and provides access to free tools for designing custom-made analysis pipelines. Ingenuity Systems in Redwood City, California, allows users to upload a list of mutations in a person s genome,
#Obama to announce $2 billion plan to get US cars off gasoline An article by Scientific American.
getting the country off oil. Obama had mentioned briefly the idea of an energy security trust in his State of the Union address in January,
would come from leases of offshore oil drilling. The money for the fund, which would probably be dispersed in the way that the ARPA-E program does it,
Weaning the nation off fossil fuels entirely for its transportation needs may not be practical or realistic.
Chemosynthesis also fuels life at other deep-sea locations such as hydrothermal vents but those are restricted to the edges of continental plates.
the researchers found genes from microbes that metabolize sulphur compounds and some that produce methane.#
Over time, methane was produced, showing that the microbes were living and growing. Lever is convinced that the microbes are not hitchhikers from the surface,
The giant craters are similar in size to seafloor pockmarks created by methane gas explosions. However
ission Impossibledevices Self Destructgoogle Advanced Technology and Projects lab built a full gesture recognition pipeline that has high positional accuracy
Anstie and his team shine the laser onto a sample of gas. Since each molecule in the universe absorbs light at different optical frequencies,
It also has to be cheap enough to compete with traditional fossil fuels. That been a high hurdle for devices called solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCS) that convert fuelsuch as methane and hydrogenirectly to electricity without burning them.
But now researchers report that theye come up with a new recipe for making key components in one type of SOFC more cheaply,
There, they react with molecules in the fuel generating water, carbon dioxide, and electricity. The electricity is fed through a circuit where it powers our devices,
The devices make electricity at an efficiency that can match a large natural gas-based power plant. But whereas a power plant is huge and costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build,
These devices work best at converting hydrogen gas and oxygen to water and electricity, and even work at lower temperatures around 600°C. Unlike conventional SOFCS the BZY membranes allow the flow not of negatively charged oxygen ions toward the anode,
barium vaporizes into a gas, which makes it harder to mix it uniformly throughout the ceramic.
#Martian methane sniffer adapted for Earth WHAT'S that gassy smell? The hypersensitive methane detector on NASA's Mars rover curiosity is being repurposed to ferret out gas leaks On earth.
The Pacific gas and electric company in San francisco and global energy giant Chevron are testing a handheld earthbound version that is 1000 times as sensitive as existing methane sniffers.
The device looks like a funky golf club with a laser at the end says PG&E spokesperson Hailey Wilson.
When it picks up trace amounts of methane it kind of sings to the operator and changes pitch depending on the concentration.
Cliff Johnson president of the Pipeline Research Council International says the detector will help find leaks in pipelines before they get large.
The colours show how this gas was moving: blue represents gas that is moving towards us
while red indicates gas that is moving away. Out of 37 galaxies observed these 30 all show gas rotating around the centre of the galaxy meaning they are disc galaxies in the making.
For the first time there is observational evidence for merging galaxies that could result in disc galaxies. This is a large and unexpected step towards understanding the mystery of the birth of disc galaxies says Junko Ueda from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Ueda and her team made the observations using data from the ALMA radio telescope. Computer simulations suggested that
#Water-splitter could make hydrogen fuel on Mars Making fuel on site for a return trip to Mars may be a step closer.
and future Earthlings enabling them to use renewable energy sources for making hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen fuel cells can power vehicles ranging from cars to submarines and rockets.
They can also heat buildings and double as portable power-packs for computers or other kit used in the field.
But existing methods for creating usable hydrogen gas from water require a lot of electricity. That means renewable energy sources like wind or sunlight which are often patchy are not reliable enough.
Cronin and his colleagues see this as a major obstacle to a future in which hydrogen fuel replaces oil.
and protons to recombine to make hydrogen gas. The whole process uses a single whack of power and patchy renewable energy will suffice for this says Cronin.
or for making fuel on Mars to power a rocket back to Earth. It is unclear
In a single degenerate system the shock wave from the white dwarf explosion should smash into the surrounding gas from the companion star generating radio waves.
