by such energy.
Coupling that piston to a generator produced enough electricity to cause a small light to flash. e turned evaporation from a pool of water into light,
and more spores could potentially generate even more power per unit area than a wind farm. The Columbia team other new evaporation-driven engine the Moisture Mill contains a plastic wheel with protruding tabs of tape covered on one side with spores.
if achieved, would require neither fuel to burn nor an electrical battery. A larger version of the Moisture Mill could also produce electricity
Sahin said, suggesting a wheel that sits above a large body of water and evaporates saltwater, causing the wheel to rotate
and generate electricity. This development would steadily produce as much electricity as a wind turbine, Sahin said
#Safe drinking water Via Solar power Desalination Natasha Wright, an MIT Phd student in mechanical engineering, has designed a solar powered system that makes water safe to drink for rural, off-grid Indian villages.
#Half Price Lithium-ion Batteries With Improved Performance and Recyclability MIT spinoff company 24m has reinvented the manufacturing process for lithium-ion batteries to reduce cost,
An advanced manufacturing approach for lithium-ion batteries, developed by researchers at MIT and at a spinoff company called 24m,
promises to significantly slash the cost of the most widely used type of rechargeable batteries while also improving their performance
says Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT and a cofounder of 24m (and previously a cofounder of battery company A123).
The existing process for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, he says, has changed hardly in the two decades
In this so-called low battery, the electrodes are suspensions of tiny particles carried by a liquid
and pumped through various compartments of the battery. The new battery design is a hybrid between flow batteries and conventional solid ones:
In this version, while the electrode material does not flow, it is composed of a similar semisolid, colloidal suspension of particles.
Chiang and Carter refer to this as a emisolid battery. impler manufacturing processthis approach greatly simplifies manufacturing,
and also makes batteries that are flexible and resistant to damage, says Chiang, who is senior author of a paper in the Journal of Power Sources analyzing the tradeoffs involved in choosing between solid
and flow-type batteries, depending on their particular applications and chemical components. This analysis demonstrates that
while a flow battery system is appropriate for battery chemistries with a low energy density (those that can only store a limited amount of energy for a given weight),
for high-energy density devices such as lithium-ion batteries, the extra complexity and components of a flow system would add unnecessary extra cost.
Almost immediately after publishing the earlier research on the flow battery, Chiang says, e realized that a better way to make use of this flowable electrode technology was to reinvent the lithium ion manufacturing process. nstead of the standard method of applying liquid coatings to a roll of backing material,
thicker electrodes, the system reduces the conventional battery architecture number of distinct layers, as well as the amount of nonfunctional material in the structure, by 80 percent.
Bendable and foldablein addition to streamlining manufacturing enough to cut battery costs by half, Chiang says,
the new system produces a battery that is more flexible and resilient. While conventional lithium-ion batteries are composed of brittle electrodes that can crack under stress
the new formulation produces battery cells that can be bent, folded or even penetrated by bullets without failing.
This should improve both safety and durability, he says. The company has made so far about 10,000 batteries on its prototype assembly lines, most
of which are undergoing testing by three industrial partners, including an oil company in Thailand and Japanese heavy-equipment manufacturer IHI Corp. The process has received eight patents
By 2020, Chiang estimates that 24m will be able to produce batteries for less than $100 per kilowatt-hour of capacity.
when is it better to build a flow battery versus a static model. This paper will serve as a key tool for making design choices
and go-no go decisions. iswanathan adds that 24m new battery design ould do the same sort of disruption to lithium ion batteries manufacturing as
however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes or, even better, that can extract energy from the environment to recharge.
Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology And circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it,
even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous experimental ultralow-power converters had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent.
Moreover, the researcherschip achieves those efficiency improvements while assuming additional responsibilities. Where its predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery
or directly power a device, this new chip can do both, and it can power the device directly from the battery.
