#Nanotubes: Can we make speakers as thin as paper? It's time for one of those imagined futures
which always miss the mark by a mile#you know..."Imagine setting off for work with your jet-pack
##But here we go anyway: imagine that photographs, newspapers and books speak, that you can play music out of your curtains,
that food wrapping calls out "I'm nearly past my sell-by date!##OK, so perhaps it's all a bit nightmarish rather than utopian,
but the point is that some weird and wonderful things would be possible if a loudspeaker could be made as thin, light and flexible as a sheet of paper.
That's what is envisaged in a study by Andrew Barnard and colleagues at the Pennsylvania State university.
They have revisited an idea nearly one hundred years old, and sounding decidedly steampunk: the thermophone or thermoacoustic loudspeaker, in which sound is generated by the effect of a material rapidly oscillating between hot and cold.
In 1917 Harold Arnold and IB Crandall of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and Western electric Company showed that they could create sound by simultaneously passing alternating and direct currents through a very thin platinum foil.
This heats up the foil, and the heat is conducted into the air surrounding it in pulses paced by the frequency of the AC current.
Nasa recently admitted that as part of a programme"to turn science fiction into fact#they are funding work to develop a 3d food printer.
So if we do ever send astronauts to Mars they might be tucking into freshly printed pizza.
the disturbingly more-ish soda made from the secretions of giant extraterrestrial slugs in Futurama.
That's one possibility if Harvard professor Daniel Nocera's idea for a device that can harness and store energy from the Sun comes to fruition.
The catalysts are cheap, earth-abundant materials and form by self-assembly, which should make manufacture cheaper.
which to some observers evokes the atmosphere of the early days in Northern California. That was certainly the vibe at Tech Open air Berlin
which focuses the sun rays to create obsidian. Other transformative processes include Ginger Krieg Dosier printed sandstone bricks of bio-manufactured masonry grown using bacteria.
Persephone aims to build a synthetic biological interior for the spaceship, working with teams from the fields of science, technology, architecture
"This technology can potentially also help cancer patients from the side effects of radiation therapy and astronauts from chronic exposure to cosmic rays on their journey to Mars. s
an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State and senior author of a paper describing the work."
And until the sun comes up really that you know authorities can't get in and really begin to assess
Mitt Romney heads to Indianapolis today but will appear via satellite to talk with folks toward the convention about veterans issues.
Apple now seeking to have pulled eight devices from U s. store shelves including the very popular very very popular galaxy smart phones.
To recruit in this environment is like being part wizard part astronaut, part diplomat, part guidance counselor.
Swiss Railways will use a smattering of Samsung gadgets#the Galaxy Note 3 Galaxy S4 Galaxy S4 Mini
and Galaxy Tab 3#for employee communication as well as for ticket purchasing and other train services Samsung said.
including rocket engines, fins, parts for the guidance and control systems, and more. ou could potentially have these in the field,
a Raytheon engineer who has printed working rocket motors. achines making machines. The user could print on demand.
Warhead designers attempt to create blast effects that meet specific criteria. nce you get into detonation physics you open up a whole new universe, James Zunino,
And we demonstrated a printed rocket motor. Wee already printed 80 percent of what would go into a missilesaid Danforth. 3d printing of missiles
Are we to believe that a country which sent a man to the moon and created the internet can figure out how to integrate alternative power sources into the power grid?
and IFC is instrumental in bringing the project in Chile to life. he Atacama desert receives some of the planet steadiest concentrations of direct sunlight according to First Solar.
Musk also owns Spacex, the firm that stands as the only private company to ever return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit.
He is also chairman of Solarcity, which he said can helpprovide solar energy for the national network of Tesla EV chargers his company is creating e
ONC which is the University of Victoria largest research project already operates the world most advanced cabled ocean observatories off BC coast.
Western Economic Diversification is also contributing funding to bring online a number of additional underwater observatories and high frequency coastal radars.
the Solartab lets its users charge any mobile device using green, sun-fueled energy. And even more impressively, ipad enthusiasts can charge their beloved touch-screen gadget even
as long as the sun is out, the Solartab will always charge at maximum efficiency. To keep this promise,
After adjusting the angle to the sun current position, all that left to do is plug in any smartphone
and shaded sunlight conditions; conventional systems suffer large efficiency losses, if able to work at all, under such conditions.