While it is true that there is no sign of the gas that might be there in a single degenerate perhaps that gas is more distant
which NIF engineers originally designed to implode fuel capsules for research into nuclear fusion power. The team fixed a diamond inside a hole cut in a small gold cylinder
For instance commodity traders might pay top dollar for detailed information on the level of oil in Saudi arabia's storage facilities.
We could also use other sensors to assess methane outgassing levels and explosion risk. Initially the firm plans to use information collected by European space agency satellites
and crew capsules to simply be reloaded with propellant and flown again much like commercial airplanes.
It also accounts for complex phenomena such as cooling gas star formation supernova explosions and supermassive black holes pulling in material that gets too Close to run the simulation the team used several supercomputers in Europe and the US each
Canada has imposed other restrictions on Russia as a result of the Ukraine crisis such as economic sanctions against a Crimean oil and gas company and the expulsion of a Russian diplomat from an embassy in Ottawa.
But Mertsch says the models they used didn't account for dust shells produced as the expanding remnants of supernovae slam into surrounding gas and dust.
Once inside the abdominal cavity which has been filled with inert gas to make room for it to work the robot can remove an ailing appendix, cut pieces from a diseased colon or repair a perforated gastric ulcer.
Gas in Earth's upper atmosphere is ionised by ultraviolet light from the sun and the resulting plasma becomes trapped by magnetic fields in a doughnut-shaped ring around the planet.
and doesn't require any propellant to move. If next month's test launch goes well it plans to build a 10-kilometre-long version to capture satellites that have reached the end of their lives.
Water could also be split into hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel. Much of the weight of today's rockets comes from their own propellant so having a source of fuel already in space would pave the way for much more ambitious human missions.
If we're really interested in extending our reach to Mars and beyond we don't want to have to bring fuel with us says Anthony Colaprete of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field California.
He is the project scientist on a proposed robotic mission called Resource Prospector which could launch in 2018 to try to extract water from lunar rocks.
Some of the teams vying for the prize also have their sights set on selling lunar-derived rocket fuel.
and teams of human miners to the moon to supply water for fuel depots that it would place in Earth orbit t
It will carry five scientific instruments including a methane sensor to try to pick up the gas in Mars's atmosphere.
On earth methane is produced mainly by life so there was a stir when Earth-based instruments and a European probe detected traces of it in Mars's atmosphere a decade ago.
Some are sceptical of those results believing they were triggered by methane in Earth's atmosphere
or perhaps water in Mars's and recently NASA's Curiosity rover added to the scepticism by finding no methane when it breathed in the Martian air.
It turns out that most atmospheres have lost a lot of gas over their lifetimes. On Mars it may be as much as 99 per cent.
The sun is currently zipping through one of the Milky way's spiral arms at a relative speed of about 23 kilometres per second ploughing through thin clouds of interstellar dust and gas.
The laser pulse ionises inert helium gas generating a stream of high-speed electrons. This electron beam is directed at a thin metallic foil
Some of these clumps begin gathering gas from the disc and become the cores of gas giants like Jupiter.
According to models of this process as the clumps get larger they feel more drag as they move through the gas and dust.
or larger one that sees smaller dust grains only about 50 micrometres wide and one that sees cold gas.
The team found that the gas and the small dust grains form rings of evenly distributed material all the way around Oph IRS 48.
If the idea is sound there must be a way to make vortices without first making giant planets perhaps involving the star heating the gas until it creates a region of instability.
When this article was published first on 6 june 2013 it mistook the temperature of the gas that Nienke van der Marel
The next drill scoop will have to wait until the planet comes back into Range in the meantime the science team has plenty of data to fuel new discoveries and daydreams.
These studies include technology policy reports focused on nuclear power coal natural gas and the smart electric grid.
In addition to research a contribution of the CPI in the long run will be to create a pipeline of students to serve as the next generation of leaders working at this intersection of technology and public policy.
undercutting even today low-cost natural gas but in areas like New england and the Southeast, taller towers are needed to reach the strong winds that make wind energy economically feasible. nce youe at the heights wee looking at,
The technology could also drive down operating costs for base stations in the developing world where these stations rely on expensive diesel fuel for power
The reason you d like to be in ion mode is to have the most efficient conversion of the mass of the propellant into the momentum of the spacecraft t
#New approach to boosting biofuel production Yeast are used commonly to transform corn and other plant materials into biofuels such as ethanol.
