##Solar steam kills germs while off the grid RICE (US) A new sterilization system uses nanomaterials to convert 80 percent of the energy in sunlight into heat,
director of the Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) at Rice university. olar steam efficiency at converting sunlight directly into steam opens up new possibilities for off-grid sterilization that simply aren available today In a previous study last year,
Halas and colleagues showed that olar steamwas so effective at direct conversion of solar energy into heat that it could even produce steam from ice water. t makes steam directly from sunlight,
and exposed to sunlight, the particles heat up so quickly they instantly vaporize water and create steam.
#New evidence suggests giant ocean on Mars CALTECH (US) esearchers have found signs of an ancient delta on Mars where a river might have emptied once into a vast ocean.
could have covered much of Mars northern hemispheretretching over as much as a third of the planet. cientists have hypothesized long that the northern lowlands of Mars are a dried-up ocean bottom,
Most of the northern hemisphere of Mars is flat and at a lower elevation than the southern hemisphere,
Researchers used new high-resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to study a 100-square-kilometer area that sits right on this possible former coastline.
000 kilometers away from Gale crater where the Curiosity rover is now roamings covered in ridge-like features called inverted channels.
of Mars, says Dibiase, lead author of the paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
This large body of water could be the ocean that has been hypothesized to have covered a third of the planet.
and that of othersncluding the Curiosity rovercientists are finding a rich sedimentary record on Mars that is revealing its past environments,
and potentially oceans, Lamb says. oth the ancient environments on Mars and the planet sedimentary archive of these environments are turning out to be surprisingly Earthlike.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation NASA, and Caltech
#Graphene#s jagged edge can easily slice cells Brown University right Original Study Posted by Kevin Stacey-Brown on July 10 2013brown (US) the jagged edges of tiny graphene sheets
a science fiction idea of a space elevator that could connect an orbiting satellite to Earth by a long cord that might consist of sheets of CVD graphene,
#It is one of the most durable construction materials on the planet and that was no accident.
#Earth-friendly alternativewhile Roman concrete is durable it#s unlikely to replace modern concrete because it is not ideal for construction where faster hardening is needed.
But the researchers are now finding ways to apply their discoveries about Roman concrete to the development of more earth-friendly and durable modern concrete.
##Dynamo accounts for Sun s weather cycle University of Chicago University of Leeds rightoriginal Studyposted by Richard Mellor-Leeds on May 23 2013u.
what drives the generation of astrophysical magnetic fields like the Sun s. Scientists have known since the 18th century that the Sun regularly oscillates between periods of high and low solar activity in an 11-year cycle
but have been unable to fully explain how this cycle is generated. It has become increasingly important to be able to understand the Sun#s magnetic activity as it is the changes in its magnetic field that are responsible for#space weather#phenomena including solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
When this weather heads in the direction of Earth it can damage satellites endanger astronauts on the International space station and cause power grid outages on the ground.
The research published in Nature explains how the cyclical nature of these large-scale magnetic fields emerges providing a solution to the mathematical equations governing fluids and electromagnetism for a large astrophysical body.
which makes up the Sun. More importantly it does so in the extreme parameter regime that is relevant to astrophysical bodies.#
#Previously dynamos for large highly conducting bodies such as the Sun would be overwhelmed by small-scale fluctuations in the magnetic field.
The presence of spots on the Sun has been known since antiquity and further analyzed after the invention of the telescope by Galileo in the 16th century.
At the start of the 20th century it was recognized then that these sunspots were the result of the Sun#s magnetic field.
Chances are the weather data you use to determine the answer comes from the roughly 20 satellites orbiting Earth that monitor weather systems.
Spire will have 20 satellites orbiting Earth by the end of this year, and at least 100 3. 5 years from now if all goes according to plan.
temperature and pressure the three main ingredients of weather forecasting of Earth atmosphere. The sensors are attached to satellites designed to only last a few years.
Spire is among a growing number of startups to be launching large constellations of satellites into space.
Many of the earliest entrants, such as Planet Labs, have been focusing on imaging. Big players like Spacex and Google are looking at satellite-based internet.
#Humancar aims for a healthy planet with healthy drivers At first glance it might look a bit like an elongated pedal car for kids,
So not only is it healthy for the planet it is healthy for the occupants too.