Unlike traditional building-applied photovoltaic (PV) systems, restricted to use in direct sunlight on very limited skyscraper rooftop space,
Solarwindow#is designed to operate in sunlight and shaded conditions on the many thousands of square feet of glass surfaces common to today#s high-rise towers#a game-changing advantage.
*Capable of producing power in direct sunlight and shaded or low natural light conditions;**Able to generate significant electricity from both natural and artificial light;*
Cleveland-based quasar energy group uses organic waste to produce a renewable energy source known as biogas which is converted then into Compressed natural gas (CNG) one of two fuels that can power the 2015 Chevrolet Bi-fuel Impala.
Since biogas can be made from most organic materials quasar insources raw materials otherwise considered waste from a variety of industries.
Anheuser-busch Columbus brewery provides an organic by-product to quasar for conversion to methane gas. f you can buy renewable fuel at $1. 95 per gallon
while reducing greenhouse gas emissions everybody winssaid Mel Kurtz president of quasar energy group. uasar Columbus facility can produce 1. 3 million gasoline gallon equivalents of CNG each year. hat
More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www. chevrolet. com. quasar is a Cleveland Ohio based renewable energy company that designs builds owns
and operates anaerobic digestion systems. quasar has thirteen operational anaerobic digestion facilities throughout the United states with several more under construction
or in the planning stage. qng (quasar natural gas) is derived from the anaerobic digestion of regional organic waste streams
and is available to the public at quasar stations in Columbus Zanesville and Wooster Ohio
and industrial processes are increasing the amount of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. he warming impact of methane
the team installed it on a mobile laboratory used during NASA DISCOVER-AQ campaign, which analyzed pollution on the ground and from the air last September.
#MIT Turns Up The Heat On Solar PV You might think that fewer steps in the process of turning sunlight into electricity would be the most efficient way to go.
in order to make use of a wider range of the sun energy. The work here is in the solar realm known as thermophotovoltaics,
T) he team inserted a two-layer absorber-emitter device made of novel materials including carbon nanotubes and photonic crystals between the sunlight and the PV cell.
This intermediate material collects energy from a broad spectrum of sunlight, heating up in the process.
facing the sunlight, is an array of multiwalled carbon nanotubes, which very efficiently absorbs the light energy and turns it to heat.
could provide efficiency because of their broadband absorption of sunlight; scalability and compactness, because they are based on existing chip-manufacturing technology;
CLIM-RUN designed its method to support a future World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) climate services network designed for the entire planet.
#Smart sensors that harvest power from sun heat or vibrations European researchers have developed advanced energy harvesting technology that allows wireless sensor networks to power themselves from the sun, heat or vibrations.
But what if sensors could harness energy directly from their environment from the sun, from ambient heat, from radio waves or vibrations?
"Harvesting the sun, vibrations and radio waves The SWAP team are studying, testing and deploying novel technologies that enable sensors to use solar
A citizen observatory When it comes to floods, citizens have often been thought of as mere consumers of information;
This is why Wesenseit is developing the concept of a citizen-based water observatory, where communities form part of a two-way information chain.
The collected data will be made available through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS. New technologies and approaches to water management are being tested
Overall, the citizen observatory concept will provide solid infrastructure within which SMES can create and test applications and services at low cost
According to Peschl, the breakthrough is ideal for the aerospace industry. Different models of aircraft have different body shapes, different types of seats and cabins, and so on.
In addition to aerospace, the XPRESS technology has also been tested in electronics, for manufacturing industrial switches; and in automobiles, for making car bodies.
Another project partner a supplier of advanced composites to the aerospace defence and automotive sectors sought to identify a milling strategy that would produce the optimal surface finish
One unexpected but very welcome result has been shown the interest by the global aerospace sector with large manufacturers planning to adopt the system in the production of critical engine components.
where the sun emits more than 40%of its radiation. By improving the reflectance of the materials,
as darker shades take in far more solar radiation. How not to soak up the rays With COOL-Coverings
adds to the difficulty of cooling down sun-kissed cities. To meet their objectives, the partners incorporated nanoparticles and micro-or nano-sized pigments into coatings and surface layers. e implemented this technology for three types of material:
This has led already to a sharp increase in price for rare-earth metals (such as Neodymium (Nd),
Considering the resource distribution of rare-earth metals, European car manufactures have to face the problem of restrictive and vulnerable supply chains for rare earth metals
and other aerospace applications is an expensive and time-intensive process involving design, prototyping and then machining of parts often using costly high strength-to-weight materials such as titanium.