However large concentrations of ethanol can be toxic to yeast which has limited the production capacity of many yeast strains used in industry.
Now Stephanopoulos and colleagues at MIT and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have identified a new way to boost yeast tolerance to ethanol by simply altering the composition of the medium in
Ethanol and other alcohols can disrupt yeast cell membranes eventually killing the cells. The MIT team found that adding potassium and hydroxide ions to the medium in
By making these changes the researchers were able to boost yeast s ethanol production by about 80 percent.
This work goes a long way to squeezing the last drop of ethanol from sugar adds Gerald Fink an MIT professor of biology member of the Whitehead Institute and the paper s other senior author.
or group of genes that could be manipulated to make yeast more tolerant to ethanol but this approach did not yield much success
and increasing the ph with potassium hydroxide the researchers were able to dramatically boost ethanol production.
They also found that these changes did not affect the biochemical pathway used by the yeast to produce ethanol:
Yeast continued to produce ethanol at the same per-cell rate as long as they remained viable. Instead the changes influenced their electrochemical membrane gradients differences in ion concentrations inside and outside the membrane
Ethanol increases the porosity of the cell membrane making it very difficult for cells to maintain their electrochemical gradients.
the longer they survive the more ethanol they make. By reinforcing these gradients we re energizing yeast to allow them to withstand harsher conditions
What s also exciting to us is that this could apply beyond ethanol to more advanced biofuel alcohols that upset cell membranes in the same way Lam says.
Industrial relevancebefore yeast begin their work producing ethanol the starting material usually corn must be broken down into glucose.
While many studies have examined ways to boost ethanol tolerance at low glucose levels the MIT team used concentrations of about 300 grams per liter similar to
Otherwise what you learn at low ethanol levels is not likely to translate to industrial production Stephanopoulos says.
Lonnie Ingram director of the Florida Center for Renewable Chemicals and Fuels at the University of Florida describes the MIT team s discovery as remarkable and unexpected.
In more recent experiments the MIT researchers have used this method to bump ethanol productivity even higher than reported in the Science paper.
They are also working on using this approach to boost the ethanol yield from various industrial feedstocks that because of starting compounds inherently toxic to yeast now have low yields.
By combining this work with our previously published high-throughput screening system we are able to create a drug-discovery pipeline with efficiency we had imagined never before adds Tsung-Yao Chang a recent MIT Phd recipient and one of the paper s lead authors.
Instead of climbing into a conventional bulky gas-pressurized suit an astronaut may don a lightweight stretchy garment lined with tiny musclelike coils.
thus avoiding the gas pressure altogether. We combine passive elastics with active materials. Ultimately the big advantage is mobility and a very lightweight suit for planetary exploration.
What s more such robots run on gasoline and are powered by a gasoline engine in order to generate high forces.
As a result they re way louder Kim says. Our robot can be silent and as efficient as animals.
and oil rigs these simulations require intensive computation done by powerful computers over many hours, costing engineering firms much time and money.
and oil and gas industries are now using the Akselos software. The startup is also providing software for an MITX course on structural engineering.
which also included research scientist Jifa Qi, graduate student Matthew Klug and postdoc Xiangnan Dang, was supported by Italian energy company Eni through the MIT Energy Initiative y
or ridges just a few micrometers across that is then impregnated with a fluid that can be manipulated for example an oil infused with tiny magnetic particles or ferrofluid
In the desert environment dust is present on a daily basis says co-author Numan Abu-Dheir of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Saudi arabia.
which electricity runs through a gas to produce light. These are very bright but can be as large as trucks
#Separating finely mixed oil and water Whenever there is a major spill of oil into water the two tend to mix into a suspension of tiny droplets called an emulsion that is extremely hard to separate and that can cause severe damage to ecosystems.
But MIT researchers have discovered a new inexpensive way of getting the two fluids apart again.
and could process large quantities of the finely mixed materials back into pure oil and water.