Humancar aims for a healthy planet with healthy drivers History The Humancar is the brainchild of Chief Scientist/Engineer Charles Samuel Greenwood P. E.,who first hit upon the idea for a human
Humancar aims for a healthy planet with healthy drivers NEV The innovative vehicle is dubbed an NEV because it falls into the U s. Department of transportation Neighborhood Electric vehicle (NEV) classification for low speed vehicles.
reasonably priced alternative that not only helps the planet, but helps the health of its occupants too.
which is 50 million times weaker than the Earth's magnetic field.""By making an inexpensive system you could have one in every hospital to test for traumatic brain injuries
#NASA probe will reveal 3d architecture of forests from space NASA is developing a laser-based instrument for deployment on the International space station that will probe the depths of Earth's forests from space in a bid to reveal more about their role in the planet's carbon cycle.
After its completion in 2018, this Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar will join the likes of the Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite in studying Earth's vegetation on a global scale."
"GEDI will be a tremendous new resource for studying Earth's vegetation, "said Piers Sellers, deputy director of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate at NASA'S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER."
when combined with the historical record of changes captured by the U s. longstanding program of Earth-orbiting satellites, such as Landsat and MODIS."
and the filters gradually degrade under exposure to sunlight. The Rice researchers stumbled upon the new technique while studying the hypothesis that cephalopods such as octopus and squid
and the other directed to earth, is connected by similar challenges, "says Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO of Nissan motor company."
such as the mountains of Mars or driving cross town in the rush hour. Source: Nissa s
#New Spanish streetlight powered by the sun and the wind The light is being developed through a collaboration between the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Spanish startup Eolgreen.
Spain University of Seville is also working on a solar wind-powered streetlight, while New york-based Urban Green energy already manufacturers one r
Contrast that now to oil, black gold, one of the rarest of substances on the Planet Earth.
Oil is found perhaps in the most dangerous, volatile, unstable areas of the Planet Earth."
Professor Sun Xiaowei and colleagues at NTU have developed a self-powered smart window that is bi-functional.
"says Sun. The scientists also used a small section of their device to power a red LED,
Sun and team are now focusing on further improving the performance of their device and are looking into commercializing the technology,
and can be used easily outdoors, even in full sunlight. As a result, the new technology lends itself to applications such as 3d electronic billboards that could display different ads at the same time, dependent upon the angle of the viewer."
#Panasonic#s new technology purifies water with sunlight and photocatalysts Drinking clean water is something that many people in the world can't take for granted as they rely on polluted sources
In response to that problem Panasonic is developing a new technology that looks to the sun to clean water extracted from the ground.
The company recently presented a system that uses sunlight and photocatalysts to purify polluted water at a high reaction rate to improve access to clean water where it's needed.
and it's essential for the future sustainability of the planet that these vehicles are able to cope with the increasing demands being put on them.
organic photovoltaics) harvesting energy from interior lighting or sunlight for various small devices and sensors that gather information from the environment.
said the soft-spoken inventor. emperature from the sun does not go beyond this level in terms of heating
what every other state is going to have to look at as they start reaching higher and higher levels of solar activity,
He wanted to find a project in which the sun did more than just power a device.
With enough sun, a large lens and an ample supply of sand, he figured he might be able to produce glassware.
He knew the sun would move and the focal point would shift during the process, so he ordered a single 4. 5-foot-wide lens
and solar panels at the other, can pivot from straight overhead down to a 45-degree angle to chase the sun. directed by a CAD design from a connected laptop,
the printer uses the concentrated beam of sunlight to slowly trace an object into the sandbox layer by layer.
The sun melts the sand, which cools into glass. When the electronics began overheating, Kayser cut open a soup can,
The sun melted only the sand, and, after more than four hours, he printed a glass bowl,
Kayser digs the object out of the sandbox TRACKING Kayser attached a cylindrical sun tracker to the frame perpendicular to the lens.
When the sun is directly in line with the lens, it shines straight through an opening in the top of the cylinder.