All of those operations also share a single inductor the chip main electrical component which saves on circuit board space
Nonetheless, the chip power consumption remains low. e still want to have battery-charging capability, and we still want to provide a regulated output voltage,
Ups and downs The circuit chief function is to regulate the voltages between the solar cell, the battery,
If the battery operates for too long at a voltage that either too high or too low
since the rate at which it dissipates energy as heat is proportional to the square of the current.
and falls depends on the voltage generated by the solar cell, which is highly variable. So the timing of the switch throws has to vary, too.
whose selection is determined by the solar cell voltage. Once again, when the capacitor fills, the switches in the inductor path are flipped. n this technology space,
because there a fixed amount of energy that consumed by doing the work, says Brett Miwa,
and the technique is much more detailed by looking at energies involved scientists can see many other things about the molecule,
re-emitting the energy as infrared light, and thus they both constrain what astronomers can see
and control much of the energy balance in the interstellar medium. Not least, in the early stages of a star evolution the dust can coagulate into large clumps the first step towards forming planets.
such as studying atomic processes and energy levels in physics, or analyzing tissue samples for biomedical research and diagnostics.
Scientists are also working on solar cells based on quantum dots, which rely on the dotsability to convert light into electrons.
one of their biggest limitations is the capacity of their tiny batteries to deliver enough power to transmit data.
and release electrical power in such bursts, which are needed for brief transmissions of data from wearable devices such as heart-rate monitors, computers,
At the moment, the coin-sized batteries used in many small electronic devices have limited very ability to deliver a lot of power at once,
Small batteries are suited generally poorly for such power needs, he adds. e know it a problem experienced by a number of companies in the health-monitoring
So an alternative is to go to a combination of a battery and a capacitor, Hunter says:
the battery for long-term, low-power functions, and the capacitor for short bursts of high power. Such a combination should be able to either increase the range of the device,
The new nanowire-based supercapacitor exceeds the performance of existing batteries, while occupying a very small volume. f youe got an Apple Watch and
because other energy storage technologies such as fuel cells, batteries, and flywheels tend to be less efficient, or simply too complex to be reduced practical
it would be desirable to have a high volumetric power density (the amount of power stored in a given volume) and high volumetric energy density (the amount of energy in a given volume).
However, with the new device, e have fairly high volumetric power density, medium energy density, and a low cost, a combination that could be well suited for many applications.
and challenging to make autonomous because most motors, pumps, batteries, sensors, and microcontrollers are rigid.
our soft robots typically have some rigid components things like batteries and control electronics. This robot is a demonstration of a method to integrate the rigid components with the body of the soft robot through a gradient of material properties
#New Technology Could Transform Solar energy Storage Chemists at UCLA have developed a new technology that is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The materials in most of today residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few microseconds at a time.
A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The new design is inspired by the way that plants generate energy through photosynthesis. iology does a very good job of creating energy from sunlight,
To capture energy from sunlight, conventional rooftop solar cells use silicon, a fairly expensive material. There is currently a big push to make lower-cost solar cells using plastics
rather than silicon, but today plastic solar cells are relatively inefficient, in large part because the separated positive and negative electric charges often recombine before they can become electrical energy. odern plastic solar cells don have well-defined structures like plants do
because we never knew how to make them before, Tolbert said. ut this new system pulls charges apart
and keeps them separated for days, or even weeks. Once you make the right structure,
you can vastly improve the retention of energy. The two components that make the UCLA-developed system work are a polymer donor and a nanoscale fullerene acceptor.
the process generates electrical energy. The plastic materials, called organic photovoltaics, are organized typically like a plate of cooked pasta a disorganized mass of long, skinny polymer paghettiwith random fullerene eatballs.
But this arrangement makes it difficult to get current out of the cell because the electrons sometimes hop back to the polymer spaghetti
The researchers are already working on how to incorporate the technology into actual solar cells. Yves Rubin, a UCLA professor of chemistry and another senior co-author of the study,
and by the Center for Molecularly Engineered Energy Materials, an Energy Frontier Research center funded by the U s. Department of energy (DE-AC06-76rlo-1830.
Ferreira received support from the Clean Green IGERT (grant DGE-0903720) 3
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