A new production approach developed under the European union (EU)- funded RAPOLAC project (Rapid Production of Large Aerospace Components) can bypass the prototyping stage
Large-scale aerospace parts can thus be built directly from the design model (CAD) with no need for a prototype stage
The SMD technology was developed initially by the aerospace manufacturer Rolls-royce plc but was adopted not widely for commercial production due to perceived technical limitations.
The consortium has produced also test parts for six different aerospace companies and is being invited to develop more for other sectors.
"The main objective of RAPOLAC was to validate the SMD for use within aerospace and develop the process to the point where it can reliably
The technology has the potential to allow smaller firms across the regions of Europe to diversify into the aerospace market
Also known as polysaccharides, these complex sugars are by far the most abundant biomolecules on the planet. Produced biologically in plants, animals and microorganisms,
It demands a lot of sun, good soil, water and cold temperatures. But how do you install an environmentally friendly and sustainable cooling system in a country so warm?
"We all get heat from sun. We feel it on our bodies when it's warm,
but who ever heard of getting cold from sun? That's what MEDISCO is about.
The process involves single axis tracking concentrating collectors that essentially orient panels towards the sunlight.
View from space DORIS used the new mapping technologies offered by the Copernicus system of Earth observation satellites operated by the European space agency.
which involves taking images at different points in the satellite orbit and then combining them to detect sub-centimetre-scale height differences on the Earth surface.
Using SAR, DORIS has proved it can record Earth movements and deformation over time. he ability to construct long time series,
and the high spatial resolution provided by modern SAR sensors has meant that we could observe changes in urban
That alone made innovative solutions developed by the EU-funded project COMET very attractive to industry in Europe. illing machines are fantastic
COMET has managed to get robot accuracy down to 0. 05 mm, which is a significant improvement on today machines. e proved with our seven tech demos that,
COMET improved the absolute positioning accuracy of industrial robots so they could quickly react to changing conditions during production.
COMET has come up with an integrated programming and simulation environment (PSIR), as developed by partner Delcam,
and national project partners to explore new applications for COMET robotics solutions in fields such as grinding, abrasive finishing,
and laser and fluid polishing. he software Delcam developed under COMET is already generating up to a million euros in additional sales,
Euhus adds. uropean aerospace manufacturers are searching for mature, flexible and cost-effective production technologies.
each requiring tool monitoring systems like those developed in COMET. Fraunhofer IPA, another partner from Germany, carried out advanced R&d on a compensation mechanism (HDCM)
One of the keys to COMET success says Gunnink, has been to include robot integrators, like SIR and Gizelis from the start:
so wee prepared to fly our results to the moon and back to give taxpayers a return on investment.
As it user friendly and doesn cost the earth, this could really change the way we farm
and the filter uses gravity (hence no power needed). What's more, UNESCO-IHE tests indicate the resulting arsenic-covered sand will percolate (leach naturally) back into the environment,
#From sunlight to jet fuel: EU project makes first'solar'kerosene An EU-funded research project called SOLAR-JET has produced the world's first'solar'jet fuel from water and carbon dioxide (CO2), a promising technology for a better
using simulated sunlight. However, the results give hope that in future any liquid hydrocarbon fuels could be produced from sunlight
CO2 and water. The process In a first step concentrated light-simulating sunlight-was used to convert carbon dioxide
and water to synthesis gas (syngas) in a high-temperature solar reactor containing metal-oxide based materials developed at ETH Zürich.
Although producing syngas through concentrated solar radiation is still at an early stage of development, the processing of syngas to kerosene is already being deployed by companies,
Also, gravity works a little bit against us, as food doesn't hold the shape as well as plastic."
The COSMOS study is looking at cell phone records and the long-term health of 290,000 participants in five countries in Europe including the United kingdom and Sweden.