As the sun shifts, the light comes in at an angle, creating shadows within the cylinder.
they also benefit from the sun tracking, which ensures that they always get direct light.
and the primarily provider would be your solar system and your storage device.####For now, though, it s only a minor threat to utilities that levy high demand charges,
I think you ll see up to 50 percent of solar systems will have energy storage, ##says Rive.####The economics and scale that Tesla has achieved in the automotive market now make stationary energy storage more cost effective and reliable than it has ever been in the past,##JB Straubel,
Affectiva s clients include Unilever, Mars and Coca-cola. The advertising research agency Millward Brown#says it has used Affectiva s technology to test about 3, 000 ads for clients.
such as this#solar-powered one that flew cross-country using the power of the sun. But,
##But the maximum radio frequency intensity of the transmission##is only one-fourth that of sunlight,##according to former NASA wireless power transmission engineer Richard Dickinson.
if there was any interruption at the earth station.####Aircraft can safely traverse the beam and tests have demonstrated that even the sensitive honeybee is unaffected,
It may think that the search term##pink##relates to the pop star rather than the color
while in sun-blasted Arizona the state s big utility tried to short-circuit a solar boom.
when the sun isn t shining. In Arizona, that credit is calculated at retail rates and APS argued that penalized homeowners who don t go solar as the utility will be forced to raise their rates to pay for the transmission system
and we can build every product under the sun for those people. And we re going to try and do it.##
half the planet s population may be served best with pay-as-you-go solar technology, not grid services.
So she opts for a small home solar system to cover basic needs like mobile charging.
Due to a combination of new found purchasing power, declining solar system costs, increasing kerosene costs, and advances in solar services business models,
perhaps, depleting) planet.####Meat will become a luxury food and will become very expensive, ##Professor Post said.
Because electricity moves through the air as magnetic waves that are similar to the earth s magnetic waves,
The earth atmosphere is a far more elegant water distribution system than rivers, reservoirs, and underground waterways.
Using solar wind, and other forms of passive energy, our future water networks will be operate with far more efficiency and convenience than anything imaginable today.
It will generate between 1-3 Gallons Water/day depending on the humidity conditions and sun conditions.
Last month, Greenpeace released a short video that imagines a future in which swarms of robotic bees have been deployed to save our planet after the real insects go extinct.
They re scattered throughout a constellation of 102 federal prisons, 1, 719 state prisons, 2, 259 juvenile facilities, 3, 283 local jails,
#New LED light technology sheds light on the future of food LED growing lights, delivering sunlight whatever the weather.
and a meter is a meter anywhere on the planet because of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.
and video of Earth taken from afar. In announcing the deal Tuesday, Google#said#the buyout will help bolster Google maps by keeping the service accurate with up-to-date images.
the Luna Wash is like a miniature dirt-destroying Death Star that uses static electricity and steam to coax your clothes clean.
Earth appetite for power continues to grow. Since the 1960s, power consumption has quadrupled around the globe,
and beaming it to earth has been around ever since Dr. Peter Glaser first proposed it in 1968.
neither the giant solar collectors in geosynchronous orbit nor the beaming microwaves, coming down to the island from 24,000 miles above Earth.
Powering the Entire Solar system At first blush, most will imagine a space-based solar array powering our energy hungry businesses on earth,
which will be closer to Earth, will experience more gravitational pull down toward the planet and less centrifugal force away from it,
while the bus will be tugged upward by the opposite effects. This balancing of forces will keep the satellite in a stable orbit,
the amount of sunlight that hits it varies greatly as the geosynchronous satellite and Earth spin.
#IBM creates a solar magnifying glass that could power the Earth IBM, the American multinational technology and consulting corporation are renowned the world over for being technology leaders
and build a smarter planet. Their latest creation is being considered as one of their best projects yet.
which is capable of concentrating the sun rays into a stream 2000x more powerful. The process of trapping sunlight also produces water that can be used to produce potable water and other modern day amenities such as air conditioning.
Scientists are predicting that the HCPVT could provide sustainable energy and fresh water to communities all around the world.
which is attached to a tracking system that determines the best angle based on the position of the sun. Such system can be applied profitably in sunny regions where sustainable energy,
With the high concentration of the sun rays and a low cost design the team believe they charge $250 per square meter which is three times lower than normal systems.