In addition to its possible role in cleaning up spills the new method could also be used for routine drilling such as in the deep ocean as well as on land where water is injected into wells to help force oil out of deep rock formations.
Typically Varanasi explains the mixed oil and water that s extracted is put in large tanks to allow separation by gravity;
the oil gradually floats to the top where it can be skimmed off. That works well when the oil and water are already large globs of stuff already partly separated Varanasi says.
The difficulty comes when you have what is called an emulsion with very tiny droplets of oil stabilized in a water background or water in an oil background.
The difficulty significantly increases for nanoemulsions where the drop sizes are below a micron. To break down those emulsions crews use de-emulsifiers
In the 2010 Deepwater horizon oil spill in the Gulf of mexico for example large amounts of dispersants and de-emulsifiers were dumped into the sea.
After a while the oil just disappeared Varanasi says but people know it s hidden in the water in these fine emulsions.
In the case of land-based drilling where so-called produced water from wells contains fine emulsions of oil companies sometimes simply dilute the water until it meets regulatory standards for being discharged into waterways.
It s a problem that s very challenging to the industry Varanasi says both in terms of recovering the oil
Tiny droplets of water colored blue are suspended in oil on top of a membrane developed by the MIT team.
and repels oil the droplets shrink as they pass through the membrane ultimately leaving just pure oil behind.
A similar membrane with a different coating can do the reverse allowing oil droplets to pass
either attract oil and repel water or vice versa. This allows one material to pass while blocking the other with little flow resistance Varanasi says.
or repel oil and water. The skin layer thickness can be optimized further using polymeric pore formers to enhance throughput.
Within seconds an oil-water mixture that is heavily clouded becomes perfectly clear as the water passes through the membrane leaving pure oil behind.
Oil-water nanoemulsions are ubiquitous in a number of industries and these membranes could enable rapid separation of those emulsions with high purity and efficiency.
where the ability to adjust the texture of panels to minimize drag at different speeds could increase fuel efficiency,
#A new way to detect leaks in pipes Explosions caused by leaking gas pipes under city streets have made frequently headlines in recent years,
Now researchers at MIT and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Saudi arabia have devised a robotic system that can detect leaks at a rapid pace and with high accuracy by sensing a large pressure
The researchers have begun discussions with gas companies and water companies the system can also detect leaks in water pipes,
or in petroleum pipelines about setting up field tests under real-world conditions. Chatzigeorgiou presented the concept this month at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Hong kong,
In addition to their potential for dangerous explosions, leaking gas pipes can be a significant contributor to global warming:
Methane, the primary constituent of natural gas, is a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
and should be effective in gas, water, and oil pipes. MIT mechanical engineering professor Kamal Youcef-Toumi, a co-author of the research papers,
adds, his technology allows for an unambiguous and reliable sensing of very small leaks that often go undetected for long periods of time.
People in rural Alaska rely on gas and diesel generators for power paying upward of $1 per kilowatt-hour for electricity.
and to convert carbon dioxide to fuels for applications On earth and in space. Today industrial infrastructure manages basic resources linearly
while producing small amounts of burnable methane, have gained popularity in the last few decades but such systems only function under specific circumstances,
In 2012, NASA began funding a Cambrian project, called Exogen, that uses electromethanogenesis to more efficiently extract oxygen or fuel from CO2 for long-duration space flights.
and the introduction of alkyl groups caused by pollutants such as fuel exhaust and tobacco smoke. To achieve this, the researchers created five different circular pieces of DNA, four
The sensors detected changes in oxygen pressure as small as 15 millimeters of mercury and it took less than 10 minutes to see the effects of a change in inhaled gas.
The knee now used by thousands of patients worldwide utilizes iron particles suspended in oil between steel plates
Inventors just care a lot about their inventions and that passion and commitment fuels commercial progress.
The work was supported by the U s. Department of energy and by the National Science Foundation and used facilities of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center r
Unlike fuels that are burned this system uses material that can be reused continually. It produces no emissions
The work was supported by BP though the MIT Energy Initiative and the U s. Department of energy Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy n
They shopped their phages to bacteria-plagued industries such as oil and water treatment, where biofilms build up in pipelines before seeing firsthand that the food industry as in desperate need of new detection technologies.