Studies such as COSMOS are important because they do not rely on participants to recall their cell phone use
However it could take several studies on the scale of COSMOS to really feel more confident in
In a letter coordinated by the nonprofit sustainability advocacy organization, Ceres, 223 companies including industry giants such as Ikea,
Mars and VF Corporation said he new standards will reinforce what leading companies already know:
Called supporting cells they form a physical base for the hearing system s##stars##the hair cells in the ear that interact directly with the nerves that carry sound signals to the brain.
when the star has been injured. After some searching the team found that an amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum has the gene ptena
The researchers hypothesized that ramping up the presence of lpten making it the star on the court could overcompensate for the mutated ptena.
not only but also that real skin regeneration is occurring##says Zhaoli Sun director of transplant biology research at Johns Hopkins School of medicine.##
Electromagnetic waves pervade the universe. We use them every day when we broadcast signals from giant radio towers, cook in microwave ovens,
Alexander Star, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, says the new chip,
Star says, nd bacterial infections are a common complication of the implant. Infection can damage the body surrounding the implant,
Star and his team have developed similar chip/nanotube sensors that can be affixed to a toothbrush to detect bad breath (the presence of hydrogen sulfide)
Another Star-developed chip measures acetone in breath, an indicator of diabetes. A National Energy technology Laboratory grant supported the research
and radar systems for aircraft ships and satellites can be extremely heavy and large so minimizing the size of these systems could provide significant savings.
The National Science Foundations NASA and the Department of energy funded the work. Source: NYUYOU are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license
of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics. The reactor called the dynomak started as a class project taught by Jarboe two years ago.
The trigger-pulling motion for example lets you switch to another browser tab change the map s view from satellite to standard
and light materials especially those that could help to protect the atmosphere including lighter more fuel efficient
#Rare molecule found in space hints at life s origins The discovery of an unusual carbon-based molecule near the galactic center of the Milky way suggests that the complex molecules needed for life may have their origins in interstellar space.
Organic molecules usually found in these star-forming regions consist of a single ackboneof carbon atoms arranged in a straight chain.
This detection opens a new frontier in the complexity of molecules that can be formed in interstellar space
and that might ultimately find their way to the surfaces of planets says Garrod. The branched carbon structure of isopropyl cyanide is a common feature in molecules that are needed for life such as amino acids
The discovery reported in the journal Science lends weight to the idea that biologically crucial molecules like amino acids that are commonly found in meteorites are produced early in the process of star formation even before planets such as Earth are formed.
Garrod along with lead author Arnaud Belloche and Karl Menten both of the Max Planck Institute for Radio astronomy and Holger MÃ ller of the University of Cologne sought to examine the chemical makeup of Sagittarius
B2 a region close to the Milky way s galactic center and an area rich in complex interstellar organic molecules.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (known as the ALMA Observatory) the group conducted a full spectral survey looking for fingerprints of new interstellar molecules with sensitivity and resolution 10 times greater
The purpose of the ALMA Observatory is to search for cosmic origins through an array of 66 sensitive radio antennas from the high elevation and dry air of northern Chile s Atacama desert.
The array of radio telescopes works together to form a gigantic yepeering into the cosmos. nderstanding the production of organic material at the early stages of star formation is critical to piecing together the gradual progression from simple molecules
The two molecules isopropyl cyanide and normal-propyl cyanide are also the largest molecules yet detected in any star-forming region
#Computer recreates powerful solar flares ETH Zurich rightoriginal Studyposted by Barbara Vonarburg-ETH Zurich on September 26 2014physicists have used computers to model solar explosions
The computer model demonstrates that the shorter the interval between two explosions in the solar atmosphere the more likely it is that the second flare will be stronger than the first one. he agreement with measurements from satellites is strikingwrite the researchers from ETH Zurich in the journal
Hans Jurgen Herrmann a professor at the Institute for Building materials says solar flares were not the original focus of the work.
Similar patterns to those in solar flares can also be found in earthquakes avalanches or the stock market. olar explosions do not of course have any connection with stock exchange ratessays Hermann
In the case of solar flares the build up of magnetic energy is emitted in sudden bursts. The sun consists of hot plasma made of electrons and ions.
Magnetic field lines extend from the solar surface all the way into the corona. Moving and twisting bundles of field lines form magnetic flux tubes.
When two tubes intersect they merge (physicists call this reconnection) causing an explosion that gives off large quantities of heat and electromagnetic radiation.
The affected solar area lights up as a solar flare. The radiation extends across the entire electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves and visible light to X-rays and gamma rays.