The burgeoning revolution has not been confined to the Lone star State. Apparently, when it comes to higher-education reform,
and reach across the most remote corners of earth. Although the total purchase sum was undisclosed,
The intention is to collect real-time, high-resolution images of the earth, and to bring greater depth
At night you are not collecting energy from the sun and it takes a lot of power to broadcast internet signals.
the turbine helium-inflated housing is durable enough for deployment in either the blazing sun or freezing snow.
even if your previous system involved a sun dial and carrier pigeons. The things even have a cool name:
or Western union apparently fail to meet the requirements to be discussed in virtually every central bank on the planet,
and became a good of such universal value it slowly became the de facto means of exchange (along with silver) across much of the planet,
#Discovery of water-containing gem points to vast oceans beneath the Earth The Earth transition zone is the part of the Earth that exists between the upper and lower mantle.
there is water, possibly massive oceans of it, deep beneath the Earth surface. The tiny gem was an accidental find
a mineral we have seen only previously in meteorites, and not On earth. Fortunately, as with many scientific discoveries, this accident was a happy find.
exists deep within the Earth, at least 300 miles beneath its surface, in the transition zone.
Geologists believe that volcanic activity pushed this particular rock up to Earth surface. Having a piece of the Earth transition zone available,
geologists spent several years testing it. Their final results showed that the gem contained 1. 5 percent of its weight in water.
This discovery proves the theory that the Earth transition zone not only contains water but might also contain more water than every surface ocean combined.
Because it so difficult to dig a hole deep enough to reach even the upper mantle of the Earth
what we know about Earth and its composition o
#Controversy brews over use of autonomous killer robots in war People are promised their quality of life will improve with the advances of technology,
when the wind stops blowing and the sun goes down. The end goal for Tesla is that cheap batteries could help Tesla deliver its $35, 000 third generation electric car.
and recorded across hundreds of servers at all corners of the earth. Consultant Andreas M. Antonopoulos, echoing a 2012 white paper by software developer J. R. Willett,
The system then combines the field data with a diversity of public data from the National oceanic and atmospheric administration the National aeronautics and space administration and the U s. Geological Survey and private data from companies like Earth Networks.
U k. emissions from fossil fuel burning in 2010 were 494 million tons of CO2 said Pieter Tans of the U s. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory
With more people sharing our mutual responsibility to reduce carbon footprints by shifting to plant-based meals we have reason to be hopeful for our planet's future.
and disappear back into Earth s environment. But bug parts break down in only a year or two.
The plant is set to be built by Abengoa SA (ABG) a Spanish company that offers global renewable energy solutions. his project will help prove the economic operation of concentrated solar power technology in the Earth sunbelt,
Powered by Landmark's Decisionspace next-generation earth modeling solution the workflow is unique to the industry in that it is capable of updating dynamically
As the only organisms capable of converting sunlight into food, plants are the powerhouses that produce all of the sustenance On earth.
and helps to regulate the planet's climate. Melchiorri's invention can potentially duplicate many of these benefits with a man-made material.
and possibly even colonize new planets.""Plants don't grow in zero gravity, "explained Melchiorri.""NASA is researching different ways to produce oxygen for long-distance space journeys to let us live in space.
Like the leaves of a plant, the material requires only exposure to sunlight and a small amount of water to produce oxygen."
non-ionizing solar radiation. They convert it by luminescence and operate on the principle of collecting radiation over a large area.
small organic molecules to absorb specific nonvisible wavelengths of sunlight.""We can tune these materials to pick up just the ultraviolet and the near infrared wavelengths that then'glow'at another wavelength in the infrared,
Earlier this week the 64-year-old billionaire announced a partnership with satellite-system designers Oneweb to use Virgin galactic's Launcherone rocket to create a massive satellite constellation in space.
Wikipedia) But there are other costs involved with anything we do the social and environmental costs the effect on people and the planet as well as the profit.
"says graduate student Chris Moon, one of the authors of the work published in Nature Nanotechnology1.
But Moon and his colleagues saw a way to go smaller by using a quantum analogy to the conventional hologram.
What the work means for the carbon balance of the Earth is also not as obvious as it may seem.
which in 1980 became the first disease to be officially wiped out from the planet. The global polio initiative, a mammoth programme involving the vaccination of billions of children,
whether the Earth's skies are dimming or brightening, how this affects the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface and what that means for climate change.