Most food manufacturers were still using traditional assays, Lu says, with some still using pen and paper or spreadsheets to track contamination hich makes it nearly impossible to gather large amounts of data,
and corrode oil pipelines, or to detect the pathogenic bacteria that sometimes cause oil to sour by changing its composition.
The next practical application however, is most likely in health care, with the potential for clinical diagnostics or rapid detection of contamination in hospital rooms with the aim of decreasing the 1. 7 million cases of hospital-associated infections recorded in the United states each year.
and fuel, release the oxygen that we breathe, and add beauty to our surroundings. Now, a team of MIT researchers wants to make plants even more useful by augmenting them with nanomaterials that could enhance their energy production
they also modified plants to detect the gas nitric oxide. Together these represent the first steps in launching a scientific field the researchers have dubbed lant nanobionics. lants are very attractive as a technology platform,
What is the impact of nanoparticles on the production of chemical fuels like glucose? Giraldo says.
Lean green machines The researchers also showed that they could turn Arabidopsis thaliana plants into chemical sensors by delivering carbon nanotubes that detect the gas nitric oxide,
and fuel consumption electric and hybrid cars and trucks struggled for years to find a solid customer base.
and charging them requires plug-in infrastructure that s still sparse in the United states. Now MIT spinout XL Hybrids is upfitting (and retrofitting) gas and diesel commercial vans and trucks with fuel-saving add-on electric powertrains
and Fedex among others can provide a 20 percent reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 EMISSIONS. The goal is to reduce oil consumption with cost-effective electric drive technology where fleets don t need additional infrastructure
and don t need a large battery says Tod Hynes 02 co-founding president of XL Hybrids and a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of management.
But XL Hybrids innovation comes from targeting commercial fleet vehicles with a good value proposition all around Hynes says offering low-cost equipment quick installation savings on gas and oil and easy integration.
At the end of the day it s about making the economics work to compete against the price of fuel Hynes says adding We re able to do a lot with a little.
XL Hybrids installs small 1. 8-kwh lithium-ion batteries that provide a 20 percent fuel savings Hynes says.
which involves running a vehicle on treadmill-like rollers to estimate fuel mileage in urban driving.
With this savings companies can expect to save 4000 gallons of fuel over the life of an XL Hybrids system Hynes says.
When a fleet customer looks at the numbers they want to see benefits based on fuel savings
It has an oil problem he says. We re very dependent on oil: We rely on imports
and more than 95 percent of transportation fuel is oil. So he quit his job in 2008 with the aim of starting a company to cut oil consumption.
With rising innovations in batteries and advanced power inverters and motors Hynes backed into a technological solution with retrofitted electric powertrains.
Reconnecting with former mentor Bill Aulet now managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship Hynes put the final pieces into place.
The MIT team found that they could create novel sensors by coating the nanotubes with specifically designed amphiphilic polymers polymers that are drawn to both oil and water, like soap.
and fuel-injected engines, as well as for processes such as spray cooling of hot metal. One application now being considered by Varanasi
such as in deep-sea oil wells. By creating a computer model of that microstructure and studying its response to various conditions,
including materials used in aircraft, oil wells, and other critical industrial applications. Metal fatigue, for example which can result from an accumulation of nanoscale cracks over time s probably the most common failure modefor structural metals in general
The work was funded by the BP-MIT Materials and Corrosion Center l
#Better robot vision Object recognition is one of the most widely studied problems in computer vision.
supplying them with the essential gas. This blood deoxygenation causes the hemoglobin in sickle cells to form long fibrous chains,
Oxygen diffuses from the gas compartment to the microfluidic channel, allowing researchers to control how much oxygen cells are exposed to.
have helped replace thousands of kerosene lanterns usually burned in homes for lighting; such lanterns spew out black carbon that contributes to global warming and indoor air pollution.
These stoves, Wu says, cook twice as fast, with half the charcoal. Moreover, Wu says,
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