Randomly oriented nanowires, on the growth substrate at left, are having a “bad hair day.” But after contact printing, the nanowires on the receiver substrate are highly aligned. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have created the world’s first all-integrated sensor circuit based …
EEStor has manufactured materials that have met all certification milestones for crystallization, chemical purity, and particle-size consistency. The results suggest that the materials can be made at a high-enough grade to meet the company’s performance goals. The company also said a key component of the material can withstand the extreme voltages needed for high energy …
If buildings are built better then the blast pressure has less effect at each range from the blast. 5 PSI buildings can be made or upgraded by using Hurriquake nails on existing buildings. $15 of material for each house. If the building do not collapse then there would be fewer fires because of fewer natural …
Oil supply is running on a streak of positive news after a lot of negative news pushed oil prices up. Saudi Arabia apparently hit its target of 9.7 million barrels a day in July. There is a steady recovery in oil production from the Gulf of Mexico, where Hurricane Katrina demolished rigs and set back …
Scientists from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands harnessed energy from the wind by flying a 10-sq metre kite tethered to a generator, producing 10 kilowatts of power. An Italian company, Kitegen, has come up with a theoretical design for a system that could generate a gigawatt, as much power as a standard coal-fired …
Top: the ALS beamline 9.0.1 experiment used a uniformly redundant array (URA) 30 nanometers thick with scattering elements 44 nanometers square (left). At right is the lithograph of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The scale bar is two micrometers long. Bottom: the FLASH experiment used a URA with 162 pinholes, next to a Spiroplasma bacterium. The …
Members of the Quantum Simulations Group at Lawrence Livermore National Labs provide an extensive discussion of how thermoelectrics can replace freon based refrigerators when inexpensive thermoelectric materials reach a ZT of 3. The Livermore group has begun working on simulations [modeling material processes using quantum molecular dynamics methods] for a diverse group of technological applications. …
Comparison of xGnP (graphene additive) to other nanocomposite additives. Michigan state University is using the recent discovery that graphene is the strongest material ever and using graphene additives to make stiffer, stronger and lighter plastics. The material – xGnP Exfoliated Graphite NanoPlatelets – can an either be used as an additive to plastics or by …
A blast-wave overpressure of 5 pounds per square inch, which is associated with winds around 150 miles per hour, is enough to destroy wood-frame buildings and cause severe damage to brick apartment buildings. However, with simple and cheap construction improvements and retrofits it is possible to enable all wood-frame buildings to survive 5 PSI. Further …
Carnival of space 65 is up at 21st century waves Music of the spheres talks about solar power satellites This site contributed an article about the latest and future thermoelectrics which has a space related angle for better RTGs Colony Worlds talks about likely iron on Mars There is a LOT more. Go check out …
Berkeley University has compressed light to 10 nanometers This will make possible smaller optical fibers, but it could lead to huge advances in the field of optical computing. Many researchers want to link electronics and optics, but light and matter make strange bedfellows, Oulton said, because their characteristic sizes are on vastly different scales. However, …