Two studies published in Science in 2005 concluded that a global dimming trend that began in the 1950s has been replaced since 1990 by global brightening1,
2. The likely effect of all that extra solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface would be faster global warming.
which help to reflect the Sun's rays back into space and so cool the planet.
Aerosols can also reduce cloudiness, however, as probably happens in northern China, meaning that the net effect of aerosol pollution on global temperatures is worryingly uncertain.
tends to absorb sunlight rather than scattering it back into space. This means that it warms the troposphere in much the same way as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
which measured incoming solar radiation rather than visibility, concluded that the skies have brightened over most land areas,
bacteria accounted for around 20%of all particles#biological and non-biological#a higher proportion than in the near-Earth atmosphere."
#Solar magnetism twists braids of superheated gas Geoff Brumfiel hears from researcher Jonathan Cirtain why the Sun s atmosphere is hotter than its surface.
The Sun's atmosphere is just jam-packed full of magnetic field, says Cirtain. As the lines of those fields cross and twirl, the theory went,
a camera capable of taking pictures of the Sun's corona in fine detail. The imager was placed on board a research rocket at the White sands Missile Range in New mexico
It took several minutes to fall to Earth, during which time it took a series of pictures of the Sun (see video).
A team member started analysing the data on the drive back from the missile range, and immediately saw evidence of braids in the twists of coronal gas.
The group now hopes to put the Hi-C on a next-generation spacecraft that will monitor the Sun for longer periods of time e
when it helped with the initial design of K-STAR, believes that the K-DEMO project is feasible,
Gisele Azimi and Adam T. Paxsona thin film made of a water-repelling ceramic material#here a rare-earth oxide#can help you stay dry.
Exposed to the sun, a solar cell employing such nanowires can turn nearly 14 percent of the incoming light into electricity#a new record that opens up more possibilities for cheap and effective solar power.
and phosphorus that absorbs much of the light from the sun (a property known as its band gap).
At the same time the novel cells could be built into so-called multijunction solar cells#compound devices that incorporate several different types of semiconductor material in layers like a sandwich to absorb as much of the energy in sunlight as possible.
Such multijunction cells have converted more than 43 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity#currently
but they can be made cheaper by combining them with low-cost lenses to concentrate the sunlight onto smaller versions of the cells.
Or maybe it s a devious scheme predicated on boring a hole into the depths of the planet with the world s hardest drill bit.
"We still need really superhard materials to explore deeper and deeper into Earth s interior,
#Nearby star is almost as old as the Universe Astronomers have discovered a Methuselah of stars#a denizen of the Solar system's neighbourhood that is at least 13.2 billion years old and formed shortly after the Big bang."
"We believe this star is known the oldest in the Universe with a well determined age,
The venerable star, dubbed HD 140283, lies at a comparatively short distance of 190 light years from the Solar system
and has been studied by astronomers for more than a century. Researchers have known long that the object consists almost entirely of hydrogen
before successive generations of stars had a chance to forge heavier elements. But no one knew exactly how old it was.
and more accurate determination of the star s distance from the Solar system, using 11 sets of observations recorded between 2003 and 2011 using the Hubble space telescope s Fine Guidance Sensors,
which measure the position of target stars relative to reference stars. The astronomers also measured the brightness of the star as it appears in the sky,
and were then able to calculate its intrinsic luminosity. The team then exploited the fact that HD 140283 is in a phase of its life cycle in
In this phase, the star's slowly dimming luminosity is a highly sensitive indicator of its age,
His team calculates that the star is 13.9 billion years old, give or take 700 million years.
The star's age is therefore at least 13.2 billion years #which was estimated the age of another known Methuselah2#and possibly older.
The very first generation of stars coalesced from primordial gas, which did not contain appreciable amounts of elements heavier than helium,
but non-zero abundance of heavy elements#shows that the star must have formed after the first stellar generation.
Conditions for making the second generation of stars, then, "must have been in place very early, says Bromm.
The very first stars are thought usually to have coalesced a few hundred million years after the Big bang,
But before the second generation of stars could form, that gas had to cool down. The early age of the second-generation star HD 140283 hints that the cooling time,
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