Observations suggest that the solar flares size distributions show a certain degree of regularity statistically speaking. vents can be arbitrarily large
he system is turbulentthe magnetic field lines in the corona do not move in a random pattern
However calculations based solely on plasma turbulence were also unable to reproduce the occurrence of solar flares in full.
and reached a breakthrough. e have been able to reproduce the overall picture of how solar flares occurthe researcher says.
which control the occurrence of solar flares. Demonstrating such temporal-energetic correspondences is the first step towards a prediction model.
and Peter Nordlander professor of physics and astronomy. lejandro created a detailed model of the far-field plasmonic interactions between the nanorodsolson says. hat proved very important
The researchers say this technology would be useful in places where sun and radio waves can t always penetrate such as inside walls
which degrade under exposure to sunlight and can also be difficult to align with imaging sensors. oday s color filtering mechanisms often involve materials that are not CMOS-compatible
The researchers chose Srf for its structural simplicity it has effectively just one electron that orbits around the entire molecule. e thought it would be best to start applying this technique with a simple diatomic moleculedemille says.
The lead author of the paper is John Barry a former Yale graduate student now at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
and his team to absorb specific nonvisible wavelengths of sunlight. e can tune these materials to pick up just the ultraviolet
As levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continue to rise researchers are looking for ways to make use of it.
The goal is to find ways to produce some of the world s largest-volume chemicals from a sustainable carbon source that the Earth not only has in excess
and astronomy and researchers from Moscow State university contributed to the report. The National Science Foundation and the US Air force Research Laboratory provided funding.
#Star collision may explain the lonely supernova University of Warwick rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Frew-Warwick on August 11 2014 A massive collision between white dwarf
and neutron stars may explain the creation of transient supernovae explosions that tend to occur far away from host galaxies. ur paper examines so-called calcium-rich transientssays Joseph Lyman from the University of Warwick. hese are luminous explosions
This means that these curious events may actually be the dominant producers of calcium in our universe. ne of the weirdest aspects is that they seem to explode in unusual places.
For example if you look at a galaxy you expect any explosions to roughly be in line with the underlying light you see from that galaxy
since that is where the stars arelyman says. owever a large fraction of these are exploding at huge distances from their galaxies where the number of stellar systems is miniscule. hat we address in the paper is
For example there could be very faint dwarf galaxies there explaining the weird locations. We present observations going just about as faint as you can go to show there is in fact nothing at the location of these transients so the question becomes how did they get there?
alcium-rich transients observed to date can be seen tens of thousands of parsecs away from any potential host galaxy with a third of these events at least 65 thousand light years from a potential host galaxy.
For the new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society researchers used the Very Large telescope in Chile
and Hubble space telescope observations of the nearest examples of these calcium-rich transients to attempt to detect anything left behind or in the surrounding area of the explosion.
The deep observation allowed them to rule out the presence of faint dwarf galaxies or globular star clusters at the locations of these nearest examples.
although fainter is the collapse of a massive star in a binary system where material is stripped from the massive star undergoing collapse.
or other massive stars in the vicinity allowing them to reject massive stars as the progenitors of calcium rich transients. t was increasingly looking like hypervelocity massive stars could not explain the locations of these supernovaesays Andrew Levan of the physics department. hey must be lower-mass
longer-lived stars but still in some sort of binary systems as there is no known way that a single low-mass star can go supernova by itself
or create an event that would look like a supernova. he researchers then compared their data to
what is known about short-duration gamma ray bursts (SGRBS). These are seen also often to explode in remote locations with no coincident galaxy detected.
SGRBS are understood to occur when two neutron stars collide or when a neutron star merges with a black hole.
Although mergers between neutron stars and black holes would not explain these brighter calcium-rich transients the researchers considered that
if the collision was instead between a white dwarf star and neutron star it would fit their observations because:
hat we therefore propose is these are systems that have been ejected from their galaxy. A good candidate in this scenario is a white dwarf and a neutron star in a binary system.
The neutron star is formed when a massive star goes supernova. The mechanism of the supernova explosion causes the neutron star to be kicked to very high velocities (100s of km/s). This high velocity system can then escape its galaxy
and if the binary system survives the kick the white dwarf and neutron star will merge causing the explosive transient. he researchers who say such merging systems of white dwarfs
and neutron stars may produce high energy gamma-ray bursts will next look for any new examples of calcium-rich transients to confirm this.
Such merging systems will contribute significant sources of gravitational waves potentially detectable by upcoming experiments that will shed further light on the nature of these exotic systems.
Researchers from University of Leicester and the Lund University Observatory contributed to the work. Source:
University of Warwickyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license n
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